August is Getting Crazy

 Whoo-boy! Sorry about missing last week, everyone. It's been... well, it's been an August already.

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At the start of the month, my one co-worker took off for her daughter's intimate wedding: Bride, Groom, Parents, Siblings. The following week, my other co-worker took off to both set up and throw a bridal shower for HER daughter, whose wedding is in September. This past weekend the first co-worker took off again for a family event - someone's 60th birthday party or something like that - and she'll be taking most of next week off to recover from mouth surgery. There's only 3 of us that cover the store, so whenever one of the other two needs off; that means I'm working.

Also, either late June or early July, the manager of one of our branch stores took ill. It wasn't COVID-19, thankfully, but it was still serious and kept him in the hospital for a while. He then had to quarantine on the chance that he contracted COVID while in the hospital. That whole time, the company has been scrambling to find extra bodies in the other stores - we are all running on kind of skeleton crews right now - to help cover that branch store. Finally, the company hired two new employees specifically for the store missing their manager. He's supposedly back to work this week, ironically since that's more-or-less when the new hires are starting as well, but he's still very much recovering, so he's probably going to focus mostly on the managerial portion of the job and leave sales to the newbies. Plus, this way he doesn't have to try to run around covering a store by himself: management stuff, sole sales person, answering phone calls, paperwork, answering emails, etc.

That's where my craziness continues, as well as why I missed last week's post. Both me and one woman from another branch store tend to get tapped for training, so we tag-teamed training Newbie #1 last week - which included me working in that store last Tuesday instead of having the day off and working on this blog - and we'll be training Newbie #2 this week.

I did still manage to get my standard 2 days off per week last week, but on "off" days for me, so it was a bunch of playing catch-up on what I normally would do on my days off, and "write a blog post" kind of slipped through the cracks.

Regardless, add in the complications of trying to keep customers satisfied when the production chain is seriously backed up and we honestly have little to no clue when more product is coming in? Well.... It's been a month, as I said.

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All of that "OMG, I may FINALLY be ready to write something!" energy largely POOFed away, but I still managed to wrestle some of it to the ground by way of pen-and-paper roleplaying.

When last we met, I was preparing for my first go as GM for a game of Blades in the Dark by John Harper. The first session we had, where Hubby was the GM, we were suggested by the rulebook to go with the First Situation written in the book itself, as a means to ease into the campaign. Problem is, the situation went sideways FAST because we didn't pick it. So, instead of telling the players "this is what the crew is going to do this week" and forcing them into a situation again, I came up with an assortment of options the group could pick from. Ended up being a great idea because, while it kept the full gaming session to complete that initial situation Hubby GMed, the group FLEW through three different scores when I GMed. I'm not sure if that's because I went easy on them, or because the players know what they're doing a bit better this go, or if it was because Hubby could play this time and that helped streamline things better than when I played, or if it was some sort of combination of those options. Either way, it proved helpful to have a list of options the group could choose from, so Hubby did the same thing last Tuesday when he was back to GMing, and then I'm doing it again when I GM tonight.

When I made my debut, I gave them the score that Hubby had teased at the conclusion of that first session. I also came up with a way for them to gather more permanent resources for the crew - called Staking a Claim, a way for them to take care of their Wanted level so consequences aren't as severe if one of the crew got arrested, a generic "this is what's going on in the city" in case they wanted to come up with their own Score based on that information, and a list of six generic scores listed in the rulebook.

The group went with the score Hubby teased, and went through it fairly quickly. They then chose a random generic score from my list of 6, handled that pretty swiftly as well, and managed to do a second generic score from my list. All the downtime the group was able to play through that session did help both them and the crew itself level up, so it was a good thing overall. Plus the multiple scores gave them a bit of a variety of ways to play that night. So, in the end, I think it worked out well. Hubby keeps telling me that everyone seemed to have fun. Although, Dragnime did kind of abruptly rush out after the third score concluded. He was commenting on how late it was and how he had work the next day, so I may be reading too much into it, but I wasn't sure he was satisfied with how the game played out that night.

