WHAT IS EASY, MEDIUM AND HARD

[Bedrockgames]

In your defense, position and effect in Blades were the thing I bounced off of the hardest until I had some session under my belt. I'll elaborate if you're interested.

I'd certainly like to understand the concept more (on surface examination it sounds like it isn't something that would fit how I normally design, but I at least want a solid understanding as a point of reference: and you never know)

 

[Fenris-77]

I'd certainly like to understand the concept more (on surface examination it sounds like it isn't something that would fit how I normally design, but I at least want a solid understanding as a point of reference: and you never know)

Sure, I'll attempt a precis. The three levels of position are controlled, risky, and desperate. The three levels of effect are limited, standard, and great. The standard action in Blades is Risky/Standard and that's what the rules for everything are based on. You can improve position/effect via better equipment and skills, generally. The point of the rubric isn't precisely mechanical, although it has mechanical effects, but more as an actual rubric for adjudication. For example, every weapon has a damage number (based on standard effect) but that ranges up and down. Here's where it gets interesting though, and, more importantly, the blow back on even success with complications gets worse as your position worsens. The GM sets position and effect based on the fiction, plus skills and gear. From there the player can decide to trade position for effect (or vice versa) depending on what they are trying to accomplish (so I could change standard/risky to desperate/great, for example)

The basic mechanic is a d6 pool where you start with your skill dice, usually between 0 and 3. You can add a die via the stress mechanic or by taking a devil's bargain, which means you take a for-sure consequence in exchange for a die now. You can also get a die from help. So you're rolling something between 1 die and maybe 6 dice, with 6's as complete success and 4-5's as success with complications. The player knows what the position and effect diad is to start, and they can exchange worsening one for bettering the other if want. Usually this means worsening you position (and thus upping the cost of failure) in exchange for upping the success level.

Anyway, I really like how the mechanic gives the player some real agency while still coloring inside the lines of the fiction, if you know what I mean.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I'd certainly like to understand the concept more (on surface examination it sounds like it isn't something that would fit how I normally design, but I at least want a solid understanding as a point of reference: and you never know)

I don't really follow @Fenris-77's explanation, and I love Blades, so here's a faster summary:

Blades doesn't do difficulties as changes to the dice. It does difficulties as changes to what success and failure look like. Position is the marker for what failure looks like, and effect is the marker for what success looks like. They have names, but it's effectively low/medium/high for each. The GM takes the proposed action declaration by the player, and instead of coming up with a DC, comes up with the position and effect for that action. The roll happens against the fixed success markers, and the results are bounded by what position and effect were set at. It's a neat little tool that follows the fiction and doesn't set target numbers or DCs.

If you're looking for target numbers, though, it's not a helpful tool because it's an 'in place of' and not 'in addition to.'

As a further note, I think @Fenris-77 might be a bit confused -- Blades has no damage numbers assigned to weapons or really anything at all. Harm, which is how Blades tracks damage, is inflicted by position, and is always assigned as a specific wound. You can take 2 Harm 1 injuries, 2 Harm 2, and 1 Harm 3. If you take Harm at a level with no empty slots, the Harm goes up a level. If you hit Harm 4, you're dead. For reference, Harm 2 is a fair Risky position consequence.

ETA: pointed out to me that 2 Harm 1 injuries is hard to parse. And it is! What I mean is that you can take two, as in only two, injuries at Harm level 1. And two at Harm level 2. And only one at Harm level 3. Harm 4 is dead. If you take a Harm level injury, but all the boxes for that level are full (ie, you take another Harm 2, but you already have two Harm 2 injuries) then it bumps up a tier.

 

[Fenris-77]

My description was perfectly cromulent.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I don't really follow @Fenris-77's explanation, and I love Blades, so here's a faster summary:

Blades doesn't do difficulties as changes to the dice. It does difficulties as changes to what success and failure look like. Position is the marker for what failure looks like, and effect is the marker for what success looks like. They have names, but it's effectively low/medium/high for each. The GM takes the proposed action declaration by the player, and instead of coming up with a DC, comes up with the position and effect for that action. The roll happens against the fixed success markers, and the results are bounded by what position and effect were set at. It's a neat little tool that follows the fiction and doesn't set target numbers or DCs.

If you're looking for target numbers, though, it's not a helpful tool because it's an 'in place of' and not 'in addition to.'

