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

[Fenris-77]

And regarding telegraphing of clocks, this is another reason why I think for the most stuff the PCs are expected to respond, a soft move before hard a move is better than a clock. Like you can pretty easily telegraph, say, the guards reacting to some noise and becoming more alert and cautious before they actually spot the characters, but how the hell you telegraph every step on six point "the guards spot you" clock so that it is clear at which point we're at? Not saying that it is impossible, but it is definitely a lot harder!

Blades doesn't have soft and hard moves, that's PbtA.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Blades doesn't have soft and hard moves, that's PbtA.

Neither does D&D, but you can still use the concept and people have for ages before PbtA was published. It is just about having "a warning shot" before serious badness that gives the PCs an opportunity to react and potentially avoid the bigger fallout. It is pretty basic GMing technique.

 

[Fenris-77]

Neither does D&D, but you can still use the concept and people have for ages before PbtA was published. It is just about having "a warning shot" before serious badness that gives the PCs an opportunity to react and potentially avoid the bigger fallout. It is pretty basic GMing technique.

Well, we were talking about Blades, so it seemed like a salient point. I'll also point out that if other games were already doing all the stuff that Baker worked so hard to differentiate, there wouldn't have been so much verbiage over the game. Let's perhaps not pretend like everything AW does was already being done by every other game. That's a tired argument and trivially, obviously not the case. If it were the case no one would have cared about AW. But they do!

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Well, we were talking about Blades, so it seemed like a salient point. I'll also point out that if other games were already doing all the stuff that Baker worked so hard to differentiate, there wouldn't have been so much verbiage over the game. Let's perhaps not pretend like everything AW does was already being done by every other game. That's a tired argument and trivially, obviously not the case. If it were the case no one would have cared about AW. But they do!

I did not say all the stuff and not in that combination. Nor I think hard and soft moves had been so clearly articulated before. But the concept certainly is not terribly novel, people have been doing some form of it for ages. But of course Baker did not write in a vacuum, I am sure he had run all sort of games before, and wanted to codify this this useful practice. A lot of game design is trying to further develop and enhance things people have found to be working well, or alternatively finding solutions to what didn't.

But sure, if you insist on keeping at Blades terminology, then the sort of stuff I mean should most of the time have two segment clocks.

 

[pemerton]

I think part of the issue there is that it's coming from an old-school approach where consequences are something to be avoided, rather than leaned into because they help generate more interesting fiction.

Avoiding consequences and conflict to make events easier for the characters generates a fiction, but I would argue not a particularly interesting one.

I find D&D combat too limiting of my agency. The GM keeps telling me, "the Orc deftly stabs in under your shield and . . " and I'm all like "Hang on, how come I'm not allowed to move my shield down to block their blow?"

 

[zakael19]

And regarding telegraphing of clocks, this is another reason why I think for the most stuff the PCs are expected to respond, a soft move before hard a move is better than a clock. Like you can pretty easily telegraph, say, the guards reacting to some noise and becoming more alert and cautious before they actually spot the characters, but how the hell you telegraph every step on six point "the guards spot you" clock so that it is clear at which point we're at? Not saying that it is impossible, but it is definitely a lot harder!

Ticking a clock is a consequence? You don't telegraph "a clock" you telegraph "Alerted Guards" or "Hunted." If the player doesnt resist a Risky roll and you advance it two ticks, you might say something like "cool, a 2? you start to climb up the wall and just as you crest your face is silhouetted by a passing lantern for a second before you pop back down. You hear voices grumbling back and forth 'hey did you see something in that murk?' and steps coming closer."

On a 4-5, you might have them climb over the wall and tick the clock once or something (please dont strawman into my examples they're off teh cuff with no surrounding fiction).

You're telegraphing "the guards are alert to intruders now" or "you're being hunted through alleyways" or "people at the party can tell you don't belong" or whatever.

 

[zakael19]

I find D&D combat too limiting of my agency. The GM keeps telling me, "the Orc deftly stabs in under your shield and . . " and I'm all like "Hang on, how come I'm not allowed to move my shield down to block their blow?"

God as much as I appreciate Draw Steel!'s combat for its balance and decision making, it's so hard for me to go back to it after playing a whole bunch of Dungeon World descended games where you can say "oh the orc is charging at me swinging wildly? I drop into a defensive position and get my shield up to block!" and like, that's what happens and we find out how well your defensive measures stack up to the orc's wild chopping.

(edit: and my players would say 'ah, I see he's going to break our shields again')

 

[Fenris-77]

I did not say all the stuff and not in that combination. Nor I think hard and soft moves had been so clearly articulated before. But the concept certainly is not terribly novel, people have been doing some form of it for ages. But of course Baker did not write in a vacuum, I am sure he had run all sort of games before, and wanted to codify this this useful practice. A lot of game design is trying to further develop and enhance things people have found to be working well, or alternatively finding solutions to what didn't.

But sure, if you insist on keeping at Blades terminology, then the sort of stuff I mean should most of the time have two segment clocks.

Ok, well I think we've firmly established where we are at. You think that nothing about AW was new or novel. You are welcome to that view point. It's wrong, but life is like that sometimes.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Ticking a clock is a consequence? You don't telegraph "a clock" you telegraph "Alerted Guards" or "Hunted." If the player doesnt resist a Risky roll and you advance it two ticks, you might say something like "cool, a 2? you start to climb up the wall and just as you crest your face is silhouetted by a passing lantern for a second before you pop back down. You hear voices grumbling back and forth 'hey did you see something in that murk?' and steps coming closer."

On a 4-5, you might have them climb over the wall and tick the clock once or something (please dont strawman into my examples they're off teh cuff with no surrounding fiction).

You're telegraphing "the guards are alert to intruders now" or "you're being hunted through alleyways" or "people at the party can tell you don't belong" or whatever.

You can telegraph that the clock has ticked, but realistically it is pretty hard to constantly telegraph at which point of a six segment clock you're at. The players just know this by looking at the clock, thus decisions made based on that are somewhat meta.

 

[pemerton]

Yeah, that makes sense. I struggle to understand how those two kinds of decision could coexist, and why it would not be arbitrary to pick one or the other, especially if both are expressed through the same mechanical framework all the time.

Here's a simple example:

In Burning Wheel and Torchbearer 2e, if the consequence for a character is death, but the player of that character has a Persona point, then the player can spend the point and declare "I have the will to live". And then the PC doesn't die: rather, they survive but suffer some other transformative consequence (the details are different in the two games, and a bit different also across different editions of Burning Wheel).

What this means is that, as a player, choosing to spend your final Persona point on something else is putting your character's life on the line. That is a manipulation of the game mechanics that is also expressive of an ethical choice as the character ("this is worth staking my life on").

Here's another example from my group's Rolemaster play, years ago. If a player has their PC choose something that the PC clearly finds traumatic or even just overwhelmingly stressful; or if - via the rules of the game - a PC undergoes an experience like that; then the GM could suggest that that PC would suffer the results of a roll on the Depression Crit table. And we considered it a mark of a good player that the player wouldn't wait for the GM to make the suggestion, but would call for the roll - the player would know that this experience was one that could seriously affect or change their character.

That is an example of a player manipulating the mechanics of the game to express something about their character and their character's relationship to what they are doing and undergoing.