All right, why'd you call me here?
The game store gives me the heebie jeebies.
They got all those creepy, strange, newfangled dice here.
What? I didn't call you.
I haven't been back to the game store since.
They're my near fatal Dungeons and Dragons injury.
All right, guys, what's the big idea?
Which one of you called me here to the game store at night?
You guys know I've never been to the game store at night before.
You've never been anywhere anytime.
You don't know how bad it is out here.
There could be tetrahedrons anywhere.
What? What was that?
Was that some kind of plot hook? Whoa.
My God I've never seen such a weird.
Little guy appear out of thin air.
Like that before. Neither is anyone in the world
but cow. It is me, the game master, I am
the one who called you 3 here to this game store, for you must
complete a special task for me. A game master?
Is that some sort of dungeon master?
I can't play Dungeons and Dragons anymore, not since my
injury. Not to worry my injured little
friend, I'm here to help you master a different type of game.
There are games other than D&D. But even in other games you have
to use all those strange dice, pyramids, octahedrons, God damn
deccahedrons. Not to worry my dodecahedron
hating chum, this game only uses regular ass dice. 6 sided ones.
Only cubes. I never thought it was possible.
I'm safe. And I'm also here and I've never
ever played any game ever before at all.
So what even is this game? Well, it's called Blades in the
Dark, you weirdo. It's a tabletop role-playing
game, which means you pretend to be a character, say things you
want to do, and then use dice to decide if you succeed.
Hmm. Sounds stupid. 6 sided dice.
Yes, 6 sided dice. Now I'm going to teach you all
how to play, and together we're going to pull off the greatest
heist in Blades in the Dark history.
Because this is. How to?
Play Blades in the Dark. Yay.
All right, everyone, gather round.
First, we've got to figure out what sort of scoundrels you are.
Wait a minute, just because I'm an expert in poisons and illegal
technology. I had no choice but to turn the
cat burglaring after my injury. I mean, I've never done it or
anything, but yeah, I definitely do crimes.
Blades in the Dark happens in three stages, and fellas, you
best start believing in the first stage because you're in
it. Stage one free play.
Yay. In the free play stage, we
decide on our score, gather information and decide how much
equipment to bring. But what is a score?
In this case, boys, it's a book. All right, let me level with
you. It's a book containing the rules
of Blades in the Dark. But are you teaching us the
rules? This is just a quick overview.
The book is extremely important to keep playing the game.
This is why we're at this God forsaken game store.
Well, I just got here, but I'll try anything once, right guys?
OK. Now that we're all agreed,
here's the deal. We're out here, the book's in
there. If you want more information
than that, you're going to have to roll for it.
Oh beautiful cube shaped fucking dice.
Six sides and not one more or less.
All right, I'm pretty good at cat burglar and let me sneak
around the place and see what I see.
What do I do? Roll a dice and add some kind of
modifier. Not at all.
When you play Blades, you use your character sheet called the
Playbook to tell you how many dice you get to roll.
If you're really good at something, you get to roll a
bunch of dice and take the highest number you get.
If you're really bad, you have to roll 2 dice and take the
lowest number. Whoa, that's so non traditional.
It's like there's an advantage, a disadvantage on every roll.
Well I'm great at sneaking and my playbook says I've got 3IN
Prowl so. So you'll roll 3 dice.
Yippee, my highest roll is a six.
That's a great roll. So you're going to get great
information. As you skulk around outside the
game store, flitting from shadow to shadow without arousing a
hint of suspicion, you see that the book is displayed in the
front window. No lasers, no presser switch, no
alarm. There are, however, a series of
security cameras to avoid, but you scoped out where they all
are. Well, if I knew anything about
anything, I think I'd say we'd better get robbing the place.
But wait. First, you must each decide what
you want to bring with you on your heist.
If you carry a heavy load, you'll have more weapons and
tools available to you, but you'll also be more noticeable
and suspicious. Choose well.
Well, I need all my gadgets and poisons.
