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

[zakael19]

But if that consequence is just being some abstract clock ticking forwards, then the situation at the moment still is "nothing happens." And if the clock is something that only matters for that score, then it merely encourages you to manage it until you've accomplished enough of your goals and then bail out before the it gets filled, and I doesn't think this creates particularly interesting gameplay. So in general I feel consequences that require you to react at the moment or recontextualise the situation are significantly better for producing compelling fiction and gameplay.

So, if the outcome of a dice roll is ever "nothing happens" in a game like Blades something has gone horribly wrong. In a case where you, say, rolled a 4/5 and the GM says "yeah you get in through the roof but a beam creaks and you see the guards start looking around in confusion, I'm going to start an 'Alerted' clock" lots of things have happened! You're inside (made it past an obstacle); you've got the fiction responding; you've got a concrete indicator of how on edge people are.

There also could be some mechanics that would help the GM with coming up with this stuff, like, you'd have chart for random action scene consequences and social scene consequences and then you would roll and get "betrayal" and that would help you spin the fiction. Though personally I feel this would be way too mechanical and restricting, but I think as some sort of optional extra it might be something that could help some GMs.

You mean like the list of Threats on these quick reference sheets? (pretty much every FITD I've seen has a list of sample consequences on the GM reference, some better then others, games like Songs for the Dusk even have suggestions for purely social Harms and such)

 

[AnotherGuy]

Clocks without context are abstract, sure. Clocks in actual use aren't abstract at all but represent various long-term projects or longer-term situations (both are game elements that escape the scope of 'encounter' or scene'). Once you've adequately described the clock, it's actually quite specific. IDK if that helps any, but that's how they are used.

Thank you. Okay, so I have both types in play.
There is a solitary one without context to the players but I do have clues seeded in play for it to be discovered.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

So, if the outcome of a dice roll is ever "nothing happens" in a game like Blades something has gone horribly wrong. In a case where you, say, rolled a 4/5 and the GM says "yeah you get in through the roof but a beam creaks and you see the guards start looking around in confusion, I'm going to start an 'Alerted' clock" lots of things have happened! You're inside (made it past an obstacle); you've got the fiction responding; you've got a concrete indicator of how on edge people are.

At the moment consequence is “nothing happens,” something only happens if and when the clock is filled, and often it doesn’t. The gameplay becomes clock management via stress and other resources, not very “stolen cars.”

You mean like the list of Threats on these quick reference sheets? (pretty much every FITD I've seen has a list of sample consequences on the GM reference, some better then others, games like Songs for the Dusk even have suggestions for purely social Harms and such)

Those are just lists of examples, which certainly are useful, but I mean something more concrete. Like the mechanic actually telling what happens and what elements must be inserted into the fiction.

 

[zakael19]

At the moment consequence is “nothing happens,” something only happens if and when the clock is filled, and often it doesn’t. The gameplay becomes clock management via stress and other resources, not very “stolen cars.”



Those are just lists of examples, which certainly are useful, but I mean something more concrete. Like the mechanic actually telling what happens and what elements must be inserted into the fiction.

You're rather misusing "nothing happens." What happened is you got the objective of your Action Roll, but there was a consequence: the guards heard something and are more alert. We're representing that notional fiction with a concrete piece of tech: a tick or two on a clock, that when filled says something like "Reinforcements!" or "Alerted!" or whatever. It's a discrete way to show something that's otherwise very abstracted. Just how close are you to the Firewall locking you out of your hacking attempt? 3 ticks out of 6, and hey - if you fail this roll I'm going to tick it to full, what do you do?

The opposite of this would be "you rolled to climb the wall to get inside but failed, you fall back down." Now nothing has happened. No impact on the fiction, no forward progress towards new obstacles, no consequence.

Like the mechanic actually telling what happens and what elements must be inserted into the fiction.

I guess you can get this from some detailed PBTA moves? "On a 10+ you get thing, on a 7-9, you get thing but something else happens, pick 1 from below, on a 6-, bad stuff - you and the GM pick one from the list."

