A Question Of Agency?

[AbdulAlhazred]

This terminology is not neutral at all is the problem. Just in a vacuum if you have choice between 'lazy evaluation' and 'active engagement' you always pick active engagement. One is an attractive descriptor, the other is an unattractive one.

As a fellow software engineer, I would characterize @Campbell's terminology here as simply heavily influenced by technical programmer jargon. 'Lazy' as a general term is used by programmers to mean "something that gets done in code at the last possible moment." Like you might have "Lazy Configuration" where you go read some values from a config file to find out some user preference, but you only do that a few lines of code before you would have to decide on program behavior based on that preference, vs doing it much earlier during some 'startup phase'.

It isn't pejorative at all, rather the contrary in that context, it is an optimization which is intended to provide superior results (although it can create problems sometimes too). Obviously nobody who doesn't code for a living will likely know this, but it is just an example of cultural context, which is another dimension in human communications.

 

[prabe]

I think principles and mechanics go hand in hand. While principles matter, it is at best very difficult to actualize them when the mechanics of the game simply don't provide the avenues by which they can naturally enter into play, particularly at the more granular levels of individual scenes which actually make up most of a game.

I think the vast majority of principles translate just fine from one game to another. Where the mechanics are different, they probably shape play differently.

I say this from experience playing with the same GM in both 5e and DW, and of running PACE, DW, and 4e in a certain way, vs running classical versions of D&D, CoC, and a very long list of other games which lack these mechanics. I was especially disappointed with the experience I had with CoC a few years ago when trying to play it in a way analogous to how I would run narrative games. It just got in the way so much that I would really never run it again, though I am a fan of the genre. Maybe someone more skilled than I am can do it, but CoC actively inhibits narrative style play in multiple ways (and is just painfully clunky, I'm amazed I was able to run it back in the 80's without more trouble). I would have a lot of the same problems with 5e, which is why I basically wrote my own story game '4e hack'.

I think CoC is really, really limited both by its history and by horror as a genre. The adventures published for the game over the decades have formed an expectation of play that is ... railroady, IMO. Horror, especially its Lovecraftian branch, is ... plausibly not the best genre of fiction to apply Story Now to, what with the tropes of hidden knowledge and secret histories and tainted bloodlines and insane narrators--it just seems as though the "gotcha" is part of (maybe the heart of) the fiction. In other words, I'm deeply unsruprised you had troubles trying to run it like a PbtA game. While 5E might be limited in similar ways by its history and by WotC's business model (making money by selling published adventures), I haven't found it to be limited in anything like the way it sounds as though you found it to me--horses for courses, probably.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I don't know how to make it clearer, I am a referee who allows his players to "trash" his setting. That they are free to pursue any goal within the setting as their character that they find interesting regardless of what I had prepared or had conceived. The only limit is what their character can or can't do within the setting given what been described about the character. For example what a 3 Strength is capable of compared to a 18 strength.

Yeah, if that sounded judgmental it wasn't intended to be. What I mean is, in the game I wrote for example, there is (or would be if I bothered to add stuff like that since I don't personally need it) an explicit statement of agenda, clearly articulating what the game expects the GM to aim for. While D&D generally has always had some fairly general statements and 'DM Advice' bits in various core books, it never really goes very far into articulating these things. A lot of people have simply never gone back and really articulated their principles. If you played kind of typical D&D, like what 5e seems to be aimed at, there is probably not much reason to, the game's structure is built around a fairly obvious paradigm.

It is hard to know with people who have spent a lot of time perfecting a very specific play style. I expect, based on what you have said, that you have very definite ideas and thus a set of principles you're sticking with. I see you've listed some of them. It can be helpful to see such embodied clearly in the terminology and process of a specific game in a way that is 'designed in'. There's a bit more formalism, etc.

