If you had told young Aidan, ten years ago, (after the third D&D campaign he’d joined had fizzled out) that one day he’d be able to hear about a TTRPG that caught his interest, head to StartPlaying, and be playing that game the next day, he would have said, “who are you and how do you know so much about the future?” You probably would have had to convince him of your time travel powers and then he would have had some questions about causal paradoxes he was kind of a nerd. But once all that was out of the way and you showed him StartPlaying, he would have cried like Matthew McConaughey in Interstellar (a reference that wouldn’t be outdated, because it would be ten years ago).
Blades In The Dark Setting
Recently I wanted to learn Blades in the Dark. I’d never played before but I’ve been on a gaslamp fantasy kick since finishing the second book in Robert Jackson Bennet’s fantastic Shadow of the Leviathan series. It’s a genre that carved out a niche for itself in the early 1800’s when everything was actually lit by gas lamps and has remained enduringly popular since. From novels like Stoker’s Dracula to much more recent (but no less classic) cultural touchstones like the video games Bloodborne, Dishonoured, or Thief; the gaslamp fantasy setting has proven itself fertile ground for storytellers of all mediums. There’s something magnetic about the idea of winding, cobbled streets, lit by flickering lamps casting long shadows that could hide just about anything. And against this spooky backdrop: a class divide marked by the empty elegance of opulent balls for the rich and powerful; contrasted with the heart and soul of scrappy, lovable rogues striving to make a name for themselves in the underworld, picking pockets and striking from the dark.
If all of that calls to you like it called to me, Blades in the Dark is made for you. It’s a TTRPG that indulges all of the elements that have kept the gaslamp fantasy subgenre so popular. Set in the city of Duskvol (Or Duskwall or Doskvol), haunted by ghosts, where nobles indulge in luxury while commoners struggle with poverty and gangs run rampant in the streets, you and your party play as one of these gangs. Everyone on the team is a scoundrel with differing talents. You can play a smooth-talking Slide, a con-man type; a sneaky Lurk who excels at hiding in shadows or breaking into locked vaults; a Whisper, who’s eyes can see the ghost plane and commune with the spirits; a Cutter, a dangerous fighter; a Leech, an alchemist and saboteur, or many others. You also get to decide during the game with your GM what type of crime your crew will specialize in: you can be Hawkers, who sell stolen goods; Shadows, thieves and spies; Grifters, who plan elaborate cons; or Vigilantes, Assassins, or Smugglers. Duskvol is your criminal oyster.
Learn To Play Blades In The Dark
How to learn to play though? That naive summer child ten-years-ago Aidan would tell you: “You’ve got a long road ahead of you, there’s gonna be trial and error, you’ll have to try and find out if anyone at your game store has a group that plays. If they don’t you could get the book on Drive-Thru RPG, read through it, get a couple of friends together, convince them to try a new system, reschedule because someone can’t make it, have long meta conversations about clocks and how they work in that first session because nobody knows what they’re doing…” But wait… what’s this? IT’S PRESENT-DAY AIDAN WITH THE STEEL CHAIR!
Forget all that! I didn’t know anything about Blades beyond a vague idea of the setting two weeks ago, I learned it all here on StartPlaying.
You can find a handy guide to character creation here to learn about the different playbooks and types of characters, and once you’ve got your character idea you can find any number of beginner-friendly games in various different time slots here. Any one of the GMs will be happy to teach you what you need to know to get rolling. If you have a busy schedule and can’t commit to a single weekly or bi-weekly time slot check out the Blades play-by-post games here. If you’re trying to learn any new system, Play-by-Post is an excellent way to do it (especially with a busy schedule). The action is slowed down, so you don’t feel any pressure from other players waiting their turn, and instead of one intense game over three hours every week or two weeks, you’re instead doing a couple of posts every day, which keeps you immersed in the system you’re trying to learn. I've also found the ability to take your time with a text based format really encourages rich role play from players who may be too shy to role play much face-to-face.
I spent a good few years trying to find a consistent in-person D&D game with a patient GM to learn from when I was starting out in this hobby. And that’s D&D, the most widely known and popular of any TTRPG. The idea of finding a group to learn anything even slightly more niche, like Vampire: The Masquerade, or Cyberpunk Red, would have felt inconcievable at the time.
And yet a couple of weeks ago I heard about Blades, thought “that sounds fun!” and for the last two weeks I’ve been a Lurk, prowling the streets of Duskvol with a new found crew of Hawkers, dodging Bluecoats and Red Sashes and carving our names into Duskvol’s history. With StartPlaying you’re only ever a few clicks away from the game you want to learn.
Aidan Wels is a writer and professional game master who runs Cyberpunk Red, Vampire The Masquerade 5e, Discworld, and D&D 5e games on StartPlaying.