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Anyway, that night the crew managed to find a buyer for a stolen map book, steal research notes from a professor/engineer and sell them to her rival, and break into a university campus in the wealthiest part of the entire city in order to steal a painting for a client and replacing it with a forgery so no one would be the wiser. There were still bits where chaos ensued, but for the most part, I think the game played out so everyone felt like accomplished scoundrels. Either that or, as I mentioned, I softballed the whole session....

Regardless, Hubby unintentionally slammed us back down to Earth last week in our first score of the session. We picked a score where we helped a rug maker whose rugs were smothering people in their sleep; a not-so-subtle nod to the D&D monster Rug of Smothering Hubby kept throwing at us in that campaign. We didn't have to worry about dealing with Murder Rugs for this score. The local police - the Bluecoats - had already shut down the man's business and confiscated his rug-making equipment. Namely, a loom. The rug maker didn't know of any other means of making money, plus he hated the Lampblacks for reasons we didn't bother asking for, so he wanted us to steal back his equipment from Bluecoat evidence lock-up, as well as frame the Lampblacks for the theft. We were already on rocky footing with the Lampblacks, but Quarthix loved the idea of screwing with the rival crew further, so we agreed to take the job.

We managed to get into the precinct well enough. My character Mara used to be a Bluecoat, so she was able to use her old uniform to sneak everyone into evidence lock-up, but we just couldn't get the evidence OUT of lock-up. I forget what roll we screwed up on, but an alarm was thrown, my companions - Dragnime's character Syra and Quarthix's character Kristov - attempted to take out the guard at evidence lock-up. It didn't go well. Mara tried her hand at knocking the guy out with Kristov's dart gun, and... well... I messed up my roll, so instead of just knocking the guy out with the dart, apparently Mara got the guy in the eye with said dart and accidentally killed him. I wrote it off as appropriate for her character because she's used to aiming with a handgun, not a blowgun. We cheesed it the heck out of there without any evidence and wrote the score up as a loss.

Hubby and I may have that failed mission come back and bite the crew on the butt in the future. We're still figuring out how.

We did our downtime roleplay and upgrades and the like, but then our crew was sucked into a turf war. A crew called the Billhooks are allies of the Lampblacks. The Lampblacks were still figuring out if they should come after our teeny crew for killing their leader - which also gave the new leader an opportunity to rule, so they aren't TOO upset??? - but they ARE still in a heated turf war already with the crew the Red Sashes, and they couldn't really divide their attention like that. So, allies that they are, the Billhooks, who already didn't like our up-start crew, decided to declare war on the Lampblacks' behalf. We were NOT in a position to go to war with anyone at the time, so we instantly called for a peace treaty.

The Billhooks have an interesting power dynamic. They are still technically run by this one guy who is currently serving life in prison, but is managing to pull enough strings to still be considered in charge. Meanwhile, his son wouldn't mind terribly if his father suddenly died in prison - the man is quite old anyway - so he could finally take over the crew. On the flipside, the leader's sister wants to find a way to break him out of prison, and/or kill off her disloyal nephew and take over the gang in her brother's absence. It's a weird power struggle as all three family members both vie for power and relent it to the other two in order to bide their time.

Well, somehow, someway, via narrative convenience, I guess, our crew The Void Serpents managed to set up a peace treaty with ONLY the sister/aunt. She confirmed she had her brother's ear, and agreed to call off the war if we did something for her: kill her nephew. She'd sort out the details so the true Billhooks leader won't come after us for revenge of his son's death. As before, I had Mara try to play both sides, wondering if we should bring the assassination plot to the nephew's attention to try to win his favor instead and have HIM end the war with us as gratitude for bringing him evidence of his aunt's scheme. The group decided that it was a definite end to the war if we killed the nephew, but only a SUSPECTED end if we warn him, and we couldn't handle going to war with the female leader of the Billhooks if Mara's plan went sideways.

