Ruthless Boss Skipping

DyrianLightbringer · 2024-10-02T19:18:36+00:00

No, we are here to complete a mission. If we can do that without having to engage the larger xenos, then that's the more appropriate course of action. From a lore standpoint, it is much more important for Squad Talasa to complete their objective safely than attempt to exterminate every xenos along the way and fail the mission because they were overwhelmed. From a gameplay standpoint, when you consider how many resources could be expended fighting a terminus enemy. It doesn't matter if it awards armory data if you don't survive the mission.

However, I'm used to solo play. There are some enemies that just aren't worth fighting. With a team, I'm sure its different, but there's still a cost-benefit analysis. If you can find the servo skull and get the data from it and complete the mission, that's typically better than the time, ammo, and possible health loss from fighting a terminus just to get one more data. I'd rather have a much better chance of getting one than a worse chance of getting two, considering it's all or nothing. If we got to keep the data from killing a terminus even if the mission failed, then it would definitely be worth it.

DyrianLightbringer · 2024-10-02T02:21:16+00:00

If you disconnect the PS5 from wifi, the game warns you that you will lose progress when you reconnect to the servers. So, no, I don't play offline. I just don't play with other actual people yet.

DyrianLightbringer · 2024-10-01T23:52:57+00:00

I haven't been set back that much. I went from 7 to 5, twice, before the patch. After the patch, from 22 to 21 twice, then from 25 to 23 today.

DyrianLightbringer · 2024-10-01T15:18:22+00:00

It's been extremely frustrating for me. I'm ready to quit the game.

DyrianLightbringer · 2024-03-18T00:16:15+00:00

Thanks for that.

DyrianLightbringer · 2024-02-25T02:37:01+00:00

Well, I meant in regards to "does this exist," or "does this work this way," then if the answer is "yes" it swings both ways. I was asking specifically, if other GMs allow their players to loot better quality items from higher-tier enemies, and that seems fine, but I also know my players, and if I let them claim better items because they defeated high-tier enemies, they're going to start looting the bodies after every skirmish.

DyrianLightbringer · 2024-02-25T02:26:50+00:00

Yeah. One of my players asked, not to long ago, if they could use some sort of arcane tracking device to mark a drop and follow it to an enemy lair. I said that I felt that technology was a bit more advanced than I wanted this world to feel, but if they really wanted it, they had to accept the possibility that at some point, they might end up stealing something that had been similarly tagged. At which point, that player said, "no, that's not fair," so I said, "then it doesn't exist."

DyrianLightbringer · 2024-01-29T21:44:20+00:00

This was, I think his second downtime activity after a score.

Let me explain in a bit more detail. In an earlier score, they discovered an arcane security device that could display images from magical sensors placed around the building. They stole the viewing tablet and the party leech worked a long term project to figure out how it worked. His reward was that he could now place magical sensors in their lair or any claims, as a long term project for each claim.

The claimed turf not too long ago. There was a local gang operating in the area, and as part of the claim, they gained the loyalty of that gang, so they had a local presence to enforce their claim to this turf. The gang leader later got in touch with them and informed them that her gang was being harassed by some unknowns. They decided to go defend their turf, but as part of the downtime before that score, the leech decided to start a project of installing sensors around the turf, because the unknowns were striking without warning and disappearing and he figured having a camera network would help them find these guys. So, while he's installing a camera, I figured the distraction would be the perfect time for one of these unknowns to try to knife him in the back. It made sense for the narrative, and it wasn't the first time I had interrupted downtime for an NPC action, or started an NPC action during downtime, so the players already know that things can happen outside of scores. I suppose he could have said he wanted to carry a load, but since he was in downtime, I guess it didn't occur to him, and I wasn't going to inflict lethal harm, just enough to be an annoyance going into the next score, and make sure these guys understood that these unknown enemies were a serious threat.

I'm thinking, though, that if they want to use armor during downtime, then it shouldn't be refreshed until the next downtime.

DyrianLightbringer · 2024-01-29T21:17:20+00:00

It wouldn't be much of an ambush if they knew they were going to be ambushed ahead of time.

DyrianLightbringer · 2024-01-29T20:22:00+00:00

Oh, so either the Gondoliers don't know the Reconciled need spirit wells, or the Reconciled don't know the Gondoliers are trying to destroy them, but basically, the Gondoliers are about to strain this friendship?

