Last night was our first session of our open table Blades in the Dark game! Thanks to @James Willetts @Richard Mills and @Beth Bachuss for taking the plunge and pulling off some daring heists! I’ll update this each week with an overview and quick summary of the session, the prep, the post-game accounting, and some insight into the proactive process, to hopefully make the motions of running a proactive game a little more open and approachable. This week, we kicked off by choosing some pregenerated characters (to my great disappointment, no one picked “Jon’ah the Pungent”) and learning a few basics of the system. Then we got right into the action! I haven’t had the chance to make a poll and decide crew type (look out for that tomorrow!) so I chose cult to get us started and the group decided they wanted to steal the shiny ancient obelisk described on their crew sheet. In Blades, every crew type has a bunch of Claims—valuable turf, places, or objects currently held by other factions. Since we’re just starting, I substituted the claims sheet for goals to get the ball rolling quickly. I’ll talk more about my plans to make this a bit more proactive in my post-game section. The heist was good fun! The players decided that the Church of Ecstasy probably had the obelisk, and that it was being brought to their large temple by the Gondoliers. Meanwhile, the Keepers of the Flame infiltrate the church for cultish purposes… Highlights include James’ leech unleashing an unknown horror from a prison to wreak havoc and destruction, Richard’s whisper unleashing an indoor hailstorm to spook off some guards and loot the organ loft, and Beth’s lurk pretending to be a wealthy donor and strongman the delivery men into moving the obelisk for her. We opening and closed with critical successes, so things were mostly in a pretty safe position thanks to great rolls and clever plans! Downtime included pissing off the yet-unnamed rival gang, who have vowed revenge and will return at a later time. Also some training and some inventing of dangerous anti-ghost substances.

Update: Relics of Hiraeth playlist in the main entry. The latest: With all the parties at level 2, I am now polling how they want to level up going forward. So far one party is purely leaning time-based, so leveling up without merit, just every other game or so. Another group wants to engage in learning about the world as justification for keystone-based leveling, which I’m excited about. Posting my in-person Daggerheart games in three different threads here… Please post accordingly so I know which game you’re commenting on. 🙏 One thing I’ve noticed is that emergent/proactive play is pretty streamlined in the Daggerheart system during world-building and character creation. I’m also taking some of my lessons learned from previous campaigns since reading the PARP guide and gauging ahead of time how proactive and goal-oriented the players want the campaign to be. That means these three different campaigns may have varying levels of proactive versus reactive play. Stay tuned!

So, this group has been playing together for a while. Running the Pathfinder 2E Abomination Vaults AP. Female - Dwarf Fighter Male – Goblin rogue Male – Poppet Oracle Male – Minotaur Cleric NPC – Nephilm/Hollowborn Magus NPC – Human rogue The poppet answered the call of another Oracle to the town of Otari where he met with others and was told a little about the town and their concerns with this old dead sorcerer’s lighthouse in the swamp. As those heroes said they would check it out. The first thing they found was small tribe of mifits called the Mudlicker’s. Learning that the Mudlicker’s had been forced out from their home in the levels below. This was news to the heroes because no one knew that Belcorra had levels below the ground level of the lighthouse complex. Teaming with the tribe the heroes started down in the levels below. It was rough go and they encounter all kinds of horrors and they learned more about Belcorra. Sadly, in her library run by ghouls the party faced overwhelming odds and all but two of them survived. The Poppet and one other hero who was too scared to go back. The poppet and the town Oracle gathered a new group to head deeper in the vault. Along the way they saved the mayor’s child, freed a mummy, stopped a contract on one of the town founder’s great great great grand child’s soul. Killed a ton of demons, put down some of Belcorra’s commanders and killed two prize hydras and selling the bodies to the town. Now hundreds feet below the surface. They have the children of Belcorra and allies against her. This has also brought the attention of Belcorra herself. The first time she gave a warring and a taste of her power. After they killed two of her spies. She appeared and bloodied them and told they to return her book and leave. They made with their new allies and took out two more spies. But during the fight the magus had a spell go wrong taking him to his knees. As the others finished the spies off. Suddenly Belcorra appeared along with some of her children. “Tonight, one of you will die!” as she attacked. The party fought holding their own but some of them being bloodied. The battle end as Belcorra shoved her ghost hand into the chest of the magus and crushed his chest. As he fell the Minotaur reacted headbutting her. As she faded out through the floor she whispered to the Minotaur, “I took one of you tonight” The party looked around to see the magus laying there. (and GM smiled see you all in a week)

