How a pen and paper RPG made me fear my friends
I've been playing a lot of Blades in the Dark recently - it might just be the best pen and paper role playing game I've ever encountered. Blades is an RPG in which the players form a fledgling criminal gang in the grimy industrial city of Duskvol, pulling off daring heists and trying to stay one step ahead of their enemies and the long arm of the law. What makes it truly special, however, are the mechanics aimed at making the experience as sleek and swift as possible, because if there's one thing from which pen and paper RPGs suffer, it's an overabundance of planning. No matter the size of an encounter, players love to try and concoct a plan to cover all bases - an irresistible exercise in frustration, as the best laid plans of mice and men and tabletop role players gang always agley.
What sets Blades in the Dark apart from the competition, meanwhile, is that planning ahead is explicitly, systematically banned. The players name the target of their next score, declare roughly how they're going to approach it (by stealth, deception, assault etc), and then the action cuts immediately to that encounter. 'You're stealing an emerald from Viscount Ewens' mansion? Sneaking in? Great. You're at the window on the second floor, trying to pick the lock...'
It's a Spartan framework to be sure, but that's not to say that you can't plan at all in Blades in the Dark; it's just that you're not allowed to plan ahead. You plan behind. At any point during a score, a player can call for a flashback in which they try to make preparations for just this type of eventuality. When trying to sneak into a ball, say, they might call a flashback to the evening before when one of the players bribed a butler to slip them a few blank invitations. A roll determines how well that attempt went, we flash back to the action, the players have a plan in place and nobody wasted 20 minutes debating the various ways getting past the front door might play out. It's razor sharp stuff, supported by a few other great mechanics that I, sadly, haven't the space to talk about.
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