Ronan McNamee

Stay Frosty

Obviously, a game like this is going to draw comparisons with the Alien RPG and Mothership given the subject matter but, from even a cursory look, it seems to be approaching the genre from a slightly different direction.

Not Over Yet

I had a great plan for today’s post. It was all coming together perfectly. We were due to finish of the Call of Cthulhu “one-shot,” the Derelict last night, but, due to various unforeseen circumstances, we were forced to postpone. So, the review of the scenario that I had been planning will have to wait too.

Still, I’m not short of subjects to write about.

Stay Frosty Remastered

I’m going to take this opportunity to take a look at one of the games I received recently as a Kickstarter fulfilment. Stay Frosty Remastered from the Melsonian Arts Council and written by Casey Garske is an old school RPG of sci-fi marines in situations of extreme tension where they face monsters, demons and aliens with nothing but a shotgun and a bad attitude. Think Doom crossed with Aliens. Obviously, a game like this is going to draw comparisons with the Alien RPG and Mothership given the subject matter but, from even a cursory look, it seems to be approaching the genre from a slightly different direction.

It’s worth noting that “Remastered” in the title. Casey Garske first released Stay Frosty back in 2017 so it’s been around longer than either of the two games I mentioned above. I first learned about the original before I ever backed the remaster. Co-host of the Fear of a Black Dragon podcast, Tom McGrenery used it several times as the ruleset in which he ran some rather unlikely scenarios. I never read the original, though it is still possible to get it here.

Basics

Roll a d20 greater than or equal to your attribute for a success. Otherwise fail. Sometimes you get another die for advantage or disadvantage. That’s it.

Obviously, this implies that, even though you roll your attributes up the same way as you do in D&D, lower numbers are better!

Badassery

You get to play some of the galaxy’s badest asses in Stay Frosty. Character creation seems very straight forward. You get some attributes (Brains, Brawn, Dexterity and Willpower,) and MOS (military Operations Specialty,) hit points, rank and some equipment. Then it’s “Oorah” and into the bug’s nest to rend some carapace. Character creation starts on page 5 and just about stretches to page 8. All the better to roll up a new badass when the first one bites it.

Gear

I like that the rules around gear are abstracted so far as to make theatre of the mind nice and easy. Ranges, as they apply to combat and weapons are expressed by bands:

Hand-to-hand -> Close -> Short -> Medium -> Long -> Extreme

Your weapon’s description indicates its max range of course.

Another touch I appreciate is the use of supply dice for ammo that you use in a combat situation. If you used it, roll the ammo die for it at the end of the fight, If you roll a 1 or a 2, it reduces the die size until it’s gone. There is a similar rule for other gear that can be depleted.

Combat

Space marines fighting bug aliens — Riiiiip

I described the essentials of it in the Basics section above. But there are a few idiosyncracies that I enjoy:

One of the actions you can take in a round is called Battle of Wills. If you succeed on a Willpower roll against a chosen target, they will get disadvantage on their next attack. You just scare them into fucking up because of your badassness.

If you get a critical or a fumble, you roll on the appropriate FUBAR table. Either “Fuck Yes, Natural 20” or “Oh Fuck, Natural 1.”

There are Psi-powers. These are restricted to PCs with the Psi-ops MOS. There aren’t too many powers in the book but here’s a selection:

Brain Bleed (although the book seems to be missing the actual Effect of this one)
Interface – lets you take control of machines
Mind Stab – mind stab

There’s a little more to the system than just these points, but not much.

Mostly these other rules are introduced in the chapter,

Other Crap Every Game Has

Which has the sub-sub-title,

Jesus Christ, I guess we have to spell everything out.

Danger, Frostiness and Tension

These are the mechanics that make the game what it is. You will see some similarities to the Stress and Panic mechanics in both Mothership and the Alien RPG.

Firstly, the Danger die is rolled whenever the PCs move from one area to another, whenever they are in really dodgy locations or just whenever they’re dawdling. It’s a good way to ramp up the Tension. It works much like an encounter die in other games so can lead to location-appropriate baddies turning up, environmental challenges and loss of resources, but it can also add Tension or cause it to be released explosively!

Which brings us neatly on to the Tension mechanics. So, the PCs gain Tension through the Danger die rolls I described above.

Tension can be good for you. Forget simply staying frosty, Tension will actually build your frostiness level. It starts at “Warm” when your Tension is at a 1 and goes all the way up thru “Chill” (gives the agile tag to ranged attacks) and “Frozen” (Advantage on saves) to “Ice-Cold” (extra attack) when you reach 6 Tension points. There is a danger of course, when your that tense. When the Danger die comes up 6, “Tension Explodes!” And every PC has to make a Willpower save. If they succeed, they can reduce their Tension by one but if they fail, they take their Tension score x their level in damage. If this reduces them to 0 or lower HP, they roll on the Going Apeshit table. If you get a 1 on this table you’re on Overkill, advantage on damage rolls but having to roll your ammo die every round instead of after the combat. If you roll a 6, though, you’re on Last Stand, abandoning weapons and armour to face the enemy mano-a-mano.

This is pretty close to the stress mechanics in Alien, which is also all governed by tables. I’d be incredibly surprised if it wasn’t inspired by this game.

The Rest

A parade of bad guys from winged demons to little brain aliens — If it Bleeds…

Most of the rest of the book consists of a couple of missions to send your frosty fighters on. But there are also a couple of pages of random tables to allow you to easily and quickly construct your own missions and a few basic stat blocks for bad guys like Amoeboids, Demons and Robotic Assassins.

Conclusion

Isaac ran myself and Tom through a dungeon in the Black Hack the other night. None of us had ever played it before and even Isaac had barely looked at the rules. It was so easy, though, that we had characters created, hirelings hired and a dungeon explored before you could say the unlikely word, “Prolch” (my slow-witted fighter’s unfortunate name.) Stay Frosty gives me a very similar vibe. I only just opened it for the first time to write this post and I feel like I could run it now. Maybe I will! Unsurprisingly, the Black Hack is listed in Stay Frosty’s Appendix A: Influences. Garske tells us here that his game was originally a Black Hack hack but he ended up totally rewriting it. You can still see the Black bones of it though.

Blades in the Dark Player Best Practices

At this point, I’ve dealt, at length, with the GM advice, but what about the players? Surely they deserve a little guidance too!

Yep, they have not been forgotten.

Progress Clock

We started our Blades in the Dark campaign last Wednesday with a character creation session. I had hoped that we’d be able to get down to the first score as well, but it was not to be. Honestly, character creation, although pretty straight-forward, was rather time-consuming. When you have three or four people around a table making decisions on their own characters as they try to form a coherent picture of them in their minds, it can take a while. Add on the collaborative decisions required of them for Crew creation, and you can comfortably double the time required.

Anyway, current progress looks like this:

Three of four characters created, an Akorosi Cutter, an Akorosi Hound and a Whisper from the Dagger Isles
Crew created: It was a toss-up between Bravos and Smugglers but, with the general vibe of the crew so far, Bravos won out in the end.
Decided that their main sponsor faction will be the Crows of Crows Foot.

I’ll get a character creation session with our last player in the next week or so and then we’ll be ready to launch into the first score.

Creating Opportunities

That’s what this game is all about, right? Taking chances, building relationships, gathering information, making your own opportunities. Well, that’s what I’m doing today. Instead of the recap of the first score, I’m using this opportunity to discuss the advice levelled at the players in a Blades in the Dark campaign. At this point, I’ve dealt, at length, with the GM advice, but what about the players? Surely they deserve a little guidance too!

Yep, they have not been forgotten.

Starting on page 182 of the Blades in the Dark book, at the end of the How to Play chapter, we have the section entitled…

Player Best Practices

The Lurk, a light-skinned, femme character dressed in a dark hood. — The Lurk, by J Harper

We have a total of eight of these listed here. Not as many as for the GM, but there’s a lot in each one. Here’s what we’ve got:

Embrace the Scoundrel’s Life
Go into Danger, Fall in Love with Trouble
Don’t Be a Weasel
Take Responsibility
Use Your Stress
Don’t Talk Yourself out of Fun
Build Your Character through Play
Act Now, Plan Later

As usual, I’m not going to go into detail on all of these. This time, I’m going to group them.

