An impeccable start, already loving the flavour and personality that you're pouring into these characters. Also very happy to see Nyryx in use, she's a very popular NPC in most of the APs I've read/listened to.
I also love the footnotes, Duskwall is a setting with tons of little details and I can imagine it's hard to get the necessary amount of exposition in without derailing the flow.
Thanks for the kind words, David! It's always a blast trying to come up with a similar-but-fresh version of a well-loved NPC from the setting books -- let me know if PTFO's Nyryx holds up the high standard of the others. ;-)
And I'm glad the footnotes are landing well, too -- I suspect once we start talking about Deathseeker Crows, Spirit Wardens, and the like, we'll need a few long asides.
I'm curious - why use an Action Roll rather than a Gather Information roll for the first two rolls? The two *are* different, but the difference can be annoyingly subtle sometimes (and it may indeed be that an Action Roll better suits your purposes). Happy to chat further, either now or in the future, about Blades GMing; I've done a LOT of it! I'm really looking forward to the project!
Cards (dice?) on the table, I didn't have a good grasp of the Gather Information rules -- I thought it was all action rolls. Going over my mechanics notes, arguably the first roll only (Rian getting general information about Molino and the Tear) was without obstacles, and the subsequent gathers (Aldo casing the joint, Rian trying to gather rumors about the layout of the house which then put him in the position to get a job) were a little more opposed. At least, that's my intuition -- what do you think?
Yeah, that's how (after much trial and error) I tend to think about it. A Gather Information roll is merely a Fortune Roll with a special name - the outcomes say how detailed the information is, in circumstances when there's no reasonable obstacle. However, I *do* think it's reasonable to call for an action roll if there's an obstacle you can name in the moment, like, say, breaking into an architect's office to get some blueprints of a location you want to rob (an actual example from one of my games - a Prowl action roll, rather than a Gather Information, was what did that).
Depending on circumstance, I suppose you could chain them together if it made sense - in that example I provided, a Prowl roll could get you in, and a Study roll might tell you how much sense you make of the plans. But, I suspect that may be outside of the Blades mindset of resolving *situations* via a roll.
I found these videos from Harper to be very useful when thinking about this. About 30 minutes long in total but super helpful.
I think there's also a strong argument for taking a GUMSHOE-like approach in a lot of situations, anyways. Often (much like in Stonetop), it simply makes sense for the character to know the basics! I think this probably matters more, though, in more typical play situations where you might be flooded by questions from players about the situation (usually in trying to avoid problems that would be better handled by flashbacks anyways).
In addition, Flashbacks can totally include Gather Information rolls too. "Of course my character would have looked at the blueprints beforehand!"
I think it is just that these are new characters but I was a confused a few times as to who was speaking. I rather love the thieves can't, one thing I wish more writers would do is try their hands at coolants, and translation of your world languages to the narrative. I think it is hard but I love it, I feel that helps the place feel so real, the specific drinks, and commodities, the particular slang. It helps paint the picture.
I already really like Aldo I think it is, he seems super level headed but also kind of like the quiet blade. Precise, efficient brutal. That's the air he gives off, at least.
Good feedback -- I will strive to make scene geography more clear in the future. I'm hoping that most scenes will involve two PCs and one or more NPCs, rather than gathering everyone in the same room time after time, but I suspect in the planning phase of a score, it's inevitable.
And I'm glad Aldo is coming through -- I tried to give all three PCs a little something to do, but he definitely comes through most strongly in this episode.
Oh are you cool with me using the Stone top Game in my every other week post? Sort of like a review of Stone top or maybe something similar to @machii a fanfic with a different system. 🤔 something I've been rattling around for a while now since I am only post twice a week, I think something like that might be cool.
But back to proper villians and the BitD system for a second (I'll be noodling over the sheets soon) but system wise it's still PBTA adjecnt system or all together different? With this system dp you feel like it makes certain things easier or does it make certain things more finicky during play? (Asking and it's only the first session, might still be up in the air of this?)
And one last thing journal's, and journal games for some reason this game strikes me as being really good for creating bonus episodes, one shots, vignettes using particular Solo journal games that are adjacent to something Like Artefact, there is another one I can't think of currently.
Re: Using my version of the Stonetop world as a jumping off point for your own story, by all means. A review of Stonetop would also be great -- I hope my playing with it for 2ish years before trying something new is good evidence that it is a really exemplary product. :)
Re: BitD's system -- I'm not sure yet. So far, the signs are good that it plays well in this format, but one concern I have is the focus on Scores -- they're very focused on a heist-like job and I'm just not sure we want to do a heist every session. Some of the downtime stuff is very gamey -- stuff like training for XP and planning how to move up in Tier -- but I think we can soften the gameiness of it by really leaning into the fiction. We'll see!
An impeccable start, already loving the flavour and personality that you're pouring into these characters. Also very happy to see Nyryx in use, she's a very popular NPC in most of the APs I've read/listened to.