So we set up a neat little trap for the nephew, and it was a MOSTLY clean assassination. I can't recall what went wrong, but Kristov ended up running away from the nephew's guards and throwing a grenade back at them, completely forgetting we were in a drug den. There were a LOT of bodies the ever intimidating Spirit Wardens would need to clean up, and we were now on THEIR list of people that might need to be "dealt with" for making their jobs so much harder with the trail of bodies we leave behind.

Honestly, with this week being the blur that it's been, I can't recall if we called it a night there or if we tried one more score. I feel like we left it there....

Now, I had started up a notebook, as I believe I mentioned last time, where I'm trying to keep track of all the major story elements of the campaign. It would be a good reference guide as well as a nice keepsake of this first attempt at Blades in the Dark. I didn't have any time to write in the notebook the week I GMed, and I tried to fill some of it out this weekend to play catch-up, but the details are already getting hazy. I'll have to chat it over with Hubby so he can help refresh my memory. There's just SO much to try to jot down.

I have to admit, one of my favorite things for this side project is jotting down the NPCs we name throughout the game. Keeping track of them so they could potentially come back seems like such fun. Plus, while we're watching the Oxventure campaign, it's always great fun for all involved to have an NPC cameo or otherwise return for an adventure. I'm excited to do the same with the NPCs Hubby and I introduce in our game.

I already have a score written up for tonight's game which will tie back into one of the missions the crew took the last time I GM'd. I have another in mind, but I'm trying to sort out the specifics of it right now, and I kind of want to run it past Hubby as well. Sure, he'd be running his character, and so it gives him a semi-unfair advantage knowing what I have planned, but at the same time, it affects our Crew in a way I want him to sign off on since he's a co-GM.

I'm hoping to get into some legit writing soon, but in the meantime, I'm taking baby-steps by "writing" these Blades missions and further fleshing out Mara's backstory and character. Not to mention trying to figure out side-stories with the rest of the world-build of the game.

It's a start. Right?

Shifting gears to reading, I still have a backlog of fanfic updates I need to take the time to sit down and enjoy. In the meantime, however, I read Chewy's original story. There were definitely notes. Anyone I've ever beta-read for can attest to that. You ask me to do a job to help better your story, and by gum, I'm going to do the best I can to accomplish that job. He seemed appreciative of the notes and we chatted a bit about it. He has a neat concept, and I can't wait to see what his more polished story looks like.

As of right now the story is more-or-less thus:

A boy of 12 is living in a dystopian America of the near-future. He has an alcoholic, and probably abusive, father who vanishes frequently while on benders, but comes back with a feast of food for the otherwise starving family. The mom seems emotionally and mentally broken; not really caring for her child and only doing the bare minimum to keep them alive. The boy also appears understimulated by his schoolwork, which results in his struggling to stay invested in his lessons. Because of this, his teachers have more-or-less written him off as a lost case. It's a depressing downward spiral for our protagonist.

But there's hope by way of a mysterious voice projecting through the child's otherwise useless one-way radio. All of the radio stations shut down roughly a year before the story begins, but the boy still hears a lone voice calling out for any contact. Without thinking, the boy talks back to the voice, knowing full well his radio is simply for reception, not projection; there's no way the voice can hear him too.

And yet, it does. The two start up a conversation, and things get weird and promising for the boy. Even when he has to spend his days in the depressing life he's always known, he at least has the nights, and the voice through the radio.

If/when Chewy publishes the short story - either professionally or for free consumption somewhere - I'll be sure to let you fine folks know.

My mom is also attempting her own writing project, so I'll be working with her on that. I'm gonna wait until we're further along before I give more details there, but at least I'm kind of writing-adjacent lately, right?

What about you fine folks? Anyone out there writing? Anything good that you've read recently? What about other creative outlets, or games you've been playing? I'd love to know.

Until next week, everyone!