Embrace the Scoundrel’s Life + Go into Danger, Fall in Love with Trouble + Don’t Talk Yourself out of Fun

These three best practices all relate generally to the same issue. You, as a player of Blades in the Dark, are not there to play it safe. You are not at the table to make optimised choices. Your character lives in a brutally unfair world and they have become adept at surviving it and even profiting from it. Lean into that! Will they have to make difficult choices that might lead them or their crew to harm? Yes! Will they have to take wildly risky actions to achieve their goals or create those opportunities? Yes! Will they have accept the consequences of their actions, which might include conflict with the highest powers int he city, imprisonment and death? Yes! This is the good stuff, in fact, not the downside. These are the parts of the game that keep it moving forward and allow you to craft scenes of kick-ass action, ice-cold espionage and even heart-breaking tragedy. This is why you want to play. If you’re playing to win, instead of to find out what happens, you won’t get the most out of this game.

Don’t Be a Weasel + Use Your Stress + Act Now, Plan Later

You know, there’s a common thread running through all the best practices for players, to be honest. I think it can best be described as “let go.” You have a say in what happens in the story, of course, but you should not be precious about your character. Push them as far and as fast as you can, drive them like that proverbial stolen car. These three practices are about doing that within the rules of the game. You do stuff by rolling with Actions, not skills. It’s important to choose the right action for the job, even if it’s not your best. That’s where stress comes in! One of your companions can spend stress to help your actions succeed with an assist, or you can spend it to push yourself. It’s invaluable for resisting consequences that would be otherwise inevitable. You can even use it to work in a flashback and do a setup action to get you out of a particularly sticky spot. You will build up the stress, of course. You’re going to have to indulge your vices to shed it or you’re going to find yourself traumatised. That’s where these stories end up sometimes. Your PC might build up a weakness or two, they might be brought to the end of their tale through the extremities of stress. But what a tale it will have been!

Take Responsibility + Build Your Character through Play

Blades in the Dark is a story game. You are telling a story at the table with your friends and you want it to be the best it can be. You want it to have ups and downs, ins, outs and what-have-yous. Dark, tragic, thrilling, horrific comedic, action-packed, whatever you want it to be, you can contribute to it. You have the option to add as much or as little as you like. Some players are going to invent new NPCs, locales, factions, street-vendors, family-members, ghosts, you get the idea. This is all good. But a player’s greatest power to contribute to the story is through their own character. The actions they take, the things they say, these things can add as much to a session as the NPCs invented by the GM, probably far more. Maybe you are already delighted with the general atmosphere and vibe the rest of the table is bringing, so you don’t feel like you need to add too much, you still have a responsibility to your own character, to have them grow from their beginnings into fuller, more alive beings. You start with a “sketch” but, through the actions you choose for your PC, how they comport themselves in various situations, the risks they are willing to take, you’ll make an unforgettable character and story.

Conclusion

The Shade. A floppy-haired dandy in a Victorian gentleman’s clothing. — The Shade, by J Harper

Like I stated above, there is a strong theme across all of these best practices: don’t be boring. In a game like this where the story evolves collaboratively at the table and is not even slightly left up to a published campaign frame or the GM, the choices you make as a player will dictate the sort of experience you have. Be bold, don’t behave.

Pirate Borg: The Repentant Review

To be clear, the ship is the whole adventure. You could easily work it into an ongoing campaign, I think. It could be a random encounter or the goal of a mission. But, for me, it worked perfectly as a one-shot. It gives you everything you need in those eleven pages.

Talk Like a Pirate Delay

I was really excited about this year’s Second Annual Tables and Tales Talk Like a Pirate Day Pirate Borg One Shot on September 19th but I was, unfortunately, overcome by some malady that day. We postponed it only to have a massive storm roll in off the Atlantic, forcing us to delay the departure of this vessel yet again. Finally, last Sunday the players’ pirates were ready to board the Repentant come hell or high water…

OK, I say they boarded it but it would be more correct to say they were taken aboard. I started them off in the expanded brig, area 1 on the map of the ship. They awoke, captured, stinking and hurting and minus all their stuff. Nevertheless, with a few improvised weapons they found lying around the cabin and the assistance of a skeleton thrall raised by the skeletal sorcerer, they managed to overpower their demon guard. This was the first of many obstacles to their defeat of the Ashen Priest commanding the ship and taking the Repentant for themselves.

The Scenario

The cover of Cabin Fever, a skeletal pirate with a tricorn hat and the words "Cabin Fever" erupting in fire from his eyesockets — The cover of Cabin Fever

The Repentant is an 11 page one-shot scenario for Pirate Borg by Zac Goins. It is published in the forthcoming sourcebook for that game, Cabin Fever, via KNOWN CONSPIRATORS, Limithron’s subtable for third-party creators. Cabin Fever is a treasure chest of extras for Pirate Borg including new PC classes, GM tools, a Bestiary, no fewer than six adventures as well as solo rules. I am one of the backers of the Kickstarter project so I got access to the PDF through that. I’m hoping to receive the physical rewards for that soon.

This scenario is presented in a typical Borg-ish style, with maps, and illustrations taking the lead in establishing the atmosphere. It’s almost all in grey and black, emphasising the theme of ASH. The layout is also typical with lots of tables, stat-blocks, keyed area descriptions etc being worked into the spaces between and around the artwork. I occasionally had to take a few extra seconds to find what I was looking for due to this but it was never a major disruption. In general it looks great and ewers relatively easy to use.

The Premise

The Repentant is a charnel ship, an unkempt brigantine with tattered sails and a crew of demons and cultists, commanded by a cadre of Ashen Clergy. Their goal is spelled out clearly in the three step plan on the second page. In summary, the plan is to summon demons, form an unholy pact with the Dark One, raid some settlements to take captives, kill ‘em, raise them as undead and then grind them up to make Brimstone ASH. This is a type of cursed and arcane narcotic on which the crew plan to make lots and lots of pieces of eight.

The Reality

There is a fun variety of enemies for such a short scenario. You have seven different types of possible demon (one for each deadly sin, with commensurate sinful powers,) the emaciated crew, the Ashen Vicars and the Ashen Priest who has a variety of fun powers. And if you deal with all those, there is a hold full of Brimstone Zombies, who have the power to promise your soul to the Dark One with a bite.

Although not every encounter ended in combat, almost all did. It felt inevitable in general. I started the players off where I did, in the brig because of the restrictions of a one-shot session. I wanted them in the thick of it from the start and escape gave them a powerful motivation to attack the terrifying demon, even without real weapons. Also, I figured the brig is area 1 on the map for a reason. The scenario does not explicitly indicate where or how you should start it as a one-shot, but if you take the hint, here, you’re probably not going to go wrong. It definitely got them into the action immediately. Without the timely and repeated use of Devil’s Luck and mystical powers in the first two encounters, at least one of the party would have gone down. The only thing is that it led to two mostly combat encounters in quick succession. Starting with them boarding over the rails or some other way might have engendered a totally different kind of adventure.

The map was fine. I was a little put off that three of the four decks had one side of the map cut off but it was of no practical disadvantage in play.

Tables, tables, tables. The tables are great, from the effects of the Brimstone ASH (different to the regular ASH introduced in Pirate Borg) to the “What did I just step in?” Table which I underused criminally.

My players only used the Brimstone ASH on their enemies, which was a shame. I think it’s because when they rolled on the table for those uses, they got 1s and 2s, which are very very bad. After I told them what else was on the table, they regretted not trying it!

6 The Devil’s inside ye. Immune to fire. All weapons’ dice size increases.

The Finale

The ASH grinder. Looks like a meat grinder, with a big funnel on top, a mincer on one side and a cranking wheel on the other. Has steps up to allow you the zombies to feed themselves into it. — The ASH grinder.

I saved the Ashen Priest, the scenario’s main villain, for the end. He might have been found in either the captain’s quarters or the hold, according to the keyed locations, but, honestly, you could locate him anywhere to suit your own game. The PCs had done away with almost everyone else aboard when they descended into the cargo hold found him there, feeding zombies into the ASH Grinder. There were a lot of undead down there with him but the PCs made such short work of him that it hardly mattered. Then they got to take the ship as plunder, not to mention the undead and the grinder so they could enact the plan themselves!

Conclusion

This was one of the most well-crafted one-shot scenarios I’ve run. We played it in about three and a half hours, though, if things had gone badly, it might have been over after less than an hour! I did give them a couple of NPCs for back-up and in case anyone lost their first PC (there were two deaths.) This might have given them a slight advantage, if I’m honest, but everyone had a good time. Looking forward to trying out some more scenarios from Cabin Fever and the rest of the slew of new books from Limithron!

Answering the Call of Cthulhu

Seasonal Event

Our local RPG community, Tables and Tales, has just kicked off a month-long event to help introduce some of our newer members to the joys of halloween/spooky/goblin themed games through the timeless medium of the one-shot horror in which you play some dreadful miscreant and revel in their inevitable and total annihilation.

