Grade the Forged in the Dark System

[thefutilist]

Well, yes, in these particular games, you do need a clock, because what the NPC is going to do must be known to the players—it's a key part of the play style. If the NPC just does something, that's a soft more or hard move or consequence of whatever severity. And of course even a soft move or light consequence is often a telegraphing of what the NPC is going to do. Now there's a fairly broad field from the prototype that stretches right out to the Oort Cloud of "You know they're up to something but you don't know what, you'll have to investigate," but usually there's something concrete that suggests at least one course of action for the players—which of course can include "ignore it and see how it shakes out."

I don’t think I’m clear on what you’re saying, are you saying that the players need to see the clock? If not, then isn’t telegraphing what the npc is going to do next still just a kind of case by case thing? I mean normally you’d want to but I don’t know why you’d need a clock for that.

 

[pemerton]

I thought I would check out the BitD SRD: The Core System | Blades in the Dark RPG

This is what I found under Game Structure:

The Game Structure
Blades in the Dark has a structure to play, with four parts. By default, the game is in free play - characters talk to each other, they go places, they do things, they make rolls as needed.

When the group is ready, they choose a target for their next operation, then choose a type of plan to employ. This triggers the engagement roll (which establishes the situation as the operation starts) and then the game shifts into the score phase.

During the score, the PCs engage the target—they make rolls, overcome obstacles, call for flashbacks, and complete the operation (successfully or not). When the score is finished, the game shifts into the downtime phase.

During the downtime phase, the GM engages the systems for payoff, heat, and entanglements, to determine all the fallout from the score. Then the PCs each get their downtime activities, such as indulging their vice to remove stress or working on a long-term project. When all the downtime activities are complete, the game returns to free play and the cycle starts over again.

The phases are a conceptual model to help you organize the game. They’re not meant to be rigid structures that restrict your options (this is why they’re presented as amorphous blobs of ink without hard edges). Think of the phases as a menu of options to fit whatever it is you’re trying to accomplish in play. Each phase suits a different goal.​

This seems fairly straightforward.

I also had a look at the bit on Gather Information:

When you want to know something specific about the fictional world, your character can gather information. The GM will ask you how your character gathers the info (or how they learned it in the past).​

​

If it’s common knowledge, the GM will simply answer your questions. If there’s an obstacle to the discovery of the answer, an action roll is called for. If it’s not common knowledge but there’s no obstacle, a simple fortune roll determines the quality of the information you gather.​

​

Each attempt to gather information takes time. If the situation allows, you can try again if you don’t initially get all the info that you want. But often, the opportunity is fleeting, and you’ll only get one chance to roll for that particular question. . . .​

​

Investigation​

Some questions are too complex to answer immediately with a single gather information roll. For instance, you might want to discover the network of contraband smuggling routes in the city. In these cases, the GM will tell you to start a long-term project that you work on during downtime.​

​

You track the investigation project using a progress clock. Once the clock is filled, you have the evidence you need to ask several questions about the subject of your investigation as if you had great effect.​

Given that Scores can also include the following:

Stealth - Trespass unseen. Detail: The point of infiltration.​

I would expect that some information-gathering - like, learning where and how your rivals protect their most potent and valuable artefact - might itself require a score to obtain.

Given the remarks about the GM's authority over gathering information, I would expect that it is the GM who decides whether an attempt to gather information is a single action in free play, or a downtime surveying project (like the smuggling routes) or a score (like my example).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

That's literally something the book suggests as a viable possibility and that was part of the Kickstarter campaign! Saying people doing that are "missing the whole point" is thus supporting my point re: the general (perhaps subconscious) hostility of PtbA/FitD players to anyone not using every single rule in an extremely prescriptive way, despite you just saying "Well you don't have to use all the rules, obviously!" (and seemingly believing it!).