I also love the footnotes, Duskwall is a setting with tons of little details and I can imagine it's hard to get the necessary amount of exposition in without derailing the flow.
Thanks for the kind words, David! It's always a blast trying to come up with a similar-but-fresh version of a well-loved NPC from the setting books -- let me know if PTFO's Nyryx holds up the high standard of the others. ;-)
And I'm glad the footnotes are landing well, too -- I suspect once we start talking about Deathseeker Crows, Spirit Wardens, and the like, we'll need a few long asides.
There is only one prime contact, and his name is Scurlock.
Do you think we should rope Scurlock into this story? :)
I'm curious - why use an Action Roll rather than a Gather Information roll for the first two rolls? The two *are* different, but the difference can be annoyingly subtle sometimes (and it may indeed be that an Action Roll better suits your purposes). Happy to chat further, either now or in the future, about Blades GMing; I've done a LOT of it! I'm really looking forward to the project!
(I'm Noel on the Stonetop Discord)
Cards (dice?) on the table, I didn't have a good grasp of the Gather Information rules -- I thought it was all action rolls. Going over my mechanics notes, arguably the first roll only (Rian getting general information about Molino and the Tear) was without obstacles, and the subsequent gathers (Aldo casing the joint, Rian trying to gather rumors about the layout of the house which then put him in the position to get a job) were a little more opposed. At least, that's my intuition -- what do you think?
Yeah, that's how (after much trial and error) I tend to think about it. A Gather Information roll is merely a Fortune Roll with a special name - the outcomes say how detailed the information is, in circumstances when there's no reasonable obstacle. However, I *do* think it's reasonable to call for an action roll if there's an obstacle you can name in the moment, like, say, breaking into an architect's office to get some blueprints of a location you want to rob (an actual example from one of my games - a Prowl action roll, rather than a Gather Information, was what did that).
Depending on circumstance, I suppose you could chain them together if it made sense - in that example I provided, a Prowl roll could get you in, and a Study roll might tell you how much sense you make of the plans. But, I suspect that may be outside of the Blades mindset of resolving *situations* via a roll.
I found these videos from Harper to be very useful when thinking about this. About 30 minutes long in total but super helpful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAl85kYCWro
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fr5ZQAECcps
I think there's also a strong argument for taking a GUMSHOE-like approach in a lot of situations, anyways. Often (much like in Stonetop), it simply makes sense for the character to know the basics! I think this probably matters more, though, in more typical play situations where you might be flooded by questions from players about the situation (usually in trying to avoid problems that would be better handled by flashbacks anyways).
In addition, Flashbacks can totally include Gather Information rolls too. "Of course my character would have looked at the blueprints beforehand!"
After a bit of Googling, I found Reddit user Sully5443 giving an excellent breakdown here: https://www.reddit.com/r/bladesinthedark/comments/108815n/is_gather_info_an_action_or_fortune_roll/
I think it is just that these are new characters but I was a confused a few times as to who was speaking. I rather love the thieves can't, one thing I wish more writers would do is try their hands at coolants, and translation of your world languages to the narrative. I think it is hard but I love it, I feel that helps the place feel so real, the specific drinks, and commodities, the particular slang. It helps paint the picture.
I already really like Aldo I think it is, he seems super level headed but also kind of like the quiet blade. Precise, efficient brutal. That's the air he gives off, at least.
Good feedback -- I will strive to make scene geography more clear in the future. I'm hoping that most scenes will involve two PCs and one or more NPCs, rather than gathering everyone in the same room time after time, but I suspect in the planning phase of a score, it's inevitable.
And I'm glad Aldo is coming through -- I tried to give all three PCs a little something to do, but he definitely comes through most strongly in this episode.
Oh are you cool with me using the Stone top Game in my every other week post? Sort of like a review of Stone top or maybe something similar to @machii a fanfic with a different system. 🤔 something I've been rattling around for a while now since I am only post twice a week, I think something like that might be cool.
But back to proper villians and the BitD system for a second (I'll be noodling over the sheets soon) but system wise it's still PBTA adjecnt system or all together different? With this system dp you feel like it makes certain things easier or does it make certain things more finicky during play? (Asking and it's only the first session, might still be up in the air of this?)
And one last thing journal's, and journal games for some reason this game strikes me as being really good for creating bonus episodes, one shots, vignettes using particular Solo journal games that are adjacent to something Like Artefact, there is another one I can't think of currently.
Re: Using my version of the Stonetop world as a jumping off point for your own story, by all means. A review of Stonetop would also be great -- I hope my playing with it for 2ish years before trying something new is good evidence that it is a really exemplary product. :)
Re: BitD's system -- I'm not sure yet. So far, the signs are good that it plays well in this format, but one concern I have is the focus on Scores -- they're very focused on a heist-like job and I'm just not sure we want to do a heist every session. Some of the downtime stuff is very gamey -- stuff like training for XP and planning how to move up in Tier -- but I think we can soften the gameiness of it by really leaning into the fiction. We'll see!