I agreed to run a game of Blades in the Dark starting in Feb. I've not run or played it before, but I have plenty of GMing experience. The plan is to do a limited game, once or twice a month for about six months (so somewhere around nine to twelve sessions in total).
It seems like the most important thing will be getting as much of the lore in my head as I can between now and then so that I can respond to the evolving gameplay, rather than plan out any kind of storyline.
If anyone is interested in sharing their dos and don't, or other experience, my player will appreciate it.
Thanks for the feedback.
I've heard this repeated, but I'm wondering how that plays out in practice. As a GM I assume that the prep I will need to do is more about understanding the setting and the npcs that will be encountered during the session. The goal being that I would be better able to react on-the-fly to what is happening. My "make up enjoyable bullshit" muscles require exercise to maintain.
If I'm off, or missing something I would love to correct my understanding.
No that's about right. My initial pre campaign prep was read the book and understand the factions, session zero to see what themes my players wanted to explore and what factions they were interested in interacting with.
Between sessions I only needed about 10 minutes to think about the next game, who was the job against, who's upset or happy with the crew currently, what factions plans are the players ignoring so are progressing unopposed and what does that look like. Was there any fallout from their last job. The way the city is set up every time your crew gets ahead it will please someone and upset someone else I found that made prepping super easy. Then all I needed was a list of random names for NPC's and I was happy making stuff up on the fly for the most part.
Some of them bigger things needed more thinking and prep like when they broke into the ghost hunters headquarters (I can't remember the name, guys follow the death crows and wear masks), that needed a little more time. Or when they accidentally summoned a demon I needed to work out what it wanted and how it worked. Side note demons are excellent fun and should be terrifying forces of nature in blades.
Thanks for the detail.
Nov and Dec are going to be read, re-read, and watch videos to get prepped. I'll makes notes along the way to help with Factions and NPCs.