Blades in the Dark: a Review

Inage (cc) Yowan2008

I haven't been tending to the blog for a while, sorry.  Covid has affected gaming opportunities, I have not had a personal laptop, I have had difficulty getting things down on paper.  Plus I have been playing a lot of Cyberpunk 2077.  A lot.

Here I am trying to re-ignite things with a review format that feels like it could have legs.  Let me know if you want more of these.

Who are the players and what do they do?

Characters in Blades in the Dark are scoundrels in the underworld of Doskvol, a haunted fantasy-industrial city fuelled by leviathan blood and electroplasm.

The players work together as a Crew, lining up and running "Scores" to acquire Coin, Rep, and Turf.  At the same time they need to manage their Heat (and Wanted level) and relations with other Factions in the city.

What is the core mechanic?

Roll a pool of d6s and try to get one or more sixes.  A 4-5 means success with a consequence, a 1-3 is a failure. If you're familiar with PBTA games you'll see similarities here, and also in the use of character playbooks.

What's different from other games is that narrative Position and Effect are mechanically important when making rolls and judging outcomes. In a desperate position the consequences are more severe. In a controlled position, failure can often be mitigated by withdrawing and trying a different tack.  Taking on something out of your league isn't statistically harder to achieve, it has reduced narrative effect when you do.

Consequences can be Resisted (effectively ignored) at a cost of gaining Stress; too much stress and your character becomes increasingly traumatised, and must eventually retire. Balancing this against the need to get the mission done smoothly and silently - and keep everyone alive - as things spiral out of control is the core of the game.

Blades is a tense game of risks, consequences, and damage limitation. And, in our case, ferrets.

What's good?

The system is driven by the narrative at the table, with the mechanics both supporting and feeding back. It's more a game about how players use their resources to achieve their goals than about getting the best gear, or building characters for maximum damage output.  The fun is in the escalating mayhem emerging from consequences more than in the satisfaction of success.

Character advancement is tied to the things that make the game fun.  Each playbook has an unique XP trigger that rewards players doing the things in their playbook's niche, plus one for playing their character's beliefs/heritage, and one for being hampered by their Vice or Traumas.  Players gain XP for attempting desperate actions, pass or fail.

It's very clear why the PCs are together and what they should be doing, and that's baked into the system. Getting everyone on the same page should be pretty easy and the story drives itself.

The game has firm structures in place which are all mechanically sound and connect well with each other.  The rhythm of play is clear and, once you know what you're doing, it's a game that pretty much runs itself.  You can literally do no prep between sessions apart from 10 minutes rolling up an opportunity for a score.

Despite it being clear that PCs are ... let's say "morally ambiguous", it is built into the rules that murder-hobos will soon get enough Heat to find the full force of the law down on them pretty quickly.  Keeping a low profile is rewarded by the mechanics.

What's bad?

I didn't find the rules particularly easy reading. There is a lot going on mechanically and, while it's easy to pick up through play, it took me a few reads and a bit of flicking back and forth before I was confident I could run the game correctly.  It could be clearer, for example, what sort of consequences are appropriate for different positions - but I made myself a cheat sheet for this.

There's a mind blowing amount of background in the book, and I would go so far to say it's almost too much detail. This is a minor gripe; just mine the book for whatever you need, that's relevant to your game, and you'll be fine. I tried to map the relationships between all the factions and it blew my mind.  In contrast to this, some areas - for example how people and ghosts interact - feel quite sparse. 

One of Blades' strengths could be a weakness depending on your group - it's heavy on improvisation.  As DM, you can set up the simplest scenario and just wait for shit to go south. I personally love this, but if you're improv-averse you should know that you might not enjoy this aspect.

Overall? 

I think it's an excellent game for its setting and scope.  Let me know your thoughts in the comments.