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

[soviet]

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?"

Also, it's so structured. You're telling me that I have to wait for the other guy to do all their stuff, and I just sit around watching for a bit, then I do all my stuff? Then wait again while everyone else does their stuff? Unrealistic.

 

[zakael19]

Yes, it is clear, so I do not understand why some people wanted to deny it so much.

What "it" is being denied? That you engage with the mechanics of the game?

But this is also the thing that makes the game not so great for immersionist first person perspective, as it sort of expects you to often assume more of a third person author perspective. Which again is not bad thing, just a matter of taste whether you like it or not, but again something certain people keep denying. I don't know why.

No, it makes it a game that's not great "if you prefer being in a first person/character perspective at all times."

Anything further then that is entirely a matter of personal preference and feeling around a term that we've beaten to death many times over the last year-ish alone that I've been participating here much less the many many years folks have cited.

And I think most of the mechanics in Blades are structured from the perspective that the players are advocating for their character's interests, and achieving them is desirable. There are mechanics for avoiding "bad stuff" and by spending XP you can get more of such features and other features that just makes your character better at achieving their goals etc. But then it also says not to care about the character success and forge the best story.

It says "dont agonize over making the 'best' decision, make the most interesting one, because you've got plenty of resources to arc things towards your goals anyway." If the core of AW was building a system which forces you to in Baker's words "say cool sh't" to get anything done, BITD is a game build as a system to "avoid over planning."

And I am sure people again will get defensive and mad at me for slandering their favourite game or something, but I hope that even if you would disagree with me about how well Blades is designed, you would see my point about the tension between the crafting the best story and advocating for the interests of the character, and how it is an interesting design challenge for the rules to support both.

The game wants you to take the most interesting fork int eh road, not waste time figuring out the "most optimal" or taking an entire session planning what-ifs, or whatever. Just fling forward and do a Flashback when you need to.

For what it's worth I dont like core Blades or Doskvol at all. But I respect the Intention that Harper designed, and the system has given rise to other games I think are really cool.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

So every decision made by a player in an RPG is somewhat meta by definition? IRL I don't know my to-hit bonus, damage dice, hit points, AC, movement rate, and skill modifiers, but I do know these things for my character when I play an RPG.

No, not quite. This is why I kept asking how it is being telegraphed how far the clock is. The characters don't need to know the exact numbers, but they should know things like "we can afford one more blunder" if it shows that the clock cannot be filled by the next consequence, as they will make decisions based on that, and I think that sort of knowledge is pretty hard to justify. I think soft move and hard move type two step process is usually significantly easier to align with character knowledge than four to eight step escalation of the clocks.

Also, it's so structured. You're telling me that I have to wait for the other guy to do all their stuff, and I just sit around watching for a bit, then I do all my stuff? Then wait again while everyone else does their stuff? Unrealistic.

I mean yeah, I said that decision making in D&D style combat becomes pretty meta.

I find that gameplay during the score in Blades where the skills are used, special armours deployed, stress points counted and decisions made based on all of these mechanical widgets becomes pretty meta, and yeah, quite similar than in D&D combat where the players consider all sort of pretty detached mechanical widgets in that system.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

What "it" is being denied? That you engage with the mechanics of the game?

That this engaging is often pretty meta.

No, it makes it a game that's not great "if you prefer being in a first person/character perspective at all times."

Anything further then that is entirely a matter of personal preference and feeling around a term that we've beaten to death many times over the last year-ish alone that I've been participating here much less the many many years folks have cited.

Isn't this pretty much what I said? I did not say that it is objectively bad design, merely for that thing, and whether it matters is matter of taste. But the thing is that whenever someone says "I don't like this thing about the Blades" then a fan of the game will surely jump to tell that person that actually they are wrong and that Blades is not like that even though it obviously is. I swear if someone said that they didn't like how the game is about criminals doing heists someone would deny it being about criminals doing heists!

So we agree what the game is like in this regards, and that it is matter of taste whether one likes that. Great! That is far more agreement than these discussions usually reach!

It says "dont agonize over making the 'best' decision, make the most interesting one, because you've got plenty of resources to arc things towards your goals anyway." If the core of AW was building a system which forces you to in Baker's words "say cool sh't" to get anything done, BITD is a game build as a system to "avoid over planning."

The game wants you to take the most interesting fork int eh road, not waste time figuring out the "most optimal" or taking an entire session planning what-ifs, or whatever. Just fling forward and do a Flashback when you need to.

I think the flashbacks are the best innovation in that game for achieving the desired playstyle. I kinda feel some other elements are bit too finicky and sort of require (or at least benefit from) some careful consideration, and sort of go against that goal. And of course not everyone will carefully calculate whether the next resist roll can fill their stress meter and who should do what to balance the stress expediture, and who should use their special armout on what nd things like that, but it also is completely unsurprising to me that a lot of people will appeoach these mechnics like that.

For what it's worth I dont like core Blades or Doskvol at all. But I respect the Intention that Harper designed, and the system has given rise to other games I think are really cool.

What do you not like about it, and what are these better games and what ways you think they are better? (At least for you, no need to debate their objective goodness.)

 

[zakael19]

Isn't this pretty much what I said?

No, you added on "immersionist." Many of us have said that we don't find speaking exclusively from teh POV of a character any more engaging or immersing (if we even experience immersion playing a TTRPG) then something where the meta channel is open and we're on multiple levels. So leaving that word out makes it less subjective and more factual: Blades doesnt expect play to sound the same as a highly-POV game does (not that D&D etc emphasizes 1st person POV, I think that's a play style not necessarily a design).

and who should use their special armout on what nd things like that, but it also is completely unsurprising to me that a lot of people will appeoach these mechnics like that.

