Help me "get" Forged in the Dark.

[Ovinomancer]

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).

Not really. Play by chat, better, but there's often a lot of back and forth that happens.

 

[Grendel_Khan]

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?

As I alluded to earlier, BoB can be tough to process, partly because it's a very rigorously structured game. Most FitD games might have more structure than trad games, in the sense of defined phases (downtime phase, mission/score phase, etc.) BoB is a real outlier, though. Other FitD games don't have players playing officers as well as soldiers, or picking from a narrow list of super defined options. By starting with BoB, you're starting (imo) with a kind of advanced and maybe a bit finnicky implementation of the FitD approach.

For example, in Blades in the Dark the players make strategic decisions such as what kinds of upgrades or gangs they want their crew to have, or what specific Claims (such as a Gambling Den) they want to take from an enemy crew. In Scum and Villainy you're deciding what ship upgrades and resources to add. And in both of those you really only have the loop of downtime phase, score phase, and back again. BoB has more phases, more PCs, more strategic decisions, plus a specific path that the campaign takes (narratively and geographically). It's an interesting game, but it's a weird one—almost part RPG, part boardgame, at least to me.

 

[Ovinomancer]

@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.

Great post, but on the trust thing, I come down entirely on the other side -- everything the GM does is transparent as is everything they are supposed to do. You can easily see a thumb on the scales. I think the big difference is that the GM is not supposed to be neutral, but an aggressive pusher of bad things. That's a big shift. FitD GMing isn't adversarial, but it is all about bringing adversity.

 

[Reynard]

As I alluded to earlier, BoB can be tough to process, partly because it's a very rigorously structured game. Most FitD games might have more structure than trad games, in the sense of defined phases (downtime phase, mission/score phase, etc.) BoB is a real outlier, though. Other FitD games don't have players playing officers as well as soldiers, or picking from a narrow list of super defined options. By starting with BoB, you're starting (imo) with a kind of advanced and maybe a bit finnicky implementation of the FitD approach.

For example, in Blades in the Dark the players make strategic decisions such as what kinds of upgrades or gangs they want their crew to have, or what specific Claims (such as a Gambling Den) they want to take from an enemy crew. In Scum and Villainy you're deciding what ship upgrades and resources to add. And in both of those you really only have the loop of downtime phase, score phase, and back again. BoB has more phases, more PCs, more strategic decisions, plus a specific path that the campaign takes (narratively and geographically). It's an interesting game, but it's a weird one—almost part RPG, part boardgame, at least to me.

Interesting. For me, it seems almost like the easier choice for trad gamers because it is so constrained. Like, in a trad game that is a sandbox, there are always players beleaguered by option paralysis. I can only imagine it gets worse when not only CAN they do "anything" but they are also HAVE to. When a friend of mine known for running great BitD con games introduced me and a few friends to it at my request, the tendency from a player standpoint was to respond to GM prompts in a way that wasn't really how things were supposed to go. I feel like that is harder than being given a narrower focus then asked to exercise freedom. You can run around all you want INSIDE the paddock, basically.

 

[hawkeyefan]

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.

Actually in Band, the GM does prepare missions. One of the GM Duties is “Generate Missions”. There are charts and you’re meant to roll on them to determine the nature of eacb mission, the number of missions that are available, and the main elements.

Once all that is set, the missions are presented to the group. The Commander then has to choose a Primary and Secondary mission, and which to ignore.

It’s definitely different than standard Blades in that regard.

 

[Fenris-77]

Not really. Play by chat, better, but there's often a lot of back and forth that happens.

I run and play rather a lot of PbP and I don't think that FitD is a great fit for exactly this reason. The back and forth that happens works really naturally at the table but I think would really drag done in asynchronous PbP. Perhaps with an additional layer of posting conventions it might be OK though. People would need to commit to pretty dense posting in terms of declaration plus options and possibilities. IDK, I'd have to try it, I think.

 

[Ovinomancer]

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

Interesting, because there's zero need for that. I mean, the book can't really dictate when you end or start a session. Mission prep takes a few minutes. Roll mission, roll rewards and costs, figure out some obstacles and go. Everything's going to hinge on the Intel questions (if they ask a question, your answer has to have weight, "not important" because of prep isn't kosher), and then the engagement roll, so the level of detail of prep necessarily needs to be very light.

I mean, let's say you prep 3 obstacles. A d then, in play, things have taken a hard right turn on the first and make the others make no sense. If you've spent hours on prep, that's now pointless. And that hard right turn will be the default rather than the exception, so detailed prep is largely pointless. You need bullets to inspire, at most, and those need to be in very light pencil.

