D&D 5E The Ship of Theseus and 5e Homebrewing/3pp

[Don Durito]

You did note that I was talking about players already familiar with the D&D rules right? Not complete newbies.

You have less of an issue with complete newbies because they no expectations.

 

[hawkeyefan]

In my Blades in the Dark game, the player who grasped the way the game works the quickest was the one with the least experience with D&D.

The other players took longer to break the habits and assumptions they had with regard to RPGs. They came around, and the game was a huge hit for all involved, but the influence of D&D was an obstacle at times.

Not a knock on D&D, just an observation about how different games and rulesets can simply function differently from one another.

There’s no one system that will be the best option for whatever you want the play experience to be.

 

[TwoSix]

Not a knock on D&D, just an observation about how different games and rulesets can simply function differently from one another.

Yea, D&D being the 800 lb gorilla of TTRPGs tends to cause this. Nobody expects their Madden skills to be useful in Fortnite, or their skills at Connect 4 to help them in Settlers of Catan.

 

[Celebrim]

In my Blades in the Dark game, the player who grasped the way the game works the quickest was the one with the least experience with D&D.

The other players took longer to break the habits and assumptions they had with regard to RPGs. They came around, and the game was a huge hit for all involved, but the influence of D&D was an obstacle at times.

As a GM I try as hard as possible to be "fiction first", "rules second", in part to force players to engage with the fiction and the shared imaginary space and not with the rules. I don't mind as the players start to obtain system mastery, but I want them to never reach the point where they are only making rules propositions and not interacting directly with the fiction.

With BitD, that approach faces one real challenge, and that is that BitD does not require time to be linear. You're players can effectively "time travel" by narrative means, in the way that a story can jump back and forth in time and isn't linear, or in the way even in D&D the players can often "travel by map", completing a journey of five days in under 5 minutes. These are events that can only occur because ultimately you are creating a story. Playing BitD you are supposed to engage with the fiction in a non-linear manner, and I think I'd personally have a hard time with that even if I'd never played D&D. Not only would I think I would a hard time breaking out of the habit of attacking a problem in a linear manner, I'd think I'd have a hard time not losing immersion in a story that jumps back and forth.

 

[hawkeyefan]

As a GM I try as hard as possible to be "fiction first", "rules second", in part to force players to engage with the fiction and the shared imaginary space and not with the rules. I don't mind as the players start to obtain system mastery, but I want them to never reach the point where they are only making rules propositions and not interacting directly with the fiction.

With BitD, that approach faces one real challenge, and that is that BitD does not require time to be linear. You're players can effectively "time travel" by narrative means, in the way that a story can jump back and forth in time and isn't linear, or in the way even in D&D the players can often "travel by map", completing a journey of five days in under 5 minutes. These are events that can only occur because ultimately you are creating a story. Playing BitD you are supposed to engage with the fiction in a non-linear manner, and I think I'd personally have a hard time with that even if I'd never played D&D. Not only would I think I would a hard time breaking out of the habit of attacking a problem in a linear manner, I'd think I'd have a hard time not losing immersion in a story that jumps back and forth.

The flashback mechanic is only part of the learning curve I was talking about, but yeah it is a part of it. It is a challenge for everyone, but even more so for the long time D&D players in my group.

In discussions here on this site, talking about the Flashback mechanic or the way Load and Gear work in Blades, it’s kind of amazing how opposed some folks are to the concepts. Those folks tend to be the more traditionally-minded players/GMs.

But you’re right that those elements of Blades are designed because they are elements of fiction that features “caper” type elements.

I think this is the kind of thinking that has to come up in design. What kind of experience is the game meant to deliver? Simulationist combat? Or stories about a crew of criminals performing heists and capers?

There’s no reason either system couldn't work. But which will fit the idea better?

 

[Celebrim]

In discussions here on this site, talking about the Flashback mechanic or the way Load and Gear work in Blades, it’s kind of amazing how opposed some folks are to the concepts. Those folks tend to be the more traditionally-minded players/GMs.

Well, I tend to be a rather traditionally-minded person, leaving aside my preferences as a gamer. My kids joke that I'm 400 years old.

Speaking for myself, I think my biggest problem playing Blades (which I should say that I both have never done and yet also really want to do) is the sense that the mechanics were letting me cheat, and as such were cheating me out of the satisfaction of winning the challenge.

The normal intuitive approach to running a heist challenge in an RPG would be to take on the persona of a character planning the heist, and then do everything that a person in that role would do to ensure the heists success. Then, if your heist went off successfully, you'd have the sense that you had been clever and won the challenge.