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Ironically Studying Blades

Nothing yet with regards to new fiction to share with you fine folks. However, that doesn't mean the gears haven't been whirling this past week!

Last Tuesday Hubby and I hosted our first Blades in the Dark session. As I mentioned in my previous post, Quarthix came by to create his character as well. He's a Leech - a tinkerer, alchemist, and saboteur - named Kristov. One of Hubby's friends and coworkers still wants in, but will be busy until mid-August, so it will be at least two weeks - today and next week - before he can be free for our sessions. He may also bring his girlfriend along, which will bring our over-all crew up to six people; five playing at a time since either Hubby or I will sit out our characters as we GM.

But otherwise, our crew is built. There's Ashlyn "Nev" Kindaith - the nickname "Nev" is short for "Nevermore" - who is a Lurk. Basically the Thief among all of us thieves. Lurks are the "stealthy infiltrators." Next up is Mara "Jackal" Basran, a Hound; sharpshooter and tracker. The third crew member is Syra "Silver Song" Vale, a Whisper. She is our arcane adept; our spellcaster in this game, if you will. Rounding us off is Kristov "Hammer" Keel.

We... um... we forgot to get anyone that could be good at hand-to-hand. Whoops! That's fine, with the mechanic the game has in play, anyone can still do anything with enough real-world dice-rolling luck. I'll touch upon that again in a moment.

Also, fun factoid: most of us chose either "Iruvian" or "Dagger Isles" as our heritage, which means Hubby's character Ashlyn, who is "Skovian", is the only traditionally "white" character in our crew with a more Scandinavian look. Mara appears more Northern African/Middle Eastern/Indian (haven't decided on which quite yet), and both Syra and Kristov appear more Polynesian.

Anyway, together, Ashlyn, Mara, Syra, and Kristov make up the Void Serpents, a daring up-and-coming Shadow crew specializing in burglary, robbery, espionage, and sabotage.

So, naturally, we assassinate someone in our first session.

Okay, here's the breakdown. First of all, we had to build up our Crew as if it were its own character. It actually kinda-sorta is, in truth. This way we can retire our current characters, bring in new ones, have the game go on for years - generations within the game, if we wanted - and that Crew will still be there; evolving with each game.

Anyway, as we were building our Crew, we had to pick a place to be our "hunting grounds;" a place where we did most of our shady business. We wanted to focus on espionage, so we picked the district of Charterhall, "the city's civic offices and the hub for shops, artisans, and commerce." In doing so, we had to pick a random faction whose turf we were invading and suffer some negative reputation among that crew. After flipping through the options, Hubby randomly selected a group called The Lampblacks. Not entirely sure why he picked them since they're described in the book as "akin to folk-heroes among the working class, who see them as 'lovable rogues' standing up to the powers-that-be." I personally would have thought they would be good allies, but I wasn't really paying attention when the faction was picked, so I didn't voice my objections then. Also, the Lampblacks are currently at war with the rival crew the Red Sashes, which is made up of Iruvian sword masters. Seeing as how my character is 3/4 Iruvian, I guess Hubby figured I'd want us allied with them????

No matter. The decision was made, and we took a few blocks from the Lampblacks' hunting grounds, causing an uneasy rivalry between us, and helping us ally with the Red Sashes more. There were other bits of our Crew build that caused other Crews to either befriend us or start up their own rivalry with us as well, but those aren't important right now.

Fast forward to our first session. The game suggests using the starting situation printed in the rulebook if you haven't played before. That way your GM won't have to struggle to figure out a good starting hook. Hubby, without reading the situation, decides that's probably best, and we all agree to just dive in using that scenario.

Then Hubby reads this:

You're in the cramped office of the Lampblack's leader, Bazso Baz, overlooking the coal warehouse floor below. Several of his thugs hang about, armed for war, sizing you up. Bazso wants your answer. Are you with them, or against them? What do you say? Will you side with the Lampblacks? Will you just pretend to? (Good luck, Bazso is very sharp.) Will you tell him to [censored] off?

