Ovinomancer
No flips for you!
There are a number of mechanics whereby they can, in greater or lesser degrees.Almost certainly to some degree. I've never seen the rules.
Ok sure, but can the players except by DM wheedling/persuasion override his choices?
Not in the sense that they're suddenly up against a higher tier, but as a consequence to a string of failed actions this is absolutely possible. I haven't considered it, but it's also possible for the GM to set a clock on a mission that might increase the Tier of the opposition, if it makes sense to do so in the fiction.That's sort of interesting. I guess. So the player's get perfect information about the mark? You don't run into a situation where you are running a con or a heist, and whoops, you realize you've just stolen funds from the city's Kingpin?
Oh, no, that's a great way to fail in the long run. If you only take the 'safe' bets, the mechanics and probability of failure means that the situation will snowball on you, sooner rather than later. That's a key thing about PbtA games -- if you think you can game them by being super careful and caution, it'll punch you in the nose right quick.It may not be the right term, since I recognized that the players had a limited ability to modify probability of success (basically only by attempting moves that they were 'skilled' in). However, just because the odds are fixed doesn't mean that there isn't a winning strategy. You win by convincing the GM that you have some edge which maximizes the success stake while minimizing the failure stake. That is to say, you win by consistently getting the house to put more on the bet than you do. Since the odds are fixed, but the payoffs are not, the side with the safest wagers wins in the long run. However, it's entirely up to the GM to determine the ratio of the stakes - whether something has a big payoff or a big risk. The players can try to be persuasive, but ultimately they don't get to rig the game in their favor, which would make the game pointless. And that's what I mean about the GM "setting the difficult". By how he weights the stakes, he's acting as the judge of the skillfulness of the player's propositions.
For example, in my example above of a controlled, limited setting, the 4-5 option would dump the players into at least a risky position for the next task. The fail option is definitely going to be risky, with a number of possibilities moving into desperate depending on what they players do. The game is built to push back, which is why the players have so many resources and mechanics available to succeed in risky and dangerous situations.
There aren't... I was talking about your initial post here where you detail concerns that are very similar to the Czerge principle. I was saying that the position and effect mechanics were to show how Blades can allow the example action declaration but still avoid the Czerge priniciple violation.I don't see any Czerge principle violations in what you described.
I'm very happy to do so. It's just a really minor narrative element compared to the ones that show up in more Nar focused games. In my homebrew 3.X D&D game, I have destiny points that act as a minor sort of narrative currency in that they allow the player to mitigate luck and decide when they want to win or don't want to lose, and even to a small extent can allow the players to break the normal rules (such as asserting that they have a skill or feat in this scene that they don't normally have). Star Wars D6 has "Force Points". Mouseguard has not one but TWO types of narrative currency, and both are pathetically underpowered timid little things that don't do nearly enough or give the player nearly enough control over the action, especially compared to all the hassle that revolves around them.
Then, sure, they're narrative points.
Amusingly, Blades actually has a pretty well detailed setting, but it's very closed. It's pretty much a single city, with lots of details, but those details are at the thumbnail sketch level only. You have a number of neighborhoods, with quarter page descriptions and a whole laundry list of gangs and organizations with a few sentences each (enough to establish some flavor). So, there's a lot of established myth in Blades, but there's plenty of room to add things in.It's pretty much inherent to success with complications, which as you note the game is geared to produce as the most common result. Throw in that I'd guess that this is mostly a "No Myth" or "Low Myth" game were the GM is encouraged to just sketch an outline of the major points, and you have an inherently GM empowering system presumably balanced by the players initial agency - "choosing the Score" - and occasional narrative control (rolling 6's or spending Stress).
I'd suggest some Gone in 60 Seconds or the first Fast and Furious for some reference material. Perhaps with an adult beverage?Forgive me, but having never stolen a car I have no idea at all what that means, and I'm inclined to imagine that if I did steal a car, my feelings and concerns would be very different than the sort of people who normally steal cars.