And yes, I get what you are saying about your playstyle. I think that's cool! It defends itself.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I think CoC is really, really limited both by its history and by horror as a genre. The adventures published for the game over the decades have formed an expectation of play that is ... railroady, IMO. Horror, especially its Lovecraftian branch, is ... plausibly not the best genre of fiction to apply Story Now to, what with the tropes of hidden knowledge and secret histories and tainted bloodlines and insane narrators--it just seems as though the "gotcha" is part of (maybe the heart of) the fiction. In other words, I'm deeply unsruprised you had troubles trying to run it like a PbtA game. While 5E might be limited in similar ways by its history and by WotC's business model (making money by selling published adventures), I haven't found it to be limited in anything like the way it sounds as though you found it to me--horses for courses, probably.

Lovecraftian horror is a genre that that is probably best run without any system. It just needs a GM that can evoke the right atmosphere and players that are willing to go along with. It really doesn't need a task resolution mechanic; if you investigate the correct thing you succeed, because the story needs that to move forward, and if you encounter monsters you lose in one way or another because that's how these stories end.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Sounds like you have an issue with the concept of fairness in general and not just in rpgs. Virtually everything you bring up about fairness applies to fairness in any setting.

I wouldn't consider myself a fan of 'unfairness', so I'm not sure what to say about that. Again, I think there's clear examples of fair and unfair in organized sports. I think there are articulatable concepts of fairness in interpersonal relations, and other areas of life, but they do involve a lot of context dependency. Nor will people always agree on what is or is not 'fair'. RPGs simply present a muddier context because they involve a largely subjective experience. Anyway, I wasn't denying the existence of a SENSE of fairness. I was asking a question. IMHO there are many cases where we could agree on "this is fair" or "this is not fair" but it is contextual.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I posted, about seven (?) pages upthread, a comparison/contrast of two instances of play: an imagined one from the AW rulebook, and an actual one from my Prince Valiant campaign.

Any thoughts?

That also applies to @FrogReaver, @Bedrockgames, @estar.

I read it, yes. It seems to me that, while there are definitely some differences in specific techniques, that the way you are employing PV has a lot in common with AW. PV seems to be somewhat less explicit about the processes by which players help to define the fiction, but then again maybe I'm just seeing it that way because I have never read/played that game myself. It feels VERY similar to the mini-game PACE, which strongly ties PCs to fiction (and has almost no rules, so it is clearly driven mostly by fiction), though again there are a few differences in mechanical details.

I could probably run the PV scenario using PACE. The various decision points would involve players expending tokens in order to influence the fiction (you can only do this during a contest, and only WRT one of your character's attributes). PACE attributes are simply 2 'true statements' about your character (they can be one word adjectives even). You get a rating in each one that sets your basic ability to bend fiction with it, and then you can spend your tokens (a non-recoverable resource) to push things further. If you get negative or positive results the GM can write up a 'card' which explains how the fiction of your character is modified (these usually are 'wounds' and they go away eventually, but we extended this to 'assets' as well, and those can be leveraged like attributes). It is not really a good system for long term ongoing play though, but we did run an Arthurian Romance mini-campaign with it one time, and that worked fairly well

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

This doesn't describe sandbox play at all.

In sandbox play, the GM frames the world, places in the world, factions and NPC's in it. In sandbox play the players set their agenda. They have complete autonomy to do what they want and to interact with what they want as long as it's done via their character. Nothing they do is by way of DM permission either. In sandbox play it's the player's unalienable right to be able to set their own agenda.


Agreed

Sounds correct, though there are important details you are missing. The GM's job in sandbox play is twofold.
1. He sets the stage that the characters act upon.
2. He continually updates the stage by reacting to the players input into the setting via their characters actions. This part is much more principled than it's being made out to be by you. At the very least NPC beliefs and personalities are considered as a plausibility test for any potential actions. The DM is responsible for picking one of the plausible reactions and adding it to the setting. This updates the stage and the players are able to react to that change.
3. The above describes a static sandbox. In a living world sandbox, the above is true, but additional NPC factions make their actions that result in the stage being updated as well.


So what?


Sure.