I'll carry a heavy load. As a cat burglar, I'll keep
everything light. I'll just bring nothing.
Oh OK, that's not really in the rules, but OK.
What kind of approach are you guys planning to take here?
Are you sneaking in? Barging in guns a blazing?
Using deception to pull a con? You get an additional missing
detail of information based on your choice.
Let's sneak in. Maybe if the lights are off I
won't see any strangely shaped dice.
Stealth it is. That means you're missing detail
is your point of entry. So we'll begin our adventure at
the back door of this game store, where you notice one of
the security cameras is broken. Great, so now we plan our heist,
predicting and prepping for every possible outcome and
surprise. Exactly wrong.
When you play Blades we get right into the action.
No planning ahead of time. But but but.
The last part of free play is the engagement role, but.
How are we supposed to? If you roll high, you'll start
your adventure in a controlled position, which means everything
is going according to plan. If you roll medium, you'll start
your adventure in a risky position.
You're not in trouble yet, but there are complications.
If you roll low, you will start in a desperate position.
Everything is going bad and you'll need to solve your
current problems before continuing with the heist.
But if? We don't meticulously plan.
One of you roll it. Sometimes you might roll more or
less dice depending on the circumstances surrounding your
heist, but today it's just one regular old cubic dice.
It's a four. So we start our score in a risky
position, eh? Well.
We haven't even planned these two.
The score. All this quiet on this cool
summer night. Crickets chirp.
The street lamp flickers. The breeze whistles by.
The three of you sneak around the back of the game store,
deftly dodging the views of the security cameras you scoped out
earlier. Does anyone else feel
unprepared? Nah, man.
I've got all my gadgets, I feel great.
You approach the back door, squinting at the broken security
camera all the while to make sure it's red indicator doesn't
come. Blinking back on, you pick the
lock and find yourselves in the dingy staff break room you're
in. However, just then a light
inside the store turns on and a voice says hey, is someone
there? Oh shit.
What would you like to do? What?
Can we do? In the score phase of Blades,
you as players will take actions.
Basically, you say what you want to do and what skill you want to
use to do it, which tells us how many dice to roll.
Then I tell you what position you're in and how much effect
your actions could possibly have.
What the hell does that mean? I don't just succeed if I
succeed and fail if I fail. That's more interesting than
that. The three possible positions, as
I said before, are controlled, risky and desperate.
Controlled means there won't be consequences even if you fail
your role, you can just try something else.
Risky means there will be consequences if you fail.
And desperate means that if you fail, some major shit is going
to go down and we. Are in a risky position right
now. Somebody do something?
Not so fast. You'd best take an action that
has the intended effect. The three possible effects are
great, standard, and limited. Great effect means that if you
succeed, you'll have a huge impact on the situation.
Standard effect means you'll have a normal impact on the
situation, and limited effect means that even if you succeed,
your impact is small. This might be because you're
injured, because your enemy is too strong, because you've
decided to do something insane or impossible, or any number of
other complications. Wow, so I can't just say I
punched the sun and roll a crate on my day 20?
Don't say Day 20. Okay cool, so I want to use my
attune skill to summon a ghost. Hard on.
So you've chosen the route of the arcane, have you?
What do you want your ghostly summoning to accomplish?
I want to convince this person the place is just haunted, no
need to look for intruders. Very well, as we know, your
position is risky and your effect is standard.
In fact, if you want to convince this person of a haunting, it's
going to take more than one action.
I'm going to start a four part clock for the haunting.
Once you've filled this clock, the person inside will be
convinced. A clock.
I don't see any clock. In Blades, the clock is
represented by a circle divided into pie shapes.
Once you fill all the pieces of the pie by completing actions,
you can achieve something. You can also have bad evil
clocks that count against you, such as clocks that track your
suspicion or clocks that are being filled by your enemies.
All right, so I have a two and a tune and my highest role is A5.
What number do we have to hit to succeed?
In blades, the scale is always the same.
