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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Fenris-77" data-source="post: 8169730" data-attributes="member: 6993955">I'm going to throw out an example from Blades here because, first, I'm re-reading it for design purposes, and second, there's on bit of the rules that really captures the idea of putting decision making in the hands of the players. Actions in Blades have a two part rubric that determines how easy and effective they will be. This is the bit about the Blades mechanics that mystifies a lot of new players, so bear with me.First, you have position which doesn't determine the level of effect, but rather the scale of consequences for failure. Keep in mind here that Blades is a 'player rolls' game, so bad guys don't attack PCs, that part of melee (just as an example) is determined by the success of the player's roll. Failure means the PC takes damage, Success with conditions means both sides take some damage, and complete success means the enemy takes damage. Position can be Controlled, Risky, or Desperate with the default being Risky (roll the dice only when there are consequences that matter etc etc). In melee, to keep using the same example, you're looking at lesser harm, harm, and severe harm as consequences in those three positions. It's not super important exactly what those mean, the labels speak for themselves for our purposes. Position is determined by the GM based on the fiction, but the players have some resources they can choose to spend to add dice to their pool once it's set. However, it's the second part of the rubric I really wanted to talk about, which is Effect.Effect is also set into three levels, which are Great, Standard, and Limited. This is also baselined by the GM, who has three categories to base their decision on - Potency, Quality, and Scale. The base roll in Blades is Risky-Standard. Here's where things get interesting, at least for me. Let's take Scale as an example. A Warrior decides to charge a band of 20 thugs, sword waving. Well, that was silly, 20-1 isn't great, so the effect there is going to limited (and probably Desperate position as well). However, and this is the bit I really wanted to drill into, is that player choices can change this without rolls. Lets say that same Warrior decides to defend a choke point so only a few thugs can get to him at a time. That would change his Effect to Standard, which in mechanical terms doubles his effectiveness. No rolls, just tactical thinking, and you success doubles. That's a huge carrot, and one that makes complete sense within the fiction. Of course, you can make the same tactical move in any game, but the results for doing so are nowhere nearly as stark and obvious. I'm going to back this up and get a little more general. What this example shows is that by engaging with the fiction, and declaring actions that makes sense within that fiction, a Blades player can dramatically shift the odds in his favor, and in a way that doesn't quite get matched by other games I can think of. This isn't about better or worse, just about agency. The same logic applies to any test in Blades, not just combat, so framing on the part of the players is crucial and incentivized to a large degree. You can't always do this in Blades of course, it has to make sense within the fiction as presented by the GM., there's no get out jail free card here.If you compare that to D&D or it's OSR children, just to pick an opposed rules set that I'm intimately familiar with, there's is nothing in terms of framing and approach to situations that carries the same weight. Anyway, this isn't a Blades is better post by any means, I just wanted to throw out an example of how one rules system really makes great hay out of the players' interaction with the fictional framing in a way that allocates a lot of agency to the players.</blockquote>

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