Let's talk about "plot", "story", and "play to find out."

[Artamo]

Perhaps it is just that that the GM needs to make up so much stuff on the spot (complications and stuff) that it is appealing to outsource some of that to the players. Also I think the vagueness of the skills and the players trying to justify why certain skill will solve the situation already opens the door for it.

This is probably what happened to us. Our GM had to describe a failure or a complication, and started soliciting for ideas, and I think that’s just the way we thought it worked after awhile. I’ve also seen a lot of that skill justification issue in various games (not just in FitD games):

Player: “I’m going to use this ability to succeed in this skill test.”

GM: “Okay, that ability doesn’t seem to be related to that skill. How do you justify or rationalize that?”

Player posits a couple of ideas but even he is not fully convinced. He was just fishing.

GM maybe throws him a bone and comes up with a rationale that works or says there really isn’t one.

Me, as a player watching that play out - there’s no story being generated there. It was as mechanical as if two people were discussing spell rules or combat mechanics. It feels like someone having a hammer and trying to find a nail everywhere they look.

 

[zakael19]

Yeah, I do not agree on this being the case at all.

Ok! I mean, people talk about GM forward OSR play as being totally obvious and easy to do and I bounce off it hard for a variety of reasons so like, got it that different people have different gaming preferences.

But.

Lets rewrite a couple of Actions.

"When you entangle a target in close combat so they can't easily escape, Roll Skirmish."

This is pretty obvious, right? You're in close combat, and you're trying to keep them there (and probably win).

Lets compare to Wreck.

"When you unleash savage force, roll Wreck."

The text here says "yeah, we can see that you might want to use this in close combat, and you could? Maybe? But it's not really fighting and it might be a lot harder to pull off - skirmish is probably want you want here."

But then you figure out that no, I'm not trying to like, fight them. I want to actually just smash into the knot of Bluecloaks and ideally send them flying so my crew can get past. I'm not skirmishing, in that my goal isn't to fight people - the effect is "you bowl the blue cloaks over and they have to pull themselves together" but teh position is probably Desperate - you're facing a bunch of folks with swords and guns with your body and a hammer or something (see: a literal example on p181 of how Wreck isn't ideal for fighting).

So the absolute core idea is to get a player to say what their character does that makes interesting fiction. And sometimes accept that it's not with your best stats because failure is often interesting (Player Best Practices: Don't Be a Weasel / Go Into Danger, Fall in Love with Trouble).

Finally, p170 of the core book forward has way more detailed discussions of what an Action is, isn't, and what different Positions look like then I've seen in the vast majority of TTRPGs.

 

[hawkeyefan]

So it is not about trying to use tinker in combat (though it certainly could be justified too,) but whether to use hunt, prowl, finesse, skirmish or wreck. They are all combat skills and the difference is mostly flavour. So you just try to describe the thing so that the best skill applies. Same with overlapping social skills. It is pretty obvious to me that overlapping skills with vaguely defined boundaries will lead to this.

See… “they are all combat skills” is what I think is off. And also “you just try to describe the thing so that the best skill applies” seems like the fictional situation in play doesn’t matter all that much.

Is the character up close and personal, facing off with their opponent? Why would it be anything but Skirmish?

Did the character sneak up on a guard, undetected? Why would it be anything other than Prowl?

Is the character sniping from a removed position? Why not Hunt?

Finesse and Wreck are even more situational… they rarely if ever come up in combat in the games I’ve been a part of. I think Finesse was used in a formal duel and Wreck was used to sabotage a structure which led to targets being killed… but I wouldn’t really classify that as combat.

Again… I think this very much speaks to a misalignment with player mindset and player best practices. If I was GMing for this group, I’d definitely ask to have a discussion to address this.

 

[Fenris-77]

I've never had any issues with the BitD skills. If a player is edge-casing they can but it'll lower position and or effect.

I'd agree with @hawkeyefan - there aren't five combat skills. There is one core combat skill (skirmish) and some others that can situationally be used in combat when that makes sense in the situation.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Where I think my play reports might lack some detail is in combat. Here's an excerpt from a report of a D&D 5E game in which I tried to include as much detail as I felt was warranted:

This brought to mind that a whole lot of fights in D&D are "second unit" fights - the sort of fight scene is handed over to the second unit director to shoot with some basic notes to make something interesting and flashy out of, and the story resumes after the fight is done. Yours wasn't one of those (two captured, some fled will both have Consequences) but fights where some NPCs end up dead, no PCs end up dead, and basically nothing was learned during the fight is I'd have said the default for post-Gygax combat.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I've never had any issues with the BitD skills. If a player is edge-casing they can but it'll lower position and or effect.