A 1-2 or three means you get a bad outcome, a four or five
means a partial success, and a six is a full success no matter
the role. So I got a partial success.
Yes, my friend, you use your dark powers.
Hello. You have those.
And you summon the ghost of an old woman who fazes through the
door and breathes cold air onto the neck of whoever is on the
other side. That can happen.
What the hell? However, her form fades to a
faint mist as she passes through the door, and she could just be
a trick of the eyes. However, two ticks on the
haunting clock are now filled. Yes.
The light stays on, but no one comes out to check, and the
voice calls again, shakier now. Hello.
All right, I want to also summon a ghost to fill up that clock.
All right. Do you have any points toward a
tune? No.
Do you have any abilities or tools that would help you summon
a ghost? No, just stop asking questions.
Let me do this. If you don't have any points in
this skill, you'll have to roll 2 dice and take the lower roll.
However, you do have some options here.
Blades in the Dark. You can get more dice to roll on
an action by using stress. Stress.
What the hell is that? I already got enough stress.
Stress is a resource you have in blades.
Each player has 9 to start, but if you use them all up you'll
give your character a trauma they never recover from.
Like my dice version? However, if you'd like to use
too stress to push yourself, you can get an extra dice on this
roll. You could also propose A
flashback and bring us back to a time where you planned for just
this situation. Depending on how much sense it
makes for your character to have prepared this action, it can
cost between zero and two stressed to do this.
All right, flashback. I've been working on a ghost
summoning device to help me all week.
Yeah, because we've definitely been planning this all week.
I remember it like it was last week.
All right, a ghost summoning device.
That's a pretty hefty invention that's going to cost you 2
stress and an item slot from your load, but it's going to
give you one dice. So now you will not have to roll
2 and take the lower, you'll just roll 1 and see how it goes.
We're still in a risky position here, but you're going to have
great effect if they have two ghost encounters in one night.
OK, great. Let me just that's that's a one.
A1 gives a bad result my friend. Footsteps start to approach this
break room as you pull out the device you made.
Its gears were and it's lights flash and you try to summon the
dark magic inside you but there there just isn't any.
No ghost passes over and a moment later a woman wearing a
game store uniform storms in looking pissed off.
So we just get caught just like that.
Well, in fact, in Blades of the Dark you can attempt to resist
the consequences of a failure. OK, I want to do that.
However, everything comes with a price.
If you want to resist the consequences of your actions,
it's going to cost you sick stress.
Mine is a dice roll. Based on your skills in a given
area. What would you like to do to
resist I? I want to hide us all.
So she thinks it really was a ghost.
I've got a few skill points under Prowess.
I can do that, right? All right, roll your dice and
let's see. I only got a 1 so that means I
take 5 whole stress but. But your resistance still works
as you hear the game store employee approaching.
You grab your companions and hide under the break room table.
In a flash. The employee's eyes widen when
she sees no one here to explain the sounds she's been hearing.
And that fills 2 more ticks on the haunting clock.
Which means you filled the clock and she believes the store is
haunted. The game store employee screams
and runs out, but as she does you hear her calling someone on
her phone and a moment later sirens in the distance.
The pigs scatter. We're not going to scatter.
We don't have the book yet. Indeed you do not, but you can
always abandoned your score. No, no, We just got to do this
fast. You said there's no security
around the book itself, right? I did.
What action would you like to take?
OK. We got one shot at this boys.
So I'll need to use a skill that I'm really good at and I'll use
stress to push myself. And is there any other way to
get more dice? Game master?
Game Master Answer me. In the darkest direst of times,
you may want to take a devil's bargain.
Jesus Christ. So yes, my sweet feather, I'll
give you an extra dice, but it will come at a terrible cost.
Suspicion on your group will be raised even after this score is
finished, and you yourself will take a Level 3 harm Harm.
Is that like a? Like a?
Like a. An injury?
No God. In Blades in the Dark you don't
have hit points to represent your well-being, but different
levels of harm which have different effects.
