Transcript: Keys (Lady Blackbird) with Whitney Delaglio

Listen to this episode here.

I love pregens! But why do I love pregens? I dug into this a bunch on an episode last year with Aaron Lim about the characters in Last Train to Bremen: I love being given a clear goal and baseline temperament when I sit down to play so I can get into drama as fast as possible. But the game Lady Blackbird goes a step further. Each character has "Keys" which lay out not just character traits and goals, but the central dramatic questions and stakes each character's arc is likely to concern itself with. And that, more than anything else, is probably what I want from my pregens.

Whitney Delaglio joins me to talk about Lady Blackbird's Keys (originally from The Shadow of Yesterday by Clinton R. Nixon). She's got her own game coming to Backerkit next month - The Old, The Cold, The Bold - which iterates on Keys. So today we get into not just how they work but how you can make them work for you.

Further Reading

Lady Blackbird by John Harper

The Shadow of Yesterday by Clinton R. Nixon

The Old, The Cold, The Bold by Whitney Delaglio - second edition on Backerkit soon!

Socials

Whitney on Bluesky

Sam on Bluesky and itch

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Credits

Our logo was designed by sporgory, our ad music is Lilypads by Travis Tessmer, and our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey.

Sam: Hello and welcome to another episode of Dice Exploder. Each week we take a tabletop mechanic and try and crack the combo on its padlock. My name is Sam Dunnewold and my co-host today is Whitney Delaglio. Here she is introducing herself.

Whitney: Hi, I’m Whitney of Toasty Seahorse Studios. My pronouns are she, her, and bro. I’ve designed games, hyped games, written for games, and drawn for games.

Sam: Whitney’s the designer behind Prism, a Dicelist classic from the 10s about mermaids and their relationships, as well as The Olde, The Cold, The Bold, a game about a criminal gig economy. Whitney’s got a second edition of The Olde, The Cold, The Bold coming to Backer Kit in a couple of weeks, May 4th, so I thought I’d have her on to talk about a different game that The Olde, The Cold, The Bold is based on. Lady Blackbird, John Harper’s 2009 game about the eponymous Lady Blackbird, a runaway noble trying to reunite with her infamous pirate boyfriend and the plucky crew of smugglers who have agreed to help her.

I think I’ve made no secret that I’m a huge sucker for pre-written characters — I think there should be way more of them in RPGs — and Lady Blackbird is the perfect example of why. One of the mechanics it uses to really make its characters sing is keys, basically statements about your character that you’re rewarded for leaning into or bucking entirely, leaving behind forever and completely reinventing yourself. These are a key part of The Olde, The Cold, The Bold too, so today we’re getting into everything about them and how you or Whitney might hack them. 

Quick note before we get started. Since recording this episode, I’ve learned the keys are actually originally from the shadow of yesterday by Clinton r Nixon. So credit to Clint for the design tech here.

Thanks to everyone who supports Dice Exploder on Patreon, and here is Whitney with keys from Lady Blackbird. Whitney, welcome to Dice Exploder.

Thanks to everyone who supports Dice Exploder on Patreon, and here is Whitney with keys from Lady Blackbird. Whitney, welcome to Dice Exploder.

Whitney: Hi, thank you for having me.

Sam: Yeah, thanks for being here. So what are we talking about today?

Whitney: Today we’re talking about Lady Blackbird and my game inspired by Lady Blackbird, The Olde, The Cold, The Bold.

Sam: So let’s start with Lady Blackbird. What is the deal with this fucking game? What’s your history with it? You made a whole game based on or inspired by it. Tell me about that.

Whitney: When I was first dipping my toes into the indie game community — Google+, RIP, still existed — a friend recommended it to me because I was looking for easy games to get into. It’s a five-player game, though you can actually run it with fewer players. It’s a story with a beginning and sort of an end, and you figure out what happens in the middle. You’re basically a noble woman trying to get back to her pirate boyfriend, and your bodyguard, the pilot, captain, and mechanic of the ship getting you there are all in the game. Whether you actually go back to your pirate boyfriend is up to the table. I just liked the idea that it’s a compartmentalized experience — every character has its own character sheet, and you’re given just enough to bite into to make up stuff as you go along.