So far so good! We kicked things off last night with Another Bug Hunt, Mothership’s introductory scenario, immediately breaking with the format for the event by not finishing it in a single session. Following rules is for squares, says our Warden, Isaac. I’m playing an absolutely jacked exobioligist who should not have been trusted with the submachine gun he was issued for the mission. None of the PCs have died yet, although, the NPCs haven’t been so lucky.

The cover of the Mothership Deluxe Core Set

The cover of Another Bug Hunt scenario — The cover of the Mothership Deluxe Core Set

We have a few more sessions lined up in the coming weeks, Shannen is acting as the chaperone for Goblin Prom which is a Honey Heist hack that’s pretty much exactly what it sounds like. Tom is planning a Thirsty Sword Lesbians one-shot with a creepy flavour too! I have a couple of games lined up for the event. Later in the month, I’ll be facilitating the move of the family Balfour to the Scottish Borders in the late 19th century for Scott Dorward’s excellent Cthulhu Dark scenario, Fairyland (check out the actual play run by Dorward himself on the Ain’t Slayed Nobody podcast here. It’s one of my favourites.) But before that, I’ll be acting as Keeper for the first time in a Call of Cthulhu game.

Dancers on the cover illustration of Goblin Prom — Goblin Prom

The cover of Thirsty Sword Lesbians — Goblin Prom

The Game

Call of Cthulhu is a phenomenon. A horror game made by Chaosium and based on the works of HP Lovecraft, its been around almost as long as RPGs have and has had an enduring legacy and impact on not just the TTRPG space but the wider culture in general (although I understand that it is difficult to truly assess its cultural effects separately from its literary inspirations.) It’s the single most popular TTRPG in Japan and it has a dedicated following and niche actual play market that seems to have been thriving in recent years. You should check out the brand spanking new and fully improvised Push the Roll with Ross Bryant as soon as possible. Isaac and Tom have run several scenarios for us, which have gone down as some of the founding lore of our RPG group. And yet, I have never run a session of it.

I’m going to change that next Friday. Honestly, I think my interest in doing this is largely down to Mr Bryant’s new podcast, which I’ve been eagerly devouring. As a pretty traditional game, it’s a little crunchy but when you listen to the podcast, you get the impression that the mechanics can be left behind if and when they get in the way, especially with an enthusiastic and role-play-focused party. I remember getting frustrated with the truly execrable skill scores of my PCs in past CoC games until I realised that was by design. As ordinary civilians facing up against the terrifying reality of cosmic horror, you are supposed to fail and there are supposed to be serious consequences for those failures. That is what makes it horror. Well, that and the Sanity rolls. So, the mechanics can also be used to reinforce the themes of the game, when they need to. If you want fantasy heroes, you’re in the wrong place. If you want the thrill of terror when confronted by your inevitable and immediate doom, Call of Cthulhu is the game for you. Listening to Push the Roll has given me the taste of that again so I thought it was about time I put myself on the obverse of the Keeper’s screen to see what that felt like.

The Scenario

The cover of Petersen's Abominations showing a mouthy and betentacled horror alongside several tv screens showing the faces of people. — Petersen’s Abominations

My Call of Cthulhu library isn’t huge so I went out to my local game shop, Replay and picked up the anthology of short scenarios, Petersen’s Abominations written by Sandy Petersen, the creator of the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game. It’s a nicely presented book with five “tales of modern horror.” This is one of the reasons I chose this anthology. I have been craving a game set in the modern world recently, and this scratches that itch. It also contains a set of pregenerated investigators for each scenario. This is a pre-requisite since I have so little time to work with. Finally, there is a nice selection of player facing maps and handouts in the back of the book for every adventure.

I chose the Derelict, for my one-shot. I decided on this one for a few reasons. First, it seems like the one I could most reliably start and finish in a single session of three hours or so. Second, I love the pregens presented for it because I think the players will easily get into them. Finally, the setting, a luxury yacht sailing the North Atlantic, is unique and I know its enticing for a couple of the players so it’s good for sign-ups!

The premise is a simple one: the yacht’s owner, a stock-broker (see my opening paragraph!) who lost his fortune in the 2008 financial crisis (its set in that time-period) is taking his rich and famous friends on one final voyage on the Delilah. He’s taking it to Liverpool to sell it. But on the way, they encounter the Derelict… I don’t want to give too much away at this stage in case my players decide to read this, but I’ll be back afterwards for a full report!

Blades in the Dark Best Practices and Bad Habits

The bad habits that are listed here are fewer in number but oh so much greater in the size and capitalisation of their headings

It Begins!

Our Blades in the Dark campaign starts tonight! I’m excited. I played in a campaign before but this will be my first time GMing one. I’ve been taking a look at the GM advice presented in the book over the last few weeks. This post examines the GM toolkit in the Running the Game chapter, and this one looks at John Harper’s advice for Starting the Game. Right before starting seems like a good time to internalise the Best Practices espoused by the same chapter of Blades in the Dark, and to beware of the Bad Habits!

Best Practices

Angelic woman with a twinl=kle in her eye and a white bird projected on her dark clothing. — The spirit of best practices. J Harper

We’ve got a list of fourteen best practices for GMs here. Although I’m sure these were written very much with Blades in mind, most of them feel like the kinds of things a GM is well advised to utilise while running a lot of different RPGs. Just take a look at the list:

Earn the trust of the group
Lead an interesting conversation
Create an atmosphere of inquiry at the table
Help the players use the game system
Don’t block
Keep the meta channel open
Be a curious explorer of the game in play
Advocate for the interests and capabilities of the NPCs
Play Goal-Forward
Cut to the Action
Be aware of potential fiction vs. established fiction
Zoom the action in and out
Bring the elements of the game system to life on screen
Put it on a card

As in the last Blades post, I’m not going to go into each and every point in detail. Some of them are self explanatory. Put it on a card, for instance means exactly what it sounds like: use index cards to record the important things that are invented at the table. Cut to the Action is doing double-duty as both a GM principle and a best practice. You’ll find it listed in the last Blades post too. Keep the meta-channel open means that you, of necessity, have to describe the subtext to the players sometimes, to represent their characters’ full range of senses and intuitions and the like. Help the players with the game system, equally, means it’s your job to interpret their words and plans into a form the mechanics can handle without forcing them to figure it out themselves.

Anyway, you get the idea. I want to take a few that interest me the most and discuss them.

Be a curious explorer of the game in play

Just take a moment to digest that sentence. “A curious explorer.” Isn’t that sumptuous? There aren’t a lot of RPG books out there creating phrases as attractive as that, and I would like us to all appreciate John Harper’s work on it. As pleasing as the phrase is, the sentiment is truly important. Look, you’re the GM; you’d better be paying attention to what the PCs are doing, to what the players are saying at the table, to the NPCs that are being dicked over, or seduced or fucking created during a session, or they’ll come back to bite you in the arse later. But that’s not what this practice means. It just wants you to maintain a degree of curiosity in the events of the game, not because they are important, but because they are fun and interesting. Look up from your notes and index cards every once in a while and breathe it in. Your players and you are building an incredible story together. This is what it’s all about. So, get interested. Ask questions, not because you want to know stuff to prepare for but just because you are curious. Maybe you’ll wonder aloud why a PC is doing something, maybe your curiosity is to do with their choice of decor for the lair, maybe its just because they gave that one NPC a stupid nickname and you don’t know why. Doesn’t matter, just stay interested.

Play Goal-Forward

This is the practical side of the question-coin. It’s nice to think this game is all about the players after the initial stages. The idea is to get them to form their own ambitions for characters and crew, come up with their own scores, fulfilling their own whims and get into and out of their own trouble. But, if my experience as a GM is anything to go by, this can take a little cajoling. So, this practice says, lead that conversation. Get them thinking about their goals, not just in the moment, on the score, during their downtime, whenever, but also, on a long-term, grand scale. Yes, you need to know what their goal is when things begin to turn to shit on a score, they’re up to their ears in ghosts, the Bluecoats want their blood or their lair was just blown up by the Lampblacks. But if you get the players to tell you what they really want to be when they grow up? That’s gold. And make sure you check in to find out if their ambitions have changed from becoming the greatest electroplasm smugglers Duskwall has ever seen to just base survival because every score they have attempted has gone south and enemies are at the gates.

The pursuit of opportunities and positions to enable certain approaches, the acquisition of information and resources, and the nested conflicts that result will drive the action of the game.

