My Blades in the Dark campaign is due for some free play soon. After every four or five Scores, I do one whole session that is just free play. No scores. Every character gets their own mini-story for the evening. This is in contrast to where our score sessions are a self-contained story, where the crew does some planning (only a little, this is Blades in the Dark after all), a score, and has some downtime. The free play sessions are more work, but they are a valuable part of our whole campaign. So let’s talk about it.

Define Free Play vs. Core Play

Let’s set up a few definitions and then work out from there. I use the term free play, which is borrowed from Blades in the Dark, which are scenes where the “characters talk to each other (or NPCs), do things, and make rolls as needed”. In Blades, this is in contrast to the Score Phase and Downtime, both of which are more regimented in their goals and rules. To broaden out that definition a bit, free play is play that is outside the core loop of your game.

Core Loop? That is the main set of activities and actions that form the game. In a game like Night’s Black Agents, the core loop is to collect clues until you are ready to take an action, then take an action, repeat until the mission is over or the mystery is solved. 

Core Play is then when you are playing through the core loop, and is in contrast to free play, which can be play that is not advancing or supporting the core loop. 

What does a Free Play session look like? 

You don’t have to do a whole session, and we get into that below, but for the sake of giving an example, here is what a free play session looks like in my Blades campaign. Every player gets an objective they want to achieve for the night. For example: making new contacts in the occult underworld. That objective is broken up into two scenes, an A scene and a B scene. 

During the session, I go around the table doing the A scene for everyone. The A scene always sets up some challenge to achieve that goal. For example, you meet this cultist, but you need to prove to them that you are worthy of learning more. They may get an action roll during that scene, but it’s not always required. After the A scenes are done, we do the B scenes. These scenes are always centered around taking action to achieve the goal, and will often include one or more action rolls. 

Why is Free Play good for your campaign?

Free play does a few things in your campaign. First, it is a change of pace. It breaks up repetition. This is nice because when something repeats too long, people go numb to it. Your group will only delve so many dungeons or solve so many mysteries before they want to do something different. A free play session does just that. It breaks up that repeated core loop. 

Second, the scenes are character-focused. Free play scenes can focus on one or more characters, primarily giving good spotlight time for the original character. This allows the players to do some role-playing, which helps to add depth to the characters, and gives players a chance to exercise their role-playing skills. 

Third, the scenes are centered around advancing personal goals. Your wizard may want to be able to unlock the secrets of the Obsidian Staff, but he can’t do that by trudging through dungeons. She needs some lab and library time. Free play allows you to have those scenes and to help advance the character’s agenda. This, in turn, creates emotional investment because players are seeing their wants and desires come to fruition in the game. 

Working Them Into Your Campaign

There is no magic formula for setting up free play scenes in your campaign, but there are some questions that can guide you into finding the right type of free play for your campaign.

When/How Does Free Play Occur?

The first thing to consider is where in your campaign you fit free play. Is it between stories? Between adventures? Only when the characters reach a town? After a campaign arc? At the start of every session? 

What helps to define this is when the characters are not in the core loop(s) of your game. If your core loop is dungeon crawling, then it is when they are between dungeons. If they are a starship crew, perhaps it’s between missions while traveling in space. Finding those “between” times will depend on your game, but if you look, you will see in your campaign where they are. 

Frequency – How often do you want to have free play scenes? 

Do you want to have a free play session in every “between” space? Or after a fixed number of core loops? Or perhaps you don’t want to have a schedule for them, and want to go by either your instincts or by request from the table. 

There is a sweet spot to this. Done too frequently, it slows down the core loop of the game, which in turn can affect the progress of the story arc, and could slow down the mechanical progression of characters. Done too infrequently, and the players don’t progress their personal goals. 

Sadly, there is no universal answer to this. It will depend on a few factors. How long is a given core loop, in sessions (and real time)? How frequently do you play? How long is the campaign?

Format – How are your free play sessions structured?

When do you have a free play session? Does everyone get their own set of scenes, or are they in small groups? Do they get one scene or multiple scenes? How will you distribute the scenes, around the table popcorn style (the current person picks the next)?  

Other Considerations

Do these scenes all take place at the same time? Meaning that everyone is busy at the same time? Or are these scenes all taking place over a larger period of time, so characters can be in each other’s scenes? Is there a limit on how many people can be in a scene? If the whole party is in a scene, are they really advancing one character’s story? Do you want these scenes to be non-combat (sometimes combat can be long to resolve, or deadly when alone)? 

My Blades Free Play Sessions

As mentioned above, my Blades free play sessions come up after 4 to 5 scores. They have a two-scene format. In addition, they take place during a period of a few weeks, so players can include other characters in their scenes. I don’t prep them that way by forcing characters together, the player whose scene it is has the option of pulling in other characters. 

Because Blades has a Downtime phase and mechanics, these scenes are typically things that are not covered by a downtime action. Mostly, they are social interactions with NPCs. They can result in new Scores or in Downtime actions, such as projects.

Sometimes You Have to Let’em Play

The free play session is a nice way to break up the core loop of your campaign while at the same time showering some attention and spotlight onto the characters. There is a bit of work to figure out how to set them up for your campaign, but once you do, they create a break that everyone looks forward to. 

Do you have free play sessions in your campaign? How are they set up? Do you have any unique rules or qualities about them?