Woah there! 'World of Dungeons' is not something that Dungeon World itself has anything to do with and it isn't AT ALL mentioned, in any sense in the DW published material. I understand that this was, at least half-jokingly, suggested as a sort of mini-game, and then was actually implemented. It isn't DW and in fact isn't even PbtA. It was more an exercise in demonstrating that 'layer 2' and 'layer 3' could be peeled away and you could still construct a playable game. That's very different from DW having an avowed and intended use as a B/X clone! It doesn't.

I don't think they are missing the "whole point" at all - in fact, I think people who can only see utilizing every rule prescriptively aren't really comprehending how DW was constructed or how flexibly it can be used, and are stuck in outdated mindset where PtbA/FitD are to be defend from hostile hordes of rules-skimming barbarians. Even using D&D adventures and the like, It's still a fundamentally different approach to B/X or similar, too, the mindset has to be very different to use Moves and so on. A viable and non-hostile rephrasing of a similar sentiment might be that they're "missing out of some of the most interesting and exciting things DW can do" - but when you dismiss such people as "missing the whole point", well, you make my point for me.

Well, from my perspective, they're entirely missing the point of narrativist relatively unscripted play that centers on players and PCs. There's a HUGE difference there. I mean, a gulf of epic proportions. They are missing pretty much the entire point of what PbtA-type approaches are bringing. Yes, they may be using moves, but if they are using them to adjudicate task-specific success in a D&D/trad approach, then the entire move architecture is not doing anything like what it does in, say, DW. And not getting that, not understanding that this IS missing the whole point is kinda the issue.

And also no, that's not at all what he was saying re: a Dungeon World 2. He was specifically attacking D&D's colonialist undertones/subtext (something I've noted before but pretty much everyone seems uncomfortable discussing) and basically saying D&D (including 5E) was very nasty game that he no longer felt like was worth emulating. Stuff like killing things and taking their loot? He wanted no more of that - that was one of his specific examples of a thing he'd drop.

Ah, OK, that's a whole other potential dimension. I would think that would best be discussed in an entirely different sort of thread, and in fact I'm pretty sure many of us here have had a few of those discussions. On that front I may have similar opinions, though I don't want to leap to any conclusions too easily in that arena.

I can't find the original detailed discussion where he laid out his ideas but he does say in a still-available Tweet:


"DW is at best a reflection of where I was as an ally 10 years ago, and even then it has a lot of things that are entirely racist, sexist, or ableist and which I did not notice."

Which like, not really sure that's true buddy re: "entirely racist, sexist or ableist" - I'm struggling to even thing of anything even arguably sexist in DW - maybe some kind of of monster? I tried to see if anyone had any examples but they didn't - not even LaTorra himself. The racism seems to boil down to "the game has 'evil races' in it", which like, sure but I think when you stretch that to "entirely racist", rather than say "unfortunately reflective of frequently-racist tropes or something" you're perhaps getting a little self-indulgent in a strange way.

Also this:

"The thing that I had honestly never even considered from my privileged POV: why is DW still in my profile? Or up for sale? When I think of it I think of the good stuff, but there's entirely too much bad stuff."

I mean, I consider myself pretty far out there on the social left in most ways, and absolutely can criticise D&D and really most fantasy games (video, TT or otherwise) for some recurrent tropes which are not great (and are indeed reflective of arguably colonialist attitudes), but goddamn son. Hoooooooo. It seems reading between the lines of a few posts LaTorra has made, the only reason DW hasn't been pulled is that Adam Koebel wouldn't agree to it (perhaps not unreasonably!).

Yeah, I consider myself at least a whole-hearted supporter of the position that biases are not something we want. OTOH it can be devilishly difficult to suss out what hits people as biased! I personally am hard-pressed to think of anything that is in DW that an author aught to be ashamed of. However, people are different from me and if THEY have a problem, then they DO have a problem and it should be taken seriously. No doubt there are assumptions inherent within pretty much all RPGs that could profitably be reexamined. The whole depiction of races as potentially being less advanced and possibly less 'good', in some sense inferior, probably exists in some fashion in a pretty high percentage of fantasy. Anyway, I guess that might factor into someone's 'grading' of the FitD system.