This is what you want to get to. If you understand the opportunities they want to pursue, the actions they might take to unlock them, then you can better facilitate them and the effects will help build the game.

Harper repeatedly refers to the game as a cool tv show that you’re invested in. You can be invested in what happens to the characters and the city from the viewpoint of the audience but you are also in the enviable position of being able to help shape the story as a showrunner.

Be aware of potential fiction vs. established fiction

A city street in almost complete darkness. Vague outlines and sparse lights are all that describe the type of location it is. — Describe wht you need to, discard the rest. J Harper

You’re not taking the PCs on a tour of every room of your house. The PCs should be more like viewers watching an edited sequence of shots that carry them forward in the action of the game

We’re still talking about the game as a tv show then. Cool. I like it. It’s a little confusing, though, that this practice is about keeping details of the fiction nebulous until they need to be concrete. I suppose a good way to continue the analogy is to say that we begin a scene with a close-up on the darkly wrapped faces of our scoundrels, and, as the players ask questions or the GM makes decisions, the camera pulls away, revealing the canal-side they are standing on, then further out to show the line of moored canal boats. Then we follow the crew across the decks of the gathered boats as they rock and the occupants cry out. As they go, the players might ask if there is any rope on the decks to allow them to climb on to the bridge and you tell them there is. Meanwhile you fill in some more details, the twitching of curtains in the surrounding windows, the scuffling of feet from the nearby alleys and so on. Layers and layers of details. Harper calls this the potential fiction cloud. You pick them out as you build the scene and they gain concreteness, they become the established fiction. But you never need to establish absolutely everything. Instead, you yell “CUT,” and move on to the next scene, starting over again with a new potential fiction cloud.

GM Bad Habits

A man with a devilish face or mask points at us. — The demon of bad habits identified you as naughty! J Harper

The bad habits that are listed here are fewer in number but oh so much greater in the size and capitalisation of their headings:

DON’T CALL FOR A SPECIFIC ACTION ROLL
DON’T MAKE THE PCS LOOK INCOMPETENT
DON’T OVERCOMPLICATE THINGS
DON’T LET PLANNING GET OUT OF HAND
DON’T HOLD BACK ON WHAT THEY EARN
DON’T SAY NO
DON’T ROLL TWICE FOR THE SAME THING
DON’T GET CAUGHT UP IN MINUTIA

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that it is more important to ensure you don’t develop these bad habits than it is that you adhere to the best practices above. Let’s look at a few that I think I might be most susceptible to and see if that’s true.

DON’T OVERCOMPLICATE THINGS

It’s a heist. Or maybe an assassination attempt. Possibly a smuggling operation. There should be complexities to it! There should be bribes and double-crosses and traps and security systems and hidden lookouts and maybe a jilted lover or two. Right? Not necessarily. Its fun to introduce new narrative complications and consequences on a 1-3 or a 4/5 roll, of course, but not at the expense of the session’s pacing, or the players’ patience. You can’t be expected to come up with that stuff all the time. There are mechanics in place to help you deal with them quickly and in keeping with the spirit of the game. So this section is telling you to use the tools you have been given. If you can’t think of a new complication, just hit them with harm or tick a clock forward or slap some more HEAT on them. Keep it simple, stupid!

DON’T HOLD BACK ON WHAT THEY EARN

I have the potential to be stingy. After all, there is a lot they can do with Coin in Blades in the Dark. You can use it improve Downtime Projects, to reduce HEAT, to advance Crew Tiers! I could be the kind of GM who wants to limit their progress, to slow the pace. But John Harper says give them the money. He wants us to remember that they should get what they earned. After all, they have it hard enough as it is. And besides, they’re likely to have to spend it before it even has a chance to enrich their pockets.

My main observation here is that, in all likelihood, the GM is the one setting the Coin value of any given score. The PCs, of course, are free to accept or reject opportunities depending on how lucrative they are, and they will have to take the heightened risk associated with bigger paydays, but still, its up to the GM, in many ways to establish how much a given sort of score is worth. If I wanted a low scoring campaign, I could start off with big scores netting no more than 4 Coins and most average ones paying only 1 or 2. Of course the opposite is true too. And I guess Mr Harper wants us to lean that way.

I appreciate more the admonition to treat secrets and information the same way. If the PCs have earned the info, don’t hold back. Only new opportunities and a deeper investment in the world on the part of the players can come from the sharing of secrets. Bring them in on it! They’ll love it.

DON’T GET CAUGHT UP IN MINUTIA

Let’s keep thinking about this in terms of a television show. Sure, there might be some shows where an eye for detail and a quick thumb hovering over the pause button is rewarded, but usually, you can rely on directors/editors to skip from one location and situation to another without the need to dwell on every twist and turn on the way. Get to the good stuff. Speed through the opening credits, jump to the negotiation or the shoot-out or the incursion into the ghost field.

Although it’s not mentioned here, I believe it’s also important to combine this warning with the lesson to be aware of potential vs. established fiction. You want to try and hit that sweet spot where you have given the players enough details of a location, person or scene to allow them to make decisions without getting bogged down in unnecessary levels of photo-realism. Allow the imaginations of the players to fill in the blanks instead.

Conclusion

Look, it’s pretty obvious that if you occasionally forget to be a curious explorer of the game or sometimes stray into the weeds in describing minutiae, you’re not going to break your campaign. But it sure is nice to have these guide-rails to help us make the best damn dark victorian horror heist game we can! Both lists are incredibly useful and I’m sure to be referring back to them every once in a while as the campaign gets under way.

Next time

In my next Blades post I’m going to do a sort of post-mortem of our very first session! Watch this space, dear reader.

Still Inspiring

Second Anniversary

My family and I are once again celebrating the life of my brother, Lorcan this weekend. Tomorrow it will be two years since his untimely passing. It’s still very near and raw. I think about him every single day and he inspires me still, every time I do. Though, it’s always tinged with sadness and thoughts of what might have been.

I wrote a post about the effect he’s had on me this time last year. I’m sharing it here again now in tribute to him and also in the hope that someone else might find some inspiration in the work he did so often to bring people together.

Inspiration

DCC – Hole in the Sky Review

There’s a pumpkin-headed but polite creature stalking the prison who will, every once in a while, grab one of the PCs and pop them in his gob

In Summary

There are SPOILERS below! You have been warned.

Sometimes you feel like things aren’t as they should be. It feels like you’re living in the wrong timeline, or like you were born under the wrong stars. That’s the extraordinarily loose hook for Hole in the Sky, the 0-Level Funnel adventure for Dungeon Crawl Classics by Brendan LaSalle. I say it’s a hook, but it’s not as if the large band of peasants you gather for this adventure really get a choice in whether or not to go to the starting location. All of that is taken care of in flashback and by dint of read-aloud text. Which is great. Don’t get me wrong. All the players came to play this scenario so, I think that makes sense.

Here’s the setup, the PCs, peasants, normal Joes, ordinary slobs all, start dreaming that they have had their true place in the universe stolen from them. They should have ben heroes! The dreams coalesce into a drive to dander, cross-country until they reach the edge of a cliff, days and days later, convinced that their destinies will be restored as a result. In this place, they encounter the Lady in Blue (there is more than meets the eye to the Lady but I’m not going to go into that here. It seems to be the kind of thing that might become important in a longer campaign that could feature her as a patron or maybe even an antagonist), a giant of a woman, floating in the air with five heads gripped in her two hands. The heads speak for her. She tells the peasants that, if they would just go and free her ally, imprisoned by her enemies long ago, they will be rewarded with a spin of the Wheel of Destiny. And this would set their destinies to rights.

Actually, after she feeds them a meal, she does give them an out, so what I said above is not entirely true. If any of the PCs wish to abandon the quest at this stage, they can, but they will meet an unfortunate end before too long. Anyway, there is a period of waiting here that is strange to me. The scenario indicates that the PCs could use the time to visit the nearby village of Mherkin to stock up on gear and provisions. This is not even the last period of waiting baked into the scenario. Anyway, after hours of waiting for the right time, the PCs can step gingerly onto the invisible bridge that will take them from the cliff to the Hole in the Sky, the entrance to Lady’s ally’s prison.

For days they walk, sticking together to avoid the edges. The PCs are buffeted and soaked by a terrible storm as they cross the bridge far above the waves of the sea. They will lose some of their number in the storm, no doubt. They will lose even more as they are attacked by Sea Shrikes. Only after three days of traveling will they reach the end of the bridge, worn out, freezing and much reduced. Here is the second period of waiting. They must wait a further two entire days, slowly starving and shivering, until the Hole in the Sky aligns perfectly with the bridge. Why? Good question.