But in Blades, with Flashback and the other mechanics that encourage you not to plan but to skip directly to "the good stuff", you are allowed and even encouraged to make up for any short comings in your mastermind scheme by retroactively inventing the master plan only after your present plan suffers a hitch. And to me, this would undermine my sense that I was in fact a person in an heist, and force upon me the realization that this is only a story and that I'm not really so clever after all. It's like playing a 'Choose your Own Adventure' book where you give yourself permission to, if choice doesn't work out, to flip back to a bookmarked page and choose something different. You could probably guess that my 6th grade self considered that cheating, and always started over from the beginning if I met an ignominious demise, and that I prided myself on being able to achieve a good ending (though maybe not the best ending) on the first attempt.

That isn't to say I don't want to try Blades, and I'm hoping to get a chance this year to actually attend a few Cons and play some of the games I don't have a viable GM for, but it does mean I really understand why some folks are opposed to the concepts for reasons more than just 'tradition'.

 

[hawkeyefan]

@Celebrim I get your concerns about the game. It’s part of what I found to be the case with my group. However, it’s not quite how you view it. The Flashbacks and similar elements allow you to provide the details along the way rather than up front. It takes some getting used to, but it becomes quite fun.

And there is absolutely risk and accomplishment in the game. The players have a lot of say on how things go, but they’re limited in how much they can do that.

I don’t want to derail the thread by having it become me cheerleading for Blades, but needless to say I recommend it. It may take a couple of sessions to really click, but it’s a very fun game and just as rewarding as any RPG I’ve played. Perhaps more so.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Well, I tend to be a rather traditionally-minded person, leaving aside my preferences as a gamer. My kids joke that I'm 400 years old.

Speaking for myself, I think my biggest problem playing Blades (which I should say that I both have never done and yet also really want to do) is the sense that the mechanics were letting me cheat, and as such were cheating me out of the satisfaction of winning the challenge.

The normal intuitive approach to running a heist challenge in an RPG would be to take on the persona of a character planning the heist, and then do everything that a person in that role would do to ensure the heists success. Then, if your heist went off successfully, you'd have the sense that you had been clever and won the challenge.

But in Blades, with Flashback and the other mechanics that encourage you not to plan but to skip directly to "the good stuff", you are allowed and even encouraged to make up for any short comings in your mastermind scheme by retroactively inventing the master plan only after your present plan suffers a hitch. And to me, this would undermine my sense that I was in fact a person in an heist, and force upon me the realization that this is only a story and that I'm not really so clever after all. It's like playing a 'Choose your Own Adventure' book where you give yourself permission to, if choice doesn't work out, to flip back to a bookmarked page and choose something different. You could probably guess that my 6th grade self considered that cheating, and always started over from the beginning if I met an ignominious demise, and that I prided myself on being able to achieve a good ending (though maybe not the best ending) on the first attempt.

That isn't to say I don't want to try Blades, and I'm hoping to get a chance this year to actually attend a few Cons and play some of the games I don't have a viable GM for, but it does mean I really understand why some folks are opposed to the concepts for reasons more than just 'tradition'.

I hear you, here, but your assumptions are a bit off-base in how Blades actually plays. You've made some assumptions of traditional play that make those mechanics look like they do things that they really don't.

Firstly, the flashback mechanic does not retcon a failed actions into a success. What it does is create a new fictional pathway in the current fiction. It does this at a pretty steep cost in limited resources that are also used to power a number of other mechanics. This is actually an important avenue for the players to have -- the ability to introduce new fiction to the current state -- because of how the player loop in Blades works.

The play loop in Blades is built to create complications for the players pretty much immediately, and then chase those complications down into a spiral of badness. The dice mechanic has the usual result of success at a cost or success with a complication. That's usual outcome. What the cost or complications are is determined by the stance and effect of the attempted action -- desperate actions have high costs, risky ones have steep costs, and controlled ones have moderate costs. This play loop, followed without player-side ability to change it, will almost always result in mission failure -- it's negatively balanced that way. To counter, the players have a number of limited resources that mitigate failures and/or change the state of the fiction to offer new avenues to success (but not outright success).

