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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 7899942" data-attributes="member: 16814">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.</blockquote>

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