 

[niklinna]

I don’t think I’m clear on what you’re saying, are you saying that the players need to see the clock? If not, then isn’t telegraphing what the npc is going to do next still just a kind of case by case thing? I mean normally you’d want to but I don’t know why you’d need a clock for that.

Players are expected to see the clock. That's how that whole style of gameplay works. Having a clock that the players aren't aware of would be pretty bad form.

You need a clock if what the NPC does (or if any kind of event/consequence) isn't immediate. Otherwise, as mentioned, it's just a move/action, hard or soft or of whatever level of consequence. Clocks are for events yet to come, whose coming can be averted, delayed, hastened, or substantively altered by PC action.

 

[hawkeyefan]

When it came to clocks, it took my group a while to get to the point where they were all player facing. There were a few reasons for this but the main one was my players. It took them a while to get used to that kind of transparency. It was like at times they thought they couldn’t trust the information… that I was going to pull a fast one on them.

Also, and it may be possible this happens in the future, when I introduce a clock, I may not have a full idea of what will happen when it’s full. I have an idea, but the specific consequences aren’t yet clear. In those cases, I’d share the fact that a clock was in play, and I’d name it something that let them know what it was related to… and then once the idea was fully formed I’d give it a more specific name.

 

[thefutilist]

Players are expected to see the clock. That's how that whole style of gameplay works. Having a clock that the players aren't aware of would be pretty bad form.

You need a clock if what the NPC does (or if any kind of event/consequence) isn't immediate. Otherwise, as mentioned, it's just a move/action, hard or soft or of whatever level of consequence. Clocks are for events yet to come, whose coming can be averted, delayed, hastened, or substantively altered by PC action.

I’ll have to consider this. On the one hand I like the idea of showing clocks to the players because it makes the situation as a whole more legible.

On the other hand, it seems intuitively deeply wrong, although I’m not sure I can articulate why. I think I’d want to be a player character in a game where that was the technique and then see how well it worked.

 

[pemerton]

I’ll have to consider this. On the one hand I like the idea of showing clocks to the players because it makes the situation as a whole more legible.

On the other hand, it seems intuitively deeply wrong, although I’m not sure I can articulate why. I think I’d want to be a player character in a game where that was the technique and then see how well it worked.

Adding to this: I don't think that AW, when it refers to countdown clocks for threats, envisages them being player-facing. I think that they're part of the GM's prep, to establish what the "offscreen" badnesses/threats are and what they do. From p 143:

A countdown clock is a reminder to you as MC that your threats have impulse, direction, plans, intentions, the will to sustain action and to respond coherently to others’.

When you create a threat, if you have a vision of its future, give it a countdown clock. You can also add countdown clocks to threats you’ve already created.

Around the clock, note some things that’ll happen:

• Before 9:00, that thing’s coming, but preventable. What are the clues? What are the triggers? What are the steps?

• Between 9:00 and 12:00, that thing is inevitable, but there’s still time to brace for impact. What signifies it?

• At 12:00, the threat gets its full, active expression. What is it?​

As you play, advance the clocks, each at their own pace, by marking their segments.

Countdown clocks are both descriptive and prescriptive. Descriptive: when something you’ve listed happens, advance the clock to that point. Prescriptive: when you advance the clock otherwise, it causes the things you’ve listed. Furthermore, countdown clocks can be derailed: when something happens that changes circumstances so that the countdown no longer makes sense, just scribble it out.​

On the other hand, a countdown clock created in order to "disclaim decision-making" (p 115) seems like it might sometimes, even often, be player-facing:

Say that there’s an NPC whose life the players have come to care about, for instance, and you don’t feel right about just deciding
when and whether to kill her off: . . .

Just sketch a quick countdown clock. Mark 9:00 with “she gets hurt,” 12:00 with “she dies.” Tick it up every time she goes into danger, and jump to 9:00 if she’s in the line of fire. This leaves it in your hands, but gives you a considered and concrete plan, instead of leaving it to your whim.​

I don't see that AW mandates a uniform practice here.

Now, I can't comment on BitD, which is a different game.