See, the opening world scenario for the game is that the former leader of the gang The Crows died mysteriously, and his second in command Lyssa took control. Problem is, the original Crows leader had brokered a treaty between the warring factions of the Lampblacks and the Red Sashes. Without his influence, the two have again crashed into a turf war.

How did we end up in Baz's office of all places when we were already at odds with the Lampblacks and mildly allied with the Red Sashes? Don't know. The situation doesn't specify. We know we're screwed from the word "go" because we had just stolen some blocks from this guy's hunting grounds. Plus, were we ready to flip on our ally right out of the gate? It wouldn't have been disastrous, really, it's not like we were firm allies with the Red Sashes yet.

The trick here, though, is two-fold. First: Hubby neglected to read off some key info about the factions we were allied with and the ones we were at odds with. He just read off their names and the key description of them.

So, for instance, for the Lampblacks, we were told, "Lampblacks: the former lamp-lighter guild, turned to crime when their services were replaced by electric lights." We were then told, "The Red Sashes: originally a school of ancient Iruvian sword arts, since expanded into criminal endeavors." We were also told the two factions are rivals/enemies. Based on those descriptions? Of course we'd want to side with the far cooler-sounding Red Sashes. Again, especially since Mara's mostly of Iruvian heritage.

None of us heard the bit about the Lampblacks being sort of the "scoundrels of the people." I don't know if Hubby even read that far into the faction description before we dove in. Whoops.

The second issue with the starting scenario is that it concluded with this lovely suggestion: "Are you actually here to kill [Bazso Baz] for the Red Sashes? (If so, do a flashback and pick a plan for the assassination.)"

Oh, Quarthix grabbed INSTANTLY onto that one. Sure, we're a crew that specializes in standard spying and thievery, but that doesn't mean we can't take on other styles of job, and Quarthix leaned HARD into that mindset.

Baz is the leader of a faction we don't like, and he's warring with a faction we do like. We could get more Brownie Points from the Red Sashes, potentially, if we off their greatest opposition at the time. Plus, the guy has us cornered, what else would we do? Flip on our ally and align with HIM?

I did offer that we agree to side with the Lampblacks and then just stay neutral in the turf war; ignoring the bit in the situation description that says, "Good luck, Bazso is very sharp." Quarthix held firm though that he wanted to assassinate this guy. No one managing to talk him out of it, we stumbled for a bit to try to come up with a plan. Getting into the new mechanics of Blades was really rough after playing D&D for years, but eventually Hubby and I just kind of threw the other two into the game - by me having Mara straight up intimidate Bazso to leave us out of his turf war with the Red Sashes; we will remain neutral and not side with either of them - and went from there.

I actually did surprisingly well for my roll - I was getting the highest roll possible nearly all night; I was shook! - and Baz let us leave. Kristov had planned on assassinating this guy, however, and dang it, he was going to follow through. So, he used the opportunity of Baz being shaken by my intimidation to attack him.

Chaos thus ensued.

Remember at the top when I mentioned none of us were built for melee combat? Yeah.... Luckily, as I also mentioned, if you roll well enough, your character can accomplish virtually anything. I more-or-less took the lead to just bash and shoot our way back out of the building; clearing paths for my crewmates to slip through.

Syra and Kristov took some damage each, but nothing terribly too major. Mara just TANKED most of the damage and barely made it out alive, but made it we all did. On the other hand, Mara killed two Lampblacks, Kristov pulled an audible and decided to kidnap Baz instead of kill him after Syra incapacitated the Lampblack leader, and, while trying to deliver Baz to the Red Sashes, we were stopped by a Bluecoat; a city cop, basically.