There are 6 and all, and if you take too much harm, you die.
Oh Christ, dying is the only thing worse than an injury.
But I'll take your bargain, game Master.
And that brings me up to five dice.
So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to do backflips all
the way over to that display, grab the Blades in the Dark rule
book, shove it in my pants, set up an explosive charge to cover
our escape, and backflip all the way back out of this God damn
game store. All right.
All right, pal, your position is desperate.
If you don't succeed here, the consequences will be dire.
However, your effect, should you succeed, will be great.
You can do this you. Got it.
OK, I got a 6. I actually got 2.
Sixes more than 1/6 is a critical success.
You flip through this game store like Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Your companions watch in amazement as you move through
the shelves of books and dice and board games like water, like
shadow, like air, moving so quickly it's difficult to see
your movements at all. You grab the book, you set off
the charge, and then you're off, sprinting back through the door,
flipping over obstacles. This place is going to blow.
The three of you run. You're out of the showroom.
You're past the break room table.
The sirens are blaring closer and closer.
The beeps of the bomb are getting faster and faster.
You push your companions in front of you.
You're at the door and the charges go off.
You're thrown forward, out into the parking lot.
You're covered in burns and soot, but the game book down the
back of your pants protected all the important bits.
Oh God, my arm, my epidermis, Oh my spleen, Oh, my Dick's OK
though, we're good. You can barely move, but your
friends help you to your feet. You did it.
Let's go. And while the police are
distracted by your explosion, the three of you make it back to
your car and drive off, your new copy of Blades in the Dark
firmly in hand. Thank God we made it.
Now I can take a long rest and recover completely from these
full body third degree barns. Yeah, and I'll get to get rid of
all my stress. And I will also be there
sleeping. What's that?
Oh no, no, no, that's not how this works.
You see, the game's not over quite yet.
Wait, what? Phase 3 downtime.
What do you mean that's not how it works my whole body?
The third phase of Blades in the Dark is called downtime, and
during downtime you can choose to acquire assets, do projects,
recover from harm, or relieve stress by indulging your vice.
You each get 2 downtime activities, so you have to
choose what matters most to you and what matters most before the
next score. The next score.
But before all that, we will have to do an entanglement role.
This role depends on how much heat you guys have built up.
Heat is how much rivals and authorities know about your
crew. And with that explosion there at
the end, you guys definitely gained some heat.
So let me just that's a 5 for entanglement and it looks like
you guys have 6 heat. So that means ah, a demonic
notice or a show of force. Your successful and unsuccessful
attempts to contact the dead have attracted the wrong kind of
attention, I'm afraid. When you open your Blades in the
Dark rule book, as you drive away from the scene, it's pages
bloom with blood that drips down all over you, burning hot.
I'm already burned. When the last of the blood
drains away, the book's pages are left blank except for the
words in dark black ink. Disturb the dead and join them,
but that probably means nothing. Time for you all to decide if
you want to roll to heal some of that harm, reduce some heat, or
relieve your stress. But keep in mind, if you're
unlucky it just won't work. You can't expect to just sleep
for 8 hours and have everything reset, can you?
I guess not. On the bright side, this is also
part of the game where you all level up based on whether your
actions were in character or desperate.
Oh nice. This has all been very exciting,
but what if I need more information about blades?
Our book is all haunted now. Well.
You can always check out the official Blades in the Dark
website bladesinthedark.com and you can listen to this podcast,
Legend Lark to hear 4 extremely hinged people actually play this
game. I was afraid to listen to Legend
Lark due to my injury, but if they're playing Blades in the
Dark now, yeah. And if they're finally done
using all those non 6 sided dice.
Oh I love Legend Lark. All that time I spent not doing
anything. I'm listening to Legend Lark.
That's right, Legend Lark, the only podcasts on the Internet,
are now playing Blades in the Dark for their brand new
campaign, Never Nowhere. Head to legendlark.com for more
details or listen to the next episode.