That same driver's seat description makes sense of a sandbox as well. Players determine what is important to them and take actions via their characters in the fiction in order to obtain the things they want. They are in the driver's seat and the DM is reacting to what they do.


That's not how sandboxes work. Players don't have a menu of adventures. They have a world that they interact with. If you are wanting to call the world the menu and all the things in the world the menu items, there's nothing stopping you - but that's pretty shaky ground IMO.

I think the key factor in our disagreement, such as it is, about sandbox play is in my deep skepticism about the feasibility of what you call the "DM's principled play" to be actualizable. My contention is that a fantasy game world is too abstract and cannot be realized in enough detail, and no single human has the sheer intellectual capacity, to really say what would or would not happen. That isn't even approaching the issue of a fantasy game where the laws of nature literally don't apply (at least consistently).

So, my position here is that what the GM is doing when they consider how the world reacts, is they are enacting their agenda. This is literally the point where the GM is entirely in control. They can justify an almost limitless range of possible outcomes for most actions (certainly at a less granular level, but rules usually cover things like combat, climbing, falling, etc. with some degree of standardization at least). So, when it comes to "does the character's plot get back to the King?" this is going to be decided by what the GM wants to happen. Now, maybe the GM could (and maybe some do) follow an agenda indistinguishable from something out of, say, DW. That is they focus entirely on engaging with whatever the plot represents and they take their job as to make it dramatic, interesting, and to throw obstacles at the PC which will challenge the character in terms of values, concept, goals, etc. (IE his sister is sleeping with the Prince, does he warn her? Will she betray him?).

I don't see that sandbox, as a conceptual framework addresses this at all. I don't see that there is any really objective process that can exist to adjudicate these things, and thus only principles rooted in narrative, or other real world concerns (the fiction being real fiction) actually carry water.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

A sandbox can very well feature a menu of adventures. A valid sandbox can be a town, a bit of wilderness, and a bunch of themed dungeons. This is exactly a menu of adventures. There's no one true sandbox. Granted, you're making a reasonable point if you're contesting just the fact that a sandbox need not be a menu of adventures, but you aren't doing any favors by returning a "must" with a different "must."

I'm rather unclear on this point! Every sandbox, at some level boils down to a 'menu', that is it is some sort of collection of 'interesting situations' which are scattered around on some sort of 'map' (these could actually be anything, they are dungeons/lairs/terrain typically in most D&D games which are spread on a literal map). By dint of exploration and decision making the players select (or maybe stumble upon) some of these 'situations', or possibly learn about them and select them explicitly (IE they get a treasure map, they follow it instead of selling it).

I'm happy to be proven wrong, but this is the fundamental architecture of a sandbox in every case AFAIK. Certainly players can have their PCs simply 'dig into' any old random spot on said map and hope that they will unearth something. It is likely the GM will respond with some sort of material, although it isn't guaranteed. I would include social situations and such in this as well. The PCs could decide to go find the local Thief's Guild, even though it isn't included in the GM's material. Either they will find something, or they will find out there is no such organization, yah! Now the party thief starts one... So, yes, you may not have to explore, but then again you could simply derail any old arbitrary module/AP and do the same things, right? In either case the GM has to decide how to respond. So, I'm not sure how this kind of 'digging' would specifically characterize a sandbox.

 

[Campbell]

First of, I would avoid any phrasing that implies that some games are not actually games. Secondly, I'd have to wonder how useful it is to apply these theories to roleplaying games, if they have nothing to say about a huge chunk of stuff that is actually happening in these games. If this thread is any indication, the answer would be "not very."

It might not be useful for the way some groups (or individual players) choose to engage the hobby, but it is instrumental to the way a significant amount of us interface with the hobby. At the very least we should be mindful of that and integrate that into our understanding and actually treat it as legitimate.

I mean a substantial part of what drew me personally to 3e's back to the dungeon mentality, then the Forge which eventually led me to both indie games and the OSR was the sense that it was socially permissible to think and talk about roleplaying games in the same way I thought about and talked about other games.