Once it appears, however, they are able to leap through and into the Prison Vale, a strange and unique extra-dimensional pocket universe designed for one purpose and one purpose only, the imprisonment of the Lady’s ally, Drezzta. The place seems to be made for giants, even the blades of grass stand tall as trees. There are a variety of potential random encounters in the Vale, 1 in 6 chance per hour for four hours if they go straight to the prison proper. Some of these look very fun and quite thematic.

Nice they make it to the prison they discover a cyclopean gate and find their way in. Inside they will discover a few things in quick succession:

There’s a massive titan, sleeping on the job, but clearly here as a warden for this prison
There’s a cage hanging from a branch maybe 200 feet up
There’s a pumpkin-headed but polite creature stalking the prison who will, every once in a while, grab one of the PCs and pop them in his gob, where they will slowly burn to death in his jack o’ lantern flames, before gently encouraging the rest of them to leave

Of course, they are not going to leave empty handed. The continue on, finding a way up inside the walls themselves. On the way they encounter lethal traps, dangerous lunatics, mutants and lots of ladders. They will get a little more of the story from some of the other weirdoes who live here and they will probably find a cache of treasure, which includes a magic spear to destroy the sleeping titan.

It should end up with them reaching the top level of the prison, dizzyingly high up. They should risk life and limb to free the poor, emaciated form of Drezzta trapped in the hanging cage. One of them will need to sacrifice either a little blood or a lot more to open the door, but that will lead to her flying free, destroying the pumpkin guy and fleeing as the very dimension crumbles around the escaping PCs.

Those who make it back through the Hole in the Sky find themselves once more on the cliffside. The survivors are each given a chance to spin the wheel. Some may find themselves thrown back into the mundane lives they left, others might find themselves destroyed, killed in favour of one of the poor wretches who died during the course of the adventure. Still others might find themselves utterly changed in almost every conceivable way… Potentially a great reward for a 0-level character who is about to progress to the dizzy heights of Level 1!

Our Experience

Chaos pig burrowing out of the ground with its little claws.

I played this funnel over two sessions of about three hours each. We played online using Roll 20 and Zoom with a group of six players, all members of our ever-expanding RPG community, Tables and Tales. With six players, of course, we had 24 0-level PCs leaping through that hole in the sky! This seemed like it might be too much. I was afraid that each player’s turn might take an age, but, in actuality, the numbers started to get whittled down quite quickly.

Like I stated above, in the half of the adventure that takes place before they enter the Hole in the Sky, there are two pretty lengthy period of waiting baked in, first on the cliffside and again at the end of the bridge. I didn’t give the players the option of visiting the village of Mherkin, despite its funny name, because the last thing I wanted to do was spoil the momentum before it even got started by introducing a shopping scene! Also, the PCs should have what they need, more-or-less, so I didn’t think it was necessary. That second period of waiting, for two entire days before they could enter the Hole is fairly inexplicable though. It exposed the PCs to the freezing temperatures and the possibility of getting sick but it felt a bit like ti took the wind out of our sails just as things were about to really kick off. I think, if I ran it again, I might remove that wait entirely.

As for the invisible bridge, I loved this as a conceit and the players did too, even if it led to a lot of deaths right off the bat. The storm was brutal to one particular player who was reduced to a single PC in one terrible gust. The Sea Shrikes’ attack was less lethal than expected but that was a matter of luck, I think. What we felt, as a group, after playing this part was that the imagery, the situation and the danger of it were all quite palpable, not to mention unique.

Moving on to the Prison dimension itself, with the giant blades of grass and the enormous gate, some of the players mentioned that it made them feel like they were in Honey I Shrunk the Kids. I think that is the vibe the place is going for so that was cool. The random encounters in the wilds of the dimension looked good but we didn’t interact with them. They simply never rolled a 1 on the encounter die. But I particularly enjoyed the Chaos Pig, a burrowing porcine nightmare, and the Woven Women, camouflaged guardian plant creatures.

On to the Prison itself:

a three hundred foot monolith covered in fifty-foot long thorns. It looks not so much constructed as grown, like some kind of massive seed pod.

This is pretty metal and I enjoy the fact that the adventure contains no fewer than two different artists’ depictions of it. Both so different and yet both awesome in their own way.

A massive oval shaped building in black with lots of sheer spikes sticking up all over it. Adventurers creep through the wilderness from the hole in the sky — Prison 1

A massive tree-stump shaped building with lots of branch-like spikes sticking out all over it. Adventurers creep through the wilderness — Prison 1

Luckily, there is no waking that titan who has been ensorcelled to want to exist in his dream realm. It would take something fairly cataclysmic to wake him up. And it does, of course, near the end of the adventure. After freeing Drezzta, the surviving peasants hoped into the cage and cut the rope holding it up. It fell on the titan’s head and rolled off him down to the floor where they were able to escape. They managed to kill him before they went though, as there is a magic titan killing spear to be found in the treasure cache, conveniently enough.

Giant Jack o lantern headed plant creature grabs an adventuer in its tendrils as others look on in horror — Cur Maxima

The pumpkin-headed lunatic is fun. I can’t quite make out the reason why it’s a jack o’ lantern creature, to be honest. It doesn’t seem particularly thematic to me or anything. But he it is a pest. The judge is encouraged to chuck him at the PCs whenever they least expect it to take just one of them and kill them in the most awful way, just put the shits up them. It works. Every time that guy turned up there wrecked groans. It was a guaranteed death every time.

There are abandoned ones who live in the walls. They were former servants of the Lady in Blue who had been sent under the same pretences as out heroes but failed or refused to carry out her orders. They longer they spent there the madder they got and the more mutated. There is one dwarf who the pCs might try to talk to but they are not likely to get much from the others. It’s not a big talking scenario this one. My PCs ended up murdering most of these wretches and burning the living quarters of the abandoned ones, sending the survivors fleeing as a result.

This is the only proper fight in the second half of the adventure and it’s not great. It’s just 12 pretty boring, emaciated enemies against a similar number of peasants. Now, the players made it memorable in several ways, but it does feel like an encounter that could have started off more interesting. At least most hits were an instant kill.

Their final reward, the Wheel of Destiny was a fun addition, although it’s a little redundant if playing as a one-shot. Each survivor gets to make a Luck roll. As soon as I told my table that, they erupted in groans and curses aimed at me. I had been encouraging them to spend their Luck liberally towards the end after all… Anyway, I’d imagine, if you were planning to play the characters in further adventures it would have been more engaging.

Conclusion

A cutaway map of the inside of the oval shaped prison depicting the titan sleeping at the bottom, the cage hanging from the top and the insides of the walls. — Prison map

A scenario map, showing the cliff side it starts at, the encounters on the invisible bridge, the hole in the sky and the dimensional prison. — Prison map

This is very engaging adventure with a great, bonkers concept. Its executed so well too. The art and maps are fantastic, as an always with DCC products. I am never that crazy about their layout or presentation of information but I’m willing to overlook that given the quality of the experience.

It’s definitely worth trying out if you are looking for a 0-level funnel that has lots of hooks built in for further adventures but it worked very well as a one-shot also.

Blades in the Dark GM Tools

I’ll be honest, I don’t usually think about the games I run in terms of goals, beyond a vague desire to do my best to GM competently, engage the players and make them entertaining.

Good Advice

So, like I said in my last Blades in the Dark preview post, this book is full of great advice. Today, I’m going to take a closer look at some of the advice for GMs that is not directly related to the first session or two. This is the sort of thing that will help you create the best version of your game at the table every session.

GM Goals

I’ll be honest, I don’t usually think about the games I run in terms of goals, beyond a vague desire to do my best to GM competently, engage the players and make them entertaining. Many of the other games I’ve played don’t deal in these terms at all, but I find I appreciate the project-like manner Blades employs here. It’s good to state your goals before embarking on any sort of initiative, otherwise, how do you know if you manage to achieve them? What do you use to steer your efforts?