Sam: Yeah, you really have these strongly defined, pre-generated characters — Lady Blackbird, her bodyguard, the captain of the ship — and also a really strongly framed goal, like you’re saying: go find your pirate boyfriend and see how he feels about you now. But most crucially to me — and I could do a whole episode on this — it has a really strong starting situation. Your ship has essentially been picked up by the evil space empire, and you are trying to escape. After that, maybe you’re going to go find your pirate boyfriend, maybe you’re going to hide in an asteroid field, maybe you’re going to have adventures with the Sky Squid. The game gestures towards all kinds of potential directions, but you always start in prison, having been picked up for essentially a traffic violation, with that tension hanging over you: are they going to discover that you are secretly a noble, and what will happen if they do?

I think all of that is really clever and good for doing what you were saying — getting into a one-shot contained experience, kicking off with a bang, and giving you some direction for play. This is a John Harper game that came out in 2010. We’re specifically going to talk about the mechanic of keys. So why don’t you walk us through what’s the deal with a key on a character sheet?

Whitney: A key on a character sheet is kind of like a signal to the player and to the experience point market that whenever you act upon your character’s archetype, you turn that key and get experience points. It informs the player how this character behaves and solves problems. Cyrus, the captain of the Owl, used to work for the Empire but now doesn’t. He has the Key of the Outcast — when your outcast status causes you trouble, you turn it. Right at the beginning, when everyone’s arrested, it’s only a matter of time before they connect the dots and find out you’re an ex-soldier. The interesting thing is that a key can get you in trouble too, and at the very start of the game, that key can already do that for Cyrus.

Sam: It works kind of like Fate aspects that way, right? All of these are supposed to be double-edged swords, even if one edge is sharper on any individual key. With the Key of the Outcast, it’s easy to imagine using it to your benefit — fitting in with other Empire exiles — or to your detriment, like when they find out who you are and your old deputy is there and hates your guts.

Whitney: Yeah. And keys also have a buy-off, which is basically turning your key to the extreme or doing the opposite. For the Key of the Outcast, that’s regaining your former standing or joining a new group.

Sam: It can be helpful to do another example to show what these buy-offs look like. Lady Blackbird herself has the Key of the Impostor, which says you are in disguise, passing yourself off as a commoner. Hit your key when you perform well enough to fool someone with your disguise. The buy-off is: reveal your true identity to someone you fooled. The buy-offs all feel like that — a big climactic moment after having played into the thing for a while. You spend an hour in disguise being a lowly commoner, and then you throw off your cloak and we get the big anime moment: this is who I really am.

When you hit your key, you get XP. When it gets you in trouble, you get two XP. And when you hit your buy-off, you get five XP — a big bonus. I think these things are a really incredible little package of role-playing prompt. What drew you to keys? What excites you about them?

Whitney: I think when you’re at a convention or at the table with your friends and it’s a new game, or it’s someone’s first time role-playing, typical character generation usually leaves it up to the player: what is your character like, how do they behave, how do they solve problems? With Lady Blackbird, the keys do that work for you — every key is evocative and to the point. You know the character’s backstory, how they interact with the world, and how they solve problems. Kale, the mechanic, likes shiny things, so you turn his key when he steals stuff.

Sam: Yeah. I love keys because I’ve been arguing for years — sometimes on the show, often off it — that I love pre-gens and more games should have them. And keys are why. You show up at the table, you’ve got your stats, and now what? Keys solve that problem. In the same way you can look down at a PBTA character sheet and find a move to do, keys are the fiction-forward version of that. I don’t know what to do, but I’m playing Kale and it says he likes shiny things — so what can I steal while I’m locked in this jail cell? Even when it doesn’t immediately make sense, it gives you direction, and often it does make sense. Maybe I pocketed a key earlier because I like shiny things. There are so many directions you can lean.