 

[niklinna]

I’ll have to consider this. On the one hand I like the idea of showing clocks to the players because it makes the situation as a whole more legible.

On the other hand, it seems intuitively deeply wrong, although I’m not sure I can articulate why. I think I’d want to be a player character in a game where that was the technique and then see how well it worked.

It isn't wrong, if your playstyle involves the GM springing things on the players rather than the players driving the action. A GM certainly could use secret clocks to keep track of how some offscreen process is proceeding, but they could also just declare things happen at any time, because reasons (which may include in response to some action by the PCs). And so clocks aren't really necessary. In Blades in the Dark, the GM simply doesn't say, "This thing suddenly happens out of the blue," because that's bad form for the playstyle.

Clocks are for pacing impending threats (on whatever time scale, from moments to months or more) when the players drive the action. Therefore they need to be visible to the players.

 

[niklinna]

Adding to this: I don't think that AW, when it refers to countdown clocks for threats, envisages them being player-facing. I think that they're part of the GM's prep, to establish what the "offscreen" badnesses/threats are and what they do. From p 143:

A countdown clock is a reminder to you as MC that your threats have impulse, direction, plans, intentions, the will to sustain action and to respond coherently to others’.​

​

When you create a threat, if you have a vision of its future, give it a countdown clock. You can also add countdown clocks to threats you’ve already created.​

​

Around the clock, note some things that’ll happen:​

​

• Before 9:00, that thing’s coming, but preventable. What are the clues? What are the triggers? What are the steps?​

​

• Between 9:00 and 12:00, that thing is inevitable, but there’s still time to brace for impact. What signifies it?​

​

• At 12:00, the threat gets its full, active expression. What is it?​

​

As you play, advance the clocks, each at their own pace, by marking their segments.​

​

Countdown clocks are both descriptive and prescriptive. Descriptive: when something you’ve listed happens, advance the clock to that point. Prescriptive: when you advance the clock otherwise, it causes the things you’ve listed. Furthermore, countdown clocks can be derailed: when something happens that changes circumstances so that the countdown no longer makes sense, just scribble it out.​

On the other hand, a countdown clock created in order to "disclaim decision-making" (p 115) seems like it might sometimes, even often, be player-facing:

Say that there’s an NPC whose life the players have come to care about, for instance, and you don’t feel right about just deciding​

when and whether to kill her off: . . .​

​

Just sketch a quick countdown clock. Mark 9:00 with “she gets hurt,” 12:00 with “she dies.” Tick it up every time she goes into danger, and jump to 9:00 if she’s in the line of fire. This leaves it in your hands, but gives you a considered and concrete plan, instead of leaving it to your whim.​

I don't see that AW mandates a uniform practice here.

Now, I can't comment on BitD, which is a different game.

I would argue that the bits I've bolded above make clocks player facing, albeit not in their particular numerical values. The GM is obligated to provide clues, to inform the players something's up. My experience of Blades in the Dark is that clocks have generally been visible, with particular stages attached to particular values of the clocks. But it would be easy enough to just indicate the stages and not necessarily reveal how many ticks each has. Wouldn't be my preference, but seems doable.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I think some clocks absolutely must be player facing. Mostly, these are any kind of in-Score countdown… like, “Alarm Sounded” or “Bluecoats Arrive”. Players should see those dangers mounting so they can act accordingly. Also, obviously anything related to Long Term Projects or similar player goals.

I’m a little less certain on others. Some Faction Clocks may be okay to not share. Like if the action is truly happening fully “off-screen”. I don’t hide them myself, but I don’t think it’d be a big deal if a GM did.

I also don’t think the book comes right out and says that all clocks shoukd be visible. It’s certainly implied at times, and so e of the principles and best practices kind of imply it, but I don’t recall it being explicitly stated. I certainly could be wrong on that, though!

One of the things that I like about sharing clocks openly is that it makes it seem like the characters are living people with lives in the city and they hear about things or get hunches about things and so on. I find clocks to be a great way to kind of support the lived in feeling.