Luck wasn't on my side then, and apparently Mara and this Bluecoat knew each other from when she was still on the force. And he did NOT like her one bit. I tried to have Mara schmooze the Bluecoat, but the dice rolls were no longer in my favor. Finally, Quarthix got a good enough roll to convince the Bluecoat - whom I had named James on a whim since Hubby never named or described the Bluecoat - to let us go with a warning. How'd he manage that? He reminded James that the sooner he let us leave the sooner he could get rid of Mara and not have to deal with her crap.

Meh. It worked.

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After delivering Bazso Baz to the Red Sashes, we were quickly reprimanded by the faction's leader Mylera who had asked for Baz's head, not him as a hostage to ransom back to the Lampblacks. We were told that we would only get our pay if we completed the original job, and now we had to make sure it was loud and public so the heat wouldn't be on the Red Sashes.

So we did. In one of the busiest bits of the city - the center of the Crow's Foot district - Kristov executed Baz with one of Mara's pistols. Ashlyn, who was our getaway driver so his character was still involved even if Hubby wasn't playing him at the time, refused to stop for the execution, and so it was very much a public drop-and-go. Boom. Shot in the head, and dumped onto the streets without us even slowing down.

Needless to say, our crew got our first Wanted rating after that fiasco. Although, to be fair, we would have been "fine" except we got extra heat - which tipped us over into a Wanted level - as consequence for me failing miserably to convince Bluecoat James to look the other way as we smuggled the abducted Baz.

At the end of every score - the "missions" the characters go on; the detailed action roleplay - the group gets their payoff and reputation, discovers the amount of heat the crew has on them, determine if they have increased a Wanted level, discover entanglements and other complications that the Crew suffers due to the actions of the score, and then the individual characters can have some downtime to work on independent character-building things and/or heal.

Well, the entanglement we got was that the Bluecoats brought one of our allies in for questioning. Basically, we deduced that James saw how banged up I was, figured I'd go to my doctor friend to get patched up, and so he sent the Bluecoats - or maybe went himself - to collect my ally. I dropped some coin to bribe the Bluecoats, and we all moved on. My ally is safe, the Bluecoats don't know anything else about our organization, and I'm back to being broke....

Mara did manage to de-stress, but she didn't heal at all, and basically one more hit would have killed her. So it's probably best that I'm GMing tonight. Gives Mara more downtime to get properly patched up. Her injuries are even a great excuse as to why she's not going on this next score. Although, everyone getting so banged up DID convince Quarthix that maybe we should aim for a non-combat score this time.... so... yay!

To further drive home the chaos of this first score - probably mostly due to the fact that we are all green and don't quite know the game mechanics yet - one of the pages offered in the player's kits is a way to track the scores the crew has been on and any key elements that might be important story beats for future gameplay. This is what a blank sheet looks like.

Fairly simple. The categories to fill in include: Score Type, Target, Location, Payoff: Coin/Rep, Heat, Entanglements and/or Faction status changes, and finally Notes, Events, and Clocks Advanced.

Well, er... it was ME who decided to fill this out for that first session and.... You guys know me. I'm not very concise. For me, a lot of details could prove important down the road, so if they feel even remotely significant I want to include them.

So it actually kept me three attempts before I managed to keep that first score confined to just the allotted third of a page....

First attempt on the bottom (upper left), then the 2nd attempt in the middle, and the final attempt on top (right side)

To sate my desire to capture as much of the game as possible, I instead turned to the single-subject notebook Hubby initially purchased for his game of Sigils in the Dark before buying his leather-bound one instead. This way we have a record of our games, which is something I've wanted to do with EVERY RPG I've played, but never managed to follow through except for Jolene's game, and that was largely because the gameplay was all text-based anyway. I like being able to look though records of the games and remember the fun we had playing. Plus, for situations like what we've been through with D&D being on hiatus due to COVID-19, it's a way for us to remember what happened last time, especially after long game droughts between sessions. We can also use it as reference points to make sure we keep continuity with regards to the overall campaign. For instance, if we come across a Bluecoat in Crow's Foot again, maybe it's James once more, but this time we DON'T get a warning because we've just irritated him enough.