As a further note, I think @Fenris-77 might be a bit confused -- Blades has no damage numbers assigned to weapons or really anything at all. Harm, which is how Blades tracks damage, is inflicted by position, and is always assigned as a specific wound. You can take 2 Harm 1 injuries, 2 Harm 2, and 1 Harm 3. If you take Harm at a level with no empty slots, the Harm goes up a level. If you hit Harm 4, you're dead. For reference, Harm 2 is a fair Risky position consequence.

ETA: pointed out to me that 2 Harm 1 injuries is hard to parse. And it is! What I mean is that you can take two, as in only two, injuries at Harm level 1. And two at Harm level 2. And only one at Harm level 3. Harm 4 is dead. If you take a Harm level injury, but all the boxes for that level are full (ie, you take another Harm 2, but you already have two Harm 2 injuries) then it bumps up a tier.

That sounds a little different from my usual style of running things in this game. With some specific rolls there may be some negotiation or discussion on what that roll means, but it would be pretty organic and rooted in the basic skill roll against a TN with a failure, success or total success as the outcome.

Fenris mentioned something about narrative control (I am not sure how that factors in with this BitD mechanic). Generally this is a pretty traditional system where you wouldn't find a lot of spaces where the players have narrative control (though there are some exceptional cases involving supernatural and spiritual elements of the game where it made a lot of sense to me in terms of the feel of the game to experiment with different approaches).

 

[niklinna]

Fenris mentioned something about narrative control (I am not sure how that factors in with this BitD mechanic). Generally this is a pretty traditional system where you wouldn't find a lot of spaces where the players have narrative control (though there are some exceptional cases involving supernatural and spiritual elements of the game where it made a lot of sense to me in terms of the feel of the game to experiment with different approaches).

Part of the negotiation of position vs. effect with my Blades GM involved the specific consequences of failure and success at different levels. The GM told me what was likely at the situational position & effect, and if I felt like shifting those, he would say how that might change things. Usually the GM just laid it out, sometimes he'd be vague about it ("you just know it'll be worse"), and sometimes he would say, "How do you think this could go wrong/succeed?"

I wouldn't call it narrative "control" so much as bargaining, or from an in-character point of view, making that risk/reward calculation before acting. Even if the GM totally determines what the outcomes would be, the player still has the choice/control in what position & effect they actually go for, which does affect the potential narrative outcomes quite a lot.

This isn't even counting the mechanisms for adding up to 2 dice to your pool. You can get +1d by burning 2 stress (a limited resource) to push yourself, or taking a Devil's Bargain, in which the GM (or another player!) presents some negative fallout from your action that is not affected by the dice roll. You can get an additional +1d if another player helps you, paying 1 stress to do so.

 

[Ovinomancer]

That sounds a little different from my usual style of running things in this game. With some specific rolls there may be some negotiation or discussion on what that roll means, but it would be pretty organic and rooted in the basic skill roll against a TN with a failure, success or total success as the outcome.

Fenris mentioned something about narrative control (I am not sure how that factors in with this BitD mechanic). Generally this is a pretty traditional system where you wouldn't find a lot of spaces where the players have narrative control (though there are some exceptional cases involving supernatural and spiritual elements of the game where it made a lot of sense to me in terms of the feel of the game to experiment with different approaches).

Part of the negotiation of position vs. effect with my Blades GM involved the specific consequences of failure and success at different levels. The GM told me what was likely at the situational position & effect, and if I felt like shifting those, he would say how that might change things. Usually the GM just laid it out, sometimes he'd be vague about it ("you just know it'll be worse"), and sometimes he would say, "How do you think this could go wrong/succeed?"

I wouldn't call it narrative "control" so much as bargaining, or from an in-character point of view, making that risk/reward calculation before acting. Even if the GM totally determines what the outcomes would be, the player still has the choice/control in what position & effect they actually go for, which does affect the potential narrative outcomes quite a lot.

This isn't even counting the mechanisms for adding up to 2 dice to your pool. You can get +1d by burning 2 stress (a limited resource) to push yourself, or taking a Devil's Bargain, in which the GM (or another player!) presents some negative fallout from your action that is not affected by the dice roll. You can get an additional +1d if another player helps you, paying 1 stress to do so.

