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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 8153449" data-attributes="member: 16814">Yes, I get you say this.  This is exactly what I thought as well (I provided the quote above).  However, when you play the game, this rapidly becomes obviously incorrect.  You cannot push a Blades game into any preplanned direction without it being blatant.Does the GM affect play with their choices?  Yes, this is trivially obvious.  The issue isn't that the GM has no influence, it's how much influence does the player have?  And, it's very clear that that influence is very much increased in Blades over 5e.  No one has argued that the GM doesn't have any say -- I missed this was your thrust because it hasn't been argued and seems perfectly clear to me that the GM must have at least some say.And I'm telling you this can't actually happen without being blatant.  I mean, you're imagining a mastermind with heavy manipulation skills just to create this hypothetical!  It's silly.Then you've misunderstood the idea behind the Czege Principle.  It applies to games like poker as well.  If one player was able to both set the bet and the result of the hand, this wouldn't be much of a game.  That the player of the game can set the bet (which is what the player can do) and then win that bet in a gamble is what makes it a game.  Being able to win what you wanted isn't a problem -- if you think it is we have some serious differences in what makes for games.  It's being able to say, "this is what I want to win," and then say, "and I win it," that is a problem.The painting wasn't magical because the player examined it.  I'm not sure where you got that.  The painting was of interest because the player examined it.  How that turned out really depended on what the player wanted and if a check was called for.  Look, here's how I thought during that transaction.  The player asked about the painting, and I asked what they were after.  They said they thought it could be something they could take back to their contact at the Uni to buy some forgiveness.  I said, sure, it might be, what do you think they would like?  The player said something occult.  I said, cool, this is the place for it.  How are you going to go about it -- what are you doing?  The player thought they could just take it, and I said, cool, we can establish the value of it to your friend after the score with a fortune roll.  The player thought about that, and decided they wanted to know now instead of just carrying around a potentially worthless painting, so they decided they were going to Attune the ghost field and suss out if the painting had any occult auras or whatever (actually, they first wanted the Whisper to do it, but that was nixed by the player).  So they did, and failed.  I had to deliver a consequence that leaned on the Controlled situation, the nature and intent of the action (Attune to detect auras), and that fit the established fiction of the scene (haunted house).  I did so with a hostile magical portrait.  A successful result could have been a lingering aura of an old, nearly insensate ghost attached to the painting which would be of good value to the PC's Uni contact.If you think that block of play is the player getting to say both what they want and that they get it, then we're, again, worlds apart on our understanding of the basics of what makes a game.</blockquote>

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