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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crimson Longinus" data-source="post: 9846085" data-attributes="member: 7025508">They could, sometimes. But it is bizarre to think that always and every situation the GM constructs the situation so that the use of other skill is blocked by the fictional positioning. Most of the time this is not the case.I mean I am not the GM in this game. I know what I would do differently if I were, and if I ever run Blades or an adjacent game, houseruling the skill section to minimise the overlap and split some overly broad skills* would be the first thing I'd do.(* Prowl, so in a game of thieves and heists you have one skill that covers all the athletics and stealth, and you can also attack with it in right circumstances? Also, study is both research and reading people. Annoying thing to combine, as there are many common character archetypes that should not be good in both of these.)But I am also thinking this from game design perspective. Why would you design this intentional overlap. It is the most baffling design choice in the Blades to, as whilst I may have overstated the amount of confusion it causes, it nevertheless annoying and completely unnecessary.Literally the same thing. And I read this the characters being daring in the fiction. And they are. They are doing daring heists, picking fights with powerful people and getting into all sort of trouble. My character even more than others.* But I don't read any of this to me that the players should still not try to play smartly and use the system for their advantage.(* I need to sometimes limit foolhardiness of my character a bit, as in this game the fallout is even more communal than in most others, and whilst I might be fine with my character dying or suffering, I don't want to cause it to the characters of the other players too much.)And see what this actual weasel example is. Trying to persuade with tinker. That is an obvious no go, and no one is talking about stuff like that; we are talking about the edges of the intentionally overlapping skills. Like I have said this many, many times, and it starts to get frustrating to repeat it.Characters make bad decisions all the time. Hell, if they weren't they would not be characters in this game, they would be doing something sensible instead. And of course the players embrace their expressive role, most of us are LARPers, there is a lot of expression and drama. But none of this says that players should be blind o the rules and not use mechanics smartly. In fact, "not just tactical" implies that this tactical role exists too!Then why ave people been arguing for pages that it doesn't happen? Like we might disagree how often it happens and I am sure it is group dependant, but it does, and this is the point people keep ignoring: the game is intentionally written so that it happens!And what value does it add? I see none, whether you think it is trivial, minor or major delay or annoyance, it is unnecessary.I mean they would probably say it because wreck says "you could try to overwhelm an enemy with sheer forcein battle," and if I am playing Chewbacca ripping Vader's arm off or grabbing a big pipe off the wall and whacking him with sounds rather appropriate and wrecky to me. Might be desperate position, then again, facing Vader if you're not a jedi yourself sounds pretty desperate regardless...Indeed. But you keep making statements about the game that do not seem to quite align with the text. Like you think it would be weird to use wreck in combat when it literally says that you can or think that you need to choose between reducing heat and healing, when in reality there are obvious ways that let you do both.Like in thse discussions it often feels that people who "get" these sort of games actually have their own understanfing and practices that are not actually in the text, and then people who jus buy the book and try to run the game based on the text run into problems. And this of course is quite common and happens with many games. Like I am absolutely sure that why my D&D 5e game is so smooth and succesful is because of me importing knowledge, experience and best practices from other games and decades of experience, rather than following the advice printed in the books. So I feel something similar is going on here.Yes, sure, but that hardly is dramatic and compelling choice. LIke whether I have 12 or 14 dots in the stash hardly is significant.No, not at all. It is just that you keep imagining clearcut situations (which certainly exists,) when actual play is full of ambigious ones. Like sure, if you are duelling one guy prowl is pretty hard sell, but when there are othercombatants, which by their own actions cause chaos, and there is environment and teraain and moving and running people, then there certainly will be situtioans where it starts to become quite plausible. Like I repeat it agian: the overlap exists, it is in the rules, it is intentionally there. So it is super weird for people to pretend that these situations do not happen; of course they do, the game was designed to create them!Like if you don't think it is an issue, that is one thing, but this denial is just outright bizarre. No one said constant fishing. Merely choosing the best one in common situations in which the skills overlap, like they're designed to do!I tell you one example from our last game. We were sneaking into a heavily guarded mansion of our enemy, who we planned to assasinate. There was group check for sneaking. And whilst my character is the sneaking expert, we briefly discussed it as players and decided that another chracter would lead the sneaking. Reason for this was that this chracter had no stress, and mine had some, and that we expected a dangerous fight later, and my chracter is the best fighter, so we wanted him to be able to burn stress in the fight. Do you think this is is the sort of considerations players should do in this game, or no?The thing is, that this game has surpisingly complex mechanics, and there are all sort of resource management and game widgets that are a bit meta, so I don't think it necessarilymeans that the chracters are nort being bold and daring scoundrels that take risks if the players are trying to leverage these mechnics somewhat smartly. I think listening and not arguing should go both way. Like I don't even tink the ambigious skills are a colossal problem, it just is very unnecessary one. But it is strange that people just deny that existence of the overlap and the obvious outcomes of that. Like it is right there in the text. Though I still don't know why. And I think this happens every time when anyone criticises the game or says they have any issues with it; the validity of the criticism is just denied.</blockquote>

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