Blades in the Dark Play Report

In continuation of our Locke Lamorra-infused game of Blades In the Dark first detailed here, we met again last night.

Reminder: We are the Night Market. Hawkers who sell thieving equipment and expertise.

Of our 5+ players, we had three. That’s ok, Blades is great at sub in, sub out play. Those players and characters were:
Hammer, Cutter played by me (William), twin brother to Sickle and youngest heir of the Caruso family.
Sickle, Cutter played by Rachael, sister to Hammer and eldest heir of the Caruso family.
Mist, Spider played by George, dropout grad student.

We got off to a slow start, but thought through the following issues for our gang:

  • The head of the organization we robbed last time is coming for us. He’s not Right People so he doesn’t “go to war” like we know it, but he’s going to send people to try to kill us. We came up with a con to ruin his relationship with his patron, but we’re not ready for it yet.

Primarily, as we wanted a job with some head banging. Here’s what we came up with:

  • We took some turf to act as a bulwark against attacks. We got the turf from Lizette, who works with the Fullcrowns gang. She’s the same person who we offered leadership of the Fullcrowns to last session.

She reminded us that she still doesn’t have such authority – she can’t give away land unless she’s the leader of the Full Crowns.

She can’t be the leader of the Fullcrowns until her boss gets a bloody nose.

So, we bloodied his nose.

Rather literally, but also metaphorically. I hunted him over the course of a few days looking for where he goes that’s not so well protected. Turns out, he’s got a gambling house that he adores.

While investigating, Hammer gets hit. He gets a broken nose. And that’s fine, that’s what noses are for.

So: We hit him there.

But first, we needed to ruin his reputation at the gambling house. So, we made it look like he was cheating.

We made extensive use of flashbacks. I did a flashback to have the same sort of cards as they use in the gambling house. Then we had a deck of passable cards, and need to get them to our target.

Our Spider does some flashback sleight of hand, to reverse pickpocket him. Now he’s got the cards.

Back from flashbacks: “You are a cheater!”, an NPC ally proclaims as both Hammer the Cutter and the mark play the same card.

Sickle the Cutter who is the sister to Hammer the Cutter demands the mark and Hammer show their cards. Hammer refuses, so Sickle slaps his broken nose.

The GM offered a devil’s bargain: No matter what the dice roll, you do a level 1 harm to Hammer. The player of Sickle refers to the player of Hammer (me), and I say “Yes!”.

That got her 5d, and Hammer a level 1 harm to go with the level 2 harm (broken nose).

Dear sister rolled a 6, so our mark showed his sleeve. Which is when all the cards we planted fall out of his sleeves.

At which point, the proprietor of the established said we could take him outside. His muscle wasn’t so much into the boss being taken out back, so we dealt with them.

With our fists. And a nicely broken nose for our mark.

Just as we toss him outside, we’re attacked. Because of course we are: We pissed off a rather powerful organization, and they’ve sent folks to snag us. Same assholes that broke Hammer’s nose, but now he’s got the rest of the gang.

We turn some of them into bodies. We do a group violence roll, with Hammer getting a crit and sickle getting a 6. Which is to say: We do some serious violence.

As these folks weren’t just here for a bruising, we pulled out the good gear – Sickle with her blades, and Hammer with his … hammer.

That was about t. We did post-session wrap up, and got some XP.

I didn’t hit my XP trigger of: The Rich Remember. Maybe next time.

Whatcha think? Is this cool?

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