Here are the GM Goals as stated in Chapter 7, Running the Game:

“Play to find out what happens.” This is the primary guiding principle. A concept that was introduced by D. Vincent and Maguey Baker in Apocalypse World, “play to find out” is central to Blades in the Dark. The idea here is that you have no set narrative in mind, no list of occurrences that you’re waiting to introduce to outfox or defeat the PCs, no plan at all. Instead, you let the PCs lead the way. Their own plans, desires, vices, mistakes etc. will drive the story forward in a way you could never have imagined beforehand. The GM here is just as “in the dark” as the players are about what’s coming.
“Convey the fictional world honestly.” Honestly, I am struggling with this one. The advice here is to “make the world seem real, not contrived.” Of course, this is a reasonable suggestion, but much more difficult in practice, I imagine. It pre-supposes this “vision of Duskwall in your head.” But, in a game where the GM is largely just reacting to things the players invent or decide, the vision is probably changing constantly. You’re told here, though, “don’t play favourites,” as well, so I begin to see the purpose a little clearer. The idea is that, as GM, you should not be inventing elements of the world that exclusively benefit just your NPCs, or explicitly disadvantage the PCs in ways that seem unfair. I suppose it could also refer to a tendency some GMs might have to treat certain PCs better than others. Resist that urge! Play fair!
“Bring Doskvol to life. Give each location a specific aspect (crowded, cold, wet, dim, etc.). Give each important NPC a name, detail and a preferred method of problem solving (threats, bargaining, violence, charm, etc.). Give each action context—the knife fight is on rickety wooden stairs; the informant huddles among the wreckage of the statue of the Weeping Lady; the Lampblacks’ lair stinks of coal dust.” I wanted to quote this whole paragraph because it is filled with practical, actionable advice that I would struggle to paraphrase. I have to say that this is a reasonable goal for any RPG, not just this one.

GM Actions

Two dark silhouettes having a knife fight. The dark city streets are portrayed within their shadows. — Knife-fight City – J Harper

So this is one of the ways in which you, as the GM of Blades in the Dark, can endeavour to achieve your goals. I guess these are the story-game equivalent of an OSR GM’s Random Encounter tables, weather and misfortune tables and hex maps. Essentially, when it’s your turn, you can look at the list of GM actions and choose one to keep things interesting.

Ask questions
Provide opportunities & follow the player’s lead
Cut to the action
Telegraph trouble before it strikes
Follow through
Initiate action with an NPC
Tell them the consequences and ask
Tick a clock
Offer a Devil’s Bargain
Think off-screen

I like that these are presented as moves. These are all the types of things you might do a GM in any game to spice things up, to introduce complications if its all going a little too well, if the game is getting stale. But, in other types of RPGs, they aren’t treated like the action you get to do on your turn, in fact, they are rarely dealt with at all.

Now, I’m not going to deal with each and every action here. Some of them speak for themselves and their purpose is obvious. For instance, “Ask Questions,” is very broad, but I think its fairly clear that it can be used in almost any situation to gather information, provoke actions, or even get the players involved in creating situations and the world. “Cut to the action,” is a great way to take the reins briefly to prevent plan-spiralling or similar. But I do want to look at a couple of these a bit closer:

Provide opportunities, follow their lead

This is how “play to find out” works in practice. You can’t simply allow the players to create their characters, tell them a bit about the city and ask them what they want to do. I mean, you could, but they will proceed to have a million questions. The starting situation is designed in such a way as to provide the opportunities ready-made for them, but from that point on, it’s up to the players to find them. It’s the GM’s job to present them according to how the PCs went about it. So you follow their lead. If they go scouring the underworld for leads, they might hear of a secret cache of electroplasm in a poorly guarded warehouse near the docks, but it might be inferior quality information. Or, they might read about a prestigious visitor from the Iruvian embassy with a price on their head attending the opera form a report in the newspaper. They might take very different approaches to find these opportunities and it’s up to the GM to provide what’s appropriate.

Sometimes, though, the players will come up with an opportunity all of their own. Maybe their efforts were stymied by a rival crew during their last score and they’re looking for revenge. Maybe they want to expand their criminal empire and have an idea for a score against a gang in another district. Same thing, in this case, it just saves you the trouble of inventing the opportunity yourself.

This section also provides practical tips on how the players might handle these things mechanically, what difference the crew’s heat and resources make to this process and even a step by step guide to what constitutes an opportunity.

Think offscreen

This action makes you spin some more plates than you already are as GM, but it is useful to think about. Basically, the idea is to bear in mind what is happening elsewhere that might have consequences for the action of the current scene. Maybe there is a riot happening nearby and it’s getting closer, maybe the Bluecoats are out in force on patrol tonight, maybe there are some errant ghosts in the area that might want to get involved. This is the sort of thing I do tend to forget about when GMing normally. It generally feels too much to introduce another element to an encounter in a lot of games. But in a story game like this, you want complications, and, more importantly, you want to see how the PCs deal with them. In all likelihood, they’ll have to do something that drives the story forward even more!

GM Principles

A man in a high collar holding a skull in black and white — “I knew him, Horatio” – J Harper

This is the second set of tools for you to use to achieve those GM goals. If you play with these principles in mind at all times, you should get the most out of your experience GMing Blades in the Dark:

Be a fan of the PCs
Let everything flow from the fiction
Paint the world with a haunted brush
Surround them with industrial sprawl
Address the characters
Address the players
Consider the risk
Hold on lightly

“Paint the world with a haunted brush” and “surround them with industrial sprawl” are specific to Blades, in that they are concerned with describing the city and the situation in the appropriate vibe and tone. “Be a fan of the PCs” has become a standard piece of RPG advice but it is important, for sure. I’d like to go into more detail on two of these:

Let everything flow from the fiction

You don’t need to “manage” the game.

It can be hard to let go. Especially when you have been raised on a strict diet of stat blocks, challenge ratings, 6 second rounds and proscribed consequences. But much of the advice in this chapter is encouraging you to do exactly that. Stop planning. Nothing good can come of it. You have to let the story flow naturally from the actions of the players and the reactions of the world. In Blades, after the briefly described starting situation and opening scene, every element of the campaign should cascade down from there.

Hold on Lightly

This is not a “no take backs” kind of game.

When thinking about the PCs approach to a situation, remember that goal of portraying the fictional world honestly. If you do that and are forced to rethink how you described a scene, that’s fine, you can go back and retcon it. Maybe you first introduced them to a room crowded with ghosts, but, on reflection, considering how the players told you they spent time staking out the room as an entrance to a hideout, beforehand, you decide there is just one, lonely spirit, there. Not only that, you should not be afraid to allow the players the same sort of leeway when describing their actions.

Next time

In the next preview post, I want to write about the GM best practices and bad habits as presented by Mr Harper in the book. Till then, dear reader!

The Lost City Review

Disclaimer: I have only read this adventure. It’s unusual enough for me to review something that I haven’t actually played but I thought it was worth doing anyway.

Quests from the Infinite Staircase

I don’t know at what point WOTC decided that every D&D book they released had to be titled Noun from the Adjective Noun or some derivative thereof but they got deep into it there for quite a while. Anyway, today I’m looking at the first adventure presented in their anthology for D&D 5e, Quests from the Infinite Staircase. This book uses an unlikely framing device known as the Infinite Staircase, along which you can find portals to all sorts of adventuresome and slightly retro locales. It’s a sort of extraplanar locus inhabited by a genie who will send you and your pals to any of these spots for whatever reason. It’s a bit like the Radiant Citadel, which they made up as an extraplanar locus to allow you to easily travel to a bunch of disparate regions on, presumably, different worlds for that other anthology, Journeys through the Radiant Citadel. Come to think of it, it’s a bit like that other famous extraplanar locus, the City of Doors, Sigil, which has been in existence in the D&D universe for decades. So why do they keep inventing new loci? Do you even really need this conceit to join this collection of otherwise standalone adventures together?

The alternate cover of Journeys through the Radiant Citadel. it depicts the crystaline citadel floating in a pastel cloudscape — The alternate cover of Journeys through the Radiant Citadel

The cover of the boxed set of Planescape for AD&D 2e. It depicts a great gate leading into the towering streets of Sigil. — The alternate cover of Journeys through the Radiant Citadel

The Lost City

Disclaimer: I have only read this adventure. It’s unusual enough for me to review something that I haven’t actually played but I thought it was worth doing anyway.

I’ll keep this relatively spoiler free but there may be a few points you’d rather not know in advance if you’re interested in being a player in the Lost City.

This adventure, along with all the adventures collected in this book, is an updated version of a classic one from D&D’s history. The original Lost City was published in 1982 and was written by Tom Moldvay as an introductory adventure for the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set. I confess, I have not read the original so I won’t be comparing the two here.

This is the first adventure in the collection. It’s meant for 1st level characters. It’s a dungeon crawl in the very classic sense with up to six levels to it and a factional element that is close to the heart of the module.

Background

The lost desert city of Cynidicea was once a prosperous and powerful place. but they delved too greedily and too deep when building a ziggurat to honour their deceased monarchs. Oops. This was the downfall of the city of course. As an answer to this, the people split into four disparate sects. None of them got along but one was definitely worse than the others. The worst of these sects led the people underground to rebuild in the darkness beneath the ziggurat as the desert reclaimed their city above.

