#duskvol

[rickmakessomeart]

The domestic joys of Duskvol

[onemorestepinduskvol]

Heartbeat Scale

Blades in the Dark has something very valuable that many TTRPGs lack; the ability to hop, skip, and step over time parameters quite easily.

It's perfectly common for you to roll to Survey a dock for traffic over a a month or two. Similarly, you may need someone's name... and to get it, one of your crew might spend several weeks Consorting to find it.

Maybe in the downtime after a big score, your crew spends months consolidating their hold while the thugs you transgressed make progress in their revenge.

I call this the Narrative Scale.

Classically, you may take a single Prowl to not just climb one wall, but this wall, cross the court yard quietly, and slip a foot between the servants door and its frame, to keep it from locking, and quietly step inside. That may take any number of seconds or minutes.

Let's call this the Action scale.

That 'scale' tends to zoom out more than it zooms in, in my experience.

But in some instances, it is neither months nor minutes but seconds, and fractions of a second, that we want to dwell in.

Sitting at a felted table, your character clocks the quiet click of a pistol. Your compatriot tries to flick you a card from his hip and you have to catch it, without anyone noticing. You can hear your breath catching and what you do in the next half a second will determine whether you live or die.

I like to call this the Heartbeat scale.

It's the kind of timeframe where time slows down as adrenaline aggressively pours through your veins and arteries. It's the kind of timeframe where it feels like the volume of what's happening is turned down... until you can hear your own, throbbing heartbeat.

It's the very moment that matters most.

Afterwards, maybe when the jig was up, the Head smuggler let the mask drop that they knew who you are all along, where they were never really going to let you leave. It's in that moment that you kicked the table, snapped a wrist and ran.

It's back to the action scale as you slide down bannisters, and crash over carts and tables to get out as fast as you can.

And it's back to the Narrative scale when you are back in your hideout and know that they are looking for you and it won't be too long before they find you.

Scaling in and scaling out helps add a tempo and contextualise the narrative arc of a score and its surrounds in a way that can feel quite visceral and taut and bitter.

[juddgeeksout]

Thinking back on 2025 at the gaming table

Looking back on my Actual Play posts for the year and bits and piece from my notebooks, trying to find a theme or a throughline. This is all Jay’s fault. This year I played Mythic Bastionland, Old-School Essentials, Burning Wheel, Cairn 2e, Death in Space, Liminal Horror (tinkering with a hack of it I was calling Weird Horror Investigation) and Apocalypse World: Burned Over using the Swords and…

Thinking back on 2025 at the gaming table

[wheelie-butch]

[duskvol]

Duskvol is a very vertical sort of city. Teetering heaps of architecture, connected by a cobwebbing of bridges, rails, raised roads, ladders, ducts, pipes, wires, cobblestones, catwalks, scaffolds, improvised elevators and, beneath it all, the canals. In the wealthier districts, the buildings are stacked and assembled with something resembling a plan. But the city grows and grows, and with the protective boundary of the lightning towers constraining its expansion, there is nowhere to build but up. Or down...

[crokus]

Duskvol is a port city with strong criminal elements and an industrial flare. It also features fantastical beings including ghosts, demons, hulls (ghosts harnessed in mechanical bodies), and the Forgotten Gods.

The city comes from the tabletop rpg Blades in the Dark. This game is based entirely on rogue-type characters and activity, the players forming a group of scoundrels called a crew to carry out scores.

It should be noted that the Thief series is mentioned in the rulebook's list of influences, along with Dishonored.

Images from the Blades in the Dark rulebook.

[tath-draws]

[littleapocalypses]

"Everyone in this city has an agenda. Get a hobby! Take up needlework!"

Cora