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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 8997430" data-attributes="member: 6696971">I disagree. It is functional. What it appears to me that is happening here is you’re appending two provisos (see below (b) and (c), resulting in your personal sense of (a) when you were playing a particular game) to what I’ve said above and then assessing “not functional” downstream of that. And, my best guess is this is happening because of your one-shot session with Blades in the Dark where you felt that (a) you couldn’t assess your lines of play because (b) you felt the board state of Blades becomes increasingly dense and, therefore, (c) isn’t gameable.To be clear:* I’m talking about TTRPGs generally, not Blades.* We aren’t examining the execution of any particular design, merely a design goal (functional challenge-based play) and the sites of challenge-based priorities available to design toward.So assuming “failed design” misses the point and dashes the entire exercise on the rocks before it begins! Because of that, assume a prospective TTRPG that cares to be gameable and is designed around a particular site of challenge, in fact, succeeds in its design; it is gameable around the site of challenge it aimed for in its design.* While I appreciate your articulation of your thoughts on the issue in the prior posts (truly I do), we do not agree on Blades nor will we. I can’t be swayed by your cognitive state in the one-shot you’ve played nor your assessment of the game based off of that experience (an experience where I’m deeply skeptical of all of (a) the GM’s exactitude in running the game, (b) the reality that one-shots aren’t remotely representative of actual games, and (c) the players onboarding Best Practices and understanding the game’s meta; which, of course is pointless anyway if (a) and (b) are confounders). I have probably 4000 hours of GMing Blades that inform my counterfactuals to your sense of the game. The board state doesn’t interminably regress, nor does it become endlessly dense, and the game is 100 % gameable when the engine is executed by all parties.</blockquote>

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