And a good GM and group acting in accordance with the rules and principles of the game will encourage each other to stop that and egg each other on to cooler and more awesome fiction. At least that's what mine do.

Stuff like the Cover mechanic handles resource usage while keeping it in good fiction.

What do you not like about it, and what are these better games and what ways you think they are better? (At least for you, no need to debate their objective goodness.)

The framing. I don't care at all to play a game of criminals trying to make I t good. The fiction isn't interesting at all to me, and I don't vibe with Doskvol as a setting (as a work of game design art I admire it tremendously and use its structure as the core of how I build city-style environments).

 

[hawkeyefan]

But, where would they get that idea in the actual fiction? If the clock is supposed to be representing a real thing in setting, how does the setting justify the PCs knowing what point on the clock is mapping to it?

The GM narrates the outcome of the roll. He says what happens, and then adds “I’m adding two ticks to the X clock” to represent that.

Then, we assume competence and insight on the part of the characters. That they have intuition related to the situation they’re in that goes beyond our imagined intuition as we sit at a table looking at numbers on paper and talking to friends and rolling dice.

I mean… have you ever been in a situation where, despite the fact that there’s not some visual countdown available, you got a strong sense of some pending thing happening?

Are you surprised by everything that happens that’s not scheduled beforehand? Are you just wandering around in a perpetual state of shock as things happen suddenly around you? Or do you observe the world around you and draw conclusions about what may or may not happen, and when, and then consider things accordingly?

OK. So how do you telegraph the difference between getting a third vs fourth tick on a six segment clock?

You just narrate additional information that reflects an increase in whatever the clock represents.

It’s that simple.

So the decisions based on it are, meta, right? The characters cannot know that they can afford to take two ticks to the clock this time as there is only three on the clock previously and it needs six to be filled, and thus not spend special armour to avoid this? That is a meta decision, right? Either say yes, or actually explain why this is not the case.

I feel based on this discussion I understand what happens in the Blades way better than most people here, who seem to just play it without being aware of what the mechanics actually do and how the decisions at the table are made and what sort of incentive structures the rules create. Which is fine for playing the game but it makes discussing it rather frustrating.

Because the clock is representative. Just as with all mechanics. Does Conan know that he has a 20 Strength? No. Does he know he’s stronger than Subotai, who has a 12 Strength? Yes. Is it Meta that he knows that? No.

I think the idea of “Meta” has broadened to the point where it’s eating its own tail. A player engaging with mechanics is not metagaming… they’re playing the freaking game. The character is not engaging in mechanics, but rather with the things the mechanics represent.

 

[Lanefan]

Just a quick aside for those reading this thread and unfamiliar with what might be termed more "narrative" games so that a wrong impression isn't created: This is not an intention nor a feature nor a requirement for playing these kind of games.

Quite the contrary, as the intention is to create developed and consistent characters, and so acting out of character just for "plot" reasons is antithetical to the whole thing.

Glad to hear that, particularly the bolded.

How does this square, however, with the [paraphrased] "players lean into the consequences rather than try to avoid them because that's what produces good fiction" take from upthread, where avoiding or mitigating the consequences in in fact in the character's better interests?

 

[Lanefan]

The GM narrates the outcome of the roll. He says what happens, and then adds “I’m adding two ticks to the X clock” to represent that.

Then, we assume competence and insight on the part of the characters. That they have intuition related to the situation they’re in that goes beyond our imagined intuition as we sit at a table looking at numbers on paper and talking to friends and rolling dice.

I mean… have you ever been in a situation where, despite the fact that there’s not some visual countdown available, you got a strong sense of some pending thing happening?

Are you surprised by everything that happens that’s not scheduled beforehand? Are you just wandering around in a perpetual state of shock as things happen suddenly around you? Or do you observe the world around you and draw conclusions about what may or may not happen, and when, and then consider things accordingly?

My own personal experience with this is that while I might sometimes get a sense of some pending thing happening, the achieved accuracy of that sense both in outcome and in timing ranges from mediocre to abysmal.

Given that, I don't assume any greater degree of intuition on the part of my characters until-unless something in the game tells me I can; on which the fiction becomes that much less believable.

You just narrate additional information that reflects an increase in whatever the clock represents.

It’s that simple.

As a player, the narration of slowly-approaching doom (if done at all well) would or should be enough for me to roleplay the increasing stress being placed on my character. A player-facing clock or counter would a) needlessly add out-of-character stress on me-the-player and b) make that sense of impending doom far more accurate in terms of timing and-or nearness than seems believable.

Because the clock is representative. Just as with all mechanics. Does Conan know that he has a 20 Strength? No. Does he know he’s stronger than Subotai, who has a 12 Strength? Yes. Is it Meta that he knows that? No.

Conan might, though - were he more math-and-stats inclined - have all the other warriors he meets, plus himself, test their strengths* against each other and then come up with a rough numeretic scale to represent how strong each warrior is in relation to the others and to himself. It wouldn't be a nice neat 3-18 bell curve, of course, as that's supposed to cover the whole population rather than just the elite warrior types, but it'd still be a numeric representation of relative strength among those he hangs out with within the fiction he inhabits.

Hard to see how the same could apply to a clock where the characters can't necessarily see or know what's coming, or how far off it is.

* - something less easy to objectively test and compare, such as Charisma, would suit your point better, as at least some of that is in the eye-ear-head-heart of each individual beholder.