Why Blades in the Dark feels less swingy than d20 – and why the bell curve (and variance) aren't the main reason

Old Fezziwig said:

We usually trade out of Controlled position for better Effect, but I really don't have a problem with Controlled as long as the situation changes noticeably on failure. If the result of failure is nothing happens, why bother rolling? It's not the most interesting Position, but it's okay here and there.

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Yeah, like a huge swathe of players in my experience when we stick with the default of Risky/Standard playing with either P or E just doesn't come up much and the game flows nice and smoothly. But I don't enjoy the entire mechanical discussion portion at all! I think the clarity about things that Harper introduced is incredible, but the process is very meh (and tbh, the text generally reinforces that most of the game should be played at Risky/Standard unless the player is pushing hard into daredevil territory, which has consequences on either side).

zakael19 said:

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We get bad results more than 75% of the time, no matter how many dice are in on the thing. It's seriously Stepping on Rakes: The Role Playing Game.

prabe said:

We get bad results more than 75% of the time, no matter how many dice are in on the thing. It's seriously Stepping on Rakes: The Role Playing Game.

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Deep Cuts / Threat Roll fixes this

My experience with the system is very different! It’s a tale of the characters succeeding, but being ground away.

zakael19 said:

Deep Cuts / Threat Roll fixes this

My experience with the system is very different! It’s a tale of the characters succeeding, but being ground away.

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My experience is that it's the tale of the characters persistently failing to get anywhere, unable to do anything without making multiple other things worse, while being ground to dust. Fun!

prabe said:

My experience is that it's the tale of the characters persistently failing to get anywhere, unable to do anything without making multiple other things worse, while being ground to dust. Fun!

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Was Rich the GM? Because I think this is also the sort of thing where different table consensus on how the tenor of the game is going to go and the general consequences the GM picks (and simply the fact that Deep Cuts removes "failure" as the core test on obstacles) are going to have a huge swing.

When I ran Blades for folks it was nothing like what you're suggesting at all!

zakael19 said:

Was Rich the GM? Because I think this is also the sort of thing where different table consensus on how the tenor of the game is going to go and the general consequences the GM picks (and simply the fact that Deep Cuts removes "failure" as the core test on obstacles) are going to have a huge swing.

When I ran Blades for folks it was nothing like what you're suggesting at all!

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Yeah, he's the GM. And I'm enjoying it more than I probably make it sound. I haven't bothered with Deep Cuts, but I get the sense it changes a lot of the choices at the heart of the game. There will of course be mixed opinions on that.

prabe said:

but I get the sense it changes a lot of the choices at the heart of the game.

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The single biggest thing that the Threat Roll does is change the focus of the actual rolling from testing success at an Action to how well you avoid the Threats. It’s not that big of a change if the game is already running along the lines of Harper’s framing in the set of videos he’s released over the last few years.

Instead the relentless focus is on the costs to the characters. Sure, you can get what you want here (Effect); but the threats are A & B - how do you avoid them?

Incidentally, this kinda changes the OP’s probability set because once you’re adding a second threat you’re in Otherkind Dice probability where you’re buying outcomes with the pool you get.

I much prefer the rhythm of conversation you get from this framing, and the character beats I got out of it.

Old Fezziwig said:

My joke about my bad luck notwithstanding, thinking about it more, I'm not sure that I agree with this if I'm reading it correctly. I tend to view the reading of position and effect as being entirely about consequences. How much am I willing to risk so my little dude can get what he wants? How aggressive does he want to be, based on his skill set? Is now the time to take a big swing? A 1-3 on a roll with Controlled/Limited is still going to be a failure -- my little dude won't get what he wants, and there'll be consequences. They just won't be catastrophic. And it won't be a partial success -- the situation will change somehow and need to be reassessed and addressed.

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Thanks for the reply.
I think I wasn't clear enough in my original post.When I talked about the "rightward shift of outcome labels", I was only referring to the vocabulary / naming of the results, not to the actual mechanical consequences or probabilities.To put it simply:

• What would be a Critical Miss in PF2e/D&D often becomes a normal Failure in Blades.
• What would be a normal Miss in PF2e/D&D often becomes a Partial Success in Blades.
• Success and Critical Success stay roughly the same.

So out of the four possible outcomes, Blades ends up with three positively-named results (Partial Success, Success, Critical Success) and only one negatively-named result (Failure).I'm not claiming that the actual probabilities change dramatically through this, nor that a 1-3 magically turns into a Partial Success mechanically. I'm only pointing at the shift in wording/labels and how that affects the player's perception and the emotional weight of the outcomes.
Does that make my point clearer?

zakael19 said:

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Thank you for the graphic — it's excellent and shows exactly the kind of fixed templates I was talking about.

What I find interesting is how similar the edge probabilities actually are. At 3–4 dice, Blades already reaches failure rates of ~6–12.5% and critical success rates of ~7–13%, which is quite close to the 5% / 10% ranges you typically see in PF2e when using Success with a Margin / 4 degrees of success.The big difference is that in PF2e you have one smooth, continuously shiftable curve (every +1 moves everything by exactly 5%), while in Blades you jump between these discrete, fixed templates.

Without having these templates ready to hand, it's very hard to intuitively grasp the real probabilities in Blades. You're mostly forced to estimate or feel your way through it — which is probably one reason why the system feels so different in play.

Again, thanks for the visual — it makes the point much clearer.