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

[FrogReaver]

And I just want to reiterate: when you frame things as "FICTION BADNESS HAPPENING, characterX what do you do?" and then the character goes "I do cool awesome thing!" then we go "hell yeah that's awesome! so like, trying to do Y?" and they're like "yup, so that Z" and then we go "ok, so that's Risky but Limited, because you know..." it all seems to feel pretty fiction->mechanics.

Pushing back a bit here regarding how you play it vs what I perceive as the intended purpose of the rule structure. I thought the whole point of BitD clarifying position and effect after a ‘declared action’ was so a player could say oh, I didn’t realize the effect would be so little so im going to do X instead. This enables transparency to the player around the mechanics so that they are making informed decisions.

is this accurate?

If so the logic flow would be something like:
Propose fictional action -> Learn mechanical specifics -> Decide whether to commit to that action or propose another

Contrast this to a less transparent mechanical system like 5e d&d skills.
Declare fictional action -> DM decides whether you succeed/fail/enter mechanical framework and if any penalties apply

The transparency followed by the ability to opt for a different action place the mechanical decision front and center or at least allow a player to treat it that way if desired.

This isn’t to say players don’t consider mechanics at all in 5e but they cannot min max their chances on the next action to the same degree due to the lack of transparency and that has a profound effect on whether players engage more with deciding their next action on the fictional level or the mechanical level.

Note: when it comes to action decisions players can always ignore either the fiction or the mechanics at their whim, so the best we can talk of is in tendencies.

 

[Fenris-77]

Pushing back a bit here regarding how you play it vs what I perceive as the intended purpose of the rule structure. I thought the whole point of BitD clarifying position and effect after a ‘declared action’ was so a player could say oh, I didn’t realize the effect would be so little so im going to do X instead. This enables transparency to the player around the mechanics so that they are making informed decisions.

is this accurate?

If so the logic flow would be something like:
Propose fictional action -> Learn mechanical specifics -> Decide whether to commit to that action or propose another

Contrast this to a less transparent mechanical system like 5e d&d skills.
Declare fictional action -> DM decides whether you succeed/fail/enter mechanical framework and if any penalties apply

The transparency followed by the ability to opt for a different action place the mechanical decision front and center or at least allow a player to treat it that way if desired.

This isn’t to say players don’t consider mechanics at all in 5e but they cannot min max their chances on the next action to the same degree due to the lack of transparency and that has a profound effect on whether players engage more with deciding their next action on the fictional level or the mechanical level.

Note: when it comes to action decisions players can always ignore either the fiction or the mechanics at their whim, so the best we can talk of is in tendencies.

I don't think is quite accurate. 5E players min-max all the time by trying to shade play in the direction of their best skills and then it's up the GM to decide when and how to push back via penalties or outright denial. They also advantage fish pretty constantly. They don't need additional transparency to hunt for mechanical bonuses as the important mechanics are already player facing.

You've missed the part of the Blades procedure where the player can decide to trade position of effect (or vice versa), perhaps contained in your use of 'clarify'. That's a really important mechanical moment in the system that proceeds a decision to try another action. You also mayb be underselling the extent to which even rough familiarity gives the players a very solid base on which to base expectations of what P/E will be as they know what the various specific factors are just like the GM does. I'm, not really arguing with you here as I am pointing out some additional decision points.

I do think that the transparency (and mechanical nuance) is a very important element of FitD. It's certainly one of the main reasons I like the design so much.