You can also make strong choices with them. Key of Greed is going to play really differently if you’re constantly stealing from the other players versus if you’re an expert on diamonds who gets distracted whenever one shows up. A big problem people have with pre-generated characters is feeling locked in, but keys give you clear targets while leaving you flexibility. And if you don’t like one, you can just hit the buy-off right away.

Whitney: Yeah. And — I always forget this part — but you’re supposed to replace it with a new key. You never remember to do that.

Sam: Yeah, but so they’re also an advancement track, which feels right, because they’re moments of character growth — or character change, not necessarily always growth — when you buy off a key. And in the back of the… I want to say book, but it’s a 16-page PDF… there’s a list of generic keys anyone can take. They’re also simple enough and clearly formatted that it’s easy to write your own. They’re one sentence long, plus a buy-off. How have keys actually played at the table for you?

Whitney: The first time I played Lady Blackbird, I was Lady Blackbird. I basically bought off the Key of the Impostor almost immediately while we were still in prison because I thought it made sense — Lady Blackbird would want to show off as soon as possible. Also, if I bought it off right away, I’d get the Secret of the Sky Squid now. Sky Squid now. Win-win.

Sam: That’s a really interesting contrast. When I played a one-shot of this game, the Lady Blackbird in our game spent the whole three-hour session leaning into that key and never buying it off — playing the character in a completely different way.

Whitney: That’s interesting. Yeah.

Sam: Go on though.

Whitney: The person who played Kale interpreted the brotherhood between him and Cyrus as romantic — but it was unrequited, because Cyrus was in love with Lady Blackbird. And the interesting thing is that every time I’ve been in or run this game, the relationship between Natasha and her bodyguard Naomi is never the same. The first time I played, I was the privileged person trying to help but kind of failing at it. We ended up being best buds. But I’ve run sessions where Naomi hates Natasha and is begrudgingly protecting her, or it’s purely contractual: I’m serving you until you reach your boyfriend, and then I’m free and never have to see you again.

Sam: That really speaks to the flexibility of these keys and pre-generated characters in general. I also love how keys play differently at different campaign lengths. In a one-shot, everyone kind of wants to make noise and get stuff going, and the buy-offs give you a really clear way to do that — they’re all so obviously big moments you can make happen. But it’s also easy to imagine a six-session Lady Blackbird game where you take your time with those buy-offs, keep hitting keys, and really live in them for a while. In both cases, there’s still this endless potential energy to the buy-offs — this constant tension of whether the buy-off is going to happen this time or not. It’s such a neat little thing to have in a tight little package.

Whitney: Have you run any campaigns of Lady Blackbird? My first session was a play-by-post, so it was kind of like a campaign. Even when it’s supposed to be a one-shot, we usually spread it out to three sessions just to breathe — it’s only truly a one-shot at a con. And since it’s technically a five-player game, I’ve run it for different configurations. Like Kale and Snargle going off on their own adventure while the A team deals with Lady Blackbird and her boyfriend situation.

Sam: Starting a separate cell while shenanigans are afoot.

Whitney: Exactly! The setting gives you just enough to bite into without confining you to a box of exactly how the world works. You could have the Owl escape the Imperial army and go to this planet, go to the asteroids, spend three episodes with Sky Squids — I would love that personally — or have really extensive refresh scenes with flashbacks, character history, character questions. This game can easily be a one-shot, but depending on how much you want to explore — character interactions or the world around you — it can definitely be multiple sessions.

Sam: Yeah, totally. So you’ve made a game inspired by Lady Blackbird that mechanically feels very similar. It’s called The Olde, The Cold, and The Bold and it’s coming to Backer Kit very soon. Tell me about it. Where did it come from, and why did you use Lady Blackbird as a framework?

Whitney: When I first wrote it, I had an idea but wasn’t sure what mold to pour it into — it was originally a game about evil house spouses, but that’s a story for another day. I really like crime dramas, but they have a lot of elements I don’t exactly love. So I thought, how can I make a game about doing crimes that leaves all the parts I don’t like out of the equation? I was listening to Terry Pratchett’s audiobooks, and the concept of an Assassins’ Guild and a Thieves’ Guild came up — regulated crime. I thought, that’s perfect. It can’t get too crazy or uncomfortable because it’s regulated.