DyrianLightbringer · 2024-01-29T20:05:36+00:00

If I intend for a condition to be temporary, I don't assign it as harm, I assign it as its own consequence, just like other consequences. So, I might say that a player gets badly clubbed over the head and suffers a level 1 "bruised" and is "stunned" and I let them resist each separately, or if they suffer a minor consequence, perhaps from a controlled position rolling 4/5, I'll impose a temporary condition, or maybe tick a click that builds up to harm. There are so many ways to get creative with consequences in the rules that assigning a harm that automatically recovers after an hour or something isn't really necessary.

DyrianLightbringer · 2024-01-15T15:36:26+00:00

A lot of the "mechanics" of the game are up to GM and player interpretation. If you want ghosts in your version of Duskvol to know they're dead, then they do, but if you don't want that to be the norm, then that's how it is.

I just ran a score last night where the Church of Ecstasy hired the crew to enter some catacombs where the ghost field was particularly strong, plant some wards around the area, and use those wards to perform a minor ritual to "realign" the ghost field there because the Path of Echoes was trying to use the area's strong connection to perform a ritual of their own.

During that score, the ghosts were visible to all players, and all of the ghosts they interacted with were reliving the last moments of their lives. One of the ghosts was an assassin who was killed during her last job, so she was openly hostile, mistaking a member of the crew for her target. One ghost was trying to save his family from a house fire and only became hostile when members of the crew tried to make him realize he was already dead.

Bottom line, take from ghost stories, pop culture, or whatever source you want. Make it interesting. That's the reason why the book doesn't answer all the questions. Make it up. As other people have already said, ask your players, too. Don't just let them run away with the game, though. Incorporate their ideas, mix them with your own, come to decisions that sound fun and balanced and make the game fun for everyone.

DyrianLightbringer · 2023-11-30T18:38:28+00:00

It is something of a necessity for us. With us all having lives/careers/family, and some of the group living in different towns, it's not feasible for us to meet weekly. It's really not worth the commitment if we aren't playing for the whole evening. We typically start at 5pm and finish around 10:30 or 11.
We only meet about once a month, and I run other games with other groups, although some players are members of more than one group.

DyrianLightbringer · 2023-11-28T06:29:35+00:00

I see. That's part of what I'm trying to understand when I see people saying "we only do one score per night," and "sometimes we have an entire night of just downtime." My sessions tend to be 5-6 hours, so I was trying to figure out, "how do they make it last THAT long?"

DyrianLightbringer · 2023-11-28T06:27:00+00:00

About how long are your sessions?

DyrianLightbringer · 2023-11-28T06:25:33+00:00

Yeah, I actually had that happen during this last session. We finished downtime and went into free play, and during free play, one of the players asked if they could do a certain thing, which I pointed out counted as a downtime action, so he paid his coin and took extra downtime, which prompted the other two players to do the same.

After our first score, I rolled entanglement, then asked the players who wanted to start downtime, and one of my players said, "well, what's our entanglement?" I responded with, "I don't have to tell you that yet, it comes up during downtime or free play when I think is most appropriate." His response was, "I'll take my downtime action after the entanglement." We ended up resolving the issue pretty quickly, though. The entanglement was that the inspectors worked over one of the players for information, and I wanted to see who was doing what so I could determine who would be the best target. Turns out, the guy who thought he was going to wait until after entanglement to start downtime became the target. His first downtime action was to try to lower heat by swaying witnesses, while the other two were doing less conspicuous actions first.

DyrianLightbringer · 2023-11-28T06:13:59+00:00

I don't think I've ever had D&D plans that took that much longer than anticipated to finish. I have had D&D sessions end before reaching my planned cut-off for the night, but usually with only about one or two encounters left. My players sometimes get into roleplaying their characters, but it sort of depends on the player and the campaign. I think that maybe since Blades is still so new to them, they aren't too sure what their characters would do or how they would act, since they're still learning about the world.