So, between session mission prep may be the suggested session structure, but that's more convenience because there's really not much to prep. The thematic constraints come at the overall structure level, not the prep of the missions.

 

[Grendel_Khan]

Great post, but on the trust thing, I come down entirely on the other side -- everything the GM does is transparent as is everything they are supposed to do. You can easily see a thumb on the scales. I think the big difference is that the GM is not supposed to be neutral, but an aggressive pusher of bad things. That's a big shift. FitD GMing isn't adversarial, but it is all about bringing adversity.

That's a good point. What I should clarify is that if, say, the consequence of an action is that a NPC throws an axe at a PC, there's nothing in the system that says how much damage that knife is going to do. Based on the fiction, the PC's action, and the related roll, it's ultimately up to the GM to figure out just how bad things will be when that axe lands. Likewise, a consequence for a roll might be that a friendly NPC gets killed. No damage roll for them, no saves—it just happens, unless a PC burns resources or uses a Resistance roll to prevent or reduce the consequence. To me, that requires a huge amount of trust in the GM, especially since, as you say, the GM is the aggressive pusher of bad things.

I actually think that, as with PbtA, it's really important for players in FitD games to understand and be interested, upfront, in a game where lots of "bad" outcomes are both welcome and interesting. That, too, is a huge shift from most trad games, where you might all have a laugh over this PC death or that TPK, but you're trying to "beat" the scenario. This is why, for me, I didn't grok FitD till I thought about a certain mode of pulp storytelling—how in something like Star Wars or Indiana Jones nothing goes according to plan, everyone is making rash decisions, and there are consequences for actions that go beyond needing to catch your breath or heal up for a bit. Which isn't to say that all or even most FitD games should be high-pulp swashbuckling affairs—arguably, Blades in the Dark should never be that. But yes, the GM is going to have to hit the PCs again and again, in ways only loosely determined by game mechanics. For that to work, I think players have to really, truly feel like the GM is a fan of the players/PCs, even and especially as they're actively punching them in the face.

 

[Reynard]

Interesting, because there's zero need for that. I mean, the book can't really dictate when you end or start a session. Mission prep takes a few minutes. Roll mission, roll rewards and costs, figure out some obstacles and go. Everything's going to hinge on the Intel questions (if they ask a question, your answer has to have weight, "not important" because of prep isn't kosher), and then the engagement roll, so the level of detail of prep necessarily needs to be very light.

I mean, let's say you prep 3 obstacles. A d then, in play, things have taken a hard right turn on the first and make the others make no sense. If you've spent hours on prep, that's now pointless. And that hard right turn will be the default rather than the exception, so detailed prep is largely pointless. You need bullets to inspire, at most, and those need to be in very light pencil.

So, between session mission prep may be the suggested session structure, but that's more convenience because there's really not much to prep. The thematic constraints come at the overall structure level, not the prep of the missions.

I don't understand this line of argument because it assumes "prep" means "inviolate expectation of what should happen" which... it doesn't, and never really has. It's not "writing a module" it is having a clear idea of the situation to be presented to the PCs. Can you do that improv style? Sure. Is improv style inherently better than thinking it through for an hour? No.

One of the things I find frustrating about these conversations is they often hinge on the worst possible interpretation of "trad" methodologies and present the new ideas -- fiction first, story gaming, whatever the case may be -- as the only solution to the obvious and certain evils of railroading and viking hat GMing. I was hoping to avoid that part of it by asking specific questions.

Anyway, I don't want this thread to turn into a "trad" vs "nu" argument. I am just trying to state my coming-from-trad-perspective so folks understand why I am asking certain questions related to understanding the game style and Band of Blades' specific play assumptions.

 

[Reynard]

That's a good point. What I should clarify is that if, say, the consequence of an action is that a NPC throws an axe at a PC, there's nothing in the system that says how much damage that knife is going to do. Based on the fiction, the PC's action, and the related roll, it's ultimately up to the GM to figure out just how bad things will be when that axe lands. Likewise, a consequence for a roll might be that a friendly NPC gets killed. No damage roll for them, no saves—it just happens, unless a PC burns resources or uses a Resistance roll to prevent or reduce the consequence. To me, that requires a huge amount of trust in the GM, especially since, as you say, the GM is the aggressive pusher of bad things.

So, just to extrapolate the example so I can understand the GM's role in this:

The players on the provision run decide they are going to load up the sacks of grain and pigs in the wagon whether the villagers like it or not. The deserter and his bunch of thugs flex to let the soldiers know they aren't having it.

Now what?

I gather it isn't D&D where you roll initiative and go around the table. The players now say what they want to happen next, and what Action they are taking (individually? collectively?) to make that happen. Based on that, the GM decides how risky that is, which determines the severity of possible consequences?