I love Blades In The Dark Games.

 I love Blades in The Dark and Scum & Villainy

I’ve run Blades and played both mentioned above. 

Last night after wrapping up the game I asked myself why do I like these games so much? Last night was the second night that I played an RPG in a row. The night before I played DnD and what a stark contrast. 

So first BitD feels like it’s designed to be played as a table top game. DND Feels like it\s still in the simulationist table flipping mode of play, where on your turn you figure out what you  need to do from a list of tables. To be fair last thursday’s game was fun: we fought the Winter Maiden the culmination of 28 sessions in a campaign. The battle was fun because the dm isolated the battle into the session. That was the only thing we did do the fight. It was a good team effort, but at the end of the day it was the two 10th level spell casters that made it all work. Crowd control and bad guy shut downs. 

When playing DnD I miss the BitD rituals, like the end of session recaps. Last night at the end of the S&V game, we did the crew recap - XP earned for what the crew did - that helped us tell the story of the evening. Then we went through character XP where we could give each other kudos for good role playing.  This encourages players to show up to the table and give their best. 

I also miss the simplicity - I played a Druid in the dnd game. The Druid basically has three powers: tie you down, tie you down while pelting you with something, having a pet attack, while pelting you with thing single target things. So instead of offering just that we have lists and lists of spells that behave similarly. Instead of responding to danger through the lens of my character, I have to anticipate danger and pick the right spells, if I pick wrong, oh well.  

To be fair, the cast lower level spells at higher level is a great feature of dnd5. 

But back to BitD - Why I find it so satisfying - I’m finding it hard to put into words. The first word that comes up is integral. There something great about having the session in mind as part of the rules. That there is a beginning middle and end that have the session in mind. That we can sit down and have expectations on how we’re going to proceed. These may seem like constraints but they free up what we enjoy about the game, the problem solving, the interaction between players, the emotional up and downs driven by die rolls. In DnD we problem solve through our characters, but it feels like our characters is the only thing we can control. In the Icewinddale game, the GM narrated the end for us. Told my character that she became the Warden of TenTowns. Would she have taken this after all this time? Probably. But the wizard in the party wanted to go off with the flying city. But that wasn’t an option. I hate games like that, because the only agency is we have the time in battle when we choose which frost based spell to cast. 

I hope to play more BitD games in the future, even a fantasy based one. I’ve been listening to Hacked in the Dark pod cast, which gives me heart that I will be able to.