 

[Umbran]

"Harder to pull off based on the fiction." My entire statement was about how we understand the fictional impacts of a desired course of action.

As in like, "so you want to fight a gang of Bluecoats with a dinner knife? I mean, you're good at fighting but that's pretty risky! That's going to be desperate position, and you're going to be at limited effect, maybe you'll bruise them a little."

Nowhere in there am I talking about their dice pool (chance of success), I'm talking about how hard it is to fight a group of guys with swords with your dinner knife.

Blades has set outcomes, it's a PBTA dice pool variant. If your best die is a 6, it's the best outcome (crits on doubles 6s). If it's a 4-5, it's ehhh; and if it's a 1-3 it's bad. Position affects how bad things can be on the 5-; and effect determines what you'll get on the 4+. The odds of success are entirely driven by the dice pool.

The player is going to have a different idea of "success" though. They have some end goal in mind, and are making the move to reach it.

If you set the effect low such that they need to crit to get what they really want, then this is really just setting their effective target number higher.

 

[zakael19]

The player is going to have a different idea of "success" though. They have some end goal in mind, and are making the move to reach it.

If you set the effect low such that they need to crit to get what they really want, then this is really just setting their effective target number higher.

So that discussion is core to the mechanical design of the game and the way in which it's played. The player is always making declarations towards goals, the GM's role is to tell them the Effect (how far towards that goal they'll get based on teh fiction and what they've said). The player then has a litany of ways to affect that Effect statement built into the mechanics, many but not all with costs. It's a very transparent process which is open to table discussion, and no dice are rolled before everybody is clear and you've adjudicated all the potential ways to boost things.

Just as an example: if a player wants to sneak across a wide open yard to get inside a mansion, the GM may say "yeah cool, I'm going to say it's Limited Effect here because of how little cover there is - you might get halfway on a single roll but those guards up there are on lookout." The Player can then go "fair enough! I'm going to mark a Loadout for my Fine Shadow Cloak which boosts my Effect here yeah? Its like mobile concealment and I'll try and flit in the deepest pools by the wall...and I'm going to Push Myself to sprint when the guards look away...so that's Great Effect!"

Blades is a game that is always asking "how much will you pay to get what you want." Properly setting Effect is key to that.

 

[Pedantic]

So that discussion is core to the mechanical design of the game and the way in which it's played. The player is always making declarations towards goals, the GM's role is to tell them the Effect (how far towards that goal they'll get based on teh fiction and what they've said). The player then has a litany of ways to affect that Effect statement built into the mechanics, many but not all with costs. It's a very transparent process which is open to table discussion, and no dice are rolled before everybody is clear and you've adjudicated all the potential ways to boost things.

Just as an example: if a player wants to sneak across a wide open yard to get inside a mansion, the GM may say "yeah cool, I'm going to say it's Limited Effect here because of how little cover there is - you might get halfway on a single roll but those guards up there are on lookout." The Player can then go "fair enough! I'm going to mark a Loadout for my Fine Shadow Cloak which boosts my Effect here yeah? Its like mobile concealment and I'll try and flit in the deepest pools by the wall...and I'm going to Push Myself to sprint when the guards look away...so that's Great Effect!"

Blades is a game that is always asking "how much will you pay to get what you want." Properly setting Effect is key to that.

You're missing the salient point here. It's not what the player wants with this one action, it's the goal the player is pursuing across multiple action declarations that's driving the strategic decision making under discussion. Success is being viewed less atomically than a single act of resolution.

 

[zakael19]

I've always done

You're missing the salient point here. It's not what the player wants with this one action, it's the goal the player is pursuing across multiple action declarations that's driving the strategic decision making under discussion. Success is being viewed less atomically than a single act of resolution.

I can't parse this.

