Friday of GenCon, I was itching to get back to Games on Demand to play a couple of different games. When I arrived, I was again greeted by Steve Segedy.
I asked Steve what the game options were, and he said it looked like there was a Lady Blackbird game about to start, though they only had 3 players. So I eagerly grabbed Jenny’s hand and we joined the table.
I ended up playing Snargle, the goblin sky-sailor and pilot. The one with the trait of Goblin, and tags of Warp shape, Glide, Nightvision, Agile, Quick, Tumbler, Teeth & Claws. Needless to say I was very excited with this development.
While everyone else had their conflicting agendas, Snargle simply wanted to charge into danger so he could quickly get back to flying Snargle’s…I mean the captain’s…sky ship.
The whole session was full of lots of great role-playing moments as Snargle continuously defied danger by drawing fire to get the guards to shoot out the grappling mechanism; Clawing his way through guards to get to the warning station before the other guard could sound the alarm; Diving from the Hand of Sorrow to try to get aboard his now sinking airship.
Heeding Fear the Boot’s advice, I’m going to skip over the details of those stories. Instead I’ll write my observations about Lady Blackbird. If you haven’t already read Ryan Macklin’s post about Lady Blackbird and Implied Setting, please do so now. Are you done? Good. Because Ryan’s article sums it up so very well.
John Harper’s Lady Blackbird is a masterpiece. It is immediately playable and immediately accessible. I had everything I needed for play on my character sheet. I could glance at my character and quickly see what made him tick.
One thing of note, Lady Blackbird isn’t about cool combat sequences and tactical encounters, but is very much a “Play to see what happens” kind of game. As such it is firmly in the narrative game system camp.