A little over a year ago I felt inspired by the story of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion. Soon after, I watched Violet Evergarden. Then, I think I watched Dungeon Meshi for probably the fifth time, and Howl’s Moving Castle for probably the hundred and fifth time. From these influences, my campaign “War is Hell” was born. In my mind it’s a collaborative world-building project first and a campaign setting… not quite second, but like, first and a half. The world is vast and wildly multicultural. Generally, the tech level can be understood to be around the Belle Epoque, though material conditions and geography differ greatly from any IRL inspirations. Two-ish decades ago, a tiny country the size of Switzerland started their imperial project and now the Empire of Alius covers 1/3 of “Eurasia and Africa”. The war crossed the “Atlantic” about a year and a half prior to session 1. In response, almost all of the significant countries and territories in North and South Patria formed the Confederation of Patria, forming the largest, theoretically strongest, most haphazardly-stitched-together military this world has ever seen. The actual campaign follows a ragtag special forces unit, especially talented recruits fresh out of boot camp assigned to the same team based on synergy—at least, on paper. The first mission was a training mission meant to test how compatible this team actually was. Following the events of the first few sessions, the campaign has become a survival-crafting hexcrawl. The team deserted pretty much immediately due to -Plot- and is now bouncing from side quest to side quest, filling out the map of the countryside and learning more about the world and the war as they go. As for system, we use 5.5e as a base with some rule tweaks to make it just a touch grittier, we follow Helliana’s rules for crafting and gathering, and I have a pretty open-door policy on homebrew so long as its well made and fits the ~vibe~ I recently was gifted the Handbook for Collaborative Campaign Design by one of my players and its advice has been soooo useful as the campaign marches on!

Essentially the adventuring crew defeated a blue wyrmling helping to prevent it from completing a ritual to gain dangerous ancestral power. They obtained dragon scales, skin, and blood from dragons. Our warlock particularly interested in the blood. In this chaos, an old powerful looking wizard crashes into the observatory the crew is in. When things settled down, Ebeneezer introduced himself as coming from a different time period and possibly parallel timeline-is holding a time staff. Says that Moander (evil deity) has a small but growing following, however he has some defectors and there are rumors there was another time period where he was imprisoned/robbed of his powers somehow. Ebeneezer asks adventurers to join him there to fight Moander amongst other things as there are so many competing factions where he comes from it’s hard to know who to trust. It is explained that Blepp took on a caricature type of persona to gain intel from the adventurers and assess them. Moander (the patron) is striking our Warlock with psychic damage throughout this conversation. There was some explanation of time travel and using the time staff, that it had almost run out of magical energy and had to be restored at this specific celestial event. Ganzon (sorcerer) asked if they couldn’t just come back to this specific event to recharge it if they need to, this was discussed as a possibility but also that they had already done this so may not be possible. Ebeneezer tells the crew there are many powerful magic items from the time period and parallel timeline he is from, centering on the large island state of Aeridor. Also shares he has defected from The Trust of the Song, the group that is after Al (wizard) for sword training. Al asks repeatedly about finding dinosaurs and Ebeneezer hesitantly shares that there are mutant psychic dinos on Aeridor that are used in fighting rings but also other ways, he is hesitant to share more. The group agrees to work as a team and go with Ebeneezer to Aeridor with Blepp, it is also revealed his real name is Plebb. Plebb offers a weak apology for hiding his true identity. The group allows Ebeneezer to transport them to Aeridor at his home base.