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

[hawkeyefan]

It is not a huge issue in practice, only a mild annoyance. Mostly it is now just the GM deferring to the player on this, to avoid bogging down the game, though discussions still happen sometimes. Which is fine, but sometimes I feel it diminishes the point of different skills.

Okay, if it's only a mild annoyance, then hey, keep on keeping on. But I would say when discussing the game, just keep in mind that what you're experiencing isn't uniform... if you feel like it's a "writers room" it's less about the text.

And like I said, as a GM I would just houserule the skill list completely and reassert the GM final-say on the matter. But I also fully understand why our GM is not doing this as this is their first campaign using this system.

Sure... I think there's a lot going on in Blades. And it takes some time to really get it to the point where it works really well and play remains challenging and engaging for all. Like anything, it takes time and experience. What makes it challenging is that I think many folks expect that their previous RPG experience is going to make it easier for them to run Blades... but often, previous experience may actually work against them a bit. Nothing that can't be overcome or dealt with, but it's there.

I still do not understand why it is designed this way though. Like most of the design decision in this game I get. Sometimes they might not be the ones I would make, but I see the value which they add. For this I don't.

BTW, and somewhat unrelatedly, one thing I am rather surprised this game lacks is some sort of circles/contacts/etc dice mechanic. I think it would benefit from it. Like you have that one ally you choose at character creation and you have background and stuff, but I think some of this could be gamified a bit more. Like for my low-class underground criminal junkie character I would like to have some sort of dice pools to represent his criminal and street contacts that could be rolled when seeking information or other aid from them. Similarly our noble could have some sort of dice pool for his upper-class contacts, our scientist for her academia contacts etc.

I don't disagree with you. In the games I've played, we've kind of just assumed that your background and the fact that characters are (or at least, tend to be) long time residents of the city... so they should have a network of friends and associates on whom they can rely. If a roll is needed, generally, it'd be Consort. If it's more about the contact's ability, then I'd go with 1d for a competent person and 2d for an expert (per the cohort rules).

We also tend to add new Friends and Rivals to the lists as they are introduced or made in play. There's no reason to keep those lists to only one entry on each.