And the title just came to me — I wasn’t even brainstorming, it just arrived: The Olde, The Cold, The Bold. And oh, those are the three archetypes. I’d been wanting to do a hack of Lady Blackbird anyway, so it seemed like a good fit — three archetypes, each with their own character sheet. Then it was just a matter of figuring out how to make it different from Lady Blackbird and add my own content.

Sam: It’s interesting that both games have the name of the most important character in the title. Yours is a trio, but there’s something interesting about that. And I think by naming the characters after their archetypes, they don’t refer to each other that way at the table — I’m not going to say “Hey Bold, come over here.” But that creates an interesting midpoint on the pre-gen spectrum. On one hand, they feel totally like pre-gens: clear archetypes, keys laid out. On the other hand, they don’t have names, so you can take them and do whatever you want. It’s so weird that just naming them makes Lady Blackbird’s characters feel like pre-gens, while not naming them makes yours feel like PBTA playbooks. You’re making essentially the same kind of choices in both games — the characters are flexible in the same way — and the only difference is naming.

Whitney: It makes sense though, because once they have a name, they’re not just any person — they’re a person. Lady Blackbird is literally the name of the game. She’s the reason you’re all arrested, because if she didn’t want to get back to her boyfriend, none of you would be in this situation. And while she has a name, you can make informed choices: she has the Key of the Stormblood, here’s what that means, she casts spells, et cetera. But with The Olde, The Cold, The Bold, you’re an Old — are you Mike from Breaking Bad, or are you Mr. Wolf from Reservoir Dogs? What else are you adding to the character, including your name?

Sam: Totally. So talk to me about writing keys for this game. What did you find fun or challenging about it?

Whitney: The most challenging part was making sure the diction made keys easy to turn. With any archetype, there are a million things a character might do, but you want to pick things they’re doing constantly so you can turn the keys as often as possible. It was about explaining each key in a way where the player can be using it most of the time. My thought was that each character has one key they’re turning more often and one less so, which is also why I added team keys — so each player effectively has more than the usual two individual keys.

Sam: You mentioned team keys — we’ll get back to that in a second, but go on.

Whitney: So the fun part was thinking about what keys make each archetype shine. The Old was the easiest because there’s an Old in every crime drama — they’re the fixer, so they’re fixing.

Sam: Every time your back hurts, turn your key.

Whitney: I feel that. I wish I could buy that one off so I don’t have it anymore.

Sam: You buy it off by getting paralyzed or something.

Whitney: I don’t need my back anymore. So the Old was easy. The Cold was interesting because the diplomatic person in a crime drama usually gets upstaged by the loudmouth, so it was fun making keys that put power back in that archetype. And the Bold was fun but also difficult — it’s a spin-off of the hothead slash loudmouth, but I didn’t want them to be that. I still wanted to keep that energy in the playbook without just making them the loudmouth. That was probably the most challenging, but also the most fun because that archetype speaks to me on so many levels. It was fun trying to describe things in ways that made more open-ended keys.

Sam: It’s interesting to think about how archetypal all of these keys are, and then playing the game is figuring out your specific version of that archetype. The act of play is refining the character from archetype into a specific person — whether that’s Lady Blackbird, noble on the run, or The Old in a crime drama. Looking at Cyrus Vance’s keys: the Key of the Commander (he’s used to being in charge), the Key of Hidden Longing (he’s completely in love with Lady Blackbird), and the Key of the Outcast (he’s been exiled from the empire). All broad, archetypal things. But as you play, you’re asking: what kind of commander am I going to be? Am I going to keep being one, or buy that off? What does my love for Lady Blackbird look like? Who is this Cyrus Vance? It’s cool to see play as this chiseling down of who a character is. So tell me about team keys — what’s the deal with them?