I mean we are really dealing with a split that has been with us since the almost the very beginning of the hobby. Often within the same groups.

 

[Manbearcat]

I think one disconnect we have, is you don't realize importance of how the setting described. I am not making up stuff all the time. It is actually uncommon. I am instead acting on information that been established beforehand.

Before I get into the below, I just want to talk about this.

There is no disconnect here. You’ve engaged with folks on this multiple times. If someone says something to the effect of “the GM (a) extrapolates the setting’s response via the collision of (b) what they have pre-authored about setting (“notes”) and (c) whatever input the players have into the evolving situation.”

The loop of this (and I discussed this upthread) will look and feel very much like (a multi-dimensional) Pictionary:

* The GM has a card (their pre-authored setting).

* The GM attempts to deftly telegraph what is on the card via drawing (without breaking the rules...in the D&D you’re depicting, that would entail outright giving the PCs the answer...there must be a level of opacity...because skilled play is a priority).

* The players act upon the GM's telegraphing to attempt to put together what is being conveyed. This is GM as cipher for their pre-established setting's motivations/dispositions and players as puzzle-solvers. Whether they can decipher these motivations/dispositions and then act upon the setting in such a way that will facilitate their goals is skilled play.

If they fail to decipher, they lose (as you've depicted below) because they will invariably act upon the setting in such a way that will render their goals unreachable (ENDSTATE - TPK).

I ran a campaign using GURPS with two PCs. They played criminals, members of the Thieves Guild in the City State of the Invincible Overlord. Basically just brutes. One thing led to another a couple of session in and they wound up killing the local gang leader when they were not supposed to. When the Guild Lieutenant came around looking for them, they killed him too. At this point they decided what the hell and started working up the guild hierarchy one by one. Executed their plans quite well and more importantly they caught the guild in a way that left them flat-footed for a while.

Finally they done enough that the guildmaster decided to call a truce and invite them in as lords of the thieves guild. The players did a lot of things right but what they didn't do is build up a following. I roleplayed the negotiations and was able to convince the players that they had a deal and meet with the guild leadership to formalize their place. They walked into his chamber and were killed.

It was pretty much as brief and brutal as you imagined. Now I know players through the decades who would have not taken that well. But for these two players, when the final confrontation ensued they knew how they were played and that they walked into a trap. And death was the only outcome.

Why was death the only outcome, because the player killed somebody who was important to the guildmaster. Done it a way that there no coming back for the NPC.

Some would be critical of this. Say that as a referee I should have handled that confrontation differently. All I can say that the players had ample opportunities to choose different courses of action that would have led to a different outcomes. There was tipping point where they figured (wrongly in hindsight) to go for it all and they came up short. Mostly because to the end they were lone wolf operators for the most part.

So one of a few things (or both) happened here. I'm going to go back to my (multi-dimensional) Pictionary as shorthand:

1) The GM drew too opaque a picture that it was indecipherable.

2) The GM drew a sufficiently transparent picture but the players did not play skillfully.

3) All of the moving parts of drawing and deciphering in multiple dimensions over x period of time was more cognitive load than the players could manage in their attempt to play skillfully.

4) The players deciphered but didn't care about the fallout. They wanted to break stuff and when all you've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

From the looks of it, your collective post-mortem led you to the conclusion that things went the way they went because of (2) above, yes?

Can you talk about a time where (1), (3), (4) were in play and things went south because of it/them?

Ok so if I read your post right we are talking about.

• It about the Score a shorthand for a heist or something similar.
• A target is selected
• An approach is selected
• Once an approach is taken, a detail is selected.
• Question and discussion follows the object of which is to determine the number of dice in the Engagement which starts out the heist.
• The Engagement roll is made determine how well the Score starts out.

And this is where it ends in your example. I am a bit disappointed that you are describing how Blade in the Dark is played in general. Not a specific instance of actual play like I did. But I can work with this as while it is not a specific situation is a ingle narrow situation, the heist. Heists are something that occurs in my campaign as well.


