Some Notes on Blades in the Dark
Last year my Friday-evening group played a short campaign of Blades in the Dark (BitD), so I figured I’d share some notes about it — mostly the bits that we did wrong or that I didn’t like, with some actionable recommendations that will hopefully improve your experience should you play BitD yourself.
We played weekly for about six months, going through many adventures. For once in a long while, I was actually simply a player, instead of being the gamemaster! I had wanted to play BitD for a while, and when one of the players said he had the rulebook, I jumped on the occasion to make him run it. So unlike many other TTRPG posts here, this one is exceptionally from my perspective as a player.
Overall the campaign was quite good. Our gamemaster portrayed a few memorable NPCs, and we got into a lot of fun trouble. My main problem with the game was a slightly-too-crunchy system, and our messing up character progression. I doubt that we’ll get back to BitD, not necessarily because we didn’t like it, but mostly because we’ve got so many other games to play and so little time.
