NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 8754286" data-attributes="member: 6696971">I'm mega-behind, I know folks have mentioned/quoted me and unfortunately I can't read through stuff in any detail to respond, and I have no clue about the trajectory of conversation in the thread...but I wanted to comment real quick on the bolded.One thing I think that needs to be resolved is this orientation to something as "house rules" vs "improvisation (within the scope of the game engine itself)."  They aren't the same things.I was just having a conversation with our Blades Whisper ( [USER=71235]@niklinna[/USER] ) about a Score last night and what is the usage of Attune in that game (which is interacting with the Ghost Field which is the AW equivalent of "The Psychic Maelstrom").  Here is the default usage for it in the game:* sight beyond sight/divination/augury* astral travel with the mind/spirit (like Xavier via Cerebro but via Ghost field) * bring bad supernatural stuff into this world from the Ghost Field * mess with the supernatural fabric that overlays existence (including people interacting with it - like channeling magic) * mess with/amplify/dampen electroplasmic energy (and tech that is employing it)Here is what the designer Jonathon Harper says about Attune:“Bring your ideas of strange arcane energy into play and ask the other players what they think about it, too.”Attune can also be used for specific purposes like the Tempest special ability (channeling elemental energy of storms) or Compel (compelling spirits from the ghost field to do as you say) or Rituals (powerful, late-game spells in D&D parlance, that require a lot of prep work and complications and stress expenditure).So last night a Gondolier (allied with The Lampblacks, the owners of the brothel the PCs were assaulting) adept (Ghost Field user) came into the scene (Assault Score) as an opening obstacle (among the other obstacles) because of a complication from an overindulgence of Indulge Vice ( from [USER=82106]@AbdulAlhazred[/USER] 's PC).  I made the PBtA equivalent of a "soft move" with him revealing that he was effectively using Tempest (see above).  So [USER=71235]@niklinna[/USER] asks if he can counterspell via Attune?Attune doens't say counterspell in it.  But look at what Attune says it does, look at the matrix that I articulated upthread (starting with game logic), and then apply all the robust and intersecting tech that Blades in the Dark has on offer to resolve such an action declaration:* Position & Effect matrix (and all that goes into that).* Fictional Positioning requirements.* Clocks (like a Tug of War Clock invoking the back and forth of a "mage fight" trying to draw supernatural stuff from the Ghost Field to get off a spell/counter it by disrupting access to the Ghost Field).This is trivially resolved just via those means!  And this isn't a house rule.  This is just bog standard Blades in the Dark GMing!  In the end, Skewth the Whisper basically spent the bulk of the Assault Score (a) locked in a tug-of-war matrix of actions/complications as he tried to prevent this Gondolier adept from channeling storm magic and assailing them with it and (b) controlling his Vampire cohort (Savage tag) so it doesn't consume the Gondolier in broad daylight in front of a crowd (and all the fallout that comes with that)!  Awesome declaration...not explicated word-for-word in the rules...easily resolved...not a house rule; just resolving an improvised, thematically coherent, milieu-coherent action declaration with the game engine tech available to you.Then there are so many other means costs/stakes (Conspicuous Tag = + Heat and Volatile Tag = Complication Rider which can be dozens of things from Harm to starting a terrible Setting Clock that when it goes boom will bring a demon into your lap etc and Unreliable Tag = Fortune Roll to find out how impactful the thing you're trying to do is) you can bring to bear to mechanize more powerful action declarations (just like in the lead post...except, again...in the lead post this action declaration is a mechanical nothingburger) that ensure you won't get a SPAM BUTTON phenomenon because every decision-point bakes in multivariate calculations about risk profile/fictionally positioning prereqs/opportunity cost/odds of success/fallout potential...both here & now and downstream of this action declaration (eg, "you've drawn the attention of an entity in The Ghost Field...you hear its whispers and you can feel its terrible gaze set upon you" > resolve with Setting Clock for this thing to "go boom").TLDR:  House rules are codified alterations to existing codified text.  Improvised Action handling is just "using the game engine's means as is to resolve unorthodox action declarations."  Yes, some games make this considerably easier than others due to the robustness and elegant integration of their game tech/procedures.  That is for sure.  But that is a statement about "how easy is it to resolve improvised action declarations in this particular ruleset" rather than "is resolving an improvised action a house rule?"</blockquote>

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