I have players do the following

The player decides to pull off a heist in pursuit of their goal. I don't have a say in this.

The player select a target using their knowledge of the setting. I don't have a say in this.

An approach is selected. Unlike Blades in the Dark the players in my campaign are not constrained by a menu of choices. Instead they use their knowledge of the setting craft a approach tailored to the situation. I don't have a say in this.

Each approach has to have a detail is where there is a major difference. In general players know many of the details prior to the decision to do the heist by virtue of their knowledge of the setting. Here the detail are created after the decision that the group is going to play Blades in the Dark and create the experience of a heist movie. Another difference that the details are discovered not created on the fly. Through a combination of experience and out of game discussion I have an idea of what the player are considering doing and prepare accordingly if I don't have the details already.

Next the discussion of the dice (modifiers) to the Engagement. This also a major difference with my approach. In my campaign every step is played out in resolved in the same way as if the players were there in a virtual reality as their character. When playing OD&D over GURPS the steps may be handled in more detail or in a more abstract way but the steps are still played out. Also in Blades in the Dark there is no chance that the heist will be avoided.

The goal of the mechanics is just to see where in the heist the remaining steps start off yet. The assumption is that the heist will commence. In contrast in my approach, discovery of the details or more commonly the evaluation of the detail may result in the group not interested in commencing the heist. Which is OK because the point of the campaign is not to execute a heist. A heist in my campaign is just a means to an end of achieving some player's goal.

Which is another a major difference between my campaigns and Blades in the Dark. In my campaign the players can do anything that their character are capable of. They can find a dungeon and explore (Dungeon World), they can wander the ruins of a fallen empire of magic (Apocalypses World), they can plan out a heist (Blades in the Dark) within the same campaign and the same setting.

My view while the approach works for people, the actual implementations are so narrow in scope that the players wind up with less agency than my "traditional" campaign. Once the group embarks with Blades in the Dark the expectation is that the group will play out a heist to it conclusion. In all the session I been involved with or witnessed anything else (romance, exploration of the setting, etc) was incidental to getting on with the heist. The same with Dungeon World and other games with a similar approach.

Sure it great to get up an going with little prep and with everybody pitching, the price seems to be reduced scope, with agency reduced accordingly.

And to wrap this part of. I don't get to pick the details the player choose focus on either.

Some of this is correct. However, on the whole, there is some significant misapprehension of how Blades in the Dark works here. I don't know if you ran the game of Blades that you played or just played in it, but your takeaway is pretty wanting in terms of clarity and accuracy.

Before I go further, games like Blades and Dogs are thematically/premise-focused, yes. They are not "kitchen sink games." It seems odd (and this isn't the first time I've encountered this) to talk about "scope as agency reduction" in any given game in the same way that certain D&D GMs will chafe if someone says "where are my pistols or plasma cannons?" Or, much more controversial, "my D&D Fighter is not mythically-capable...the 13th level spellcaster can do a, b, c, d, e, f, g, etc whle I can only do x and y...this scope reduction is agency reduction."

All games constrain scope of permissible action declarations and all games constrain scope of genre tropes and attendant conflict.

And I would say (very confidently) that scope without forensic examination means very little. You can have all the scope in the world yet not have sufficient agency. The inverse is also true. You can have dramatically constrained scope and simultaneously have enormous agency within the confines of the scope.

Use my (multi-dimensional) Pictionary above. You can have a D&D game that alleges to have all the scope in the world. But if (2) or (3) seep into play such that gamestates start to become perturbed by it, then the players start to go the route of (4) because they're frustrated and then GM starts to deploy Force (using their exclusive access to all of the GM-facing aspects of play; unrevealed backstory to execute blocks or reign the players in or modifying DCs or action resolution results)...how much actual agency do they have?

In my opinion, (2) and (3) and GM Force are the biggest threats to agency loss in the type of D&D you're talking about. I've been running games for 36 years. I've sat in on (not played...but sat in on to see how the sausage is made and then discussed with the GMs afterward) 100s of hours of play where any 1 of those 3 things become inputs on play. Alleged "Scope" does not make up for it.