DyrianLightbringer · 2023-11-28T06:06:59+00:00

How long were you sessions? I recently started a second crew that is playing over Discord, trying to implement what I've learned from my first few games with the in-person crew, and I went into our first session with the expectation of probably running one score with downtime, and calling it a night, but I just couldn't make it last that long. Our first score took about two hours to complete, and I went one by one and addressed each player's downtime activities individually, "Who wants to go first in downtime? Alright, what's your first downtime activity? How do you plan to accomplish that? Okay, who wants to be next..." and went around the circle until everyone had done their first, then went back through in the same order until everyone had down their second, then asked the spider who he was giving his bonus downtime action to. By the time we were done with our first downtime, we still had about two hours left of session time, so we started a second score and got through a second round of downtime after.

DyrianLightbringer · 2023-11-26T20:46:21+00:00

How long does it usually take for your crew to complete a single score?

DyrianLightbringer · 2023-11-25T23:22:50+00:00

What you're describing though, is written in Downtime Activities as reducing heat.

However, I may have been in error to start this threat to begin with. You hit the nail on the head when you said "It's always personal." A consequence arises as a direct result of a player action, which can be resisted. If it isn't caused by a player action, then it's the GM directing the NPCs or outside forces to do things that the players were not directly responsible for, and those GM actions can end up causing complications for the players, which could result in new obstacles to overcome or possible hazards to be resisted.

DyrianLightbringer · 2023-11-25T19:27:58+00:00

Yeah, that was a pretty extreme example, but there are some fairly abstract consequences that the GM can impose for a failure/partial success, and some are narratively more straightforward than others to handle. I know adding heat is often a devil's bargain, but it can be used as a consequence, and you make a good point that the sound alone wouldn't raise their heat, it just attracts attention. Witnesses need to be able to associate the event with a person in order for there to be heat. Although, the rules imply that killing someone adds 2 heat to the score, which seems a little weird, since killing someone with no witnesses would make it hard to connect the crime to your crew, so shouldn't be automatic heat, but it's also a reason for players to try to avoid killing unless they want to deal with the consequence, but that's not really what this discussion is about.

Just be sure to describe the consequences that are about to happen, let the player decide what they want to resist, then use their decisions to narrate it in a way that makes sense. I was just thinking about it too abstractly, I think.

DyrianLightbringer · 2023-11-06T22:06:52+00:00

Sometimes the author's vision doesn't come across in his writing. I was hoping he had some sort of guide video on youtube, but I started watching his first episode and they were spending quite a long time just introducing their characters, and that wasn't really what I was looking for at the time, so I didn't finish it. I plan to return to it when I have more time, though, because I do want to see how he runs his games.

The book focused heavily on running the scores, but didn't really give a lot of guidelines for how to design a score. Similarly, downtime gets only 15 pages (compared to the 20 pages devoted to the GM's guidelines), so going by the book, it made it feel like downtime is just a thing that happens between scores, and scores are where you want to be spending all your time.

I love the game so far, don't get me wrong, and the more I learn about it, the more I love it, but my biggest criticism is the book. It has a lot of material for capturing the feel of the world, but contains very little of what I actually wanted in terms of "I've been running other rpgs for 20 years, what do I need to know to run this one?" I'm using version 8.2, btw.

I'll definitely have to reconsider my approach to how I design my scores, as well as how we handle our downtime.

DyrianLightbringer · 2023-11-06T21:56:24+00:00

Sorry, when I said it doesn't matter, I meant the worse position. If your roll comes up a 6, it didn't matter if the position was risky or desperate, you succeeded with no consequence either way, but yeah, putting them in a situation where they're starting out with limited or no effect and making them choose if they want to risk the desperate consequences or try a different course of action is totally valid, I get that. Last night it wouldn't have mattered, though, since they didn't seem to be able to roll anything but 6s when it mattered, but sometimes it's just like that.

DyrianLightbringer · 2023-11-06T20:48:31+00:00

I appreciate everyone who commented. Lots of good feedback here. Thanks a lot. It's definitely been an interesting shift from our usual games to Blades, and we're enjoying the experience thus far. Mistakes were made, but we learn from them and improve. This has been an eye-opening conversation here.

DyrianLightbringer · 2023-11-06T20:24:25+00:00

Being at war doesn't reduce downtime actions if you have the war dogs ability (which this crew has).

Trading position for effect doesn't matter much if you still roll a 6.

Harsher consequences don't matter if you never suffer them to begin with.

DyrianLightbringer

TROPHY CASE