So, then, the question of the amorphous nature of these resources needs to be addressed. These resources, like the flashback's ability to add almost any new fiction (within genre restrictions), are necessary because play rapidly moves into new directions based on the play loop above. A failure on an attempt to sneak may be the GM introducing an patrol approaching that will discover the players, putting them in a bind! Well, players may opt to engage a flashback, where they have bribed this patrol Sargent to look the other way! That's the new fiction paid for by the flashback, but the success of that must now be tested in the present -- the Sargent has been bribed, but will he hold to (or be able to hold to) the deal? Dice clatter, you find out. The flashback doesn't create success from failure, or negate a failure, but instead provides a new path for play that didn't exist before. This might result, after testing, in a mitigation of failure, but that's the point of all player-side resources in Blades! The game is very unforgiving to the players, otherwise.

 

[Celebrim]

Firstly, the flashback mechanic does not retcon a failed actions into a success.

I didn't say it did.

What it does is create a new fictional pathway in the current fiction.

I'm aware of how the mechanic works. But, while it does not change a failed action into a successful one, it does allow you to correct for any failures in planning - failures in planning that are inevitable because the players are encouraged not to plan and introduce the planning aspects of the heist into the fiction through Flashbacks. So for example, you might get to the estate and find it is protected by vicious guard dogs. In a normal game, if you haven't prepared for this eventuality or have no resources to deal with it, you are out of luck. You almost certainly fail as the penalty to your lack of intelligence gathering and scouting of the target. But in Blades, you could then in Flashback attempt to have inserted a supply of drugged dog food through the estates supply chain earlier in the day, playing out the story in a non-linear fashion in response to the challenges you encounter. And if you are successful in that flashback, well the vicious guard dogs are asleep, or if you are less successful you could replace that complication with a new complication if you didn't have an outright success - a suspicious dog keeper with a flashlight for example, or perhaps the kennel master has even called a magistrate out to report the foul play, or whatever.

So I get all the stuff you are saying. I'm afraid you don't really understand the source of my unease with the concepts involved, which among other issues involves statements like this: "A failure on an attempt to sneak may be the GM introducing an patrol approaching that will discover the players, putting them in a bind!" I get that, but now we are not only not interacting with the fiction in a linear manner, but we are also not interacting with a stable fiction. In a traditional RPG, the patrol either exists or it doesn't, irrespective of my failure to sneak. Thus, I could suffer consequences of alerting guards or being caught by a patrol if I fail to sneak, but I could not summon up a patrol or create more guards by failing to sneak. Remember what I said about my preference being "fiction first: mechanics second". To introduce a new fictional element on the basis of a metagame construct inherently means mechanics are driving fiction and not the other way around.

In any event, I don't attend to derail this thread into a conversation over the benefits and limitations of a Nar based approach to a Heist game, or to rile up BitD's passionate supporters.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I didn't say it did.



I'm aware of how the mechanic works. But, while it does not change a failed action into a successful one, it does allow you to correct for any failures in planning - failures in planning that are inevitable because the players are encouraged not to plan and introduce the planning aspects of the heist into the fiction through Flashbacks. So for example, you might get to the estate and find it is protected by vicious guard dogs. In a normal game, if you haven't prepared for this eventuality or have no resources to deal with it, you are out of luck. You almost certainly fail as the penalty to your lack of intelligence gathering and scouting of the target. But in Blades, you could then in Flashback attempt to have inserted a supply of drugged dog food through the estates supply chain earlier in the day, playing out the story in a non-linear fashion in response to the challenges you encounter. And if you are successful in that flashback, well the vicious guard dogs are asleep, or if you are less successful you could replace that complication with a new complication if you didn't have an outright success - a suspicious dog keeper with a flashlight for example, or perhaps the kennel master has even called a magistrate out to report the foul play, or whatever.

So I get all the stuff you are saying. I'm afraid you don't really understand the source of my unease with the concepts involved, which among other issues involves statements like this: "A failure on an attempt to sneak may be the GM introducing an patrol approaching that will discover the players, putting them in a bind!" I get that, but now we are not only not interacting with the fiction in a linear manner, but we are also not interacting with a stable fiction. In a traditional RPG, the patrol either exists or it doesn't, irrespective of my failure to sneak. Thus, I could suffer consequences of alerting guards or being caught by a patrol if I fail to sneak, but I could not summon up a patrol or create more guards by failing to sneak. Remember what I said about my preference being "fiction first: mechanics second". To introduce a new fictional element on the basis of a metagame construct inherently means mechanics are driving fiction and not the other way around.

In any event, I don't attend to derail this thread into a conversation over the benefits and limitations of a Nar based approach to a Heist game, or to rile up BitD's passionate supporters.

Fair enough, although given your reservations and preferences, I'm pretty sure Blades will not be a good fit for you. And, that's fine.