Trying to get as much narrative detail as I could remember down on paper kept me HOURS on Friday, and five full notebook pages. My hand hurt so much when I was done....

I wasn't quite done yet, though, because we're now up to what I mostly did with my week. Namely, study this dang game!

I knew bits and pieces from Hubby reading passages off to me as he read through the book, plus he had to explain the base rules to the other players, so we all had enough to go off of to play, but was it enough for me to RUN a session?

I brought the roughly 300pg rulebook to work with me this past week, and whenever I had downtime I read. I read this book like it was a school textbook that I needed to study. I copied pages I wanted to make notes on or highlight passages. I jotted things down in a notebook to keep in mind. Most importantly, I tabbed the HECK out of this book so it would be easier for us to quickly flip to whatever rules we needed to figure out in the heat of the game so we didn't bog down the gameplay too much.

While reading though and studying the rulebook I reflected back on the session Hubby ran. He was new to the game as well, and one of the first pages of the rulebook stated that you shouldn't be expected to understand the rules your first go. There's certainly a learning curve with this game, but it's worth it. That said, I did use my knowledge of how the game DID play out versus how it probably SHOULD have played out, based on the rules, so there's some housecleaning we need to do before we officially start playing tonight.

But that's good. We're learning, and I can now help Hubby when he's unsure about a rule, and vice versa. I definitely have a much better understanding of the game and the rules I need to know specifically as a GM. I'm still a bit nervous about running the game tonight since I SUUUUCK at improv, but I feel a lot more confident with Blades than I ever was with D&D. Mostly because a means for me to answer player questions is right at my fingertips within the book, plus the players certainly have more storytelling and storycrafting control with Blades than in D&D, so it's less load on me.

I actually came up with a handful of scores the players can choose from tonight, that way they even feel like they have more control on the situational hook they follow, instead of being strong-armed like we did with the first session.

I have the score Hubby teased the group with at the end of the last game; utilizing our Crew's contact Fitz. I also have a Staking a Claim score, which is another key element of the game as a means to upgrading the Crew. Quarthix and Dragnime both figured last time that we should probably wait before staking a claim on anything, but I have the option available for tonight in case they change their minds. Another option I will literally have on the table is a potential way for the Crew to get rid of our Wanted level; something that doesn't happen until SOMEONE goes to jail for the crimes associated with our crew. Finally, I narrowed the 18-option list of potential Shadow score opportunities down to a list of 6. If they choose "random opportunity" they can then decide to either pick one of the six, or have me roll for one.

On top of all of THAT, I also started thinking about the world-build of the game itself. Another key thing of this game is that the city of Doskvol and the world of the Shattered Islands is supposed to be ALIVE in the background. The world doesn't revolve around our crew, and the environment surrounding each game session should reflect that. I won't get into the mechanics of how the game suggests doing this, but the long and short is that each faction has its own goals, rivals, and allies. As the player characters do things on their scores, during downtime, and while free-playing, they are going to somehow affect the delicate but unsteady balance within Doskvol.

For instance: murdering Bazso Baz.

