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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 8151495" data-attributes="member: 16814">No, this is utterly incorrect, and you've missed some key parts of the explanation.  Not that I didn't explain them -- you failed to attach significance to them because you're operating from the point of view of the play your used to.In this example, the painting started as mere color -- a descriptive element to reinforce the theme of a haunted, abandoned manor house.  It was the player's interest that made it more, and the player's choices that determined how that fiction would flow.  When the player asked after the painting, I asked what they were interested in.  They wanted something their friend at the University would value, and that friend liked occult things, so only at this point did the painting begin to resolve into something more that color -- it was the player's intent that did this.  Since the player was in the process of trying to switch their vice from gambling (fighting) to obligation (University), this was a major thing for the PC and so requires testing if you're following the game rules and principles.  Had the player stated they were looking for something valuable to pawn, then we'd have gone down that route, and I might have said sure, 2 coins, but it's bulky, you'll have to ditch some equipment, mark 1 slot and you have a 2 coin treasure.  But, no, the player wanted something occult, and they wanted it to be significant enough to move towards their goal of switching vices (had this succeeded, the player could have used it for a few free slices of that particular clock).  THEN the player choose how they were going to tell, and took a very risky action of a 0 dice Attune attempt -- directly reaching out to the ghost field, a dangerous activity in better conditions, to do so.  Why did they do this?  Because this was important to that character and the player enjoys taking risks (Blades is almost like enabling this player!).  So, this entire line was led by the players choices.  Change one of those choices and the result changes, dramatically.As for different consequences, yes, I could have, but I was bound to honor the intent of the action -- the action the player chose involved the ghost field, so consequences should flow from this.  Further, this was one of the first actions of the score and the Engagement roll had been very successful, so I was bound to not increase risk or consequence without first shifting the position, which is why there was a step between the painting going hostile and the player suffering any consequence.  I think I did explain this poorly -- the player's intent with their action wasn't to flee, but to successfully escape the power of the painting while still maintaining the painting.  They tried to rip it from the wall under the theory this would disrupt the effect if it wasn't grounded into the haunted house's power.  And, had they succeeded, that's exactly what would have happened.  But, they failed, so they didn't rip it from the wall nor did they escape, and Harm was leveled.  Had they just chosen to run and abandon their intent with the painting, that feels to me like a sufficient failure already -- they didn't get what they want, but they're not hurt.All that said, it is tiring to try to present a play example that illustrates a number of differences from traditional play and have the other side insist that, while they have either no or almost no (a one-shot a few years ago?) experience with the system that they can definitively tell it's just like the games they play.  It's not.  I mean, I run 5e -- we're rotating back to it after the holiday break -- alongside Blades, so maybe, just maybe, I'm in a position to be actually able to note the differences.  It's certainly frustrating to be gainsaid by someone that doesn't even understand the core principle of how Blades play operates on player choices as if they have a better understanding thanks to a one-shot experience a few years ago than I do, who ran it (almost) every week for the last 8 months or so.</blockquote>

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