Getting There

At the start; how to get your PCs here from the Infinite Staircase, where to locate it on three D&D worlds and a couple of adventure hooks to get them to go. The hooks are fine. Get hired by an anthropological expedition or get separated from your desert caravan. If you wanted to incorporate this into an ongoing campaign, I feel like you could do better yourself.

Advancement

There is a handy section that spells out for you at which points you should let the PCs level up if you’re using milestone levelling. By the end of the adventure, your characters should hit level 4.

About the Original

There is a nice little sidebar here and in every adventure in the book, which tells you about the original. It gives you some info on the edition it was meant for, a few details on how it was supposed to be used and the credits. I like that here, they tell you that The Lost City was meant to be used to teach new DMs how to run and design a dungeon, allowing them to come up with the lower levels of the dungeon themselves.

People and Factions

The Cynidiceans all wear masks, usually some sort of animal mask, and they generally don the shabby left-overs of their once glorious past. Also, sometimes, they act like the animal depicted on the mask. Fun!

As I noted above, the factions are often at the heart of the adventure. They are detailed here. Each of them worships a different god, with their own portfolio, of course. Thematically, they are each quite distinct and have a look all their own, exemplified by a particular type of mask that they wear and a tattoo that they sport.

The paragraph or so that each faction gets here leans heavily on the ways they will pursue their goals, which are, unsurprisingly, influenced by the type of god they follow. We are told they all want to preside over the rebuilding of their city in their own way. They all want the same thing but they will not co-operate. This leaves me wanting a bit more, maybe some aim that’s a bit more immediate would help.

Random Encounters

Roll a d6 for every hour spent in the Ziggurat. If you get a 1, it’s encounter time. There’s a d12 table with a preponderance of cultists and other Cynidiceans, which makes sense, and an owlbear, which doesn’t (did I mention it was in a desert?)

The Ziggurat

The PCs have to enter from the top and work their way down. They’ll be sealed in once they enter, like a common hobbit and his eight fellows in a mine. The goal of the entire adventure is basically to survive long enough to find another way out. This might change during the delve, of course, once you meet the factions. But probably not.

I want to point out a cool thing right at the entrance where they can use ladders to either climb down into tier 2 of the ziggurat or up into the hollow interior of a set of statues on the roof of it. They can use levers that allow them to move the statues’ limbs and there’s a speaking tube. I like the idea of this but there is no practical use for this feature. They are not likely to encounter anyone outside on the top of the Ziggurat to impress with this display and it’s not going to do them any good once they’re on the inside so it seems a bit pointless?

Anyway, as I stated above, there are up to six levels to the Ziggurat. To be fair, the first level is just a single room right at the top, and hardly counts. But, as you would expect from a ziggurat, each level gets bigger as you go down. Even level 1 (or tier 1 as it’s called) has a pretty gnarly trap right from the get go. At worst, though, it will result in all of the PCs being rendered unconscious. If this happens, they’ll be taken by the first of the factions, the Guardians of Gorm, who will question them and try to recruit them. There are moments like this for each of the factions, partly because the place is positively riddled with traps and partly because the adventure does not want them to miss out on meeting each of the factions. It also wants them to join one or maybe more than one of them. this will, of course, complicate things for them if and when they try to interact with any of the others.

A magic joining ritual for one of the factions. Five masked individuals gather around an altar, gesturing elaborately. — A magic joining ritual for one of the factions.

Once they meet the leader of a faction, the PCs will generally be judged in some way, and, if they are judged worthy, will be given the option to join the sect. If they do, they’ll get some advice and some kind of reward for it. But, if they refuse, there’s not much of a downside, to be honest. They won’t get to use the factions quarters to rest and they won’t get the aforementioned rewards but that’s it. And the other thing is, you would expect the faction leader to ask something of the new recruits. Maybe an attack on one of the rival factions or a quest to retrieve a sacred relic from the levels beneath, but no, nothing like that. You join and then you go about your business, pretty much. Seems like a missed opportunity.

All of the faction stuff happens on levels two and three of the dungeon. That’s where they will encounter all the sect leaders and probably learn a few things about the levels below that might help them out a bit.

Tier 4 has a bunch of undead encounters. This is where the royals were buried along with members of their court. There is a good variety of undead featured here and a nice through-line of a story involving the king, the queen and a handmaiden. There are zombies, skeletons, a ghost, a banshee and a wight, as well as a mummy (which seems an unusually unbalanced encounter for 5e.) With any luck, the PCs will be able to see the entirety of the story of the royals through. If they don’t, there isn’t much else in the dungeon to satisfy them and it will lead to a bit of an anticlimax.

Tier 5 has a fun encounter with a possessed robe, the main entrance/exit of the ziggurat and a grab-bag of traps and encounters of varying levels of fascination and challenge including a drunk owlbear. As I mentioned above, the main goal of the PCs was probably to find a way out of this crazy dungeon and this is where they will find it. There is a great big door behind which the sands have conveniently shifted to unblock it. There is literally nothing here to prevent them from doing opening it and escaping.

However, there is possibly a plainly visible trapdoor in one corner that leads down to the next level. This, I think is the level that, if you were a DM back in 1982, you would have had the opportunity to create yourself. As it is, WOTC have decided to relieve of that particular creative opportunity/burden and do it for you.

A mosaic depicting the construction of the ziggurat, the rise of the demon lord and the submission of its followers. — Story mosaic

Level 6, also referred to as the Expanded Ziggurat, is an unfinished tier that has been occupied by the demonic force that brought about the ruin of Cynidicea so long ago. I quite like this level, it’s thematically foul with lots of bile and slime and the like. As well as the demon itself, there are lots of its loyal servants, a black pudding and a gibbering mouther to encounter. There is warning at the start of the section that this tier is much more difficult than the others and is meant for higher level characters. The fact is, if the party of 4th level PCs makes it to the demon, they’re not going to survive. Its got a challenge rating of 17 and a set of legendary resistances and actions. I do have to ask why. I am thinking now of the excellent Sailors on the Starless Sea DCC adventure. The 20 or so level-0 peasants who enter that dungeon probably didn’t expect to come across some elder evil at the end of it, but there is was beneath that chaos keep, awakening from an ageless slumber. They killed it. It was statted out so that it could be killed by these peasants. And it gave them such a sense of achievement and heroism to do it! So why can’t the Lost City do that with the big bad at the bottom of the ziggurat?

By way of some sort of explanation, perhaps the idea is to make a much longer campaign of this situation with the factions and the demon lord and the Underground City which is presented very briefly at the end of the adventure. The demon would then be the ultimate BBEG of the piece and the PCs might have had many adventures rated to it and its cultists along the way to gaining the sorts of levels that might allow them to face it. The problems for me are that the factions were not compelling enough in the adventure to start with, the information on the city that you do get is too sparse to be of much use and there is every chance the PCs fucked off home when they found the exit back on tier 5 anyway.

Conclusion

I actually think that, with a bit of work on the factions, the NPCs and some editing for theme, I would enjoy running this dungeon-crawl. As it stands, the factions are underutilised, some of the encounters make no thematic sense and the NPCs are quite one-dimensional. It also feels like it needs more of an ending. But that doesn’t change the fact that there are some fun traps and challenging combat encounters, which is nice in a dungeon.

One of my main reservations is its size. It’s quite long, with over 60 keyed locations in the dungeon. I would worry about maintaining interest in a dungeon crawl of that length. I would imagine it would run for quite a few sessions.

Although it is obviously presented for 5e it could be very easily translated for use with any OSR ruleset, DCC or Dungeon World. I found myself thinking about how to convert it for Trophy as I read through it too.

Beginnings in the Dark

I want to start by acknowledging that I think this entire section is fantastic. It’s full of gold. The advice presented here is the kind of thing I would love to see in every game.

My Own Advice

In my post on beginnings I suggested a few things. It’s a good idea to start in media res. Starting in the middle helps to introduce the world to your players and helps them to introduce their characters to the world, assuming you give them enough narrative freedom to do so. I suggested using flashbacks to fill in blanks as necessary. But I also suggested that, for a longer game, you might want to begin with some in-depth scenes of the PCs’ personal lives to give everyone a good idea of what drives them.

So, how does this hold up to the advice provided by John Harper in Blades in the Dark?

Starting the Game

A leaping scoundrel in black and white. — A leaping scoundrel in black and white by J Harper.