The narrative control comes in at a different level. Firstly, the game is always going to be about what the players want it to be about -- they pick the scores and how to go about them, not the GM. The GM only handles the consequence space, both at the micro (action level) and macro (score/entanglement level). Further, the GM has no special authority to veto actions (like any other player they can object to and appeal to the table actions they feel violate honest play). This means that whatever the players are saying their character do, the only way the GM can oppose that is to call for a check, and if that succeeds, they're bound to honor that success fully. So this does give players some narrative control in that they have significantly more authority to direct where the game goes, but no authority to just override and autowin and say what happens -- they have to win that.

 

[Manbearcat]

That sounds a little different from my usual style of running things in this game. With some specific rolls there may be some negotiation or discussion on what that roll means, but it would be pretty organic and rooted in the basic skill roll against a TN with a failure, success or total success as the outcome.

Fenris mentioned something about narrative control (I am not sure how that factors in with this BitD mechanic). Generally this is a pretty traditional system where you wouldn't find a lot of spaces where the players have narrative control (though there are some exceptional cases involving supernatural and spiritual elements of the game where it made a lot of sense to me in terms of the feel of the game to experiment with different approaches).

My guess is @Fenris-77 might be using Narrative Control in a few different ways. When people use that term, they’re often using it a a stand-in for “control of the gamestate and shape of the imagined space via deployment of game currency (often but not always meta) or player fiat abilities (this happens_full stop).” Blades does have some of that.

However, the way Blades players have control over both the content of play and the trajectory of play is more far-reaching and sometimes more subtle (or by-proxy). Here are all the various player inputs into this:

* Beliefs, drives, heritage, background, playbook-specific xp trigger, vice, traumas. All 7 of these are xp triggers so there will be obstacle-framing and consequences and Devil’s Bargain’s around these.

* Desperate action rolls. These are xp triggers so players are inventivized (doubly sometimes) and directed (best practices) to punch above your belt, take on more than you can handle, or make moves/negotiate a situation to be as threatening as possible (with multiple means at your disposal to do so).

* Enemies, Friends, Contacts, Cohorts. These are assets, liabilities, and foils. Players decide what they care about and what they oppose by bringing these into play or sustaining them through play (or not). They affect the gamestate in multiple ways (obstacle-framing, consequence-space, Engagement Rolls, Entanglement results, the ability to Acquire Assets, etc).

* Players direct the opening content of Information Gathering/Free Play nearly fully (whether it be player-authored/negotiated kickers to frame scenes or via their Info Gathering questions).

* Players choose (and effectively create them like Kickers via a complex, integrated, feedback-sensitive system of Downtime + Info Gathering + Entanglements + prior fiction + everything rise mentioned above) Scores based on their personal thematic interests, Crew-needs, Claim Map management, evolving fiction, and stakes from Downtime Activities (their own and Setting/Faction Clocks).

* Payoff amplification or nullification decisions (including Crime-boss and Factions perturbed from play).

* All the various resources they can marshal (far too many to list) and must be managed + all the various configurations of PC and Crew build/Score type/Score Detail/Loadout + approaches to obstacles (immediate and downstream) and Teamwork and Cohort deployment and Flashbacks and Position : Effect negotiation + Downtime management (Projects in particular).

* The huge input on play that is building out The Crew (including what consequences a GM can bring to bear against you and your Lair, Lair toe and location for Hunting Grounds, what means you can collectively bring to bear - both type and + Tier).

* Management of The Faction Game and (the punishing) At-War status both for The Crew and for enemy and allied Factions alike.

* The ability to Resist (or outright mitigate) Consequences and the significant through-line impacts upon play (intra-Score and somewhat persistent) that this yields.

* Character change/erosion with the choice of Traumas when you Stress Out of a scene (which then feeds back onto the top bullet point and might feed into the directly below one).

* Managing Heat/Wanted Level including who does time in Ironhook Prison to alleviate it and whether to engage with the Claim Map while within or effectively “retire the character.”

* The ubiquitous “Ask Questions and Use the Answers” that is pervasive in each session. This is “input-by-proxy” and helps inform everything from the setting at large, scene framing, macro Score framing, consequence-space, Devil’s Bargains.

---

I think that about covers it. Quite a bit of stuff.

 

[Fenris-77]

Apparently I explain Position and Effect about as well as I initially understood it.

 

[Fenris-77]

For those who might be interested, John Harper explains position and effect...