Now frame the below Blades play excerpt (which parallels yours) in terms of (1), (2), (3), (4) and GM Force. None of those things are a threat to play EVER in a game of Blades. The fact that they're not a threat is an enormous social burden off of all of the participants at the table. And that works hand-in-hand with "perceived agency" which is every bit as important as "actual agency." When the two of those are basically 1:1 at any given moment of play, its a different experience.

---

Blades is structured with 3 phases of play:

• Information Gathering/Free Play
• Score
• Downtime

In the 3rd instantiation of this Crew (these players liked the ideas of these characters and wanted to see if they could ascend to the top of the Duskvol hierarchy with them), they had made their way to Tier 2. Tier, like all things in Blades and games of its kind, is Player-facing. Not GM-facing. Punching above your weight has consequences. The Position of many Action Rolls will be Desperate which comes with significant Complications upon failure. Punching above your belt and dealing with a Magnitude 4 (this equates to Tier) Demon is something else entirely.

The PCs had been antagonizing (and worse) the Circle of Flame (Tier 3 - refined secret society of antiquarians and scholars w/ one of their leadership being a Demon in disguise) since the end of Tier 0 before they became Tier 1. Recently, they had been on the warpath (as you describe your PCs), stealing items from the Circle, then smuggling them to auctioneers or private buyers, conjuring and bartering with spirits for reconnaissance, then putting it out into the city through the underworld and journalists that the Circle of Flame's Centuralia Club (a speak-easy featuring innocuous supernatural entertainment for high-society in rundown Six Towers) was actually run by a Demon.

This was achieved through several of all 3 aspects of play (including Longterm Downtime Projects). All of the machinery of resolution broadly and specifically Player-facing.

So the last Social Score (to convince high society to eschew going to the Centuralia Club) reduced Faction with the Circle of Flame to put the PC Crew At War with them. This has significant (and Player-facing) fallout:

- 3: War. This faction will go out of its way to hurt you even if it’s not in their best interest to do so. They expect you to do the same, and take precautions against you. When you’re at war with any number of factions, your crew suffers
+1 heat from scores, temporarily loses 1 hold, and PCs get only one downtime action rather than two. You can end a war by eliminating your enemy or by negotiating a mutual agreement to establish a new status rating.

Before the final Gambit, we had to resolve Downtime:

• They only get one apiece (rather than 2) due to War.
• The Lurk Acquired an Asset (Goggles to protect himself from terror at the demonic visage...the Whisper already has protections against this).
• The Whisper primed the Ritual to reveal the Demon's true form.

On the Information Gathering/Free Play phase, the PCs gathered intel on when (a) all 7 Leaders of the Circle of Flame would be at the Centuralia Club and (b) convince enough civilians to go so as to incentivize the remaining 6 Leaders to confront the revealed Demon. A séance and big party the following evening.

With that done, its onto the Linked Scores to finally resolve the conflict/War (their goal was to reveal the Demon to the other 6 Leadership of the Circle and then parley with them to destroy the Demon, the total of which leading to a new Faction Status of +1 (Helpful) due to the Crew helping literally uncover the Demon in their midst.

OCCULT Score (1st of 2 Linked) - Engage a supernatural power. Detail: The ritual.
SOCIAL Score (2nd of 2 Linked) - Negotiate, bargain, or persuade. Detail: The social connection.

We tally up the bonuses for the initial Engagement Roll (including a cohort that will help finish the Ritual) > Roll > frame the scene > Set up a pair of Linked Clocks (one for the 1st Score and then one for the 2nd after that one is complete).

Everything is Player-facing here. Everything.

All GM moves are constrained by codified rules and binding principles.