That’s the name of the section under the Running the Game chapter in the book. No confusion. I want to start by acknowledging that I think this entire section is fantastic. It’s full of gold. The advice presented here is the kind of thing I would love to see in every game. It was definitely the kind of thing I wanted from Spire before beginning it. I was so anxious about starting that game because I really was flying by the seat of my pants. Why? Well, because I had never played anything like it before. And in Blades in the Dark, Harper is perfectly aware that you’ve probably never played anything like this game before. So he takes your little hand and leads you gently into Duskwall, nodding reassuringly and telling you it’ll be alright.

Preparing for the First Session

A map of the coastal city of Doskvol which includes the names of each of the districts. — A map of the coastal city of Doskvol

Under the sub-heading, Preparing for the First Session, you get the advice to read through the character and crew creation sections again, assuming, I suppose, that you read them already. Here, it’s recognised that the GM is going to be the one leading on this and advising the players on how to create those scoundrels they’ve got in mind. Of course, this is good advice for any GM-led game but it’s good to have it in black and white here. Related to this is the fact that during these processes, the players are going to need answers about certain factions that will be relevant to their characters and the starting state of the city. So, you’re advised to pick a few factions you’re interested in or brush up on the ones mentioned in the starting situation, “War in Crow’s Foot.” To add to this, personally, I think you want to brush up on some of the factions, personalities and organisations that affect the entire city, like the Bluecoats, the Sparkwrights and the Spirit Wardens. You don’t need an exhaustive knowledge, but the basics will be helpful to allow you to answer some world-building questions, even if they’re not directly related to their characters or crew.

Harper states here that you should get through character and crew creation and, at least start the first score in your first session. This sets an expectation and, trusting that he has play-tested this a lot, its one that you have to assume is realistic. I also like the idea of taking these freshly minted scoundrels and throwing them straight into the action. I guess my in media res advice remains solid here.

There’s a short paragraph about what you can do to get yourself in the dark industrial fantasy mood of the game. Watch some Peaky Blinders, play some Dishonoured or read some Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser. I like this idea and it is something I do regularly to get me thinking the right way for an upcoming game with a very specific vibe.

Lastly, print out the character sheets and other reference sheets and get the gang together.

The First Session

A dark black and white illustration of several scoundrels on the canal, lit by a giant moon above. — Midnight on the Water, J Harper

The next section is entitled, “At the First Session: Setting Expectations.” This is always important. There are some formalised techniques to achieve this, of course. One of these is C.A.T.S. (Concept, Aim, Tone, Subject matter.) You can describe the type of game you’re going to play using CATS and, hopefully, that should help potential players to decide if they want to play it or not. Honestly, by the time you gather at the table, players should already be familiar with this stuff and know what to expect from your game. So this is not really what Harper is trying to achieve here. Instead, he’s trying to get you into, as he calls it, “let’s play mode.” He suggests a “punchy synopsis of the game” like this:

Okay, so you’re all daring scoundrels on the haunted streets of Duskwall, seeking your fortunes in the criminal underworld.

This is something I also love to do when starting a new game. I often take the blurb from the back of a book, or the summary from the first page and read it aloud, or paraphrase it to get the players in the right frame of mind so I would go further and remind them about what sort of dark, broken, victorian world this is, what the stakes are and the types of things they might be called upon to do.

Then continue:

Let’s make some characters and form a crew! Here are the playbooks. They’re the different types of scoundrels you can play. I’ll summarize them and then you can choose…

Harper goes on that the advise you to keep your explanations and rules-talk to a minimum at this stage. Introduce the players to concepts and answer questions but don’t get lost in the darkened alleys of Doskvol just yet. Instead, give a loose outline of the various playbooks and crew types, just enough to pique your players’ interests while they look through the options.

He then suggests saying something more like a sales-pitch at this point. The speech he includes in the book is real hearts-and-minds stuff,

This is a game, but it’s also something else—something really cool and unique. We’re gonna collaboratively create fiction together, by having a conversation about these characters and situations, without anyone having to plan it out or create a plot ahead of time. It’s like our very own TV series that we produce but we also get to watch it as a viewer and be surprised by what happens. You’ll say what your characters care about and what they do, and I’ll say how the world responds and just like that, a story will happen. It’s crazy. And fun.

I like this but I think I’d definitely come up with my own spiel. It’s just not me. I would definitely use this though:

play your character like you’re driving a stolen car.

Creating Characters and Crew

An Eldritch ball of light being released or cpatured by a crouching person in the foreground. Several scoundrels with a lantern in the background. — Eldritch light. J Harper

While the players work on their PCs, this section provides a set of questions to ask them. The text here does not suggest you ask all of the questions or that you ask everyone the same questions, or even that they should answer them out loud. Although I think I would try to get answers for at least a few of these to help me in making decisions as the game builds.

Here is a selection:

Why did you become a scoundrel?
The two of you have the same heritage. Do you want to be blood relatives? Do you know each other’s families?
When was the last time you used your blade? Why?
Who do you trust the most on the crew? Who do you trust the least? What’s that about? Or will we find out in play?

Harper points out here that we don’t need or really want to know everything about the characters before starting. A lot of the fun of playing a character is discovering them as you play, of course. The dynamic nature of Blades in the Dark and the degree of influence PCs can have over the world and, more importantly, the story, makes this particularly true of this game, from my experience.

You want the players to want to play their characters and to be excited about it. So Harper asks you to make sure, if anyone is not that enthused or is maybe frustrated by the process or any lack of detail that you spend a little time getting to the bottom of their dissatisfaction, providing more info if they need it, until they’re happy. You can also remind them that, if any of them find, after a few sessions that they wished they’d made a different choice here or there in character creation, then they can make the change, “no big deal.” An enlightened and realistic approach, I think, to what is, after all, just a game.

Once they reach the crew creation stage, they’ll have questions for you about the factions I mentioned earlier.

who gave them their hunting grounds, who helped with their upgrades, and who’s connected to their contact.

So, you’ll be happy at this point that you did that reading earlier. The advice here is, again, to use the factions in the starting situation to save yourself some work and associate the crew with the occurrences. This section ties things up by suggesting you skip crew creation for a one-shot, allowing the crew to develop organically during play instead.

Introduce Characters & Crew

Finally, it comes to the point the players will have been waiting for. They get to show off their cool new guys, their wee scoundrels! You get to use this to ask each player a few more questions to help clarify things or to get them thinking about how their PC might develop in play.

Some good advice here on how they should come up with their crew name. Even though they just put in a lot of work on crew type, upgrades, special abilities etc, the name can be elusive. So Harper suggests they leave that until after their first score at least. A suitable moniker is likely to come out of that.

The Starting Situation

A cityscape type view of Crow's Foot — A cityscape type view of Crow’s Foot

I love this bit the most. You could potentially run Blades in the Dark games over and over again for years, one campaign after another, and use this same formula for your starting situation, and it would never get old:

Set two factions directly at odds, with opposing goals. They’re already in conflict when the game begins. Both factions are eager to recruit help, and to hurt anyone who helps their foe.
Set a third faction poised to profit from this conflict or to be ruined by its continuation. This faction is eager to recruit help.

And that’s it. It’s not overly convoluted. Three factions and their goals shouldn’t be too much to burden the players with and there should be plenty of potential in the situation. “Keep
it simple at first—things will snowball from here.”

The main thing is to give them something to do right off the bat, rather than asking “more creative work” of them. Once again, I love this. This is the sort of advice I wanted when I first ran Spire. Instead, I think I left my players floundering right at the beginning, without a clear idea of what they should pursue straight away. We ended up really enjoying that campaign but it always involved an awful lot of talking about what they were going to do next, planning that thing and then changing minds and starting over. And I think that’s because it never recovered from that first session, and its lack of direction.

The Opening Scene

Now you get into the nitty-gritty. This is practical advice that I really wanted. What should that first scene look like? What should you give the players here? What kind of thing is being asked of them? What if they don’t want the jobs that are being asked or demanded of them?

The most important lesson I am getting from this section is that the ball is in the PCs’ court. You need to give them a decision to make and they need to make it right now! Whatever happens, they are going into their very first score right away. No hanging about, no ifs, ands or buts. Love it.

Conclusion

The section ends with an example starting situation, “War in Crow’s Foot.” I’m not going to go into it because I might just use it. But I can tell you that its exactly what I’m looking for here. It’s a concrete example of the way the GM gets things started and how you can hand it over to the players. It’s got sample scores from different NPCs and advice on how to play those NPCs too.

Having read this whole section and followed some or all of its advice, you should be more than prepared for the crew’s first big score.