But the difference exist only in the GM's head. No one else will know if the consequence they introduced was truly generated on the spot as response to the player's action or whether it was preplanned and they were just waiting for a convenient place to drop it in, and as they frame the scenes they have plenty of opportunity to make it very likely that an appropriate moment arises.
This, again, assumes that you're playing in a more D&D style, where the GM anticipates things. The way that play of Blades so rapidly moves means prep is pretty useless to begin with, and prep that's you try to force into the play becomes obvious because it doesn't fit. You're still not adapting to the entire play process. I thought the same way, prior to gaining experience with it -- it's a natural thought if you haven't entirely moved the paradigm. I'll even say my first few sessions I was still trying to do things like this, but I quickly saw how that just didn't work out and fully adapted to the style. Now, it's not that I don't want it to be possible and am arguing to protect the game (I don't have much stake at all in this, I'm not stuck defending Blades at all), but rather I have the experience to say that this just doesn't and mostly cannot happen at all.
I am not only looking at single moments, I'm looking at overall trajectory. But perhaps I'm missing something. In your example, who decided it was haunted mansion, who decided the guard was there and what kind of guard they were who decided what was in the room? How did the characters even end up in the room?
The players did. Or rather, they decided to go after a cult doing creepy things, we did free form roleplay where they investigated where that cult my be by contacting a source in Six Towers (a neighborhood of Duskvol). From there, it was determined in play that the cult was there and the source knew where they were, but needed payment (the fortune roll was mixed). So, I decided that the source wanted something stolen from the cult's location in addition to what the PCs wanted to accomplish, to pay for his information. I then looked over the neighborhood description for Six Towers, saw Lord Scurlock's abandoned manor was a landmark, and pitched it. Here's the lore on the Six Towers neighborhood:
This formerly prestigious district has faded over the centuries into a pale shadow of what it once was. The eponymous six towers were originally the grand residences of Doskvol’s first noble families. All but two (Bowmore House and Rowan House) have been sold off and converted into cheap apartments or fallen into ruin and abandoned. The district has an empty, haunted feel, with many sprawling old buildings dark without power, broad stone streets cracked and buckled, and the fires of squatters rackling from overgrown lots.
And here's Scurlock's Manor:
Scurlock Manor. The Scurlock family came to Duskwall centuries ago and was once a great force in the city, before some curse or calamity befell their line. This tumble-down manor house and tangle of vines is all that remains of their original fortune. It’s said that a young nephew or cousin still resides there, but Lord Scurlock himself has moved on to finer abodes.
This is what informed the decision to use a cool landmark from the game -- "Bring Duskvol to life" -- and lean into the haunted nature of the neighborhood and Lord Scurlock's past -- "Paint the world with a haunted brush." I mean, haunted manors are solidly within scope of the game. Plus, the cult they were seeking had occupied play for the previous few sessions -- it didn't even exist at first, but the PCs' failures led to the addition of a cult, then the kidnapping by the cult of one PC's ally (a ghost), and then a demon got involved wanting this issue closed (am entanglement roll of "demonic notice" at a time where it fit perfectly), so the crew had a lot of motivation to do this thing. This entire quest line started with a job to recover some sets of alchemical notes that were driving alchemists mad (a rolled score, when the crew went to one of their contacts for a job). Everything else snowballed from there, as the system is built to do -- create complex stories from simple inputs and play.
As for who decided, I did, from player input. They chose to sneak into the manor, and had a great engagement roll, so the opening scene had to be Controlled, which means, usually, a foreshadowed threat rather than a present one. So, they entered the manor through an old servents tunnel (the player decided "detail" of the engagement), and that let out into a storeroom off of a hallway in the manor (I decided this, from the detail). Since Blades runs on obstacles, I am required to frame one in the opening scene, and start a new scene when one is played out. So, I narrated a guard being present and needing to be bypassed, but currently unaware of the crew -- hence a controlled situation completely grown out of many, many inputs, some decided immediately before (the engagement approach and detail and the result of the roll).
I anticipate that you'll try to point out this could have been planned in advance, but I'll go ahead and counter with asking you to plan something in advance for a Blades mission, and we'll see how well it survives the PCs choosing a score and approach and detail -- that it might theoretically perfectly play out so that pre-planning is even remotely relevant, much less useful, is very long odds.
Yes, but a lot of them are still rather vague and open to interpretation. I did not even find any firm guidelines for which harm level GM should assign. Maybe I'm missing something here, as it seems rather arbitrary.
So, for one, the SRD is very light. The actual rulebooks spends pages on these, and has examples to illustrate. Harm is presented in levels -- 1, lesser, 2 moderate, 3 severe, and 4 dead. These correspond nicely to the positions -- controlled, risky, and desperate. Dead is reserved for your second severe injury or fictional situations where the effect is very severe and foreshadowed. Given that the PCs can always choose to Resist, although that may take them out, it's okay to occasionally have such dire threats if it fits the game.
Again, remember you've read the SRD, which is very basic and covers topics just enough to get by.
I believe that you didn't intend to direct the player, but it wouldn't have necessarily looked any different if you had. This again is a difference that only exist in GM's head, only they know what they intended to do.
Oh, I assure you, it would have looked different. I would have played up the portrait more, making it more interesting than I did, and I wouldn't have included the guard as the primary point of conflict and interest in the scene. Had that player not had the motivation they did, it wouldn't even have been remarked on -- I add lots of color to my descriptions, and it's usually just that. Just because this particular piece of color caught a player's wants doesn't make it anything like what you're trying to claim it could maybe have been. This is a deep dive into Maybe Lake.
The fact that the player could have poked some other object and that would have become important and caused some other, perhaps cosmetically differnt complication is what makes it feel to me that the player agency here is rather illusory. Except not really, because the players know it is an illusion... As a player this would bother me. It would bother me that I am obviously generating the imaginary reality which makes it obviously fake.
I am sure that a lot of people won't get this complaint, not all people think these things in the same way.
Sure, that's fine. I don't think it works out this way -- you find something interesting and it's interesting, you're not checking with the GM to see if it's interesting or not. But, still, I totally get that you might prefer having someone else make that call so you can feel like you're exploring some reality. It's all still make-believe, though, so this is definitely a thing of how you're choosing to suspend your disbelief over what's the same thing at the end of the day, just with different people responsible for it.
This does go the agency point, though -- if only the GM has the say, then it should be obvious the players have less say. That's really the end of the point. You clearly think you wouldn't like having more of a say, so that's that -- you've got your value statement and it's a good one. The argument hasn't been about which is better in any way, but how it works.