Both Engagement Rolls. Every Position and Effect negotiated. Every Action Roll (which the player's pick). Every tick of the Clocks (and how much). Every deployment of Special Abilities and Loadout, Devil's Bargain, Assistance, Flashback, Push Yourself, Protect, Set Up, Lead a Group Action, Resistance, Special Armor. The way Consequences and Effects emerge action resolution and the way the fiction evolves and the way the evolving gamestate orbits around the evolving fiction.

All Player-facing, all codified by rules and bound by explicit principles.

Score 1 is successful as the Clock is filled and the Demon is revealed. The Whisper uses their Special Ability Tempest (powerful elemental magic) to keep the Demon mildy under control/at bay as all hell breaks loose in the club. Civilians run for the exits/cover. The Lurk then initiates the Social Score and tries to convince the 6 to help defeat the Demon; wrest control of the Circle of Flames. Things go well initially, but eventually, the Whisper (after using their Special Armor and several Resistance Rolls to resist supernatural Complications) fills their last Stress box. They're out of the scene and going to accrue a Trauma if this doesn't end in a complete wipe. Which it nearly did. But through deft Flashback usage and great rolling, the Lurk and the Occultist Cohort were able to escape with their passed out companion as the Centuralia Club went up in an inferno.

So no TPK. But now we have to resolve what happened. The game has Fortune Rolls for this.

The Demon is Tier 4 so 4 dice. However, the Whisper wrecked it with Tempest (nearly defeating it) so -1 d for Major Disadvantage.

The Circle of Flames is Tier 3 so 3 dice. They're all used to dealing with the supernatural so no Major Disadvantage here for the nature of the enemy. However, 2 of their numbers were killed in the ensuing calamity as the ceiling collapsed onto them with a massive light fixture (the Lurk tried a daring effort against Desperate Position and Limited Effect to tackle all 3 out of the area, but could only save 1). So -1d for Major Disadvantage.

Opposing rolls = Demon 4-5 (Partial Effect) and Circle of Flames 1-3 (Little Effect).

We come to the conclusion that this means 2 things. 1 good for the PCs and 1 bad. The Demon has destroyed the club, all assets and, for all intents and purposes the Circle of Flames. They are no longer At War. The Demon endured, will reconstitute itself an 8 tick Faction Clock (checked for ticks each Downtime), and will be set on nothing less than the Crew's destruction once its reconstituted.

This is a Linked Score and both must be successful for Payoff. Because that isn't the case, they get neither Rep nor Coin. They get a RIDICULOUS amount of Heat (11) because of all of the particular fallout (again, codified). This increased their Wanted Level.

Now this is not a TPK like in your game. What happened here was extremely complex with an ENORMOUS amount of fallout for the PCs. Losing a Score starts a negative feedback loop. Wanted Level increase increases peril/fallout. The Whisper has just gained their 2nd Trauma (4 and you're retired/dead) and both PCs took level 2 Harm with the Whisper also taking Level 1 Harm. And the Lurk ate a bunch of Stress. And they've got a ticking timebomb of a Demon. And they don't gain Ally status with the Circle of Flames.

Really bad situation.

---

Now when I look at the above play excerpt from my Blades game, I know that even if I instantiated this scenario 100 more times, none of any of 1-4 would come into play to negatively impact (a) scope, (b) the perception of agency, or (c) actual agency.

There is a ton of scope and the chips are absolutely stacked against them (the average Blades game is profoundly more dangerous/short than your average D&D game). The players perceive all of the actual agency that they have at every moment within every unit of play. This is never under question for them. And the agency that they have to (i) know the game always orbits about their dramatic needs, (ii) the can skillfully play to affect desired outcomes by managing/leveraging/interfacing with the longterm resource/asset/faction/advancement/unit of pressure/threat game, (iii) they can skillfully play to position themselves into making desirable (which shouldn't always read as "optimal") risk: reward action declarations, and (iv) none of this will ever not be Player-facing.

Now besides the reality that I'm sure you would find running/playing Blades unpalatable, what do you think about the above with respect to Scope, the confident affirmation that none of 1-4 above would ever be a part of any instantiation of a like scenario, and what that says about Agency?