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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 9331786" data-attributes="member: 6696971">What work does the below do on play?[ATTACH=full]360693[/ATTACH]That should be a bloody easy question to answer.  And if your answer is "it doesn't do any work because system doesn't really matter and its all social contract (opt-in or opt-out of whatever...even when the rules explicitly say "play by the rules and use the game system as-is...but if you want to Change the Game; here is how')," then I wish folks would just come right out with it so we know what claims we're each advancing.  Its impossible to present networks of evidence and confounders if you don't know what claim you're dealing with.Alternatively, if you're like "well, my players are passive and don't present and don't advance goals...", then refer them back to the above.  Play Goal-Forward, damnit.  Not enough for you passive players who don't play with ambition, who don't present nor advance goals?  Ok, how about this in concert?[ATTACH=full]360694[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]360695[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]360696[/ATTACH]Don't safeguard your characters.  They're tough.  Make them earn it.  Make them get up off the canvas and get back in the fight when they get whooped.  They've got the moxie and the means.  And if the story is them perishing (one way or another) in a blaze of haunted, gothic, bloody glory?  Awesome.  Good either way.Be ambitious.  Have a goal.  Despite the odds and forces arrayed against you, attack it like a rabid dog until you come away with the bone or you're put down for good.  Either way is awesome.Still not enough?  Ok, what about incentives and reward cycles:[ATTACH=full]360697[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]360698[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]360699[/ATTACH]Take significant risk, accept thematic consequences/setbacks/trouble, address/express/struggle with your character's and crew's thematic porfolio, earn rewards that generate horsepower, momentum, evolution, and trajectory of characters, setting, situation.If none of this does sufficient work to generate a particular and novel play paradigm...if players are still passive, unambitious, goal-vacuums, turtley derpburglars, and expecting the GM to just spoonfeed them theme & premise neutral opportunities...and/or the GM is willing and wanting to do just that and play some kind of weird "Score Crawl + GM Setting Solitaire?"Then why in the world are you playing Blades in the Dark?  I mean...you're not playing it.  But why are you wasting your time with a giant rulebook and system (and the above is only a fraction of the material that works in concert to support a very clear, very novel gameplay paradigm) instead of just social contracting your way through a pre-existing game that you've already internalized and hacked/drifted/sculpted to a particular form of play a million times before?  Just do that!  Don't waste your time with a giant new rulebook and novel system!</blockquote>

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