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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 7399853" data-attributes="member: 16814">Having played Fate, the move to Blades (which I recently started playing myself, btw, and love to pieces) shouldn't be as jarring.  The real key, I've found, is as DM both rooting for the PC and yet still beating the hell out of them.  It's a strange integrity to do both.  There's a few ways I've seen about running scores.  Some prefer to have a general map laid out and  established and go through it for the score, others wing it and create the scenes as needed in TotM only.  The trick is to find a pacing that works for you and your group and meets their expectations.  I was moving players from D&D 5e to Blades, so I broke entirely for TotM to separation because the play is pretty different, but YMMV.  I can easily see the use of a map as a pacing mechanic -- you have to get through these rooms to here to succeed -- but it's not necessary.  I use the clocks to pace the score, using more or more complex clocks depending on the details.  The clocks mechanism of Blades is something I just fell in love with, and I occasionally find myself thinking of even other games in terms of clocks now.  They're just so flexible, especially if you adopt the idea that play can go against any clock at any time.  Example time!So, in a theft by stealth score against a tough target, the engagement roll established a risky entry, so I placed the play outside the target building but close and in an undiscovered condition.  The issue was that there were more guards than anticipated, so the initial plan to access the kitchen window (the detail of the stealth approach) was in jeopardy.  I set down two clocks for this scene -- access the window and gain entry, a four clock, and Alarm is raised! an six clock (the numbers are the number of segments in the clock, fill the clock and it's 'thing' happens).  The Alarm clock is filled by failures, the window clock by successes.  A player declared a dash across the street to the shadows under the window.  No effort had been expended to determine the guard patrols, so I declared the action to be risky with normal results.  A failure occurs, and the Alarm clock got 2 ticks as the PC made the dash but was exposed as a guard came around the corner.  A moment away from it going pear shaped!  But, in allowing actions against any clocks, the next player declared an action to try step out and knock out the guard before an alarm was raised.  That seemed a desperate action, with limited results because the guards were a tier higher than the PCs.  This time a critical success was rolled, so the player got full success and then pushed for increased effect so guard was knocked out and dragged into an alley, removing all the ticks on the Alarm clock.  The players are still no closer to gaining access to the kitchen window (they've not advanced that clock) and now have a possible liability (an unconscious guard in the alley across the street), but they've reset the challenge of the scene back to start.Ciocks are just awesome.</blockquote>

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