Whose Score Is It Anyway - Blades in the Dark's heist structure in focus

Introduction

My last post was essentially a short series of complaints about Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, in light of a campaign I ran with it. As I promised in the prior post that lead to it, I intend to write a longer discussion of D&D 5E's character sheet game. But to do it justice, I want to compare it to at least two other systems that I am not only familiar with, but that I have at least played.

Thankfully, the creator of the Discord server where I helped playtest Bounty Hunter TTRPG, Pinkerton One-Shots Agency, hosts a variety of one-shots by several GMs, and is open to new people (like me!) setting up their own games. After having played the BHTTRPG playtest, and an unrelated Call of Cthulhu session, I pitched a one-shot, titled "Whose Score Is It Anyway?"

Premise

The idea was simple: since one of the most influential elements of Blades in the Dark is the heist structure, or the score, I would try to run a session with as little preliminary work as possible before getting to the starting point of this structure: the engagement roll. This would go the farthest into simulating the heist genre, putting the players and their characters in media res, and hopefully we could learn and gain experience with the rest of the necessary rules as we went along.

Normally, there would be some discussion of the crew sheet, choice of lair and starting district, and free-form in-character play and information gathering, before the score was settled upon. However, that is where my previous attempt at running BitD got stuck, so I decided to dispense with it. I would use the crew only as a starting point for choosing the specific score. I also ignored the score's district, treating Doskvol as a unit.

The written pitch was "zero prep", but I did have to make some preparation, if nothing else to build the pregenerated characters, as well as to refresh my memory of some of the mechanics, as it has been a while since I've finished reading the book, and a while longer since I've last attempted to run the game.

Session

After the players chose their characters from a list of pregens, in line with the idea of spending as little time as possible on thinking or making decisions before the score, I rolled a random crew type, and then I rolled randomly on the table for relevant scores, and asked the players to choose which of the three choices they liked the most. The crew rolled was Hawkers, purveyors of vice, and the chosen score involved dealing with a competing product on the market, which led us to conclude that the vice was illicit drugs.

Then I had them use the contacts in their character sheets (which I also generated randomly) to provide detail for the approach. One of the characters, a Slide, had a small-time drug dealer as an ally, and the player proactively claimed that they used to be supplied by the crew, but hasn't bought anything in some time, while nevertheless continuing to sell, suggesting they would make a good contact with the rival crew. Another player, a Hound, suggested that they could follow this contact on their next supply run. They decided that this is how they will sneak into the rivals` lair. That took care of the plan (stealth) and detail (point of entry).

Next I explained how the load-out system worked, and emphasized that specific items are chosen only during the score, rather than being predetermined. The characterization and details of the plan were enough to suggest how heavily they would be equipped for action, so this didn't take long.

Finally, we went over the engagement roll. One die for luck, and another die for using a weak spot of the target (a handoff point for the drugs). The roll went well, so I established that their Hound was well situated to watch over the contact entering what turned out to be the rival crew's manufacturing facility.

As for the rest of the session itself, suffice it to say that it started off sneaky enough, with slowly escalating levels of alarm, culminating in a gun fight and a blockbuster of an explosion, wrecking the warehouse and its surroundings. The characters came out wounded but alive, while their rivals were only able to keep half of their equipment and supplies. I then got some feedback from the players, and bid them farewell.

Things that worked

The session itself went well. Starting this way did save a lot of time before the action came in. The players took to the setting and to the properties of their characters. I was lenient in allowing them to retcon a few details when there was confusion, and I happily took advantage of immediate feedback and suggestions from one player, who has had a lot more experience with the game, to pull it off.

Despite the lack of mechanical team incentives, the shared challenge created a sense of camaraderie that I've seen when running D&D in a similar in media res situation. With time, the players got a hang of the main resolution mechanic, pushing oneself and accepting a devil's bargain, helping each other, the use of load and clocks, and so forth. The trappings of Doskvol also made themselves clear through play. 

Things I would do differently

I was hoping that we could learn more of the rules as we encountered them, but feedback suggests that I should have just had a very clear explanation of the main resolution mechanic, focusing on the fact that every character is able to try anything - even if they have zero "dots" in an action rating, they have a 25% chance to succeed with at most some complication, and as long as the player is aware of the amount of stress they're in, it's not that hard to push oneself or accept a devil's bargain to get up to 50%.

Less mechanically, It seems like I need to find a happier medium between freeform roleplaying and the strict laser focus on building on the engagement roll, because it did feel a bit jarring to some to just jump in this quickly.

An important aspect of Doskvol I forgot to mention, until someone had already committed to killing someone, is the Spirit Wardens and their swift response to death. It serves an important purpose in making the game less bloody. Fortunately, one of the players, whose character was a Whisper, stepped in and provided an excusable way to mitigate it, but it is a fundamental worldbuilding element whose ramifications I didn't pay enough attention to, not to mention explain to the players.

Another comment I got in feedback that I think is very poignant is that the possibility of flashbacks really needs to be brought up for new players in a more proactive fashion. It is one of the foundations of what allows the scores to run as they do when this game is played best.

I think districts add flavor to the scores and to the city at large, so I would roll a d12 to choose one.

Insights into the game

Since this was a one shot with no crew structure and no real ties to Experience Points, some of the incentives a full game would have were absent. For example, one incentive to attempt actions in a desperate position is that it leads to immediate XP gain. Similarly, some forms of characterization are encouraged by the means by which different playbooks gain XP, as well as how different crew sheets do.

The absence of an expected downtime period also meant that the Heat implications weren't visible, nor was there a significant mechanical connection with the vice as a tool for eliminating stress.

Mechanical shortcomings

The fact that the game is 1d6-based, but there are 7 playbooks, 4 starting builds for each playbook, 6 heritages, 7 backgrounds, 7 vices, 5 clever friends, and 8 starting special abilities, made quickly creating a few pregens more difficult than it should have been, and make for longer character creation in a normal game, as well. The text contradictorily suggests assigning the extra dots to attributes based on heritage and background, while also providing this in the quick build - if the backgrounds and vices were reduced to 6 each, and if there were a table for assigning attributes based on heritage and background, that would have improved things. There are 12 districts - if there were instead 11, and if it made sense for some of them to have more scores than others, then 2d6 would have made for a good way to roll for one.

Conclusion

I and the players had a good time with this concept. Some of the adjustments I will want to make to improve my next run of this nature are entirely on me, while others may require a bit of rules hacking to get right. I do recommend giving this type of experiment a shot if you've struggled to make sense of BitD. It will force you to reckon with the game's heist structure, which is a real breath of fresh air - at the expense of missing out on a lot of very interesting further structures. However, it might also make for a good start to a fully-fledged campaign, if you are willing to do some work to retroactively apply the results of your first score to the full system.