Help me "get" Forged in the Dark.

[Reynard]

This is also golden advice. Especially the bold part. You'll find lots of new areas where previously as a GM, you might have prepped something ahead of time that would negate the players' intended course of action. In PbtA / FitD, in most cases your job as GM is to adjust the fiction to account for the players' intentions, but then bring the hammer in terms of consequences if they fail.

The bolded part I am not so worried about, because that's not how I run trad games anyway. I am more of a "define a situation to the extent that I can improv off any reasonable choice the players make" style GM. Mostly because I am lazy AF.

 

[innerdude]

I haven't read the whole book yet but I haven't gotten that impression. So far it seems like the players decide what they do and how they do it, the dice decide the results, and the GM interprets the results into the fiction. Or I am as confused as ever.

I think the big point of your thought is in bold. The biggest hurdle as a GM I had to overcome for Ironsworn was to stop immediately negating the "how" just because I had thought of something ahead of time that would make me say, "Oh no, the players can't do that, that's impossible because I already decided X."

FitD tells you to undecide X, make the fiction fit the action declaration, then let the dice, the game principles, and in-moment play discover the consequences.

 

[Reynard]

Also, a total aside: Is FitD and Band of Blades specifically a good fit for Play by Post. My initial impression says it is, but I don't know if there is something I have not encountered yet that would make if not work. if it matters, I would be doing it over a dedicated Discord channel (my favored method of PbP these days).

 

[Reynard]

I think the big point of your thought is in bold. The biggest hurdle as a GM I had to overcome for Ironsworn was to stop immediately negating the "how" just because I had thought of something ahead of time that would make me say, "Oh no, the players can't do that, that's impossible because I already decided X."

FitD tells you to undecide X, make the fiction fit the action declaration, then let the dice, the game principles, and in-moment play discover the consequences.

Okay. That makes sense. I don't generally think that way as a GM anyway, so it hadn't really occurred to me that's what it meant.

 

[Grendel_Khan]

@Reynard Something else to keep in mind with FitD (though it applies to PbtA, too) is that you have a lot more leeway to introduce consequences that, in a trad game, would be a logistical and gameplay nightmare. Adding four enemies to an in-progress combat encounter would be daunting enough in another system, meaning that many more statblocks ready to go, plus all the extra time added to resolving the combat. Or if you threw in an undead dragon, and now you have to worry about a TPK, since in another system that dragon has specific rules and numbers of attacks and usually one way of being dealt with (grinding down its HP or equivalent).

In FitD all of that stuff is just fictional positioning, and can be factored into position, effect, and further consequences, including Harms. So if the dragon attacks and someone says "I'll draw it away, run!" you can resolve that PC's action, without getting into combat turns and stats and everything else. Likewise, adding more enemies just means the overall threat is greater.

I'm saying all this because, to me, FitD and PbtA GMing are maybe 90 percent about coming up with consequences and complications in the moment. That usually means being willing to take the entire scene, session, and maybe campaign in a new direction at any point. But it also means making sure the fiction is really, truly dialed in—not just the immediate fiction in the scene, but what sorts of things happen in this setting, and do the players have a sense of that, so they aren't constantly being caught unawares or asking questions to help define it.

And all of that is dependent on the players having full and consistent buy-in. They have to trust the GM way more, imo, than in a trad game, because the rules will never really do the work of determining what happens. If you say that the risk of drawing that undead dragon away on your own is death—maybe there's basically no cover, nothing to duck or hide behind—and they do it anyway and roll a miss, then they are dead. Now FitD has ways for the player to mitigate that sort of outcome, such as a Resistance roll, or maybe they can burn some special armor. But if they're out of those, or they refuse to use them, or even if using them just turns a lethal injury into a serious, crippling one, they need to accept that you, the GM, have come up with an appropriate consequence. There's no damage roll to shift responsibility to, no failed death save roll, etc.

If that trust and buy-in is there, it can all flow beautifully, and insanely quickly, and the GM can feel increasingly comfortable coming up with consequences and sticking to them. But if you have the kinds of players who aggressively challenge rulings or think they can rules-lawyer their way out of situations—or who are just used to a traditionally adversarial GM-vs.-PCs approach—then it can really fall apart. So the idea of FitD being collaborative is more than a matter of individual play loops or mechanics. It's the whole thing. Swim together or sink apart.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Separately:

It appears that some traditionally GM tasks are divided up amongst players in the Campaign Phase roles. Is that a fair description of how Campaign Phase is supposed to work?

More generally, what are folks experiences with the defined decision making roles in play. Do groups have a hard time with the Commander(?) telling you which mission you are going on and the Marshall(?) telling you which character you get to play?

I’ve only ever GMed three sessions of Band. My group took a hiatus from our regular game and we tried Band for a few sessions. So my actual hands on experience with it is minimal. It’s come up as a possible game to play in the next campaign of both games I’m in, so I’ve been looking at it again recently. I do like it and I think the changes it makes to the Blades rules are interesting.

I do think that two of the key elements of the game are limited choice and hard decisions. I think this is meant to evoke the life if a soldier. You don’t get to decide what you do, you’re ordered to do it. And you need to do it, no matter what.

The Legion roles used in the campaign phase help accomplish this without totally removing player input. Now it just limits certain decisions to specific players. It’s an interesting dynamic, and basically replaces the Downtime phase of standard Blades.

Gotcha. That sounds familiar from reading Blades in the Dark. I wonder if that means that Band is in fact a better choice for me to slide in, because it seems like is hold on to a few more trad ideas?

I think Band is less open in that sense. I mean, the game comes with a map and a predetermined goal to return to Skydagger. So it’s got a more specific premise and a more narrow range of choices for the players.

 

[innerdude]

@Grendel_Khan --- I need about eighteen more heart emojis for that post. Incredibly, dare I say even beautifully well stated.

 

[Ovinomancer]

No, this is an area where Band of Blades differs from Blades in the Dark and many other FitD games. The mission selection is narrowed down to a few choices presented by the GM. Then the player who’s acting as the Commander (I think that’s the legion role) decides which will be the Primary mission and which will be secondary. Any others are ignored, with possible consequences.

The missions are determined randomly. Although depending on the location ofthe Legion, there are also Special Missions specific to that location that can come up.

In standard Blades and many other FitD games, this is not quite how it works. The GM may suggest sometype of score, ormore than one, but the players are also free to come up with their own ideas.

Yup, the GM isn't preparing missions. The Commander lays out the mission they want (Assault, Supply, etc) and it goes from there. This happens at the table, so the concept of prepped missions or the GM presenting missions in a trad sense isn't present. The players tell the GM what they want to do and the GM complicates that.

 

[Reynard]

@Reynard Something else to keep in mind with FitD (though it applies to PbtA, too) is that you have a lot more leeway to introduce consequences that, in a trad game, would be a logistical and gameplay nightmare.[snip]

That's a good point I didn't really consider. I am the GM that would add the undead dragon off the cuff because the fiction "demanded" it, but then we would be in for another two and a half hours of combat.

 

[Reynard]

Yup, the GM isn't preparing missions. The Commander lays out the mission they want (Assault, Supply, etc) and it goes from there. This happens at the table, so the concept of prepped missions or the GM presenting missions in a trad sense isn't present. The players tell the GM what they want to do and the GM complicates that.

That's not what the book says. the book says mission prep is done between sessions.