Games like blades in teh dark are very concretely goal oriented: you need to have a declared goal/objective before you can really access the varied mechanics for kicking a score off. Everything you do during play as teh scenes are framed and actions adjudicated should be driving towards that as a team of scoundrels; using the array of mechanics and fiction at hand.

The GM must state the risks and obstacles to the player's success in an open and principled manner, and adjudicate the Position and Effect of the specific methods the players suggest to get around them, and then follow through.That's why teh game gives so many tools to play around with P&E!

 

[hawkeyefan]

But if that consequence is just being some abstract clock ticking forwards, then the situation at the moment still is "nothing happens."

Not really. The ticking of a clock should correspond to something in the fiction. It can just be descriptive, but it aligns with some progression of the situation.

I mean… if the GM in a D&D game said something like “the guards perk up at the sound of your entrance, more alert now than they were before” would you describe that as nothing happens?

Also, there’s no reason a Clock needs to only be temporary. Quite the opposite, I think… having Clocks be in play continuously, requiring attention from the players, is one of the ways to keep the pressure on them. Clocks should progress during Downtime… and may require the use of Downtime Actions to address them… which then taxes that resource.

I think this is the kind of thing that is harder to perceive when first running this game. All the different systems feed into each other and should add up to a high pressure situation for the Crew, where the choice of how to spend DTAs and whether they spend coin for more all become meaningful decisions.

I think the issue might arise because these games ask the GM to invent consequences so often that it might become difficult for GM to make up something interesting constantly, so it is easy to just default to ticking "alarm will be raised" clock or some such. And this of course is a skill issue, and some GM's will be way better at this than others and will have no problems with coming up with cool consequences. But I think design-wise the designer should carefully consider how often the system prompts the GM to come up with such stuff, as I feel rarer, but more impactful consequences is better than frequent but boring ones.

I won’t say that I’ve never had nothing happen on a roll in BitD. I’ve done it. Usually because it becomes clear that the risk was very small… let’s say a 4-5 on a Controlled/Standard roll in a scene where the situation has been otherwise resolved. It might even have been better to not even call for a roll, but there seemed to be some level of risk, even if minor.

But that should be an exception rather than the rule. Given the way the game works on a mechanical level, with the GM not rolling, player rolls are carrying a lot of weight. There should be a feeling when the dice are picked up that things won’t be the same after this roll, either for good or ill.

So a GM for BitD has that as one of their primary roles… the need to come up with interesting complications. Yeah… this can be tough. And it takes some time to get comfortable with it and then improve at it. I've gotten very comfortable with letting the fictional situation dictate what kind of consequences I bring into play. it took me some time to do that… luckily, until I got better at it, the game has some solid ones to default to. Harm and Heat are great for that. I tended to rely too much on Harm early on… but that by no means made the game terrible or anything. It was just a little less dynamic than it might have been otherwise.

Ticking a Clock is another default way to levy a consequence. Ticking a Clock shouldn’t feel like nothing happening, and if it does, I’d work to figure out why and see what I could do about it. If I found there was no way to correct this… some idiosyncratic trait shared by all the players that simply prevented them from seeing a Clock as a progressing situation… then I’d try to rely on Clocks less often.

 

[zakael19]

I won’t say that I’ve never had nothing happen on a roll in BitD. I’ve done it. Usually because it becomes clear that the risk was very small… let’s say a 4-5 on a Controlled/Standard roll in a scene where the situation has been otherwise resolved. It might even have been better to not even call for a roll, but there seemed to be some level of risk, even if minor.

One of many things I love about Deep Cuts is basically getting rid of Controlled as reason to roll dice. Just pay a cost at that point and move on!

Not aimed at you, but forcing the GM to clearly articulate the risk involved in teh roll is probably one of the other great things about the Threat Roll for a lot of people. If you can't articulate a risk that makes sense in the fiction, no roll! Sidesteps a lot of issues people run into I think.

Edit: also a fun thing about Clocks is they feel like "no big deal" until suddenly they're about to complete and then everybody is jumping through hoops and praying for good rolls and yelling at their dice...