Baz was the leader of a well-loved criminal faction; champions of the People, as they were. The citizens will NOT be happy about Baz's death. Also, Hubby had headcanoned that Baz's second in command Pickett was out with the majority of the Lampblacks, fighting their war against the Red Sashes, but could there be rumors that Pickett staged a coup? Did the 2nd strategically set up the meeting between the Void Serpents and Baz at the same time the warehouse and Baz would be mostly unguarded, wanting the faction leader to be killed? Would this cause unrest in the gang and a potential power vacuum? Or would Pickett step in as leader seamlessly? Would members start in-fighting as some begin to distrust Pickett? Would they be torn as to who to go after for Baz's death? Because there are other candidates as well. Such as the Red Sashes. They clearly would have the most to win from Baz's death, and there were rumors that he was taken to their HQ before his execution. Does this mean the Lampblacks push harder against the Red Sashes, winning advantage in the turf war? Or is it the Red Sashes that now have advantage since the Lampblacks are trying to recover from the assassination of their leader? What about the new leader of The Crows, Lyssa? The turf war started because she took over for Roric, and a lot believe she actually killed Roric so she COULD lead. She's known to be both connected and brash along with the suspicion of being a killer. Would she purposefully start up a turf war to try to weaken both the Lampblacks and Red Sashes - factions who are fighting over Crow's Foot which the Crows also obviously have turf within - in an effort to eliminate them? The Void Serpents are this daring upstart crew that is barely worth paying any mind, and yet they were somehow both smart enough to execute a faction boss and dumb enough to cause such a ruckus doing so? There's also that rumor about the Void Serpents taking Baz to the Red Sashes, only to execute him themselves. Was this all a ploy to try to convince the citizens to riot against the Red Sashes and weaken them as well? How deep does this rabbit hole go?

And that's just one district of this city! There are 12 districts in total, and 48 factions! Let alone other starting crews like ours - Hubby and I could come up with a rival starting crew of NPCs if we wanted - or anything going on outside of Doskvol. There's six countries that create the Shattered Isles which makes up the game world. There's also 20 other named cities in the world. At any point, Hubby and I could have something happen in any of those locations, or the ink-black Void Sea, or the vastly uninhabited Deathlands. I also didn't touch upon the Bluecoats and how things may have shifted for them as well due to the turf war and knowing Mara's potential involvement. Or the Spirit Wardens who had to clean up three scattered corpses from just one scuffle, before the spirits could emerge from the bodies and add to the already overwhelming ghost/haunting infestation within Doskvol.

There is a LOT to manage in the backgrounds, is what I'm saying. And that was largely what I was doing this week: studying this game, trying to understand the world already fleshed out in the game, and trying to figure out how our characters already affected the world, all while also trying to figure out score options for the players tonight.

It was a HUGE undertaking for me - Hubby says I put in TOO much thought when most of the world-build answers are at my fingertips via the rulebook, and he's probably right, but... meh? - but it was fun, and it did get the creative storytelling portion of my brain moving again. Shake off that dust! The true irony mentioned in this blog post's title is that Blades is a game designed to AVOID extensive planning. The point of the game is to just dive in with only the vaguest of plans - you're actually not allowed to plan via the rules - and then plan backwards by way of the Flashback mechanic. So much of the world and a TON of NPCs are already psuedo-fleshed out in the rulebook. All I'd need to do is flip to a page and read it for the group. The Score that Hubby teased the group was based on the "goals" section of one of the Faction descriptions. Again, this should be easy. It's all more-or-less already built.

I dunno. I guess it's easier for me to dive in with regards to fanfiction because I could immerse more into the worlds of "Hey, Arnold!" or Miraculous Ladybug or Legend of Zelda. I just need to be patient and spend more time with the last chapter of the book that explains the world itself; not the game and game mechanics. I'm hoping I'll get there.

In the meantime, let's see how well the game goes tonight. Hubby will GM next week, so I'll be able to take a bit of a breather and can go back to focusing on reading fanfics and maybe start thinking of my own fanfics.

Plus, I now have an original short story to beta read! A college friend we lovingly nicknamed Chewy - as in Chewbacca, but we spelled it with a -y instead of the -ie - asked me this weekend to look through a story he's been working on for pretty much all of 2020. Or, maybe it was a side-project he was working on whenever he needed a break from the main 2020 story that has already filled 2 journals? Either way, I'm excited to see what he came up with. Reading his story is on my To Do list for tomorrow.

Hacker Boy
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by Birdman, Inc.

What about all of you fine folks? Aside from bots, I haven't had any comments in a while. I'm curious as to what you've been up to. Any writing on your end? Any good stories you've been reading? Any fun games you've played? Have YOU tried Blades in the Dark or other Forged in the Dark games? Let me know below!

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