I'd agree with @hawkeyefan - there aren't five combat skills. There is one core combat skill (skirmish) and some others that can situationally be used in combat when that makes sense in the situation.

Yeah, I think lowering Position and/or Effect is something that’s missing when I see complaints like this. The book provides a page or more of examples along the line of “you might use Tinker, but Wreck would be better”. I’ve definitely offered different Position/Effect when a player suggests some alternate action.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

@hawkeyefan @zakael19 the situations on the game are not limited to the handful of examples in the book, and due the intentional overlap of the skills, it often is not obvious what is the "correct" skill to use. And of course what is happening in the fiction is influenced by the players, so if I have great prowl I will obviously describe my attacks as moving stealthily behind the enemy when they're distracted by the other character or something else and backstabbing them etc.

And yes, this could affect the position or effect* and probably should more than in our game it does. But the fact of the matter is that this ambiguity is intentionally built in the system, so it seems to me it is intentional that these unclear situations happen constantly and the player can describe their action so that they can use the better skill.

(*And then we of course are in cost benefit analysis of whether it is better to roll with more dice with desperate or something. Which seems like legit gameplay but also slows things down.)

Like if the intent is not for this happen, then don't make the skills ambiguous and let the GM just declare what needs to be rolled!

Like a lot of people here seem to think that people should just play this game blind, not seeing the obvious incentives built in the rules. Same with stress and heat. There are obvious strategies for managing them and mechanics whose sole purpose is to let you do so effectively. So if we are not supposed to do this and just roll the dice and not try to avoid bad stuff happening to our characters, why are such mechanics in the game? Besides, I just do not think that most people can be so dispassionate about their characters and not take obvious avenues to prevent them from being maimed, killed or imprisoned.

 

[zakael19]

@hawkeyefan @zakael19 the situations on the game are not limited to the handful of examples in the book, and due the intentional overlap of the skills, it often is not obvious what is the "correct" skill to use. And of course what is happening in the fiction is influenced by the players, so if I have great prowl I will obviously describe my attacks as moving stealthily behind the enemy when they're distracted by the other character or something else and backstabbing them etc.

And yes, this could affect the position or effect* and probably should more than in our game it does. But the fact of the matter is that this ambiguity is intentionally built in the system, so it seems to me it is intentional that these unclear situations happen constantly and the player can describe their action so that they can use the better skill.

(*And then we of course are in cost benefit analysis of whether it is better to roll with more dice with desperate or something. Which seems like legit gameplay but also slows things down.)

Like if the intent is not for this happen, then don't make the skills ambiguous and let the GM just declare what needs to be rolled!

Like a lot of people here seem to think that people should just play this game blind, not seeing the obvious incentives built in the rules. Same with stress and heat. There are obvious strategies for managing them and mechanics whose sole purpose is to let you do so effectively. So if we are not supposed to do this and just roll the dice and not try to avoid bad stuff happening to our characters, why are such mechanics in the game? Besides, I just do not think that most people can be so dispassionate about their characters and not take obvious avenues to prevent them from being maimed, killed or imprisoned.

Idk man, playing like that is ignoring the Best Practices that are supposed to help the players bind their instrumental play to a degree. If your group is unable to do so, Blades isn’t a good match.

(Also Skulking doesn’t work in a swirling skirmish? But if somehow the running fight has elements where you can hide and have a fellow player set you up by slowly maneuvering them to where you’re hiding then cool! You’ve done it)

Edit: anyway, this back and forth about FITD play is probably pointless, and re-occurs across the internet.

 

[Fenris-77]

Idk man, playing like that is ignoring the Best Practices that are supposed to help the players bind their instrumental play to a degree. If your group is unable to do so, Blades isn’t a good match.

(Also Skulking doesn’t work in a swirling skirmish? But if somehow the running fight has elements where you can hide and have a fellow player set you up by slowly maneuvering them to where you’re hiding then cool! You’ve done it)

Yup, that's a great way to not have fun playing Blades IMO. But if it works for someone else, great. It's no example of how the game is supposed to work though, that's for sure.

 

[FrogReaver]

There's a big difference between giving agency towards what kind of scene will be presented versus how the scene will be resolved. Many games and playstyles give the former, far less the latter.

Is there? I mean the argument against trad DMs goes like, since DM can set up the scene however he wants that power means he can put his finger on the scales of particular outcomes, thus taking away player agency.

It seems to me it’s already acknowledged in the criticism of the trad playstyle that the power to present a scene comes with defacto power around the resolution of said scene (even if said power isn’t absolute).