GM: Judd Karlman
Players: Pete Cornell, Jason Bowell, Rob Bohl, and Sean Nittner
System: Blades in the Dark
Crew: The Wobbegong Crew
In which Maude’s guild leads to our doom.
This game was such a good one that I completely flubbed it up and didn’t save the video before it expired on Twitch. My lamentations know no end.
However, fortuantely Judd wrote up this great actual play post here: https://githyankidiaspora.wordpress.com/2017/09/25/wobbegong-crew-the-coalridge-demon-job/
I’m also (call it broken link paranoia) going to copy/paste his write up here as well!
Wobbegong Crew: the Coalridge Demon Job
In which the Wobbegong Crew try to set Maude’s demonic mistake right, angering the Hive and the Lampblacks in the process and brutally fail in the mines under Coalridge.
In the end this game happened because Maude failed some rolls and turned Coalridge into a charnel house. Sean decided that Maude had a conscience, which is a gutsy and fun decision. My favorite parts of this game were when the players made decisions for their characters that gave the situations and supernatural setting stuff real weight.
Maude deciding that she had to own up to her mistakes and ask the gang to do a job to make it right.
Willoughby and Charming acting scared when meeting Roric’s ghost.
It is one thing to have a Heavy-Metal-Album-Cover Demon unleash hell in a city district and having a ghost smoking a cigarette but Sean, Rob and Jay’s decisions gave it all real weight and feeling. It was inspiring.
Everyone had moments where they shined and the group is getting better at playing off one another. From Charming making brutal use of Willoughby’s truth-hearing to the way Willoughby managed to be the only person to escape.
Rob’s write-up of the game is well worth reading over on G+.
We learned a bunch about Duskwall tonight. From the warehouse where the Hive sells people and their brutal security teams to the fact that if you sacrifice the right people on the Saint of Witch’s altar you can rummage around in the dead bodies and pull out weapons.
Lucella: accountant for the Hive – sacrificed to the Saint of Witches
Atreus: The Saint of Witches blood-thirsty son, now roaming free in Coalridge.
We were going to do a job concerning the hostage they had and using that leverage to broker peace between the Red Sashes and the Lampblacks but Maude had a problem. She had unleashed a demon into Coalridge and the word I used to describe the quarantined district was charnel house. It was weighing on Maude’s mind.
Charming and Willoughby agreed to put the hostage job aside and help Maude try to put this demon back in the bottle. Charming grabbed 2 people from a Hive-owned warehouse where they stored slaves, or as the Hive calls them, Product. He grabbed a guard and an accountant.
Willoughby found a coin-generating job to do in Coalridge, finding out that a factory foreman had a vault with treasure in still in the deserted district. It was a way to make some money on the endeavor. They never got to it.
Maude took the 2 human-traffickers from the Hive and killed the one still alive. The Saint of Witches put weapons inside them. It was squicky! Killing someone in a fight is one thing but killing an accountant who is chained up, even one who helps the slave trade was uncomfortable for all of us. It wasn’t over the line but it was close.
The failed their engagement roll and ended up in the crossfire between the Spirit Wardens and the demon and its cultists. Turns out the cultists were Lampblacks.
It was a total disaster. They prowled into position. Willoughby provided a distraction, acting like a scared citizen. After that it was a disaster. Charming broke against the demon in an assault – he trauma’d out. Maude tried to channel the demon’s mother’s voice. She failed to contain that much energy and vomited blood.
Willoughby wanted to grab Charming and bounce but she rolled a 5. She got out but Charming stayed.
I don’t keep track of the players’ stress; they do that. When Charming trauma’d out it was a surprise to me. The stress mounted slowly and surely. The scoundrel’s grind is brutal.
Demons are no joke.
I liked the way it all shook out. I can’t wait to see what happens next.