Whitney: Since it’s at most a three-player game, I wanted to give keys that create reasons to interact with your fellow partners in crime. There’s one team key that all three turn at the same time — when they’re working as a unit, which will probably be often. But there are also keys that hold hands with another specific player. The team key between The Cold and The Bold is basically that they turn it together when one is hyping the other up or making them laugh during a tense moment. It also informs how the character acts. The Cold’s regular keys are: I only enter conversations when I need to, and most of the time I think I know what I’m doing. The Cold/Bold team key tells the player that there are instances where The Cold isn’t feeling as confident, and The Bold will be there like, “No, it’s okay, we got this.” The Cold also has a team key with The Old, basically around finding common ground — “I too like expensive watches.” So The Cold’s solo keys tell you how they interact with the world and solve problems, but the team keys tell you how they interact with people.

Sam: Yeah. It’s an evolution of the one-sided relationship keys — like Cyrus Vance being in love with Lady Blackbird. Making it bi-directional makes it clearer that both players should be invested in the relationship, and gives both of them more of a handle for how to contribute to what it looks like and how it plays out. That just feels more fun because relationships are two-sided. It also puts more emphasis on group dynamics than on just figuring out who your individual character is. Tell me a little more about the setting. Crime gig economy workers — where did that come from, and why did it feel like a good fit for this set of mechanics?

Whitney: The criminal gig economy just kind of came to me as an interesting concept to explore. You’re not necessarily criminals who are doing crime 24/7. It gives players the freedom to ask: am I doing this when I need a few extra bucks, or am I all in? People use the app because it’s supposed to get the cops off their back — you can do crime without worrying about the fuzz, which is fantastic. And since it’s through an app, you’re supposed to assume the gigs are vetted, quote-unquote.

Sam: Yeah.

Whitney: I know some people have assumed it’s supposed to be dystopian, but in the second edition I’m trying to make clear that that’s not the case. As the premise says, crime is always going to happen — might as well regulate it. And the criminal gig economy isn’t just regular crimes like stealing a car. It also includes vigilante anti-crimes, or the justice people can afford. In my head, the app exists because you have high-profile crimes — “I’m a rich person and I don’t like the other rich person, they stole my idea, make them pay or get my stuff back.” Those pay the bills for the company. But then you also have things like: there’s a guy who’s been recklessly driving through the neighborhood for days and no one’s doing anything about it, can you handle it? The app would say, we’re going to solve your problem, we’re not going to tell you how, and then that guy stops being a problem in the neighborhood anymore.

Sam: It’s a really interesting take. You hear “gig economy crime” and you expect a hitman sort of thing. But then you read the examples in the book and it’s this much more utopian vision — doing crimes for public service. That’s not the genre I was expecting, and not even the only way you’d have to play it, but it makes for a great set of examples for what the premise could be. Do you have any closing words about your game, or about keys at large, or Lady Blackbird?

Whitney: More people should play Lady Blackbird. It’s free, it’s a PDF, you can get it any time, print it out, and run it for your friends. It’s awesome.

Sam: And it’s super short — truly like 11 pages of rules at most, and a lot of that is repeated text. It’s such a low investment game. It really works as a one-shot or a really short campaign, and that’s a format I would love to see more games in.

Whitney: And you get to roll handfuls of dice, which I know is exciting to any nerd ever. Handfuls of d6s.

Sam: Fistfuls. You really get lots of dice going in this game. We’ll talk about traits and dice pools next time. Whitney, thanks so much for coming on Dice Exploder. This was great.

Whitney: Thanks for having me. It was great.

Sam: Thanks again to Whitney for being here. Follow the second edition of The Olde, The Cold, The Bold on Backer Kit today — there’s a link in the show notes — and follow Whitney on Bluesky at @toastyseahorse. Thanks again to everyone who supports Dice Exploder on Patreon. As always, you can find me on Bluesky at @diceexploder.com and you can find my games at sdunnewold.itch.io. Our logo was designed by Sporgory. Our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey. Our ad music is Lily Pads by my boy Travis Tessmer.