Blades in the Dark includes a specific suggested starting situation: A war in the Crow’s Foot neighborhood between the Crows, the Lampblacks, and the Red Sashes. If you look around the web for examples of actual play, therefore, it’s unsurprising that you’re going to find a lot of gang wars in Crow’s Foot.

And that’s good. One of the (many) reasons the game has been seeing so much success is that John Harper very adroitly gave you literally everything you need to pick up the game and begin running a campaign immediately and with zero effort.

With that being said, I think you’ll get much better results if, instead of using the canned example of a campaign premise, you create a custom premise. Harper, smartly, includes a generic structure for doing that (the same generic structure that’s used to create the specific War in Crow’s Foot example), as described on p. 203:

• Set two factions directly at odds, with opposing goals. They’re already in conflict when the game begins. Both factions are eager to recruit help, and to hurt anyone who helps their foe.
• Set a third faction poised to profit from this conflict or to be ruined by its continuation. This faction is eager to recruit help.
• Establish an opening scene at one of the faction’s headquarters. The PCs are meeting with the faction leader or second-in-command, who summarizes the current situation as they see it and then make a demand of the crew or offer them a job. What could the PCs’ type of crew do for this faction to help them?

I further recommend that you don’t do this until the end of your Session 0. That will allow you to personalize your starting situation to the crew the players have created, picking factions and struggles accordingly.

(For those unfamiliar with the game, the setting includes 20-30 factions that come prepackaged with agendas which are mechanically coded into progress clocks. This makes it really easy to flip through a few pages, grab a couple factions, and identify their conflicting agendas, although these techniques could work equally well, albeit with a bit more elbow grease, if the GM was creating brand new factions, too.)

This default structure is quite excellent at setting up a dramatic starting situation. But it is obviously not the only structure capable of doing that, so we’re going to explore a few alternatives. With a significant number of Blades in the Dark GMs wrapping up their first campaigns and now looking to start their second, I think these will prove particularly useful in shaking things up a little bit.

AIM AT A CLOCK

• Pick a faction and one of that faction’s faction clocks.
• Have the faction hire (or compel) the PCs to achieve that goal for them.

This won’t necessarily work well for every faction clock in the book, but it will present the PCs with a specific, multi-step goal, while giving them flexibility in figuring out how to achieve it. This allows the PCs to define their own scores right out of the gate, rather than simply being hired to do specific jobs.

A few tips:

• Players may want to default to a single, straightforward strike to achieve whatever the goal is, but that won’t work. These are big, complicated goals. That’s why they have a progress clock. Make them set up their vectors.
• Look at the “Enemies” section of the faction the PCs are working for as sources for likely scores that can help achieve the faction’s progress clock.
• It should probably take two to four scores (possibly supported by various downtime actions) to fill the progress clock. These scores don’t need to be run to the exclusion of any other activity: Mix in unrelated (or tangential) scores. Or, more effectively, let the PCs choose to mix in such scores as they begin defining their own agenda.

EXAMPLE – THE CITY COUNCIL. Three of the councilors (Bowmore, Clelland, Rowan) have aligned against Strangford and are maneuvering to remove the house from the council. (6-clock)

So here the PCs are approached by Bowmore, Clelland, and/or Rowan and told to create a situation in which Strangford will be removed. Blackmail? Criminal prosecution? Assassinations? Whatever. Each score will fill 1-3 ticks on the clock. (Maybe a number of ticks equal to the Tier of the target? Or Tier +1?)

EXAMPLE – THE LOST. The Lost, a group of street-toughs and ex-soldiers dedicated to protecting the downtrodden and hopeless, are seeking to destroy the cruel workhouses in Coalridge. (4-clock, repeating)

This one seems pretty straightforward: Assassinate foremen. Blow up buildings. Steal payroll. Again, whatever works.

AIM AT A CLAIM

• Have the players pick one of the claims from their crew’s claim map. Ask them questions in order to define exactly what the claim is. (And why they want it.)
• The first score will be to secure that claim.
• Pick the faction that currently controls the claim. As with any other seizure of a claim, this will be the faction opposing the PCs’ attempt to take the claim.
• Pick another faction that also wants the claim. As soon as the PCs take the claim, this faction will either approach them in order to leverage the claim or will attempt to take it from the PCs. (Either way, this will probably end up being the second score.)

And a few tips for this one:

• This option really pushes the focus onto the crew-building component of the game.
• If you want powerful factions to be involved, the claim does not have to be directly controlled by one of them. (Which would most likely be too difficult for a Tier 0 crew to seize.) Instead, it may be some small sub-division or subservient organization.
• The squabble over this particular claim is just one small part of a conflict between the two factions you’ve chosen to have involved. In creating that conflict, you can use the nature of the claim they’re competing over as a creative guide.
• This also means that, in the act of securing the claim, the PCs have inserted themselves into the middle of this conflict. How the factions react to his will depend on how these first couple of scores play out; but they will react. Set up some progress clocks and let them start ticking.

EXAMPLE – ASSASSINS (FIXER). The fixer is a man by the name of Otto Fingaria. He currently works closely with the Deathlands Scavengers, who have discovered an ancient bunker in the mountains east of Duskvol. The find is a rich one, and they’ve been slowly funneling its contents through Fingaria for the past few months. The Dimmer Sisters have become interested in Fingaria’s trade; some of them have suggested an ancient prophecy has come due. The Dimmer Sisters want to know the location of the bunker, and they’ll go through Fingaria to do it.

EXAMPLE – BRAVOS (TURF). The gang decides that they want to take control of a training gym for boxers in Coalridge; they’ll use it as a front for their strongarm mercenary work and also as a recruiting ground for a cohort. (Tim is also potentially interested in fixing matches on the circuit.) The gym is located in the middle of a Skov ghetto, though, and Ulf Ironborn at Akorosians trying to muscle in on Skovlander businesses. If the PCs can nevertheless take control of the gym, they’ll be visited by the Billhooks: They’ve heard there’s new management and they want to make sure the PCs are onboard with supporting their fixing of the boxing matches.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

Ultimately all of these methods take two or more factions, put them in conflict with each other, and then create a vector by which the PCs end up somehow stuck in the middle of that conflict. This should probably be unsurprising, because in large part that’s what Blades in the Dark is ultimately about: The conflict between powerful factions and the path by which the PCs become one of those powerful factions (or are destroyed in the attempt).

The distinction between these methods largely lies in (a) how the GM draws inspiration for the most pertinent faction conflict at the beginning of the campaign and (b) the method by which the PCs become involved. The latter is crucial in terms of shaping what actually happens at the gaming table: Battling over turf is different than choosing sides, which is different again than being hired to potentially instigate the conflict.

NEXT: Advanced Starting Situations

Random GM Tip – Visualizing City Block Maps Blades in the Dark – Crew Mission Type Tables Blades in the Dark – Advanced Starting Situations