Blades in the dark: Servants of Halthar

Game Master Meetch

If you all settle on Ritual Sanctum, you'll get to pick a second upgrade. You can give your Adepts a boost by making them elite, or get a vault or add security to your lair or get a goat/wagon or get a boat or a workshop for Mender or add quality to one of your item sets, or add a new training (so you can gain XP faster) or get Cult rigging so you can carry more stuff. Lots of choices!

okay, proposal for our long-term goal... putting acolytes and faithful in positions of power, through skullduggery, trickery, and magic

also, Maybe Elite accolytes, if we're doing more rituals? or personal training.

Of the recent suggestions, I'd go for Ritual Sanctum and personal training.

I'm a fan of personal training as well.

Hi crew.

I've been struggling a lot with the mechanics around harm. I made a reddit post that details exactly what's bugging me about the way it works.

After a lot of back and forth (occasionally with some nasty people) and some clarification from John Harper, here's what I'm proposing. I want your feedback on this.

Some harm will be temporary. I'll let you know what harm is temporary when the harm happens (so you can make an informed choice about resisting). Temporary harm will reduce by 1 level at the END of the downtime following the score where you earned the harm.

That means if you get temporary harm 2, at the end of downtime it becomes temporary harm 1. At the end of the next downtime it goes away completely.

You can still do a recovery during downtime (aided by Dr. Mender) to clear the harm during downtime instead of after (which may be useful for downtime actions where you would be getting a penalty.)

Other forms of harm will NOT be temporary. Injuries, broken bones, things of that nature. They won't go away on their own and will need recovery to make them go away.

Sound good to everyone?

I'm present and attentive, but biding my time.

Those are some charming people in that sub yeesh. These rules sound reasonable.

Yeah. Yikes man

though, I do resent "Insane Prophet". unstabl or sociopathic, maybe, but not insane. /s

Dawg you hear voices and set bakers on fire sooooo

If anything it's redundant, but that's just me.

I set Baker on fire. not multiples yet.

and, theres like a 30% chance the voice in his head is actually a god...

come to think of it... carry on.

Da XPs:

Personal:

You addressed a challenge with technical skill or mayhem:

1 for my flashback to poison the graycloaks, and another for using my bandolier to help with the melee combat, so 2 total.
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You expressed your beliefs, drives, heritage, or background.

Not really appropriate here.

You struggled with issues from your vice or traumas during the session.

Also not really appropriate here.

So 2 xp total, which I will put into my Playbook, which will grant me an upgrade. I am going to choose Analyst, which gives me 2 ticks towards an investigation or crafting LTP. I am going to use those 2 ticks to add to our clock to determine who is hunting us.

Da Crewz!:
Advance the agenda of your deity or embody its precepts in action.

This mission was about increasing our secular position, not our spiritual one.

Contend with challenges above your current station.

We should get xp here cause the Greycloaks are above our station.
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Bolster your crew's reputation or develop a new one.

I would argue that our crew might get a reputation as Daring, given that we basically took a Greycloak holding in broad daylight.

Express the goals, drives, inner conflict, or essential nature of the crew.

I would vote for 1 xp here, as we all worked together to complete our mission, even if Tarnikos got a bit jealous of the others =P

xp:

address a challenge with arcane power or knowledge: well, he tried 1 xp

Belief, drives and heritage: well, he acted like a scheming noble, briefly, before descending back into a stabby madman. he also was gonna throw lantern oil on the remaining greycloaks, and threaten to burn them if they didn't GTFO. empty threat, but they don't need to know that 1xp?

vice and traumas: nope

2 xp, I think

what's our next score? are we gonna deal with the Greys? do that thing for the sashes? be weird cultists?

this last score would have been better to use Emaline on. also, do I tag out before or after downtime?

I think Hutch just gets 1 XP from his drive. Something's got Hutch all wound up, and I hope it showed before and during this score.

I agree with all xp triggers.

Mender: you already figured out who is hunting you. You can spend that on finding where the Greys leadership is hiding or something else entirely or pick a different move.

Velaris: you can tag out any time before the start of the score, but if you want Em to do downtime actions she’ll need to be “active” at downtime.

So you can be Em for a score, Velaris for downtime, Em for the next score (or vice versa) but both characters don’t get downtime.

Oooo, I could make a score toadie and keep Hutch at home for downtime actions?

hmmm...

Yes!

you'd need to use the toadie for dowtime sometime, or else he'd be nothing but neuroses

Then you go and get another right?

As for XP I think Tarnikos only gets one for taking that poor graycloak for the ride of his life.

Okay, let's go with using my 2 free ticks to locating the Greycloaks leadership. Just in case.

I’ll give you two for that, it was a critical after all

Cissa, ever in Hutch's shadow...

How many times are you gonna use that alias?

I’ll make a cs for her tomorrow...

Also, do we need to research that ritual Hutch is proposing? and is it our next score, or do we have a few downtimes to research it?

How many times are you gonna use that alias?

I like to be economical with my aliases...

Initially I was going to let you do attunement as an LTP but this is interesting.

Velaris, I’ll say that Halthar blessed you with the knowledge of attunement

Okay, so... I plan to push Hutch until he hits a Trauma or two on this score, and mostly with flashbacks. We've got tons of coin, I'd like to see us really pull out all the stops. Do training, grab some fancy gear, go nuts. Pretty sure we have enough coin for everyone to do up to three extra downtime actions.

I think I did 4 this time around.

if we need to burn more coin, I'd love to get that third dot in attune, both for compel, and rituals.

I spent 2... (one probably went toward laudanum for Velaris, who is still jonesing.)

... How do Cohorts work? We might need some extra people...

You have two cohorts. They're adepts, so not great at fighting but pretty reasonable at study or attuning. If you want to send them out on their own, that's command. If you want them to join you on a group action, they can and they'll roll their tier for any adept-related roll

You can get more on a temporary basis by spending some coin and doing an acquired assets roll

Awesome, as a Player, I was hoping they'd be able to help Velaris. Hutch probably forgot they exist.

I'm visiting my brother this coming week. Not sure yet what my availability will be during travel, but I should be able to keep up with updates.

For the record, I friggin' love this (and I'm pretty sure Bastian knew that. also it would be a tad hypocritical of me to get pissy for them killing my character)

I absolutely won't roll dice at you unless that's how you want something decided. It's just Hutch being melodramatic.

I mean, Velaris got his hands dirty.

I hope my pushing things is welcome... I worry alot that I frequently overstep, but I feel like the system requires some boldness on the part of the players to push things into choppier waters.

It's useful as well in a PBP setting, where unless the characters are hyper driven, a lot of times you can end up with everyone waiting for someone to make the first move.

I'll get my xp breakdown posted later this evening.

I'm very sorry to have to do this (and to have taken so long to pull the trigger on this) but due to changes in my work schedule I'm just not in front of the computer long enough to run games any more. I can still play (since playing is easier to do from mobile) but I can't give the games I manage the proper attention.

If anyone wants to take over this game, let me know. I'm happy to pass off GM reins to anyone who wants to take over.

It's been a wild run. No hard feelings. I know how tough it is to let a game go. See you around the forums.

Aye, thank you very much for running!

Thanks for introducing me to this game!

It was really fun while it lasted