NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 8016362" data-attributes="member: 16814">I'm struggling with this.  I think that it's framed in a way that really highlights Blades' strengths against a caricature of GM decides.  The focus on decision mechanic hides a few things.  I still thinking through this, so the below is not going to be tight and it'll be muddy as I puzzle through it.  I might end up not agreeing with myself.  But, I think that my opening statement has some merit and I'm going to go look for it.The Blades player has less authority over their character, and so has less agency in manipulating the state of the character for which they're supposed to be advocating.  This is a contrast worth noting.  As a GM in Blades, I can essentially declare and enforce actions for your character if the mechanic is a hard fail (and a bit on a success with complication) and still be in the lanes -- this wouldn't be degenerate play.  Doing so in a GM decides game is degenerate, because PCs are hands off outside of fixed mechanics.  In GM decides, I'd have more authority over character action inputs.Yes, there's more player input and control and therefore agency in the action resolution mechanics, but much less agency for the GM.  This might, at first blush, appear to be good for the player, but it concurrently places a great deal more responsibility on the player.  In Blades, that responsibility is further constrained by the requirements to lean into the game and to risk the very concept of your character.  That framework puts a lot on the player and does act to constrain their authority in ways a that don't happen in a GM decides game.  The price of the clearly agency in resolution is an increased cost in player effort and risk to the character.  To put this another way, the player is pretty much required to play aggressively in Blades, to put their character at risk in often crazy ways, and to share some control over that character in a way that might radically alter the PC.  These are all limits on agency that don't exist in a D&D game.Lastly, the nature of the resolution engine in Blades means something always happens.  Any action that invokes the mechanics will always alter the fictional state in a definitive way.  This means that other players, when exercising their agency, impinge on yours to a greater degree.  This is present in GM decides game, sure, but usually not to the same degree and certainly not as often.  The danger snowball effect in Blades means that players are always trying to impose agency on a shifting and chaotic scene.  In GM decides games, this is much less common, and the feeling of control and agency is increased (provided fair GM).  This is mixing actual agency with perceived agency a bit, but I think both are impacted.In summation, I agree that the player-facing nature of Blades is very clear who has authority and therefore increases agency.  But, this isn't free.  You don't build that kind of resolution mechanic without a cost somewhere.  And that somewhere is the limitation of the player's agency over their character and the additional overhead the player takes on to play the game in a narrow way.  I love Blades, precisely because I love it's laser focus.  The system is adaptable to other genres, but that laser focus remains.  Every attempt I've seen to broader that focus using the PbtD tech has muddied up the system in ways that lose that mechanical perfection (I looked for awhile for a way to get a D&D/Blades hybrid -- doesn't work).</blockquote>

Verification