The Good
An incredible setting. An evocative city, loaded with factions and districts which are well described. Factions have goals and NPCs which helps get them into play well. I'd love to have other fantasy cities described in this format, for use in traditional rpg campaigns.
Loads of one-liner story hooks. The setting felt a bit overwhelming for me at the beginning. There are many factions and districts, and it was a lot. But the setting information is rich in ideas for scores or side-plots. By flipping through the factions, or using the random tables at the back of the book it is not long before I found something to trigger an idea.
No analysis paralysis. I have played many years of Shadowrun. This game suffers from players trying to overplan every aspect of their mission. We could spend 2 hours planning a mission, before we even did one dice roll. Blades is very effective at removing this completely. I followed the advice in the book and started the missions by describing how the PCs have already started their mission, and how their planning has been completed (even though nothing was actually planned by the players). The players can use flashbacks to bypass or downgrade the threats they face, and we can visualise those actions as being part of their effective planning. It really works well and keeps gameplay moving at a good pace.
Highly structured phases of play. There are 2 very distinct and different phases of play. Playing a Score is very different to playing Downtime. Downtime, particularly, is very structured. There are 4 specific stages to Downtime; Payoff, Heat, Entanglements and Downtime. Each phase consists of a few fictional questions to ask, and maybe a dice roll or two. The results will add or subtract points from the crew, such as Heat or Coin. I found these phases a bit jarring at first. It felt like a board game, where you mechanically work through a process. I can recognise that they are helpful, because we spent less time talking around an idea, and instead were able to quickly figure out what happens mechanically, then use a montage to flesh it out in our fiction.
Your story grows organically. At the start, we had a crew and some PCs. We figured out 1 faction that was friendly and one that was a rival. Slowly a story began to develop, about how we had stolen a boat from a smuggling ring and were using it as our base of operations. The next session we added 1 Friend and 1 Rival to each PC. Now we had NPCs who we could use to help us, or who might obstruct us. Our alchemist had overindulged on a drug binge and been banned from his favourite opium den. Now he had a goal. These small events, triggered by dice rolls on ordinary mechanics, are wonderful at gradually adding depth to your story. You are soon in a situation where there are many threads that can be pulled to generate stories. And those stories are personal.
I found it easy to prep. I do not consider myself good at improv. But after 3 sessions, I was pretty confident running a session with minimal prep. My prep was honestly about 10 minutes as I scribbled down some ideas for threats or interesting situations on the next Score. Coming up with an idea for a score was quite natural, becausse we would just look at projects the PCs were working on, or goals the group developed naturally. I also was able to use this online score generator if stuck. Optionally, I could spend a bit of extra time creating portraits for NPCs etc, but this was optional.
High quality physical book. The cover just feels luxurious, the pages are thick, and the A5 format is easy to hold and use. It feels deluxe.
