So I’ve been kicking around the best way to approach this particular piece of feedback since the Quick Start rules were released and after several fruitless days of mulling it over I don’t think I’m going to be able to compose it any better so I suppose I’ll just throw it out there and see how it goes.
One of the weaker aspects of Dungeon World, looking back on it, is the sheer proliferation of advanced moves in each playbook compared to that of Apocalypse World, many of which aren’t very interesting. That said, I find that I have almost the exact opposite problem when considering the Blades playbooks…I feel like they have too FEW distinct moves among them. Half of each playbook’s moves are shared across all the playbooks (some form of special armor, Daring, Experienced, and Veteran) which leaves only four unique special moves for each playbook, and many of those special moves have a tendency to boil down to some form of “add 1d when CONDITION occurs,” which are functional and useful but also a little bland at times.
I’m not the first person I know who’s seen the Quick Start to share this sentiment. Now here’s where this feedback falls apart…I’m not personally sure how a good way to go about addressing this would be. It’s easy to say “these could use more diverse/more interesting moves” but I’m not really sure what in the context of Blades in the Dark that would look like, precisely. I believe John Harper’s gone on record as stating that Blades isn’t the sort of game where direct narrative control via player moves is likely to be employed and the main task resolution method is relatively streamlined without a great deal of moving parts. Shoehorning added complexity into a game for the sake of added complexity isn’t ever really something I look to do so it’s possible that the design space may not be there to warrant trying to append extra moves to the various playbooks at the expense of clarity and ease of play.
(Also there’s the fact to consider that, as laid out, there really isn’t very much more room within each playbook’s sheet for additional moves.)
Does anyone else have some thoughts on the matter?
This is more-or-less what one of our group said after playing our first session. Compared with DW or AW, there’s certainly less variety of PC moves, but I’m just not sure that comparison is worthwhile. I guess I’m not convinced PC moves are so important in Blades in the Dark. I guess after I’ve played half a dozen sessions or so, I’ll have a better feel for what’s important.
^wise answer. I’m thinking maybe it’s not a question of there not being enough moves but a question of a faulty assumption of large differentiation between playbooks being necessary for a PbtA game to function? I mean look at World of Dungeons. It’s a fucking masterpiece and there really is only one player move in the whole game.
Also the enforcement of troupe play and the crew sheets. They characters are broader tropes with flavor being added situationally. I think as we dig for longer play in some of this will develop in interesting ways.
True, I think that too much character differentiation beyond niching is maybe detrimental to the cohesiveness of the gang-as-character paradigm it seems like John Harper is going for here. I could be way off though.
I’m not 100% sure about the importance of it myself, hence why I went back and forth on posting this. That said, I feel like player moves and abilities CAN be important and interesting, especially when the provide players with exciting and unique ways to engage with the game beyond the baseline. The quintessential example I can think of here is Apocalypse World’s classic NOT TO BE FUCKED WITH (which I note that John Harper himself borrowed for the Cutter, a decision I approve of) which upgrades the Gunlugger to the equivalent of a small gang in his or her own right. The move itself isn’t tremendously complicated but the effects of it go beyond a simple “get +X to hit and +Y damage” in that it significantly recontextualizes the Gunlugger’s nature, role, and actions in the game beyond merely “a guy with a big gun or three.”
I do agree that a large NUMBER of moves isn’t necessary for a PbtA or PbtA-inspired game to function. As I said, Dungeon World gives every playbook perhaps twice as many moves as they really need, certainly more than most games will ever use. I simply feel like there’s maybe more room for some unique differentiation and exploration of the design space to be found in Blades in the Dark beyond what’s already there. Off the top of my head, I can think of a few possibilities for exploration…the three stances, moves that append playbook specific results to various success thresholds, moves that are intended primarily for downtime (where most of the playbook moves seem to be intended for use on the job), moves that tie back into the crew itself, etc.
I think of it a little differently. I see the Actions as being the equivalent of moves, with the special abilities being more like tweaks to the rules.
For example, in DW, Thief gets moves about disarming traps and picking locks, but in Blades this is modeled through having dots in Secure and Feint.
So special abilities + Actions + Contacts etc do the job of what the class moves do in DW, I think.
I do like the approach of Blades in the Dark a bit better.
In general it is not as codified in regards of moves as AW, DW or PbtA games are. Characters can do as they like based on the fiction of the player. The player doesn’t have to go “I want to attack them” and then to decide if it is a defy danger, volley or whatever move.
Designing specific moves could feel like taking away from that freedom.
In regards of the specifics of the bladebooks its make as well worth considering that granting special abilities might remove the option that two or more players chose to be Cutters or Whisperers as they’d occupy the same space and that certain bladebooks like Whisperer may become more crucial.
I don’t like the rule in PbtA games that one playbook can be only used once.
Think clocks and devil’s bargains folks. These are the moves that maketh the game.
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I’m coming into this game with little to no knowledge of the *world family of games. I have read a bit of the DW srd when it came out, and have glanced over a couple of AW hacks. All in all, I feel that the overlap of special abilities in Blades is a non issue. Due to the idea of fictional positioning your ratings in actions seems more important than the special abilities, which to me are just the awesome cherries on top.
^this!
I’m largely in George Pitre’s boat when it comes to my experience with *World games. That said, though, I never got the impression that the Special Abilities weren’t enough. For example, everyone gets special armor and a Stress-clearing condition, sure, but the kinds of rolls you can apply them to are wildly different between Playbooks–which, when combined with the “Face an Effect for Another Character” Backup move, encourages players toward a broader selection of Playbooks for their crew without explicitly forcing the issue (or punishing those crews who don’t). I haven’t felt like anything was missing so far.
I definitely think the skill and effect rating add a lot more nuance than the special moves suggest. The lack of special move variety does strike me as something that I might feel limited by after making many many characters, but making my second over the weekend, I only just realised that half of the special moves were duplicated on all the playbooks!
I concur with your opinion Kai Tave though it seems a bit unpopular. I think you articulated what I’ve been feeling extremely well too, considering multiple angles at play. One of my first feelings was wondering how quickly players would run out of special abilities to gain (unless they instead take the option for lots of items from other books’ lists), and that the abilities don’t play as much with some of the available mechanical levers as they could.
As you said “Off the top of my head, I can think of a few possibilities for exploration…the three stances, moves that append playbook specific results to various success thresholds, moves that are intended primarily for downtime (where most of the playbook moves seem to be intended for use on the job), moves that tie back into the crew itself, etc.”)
Yet, like you, I also recognized that abilities are not the core of the characters, they’re not at all the same as ‘moves’, nor are they meant to let players break the rules in most ways since the rules are already broad enough not to need to be broken.
I think the discussion is definitely worth raising the way you have.
This is a great discussion. Definitely worth talking about.
I think the mechanics have a great deal of impact on player character ‘special ability’ choice too, and the resultant impact this has on the fiction (despite similarity across the playbooks).
Unlike some other story games, there is no stake setting ritual. Unlike in other ‘World games, the GM doesn’t decide on the appropriate tigger for a move.
In Blades, the player has complete responsibility for action and effect, sometimes deciding between multiple paths (and potentially variant clocks) to achieve a similar fictional outcome. So even as their chargen choices flag the GM, so too does the manner of their engagement with the system.
The interplay of action / effect choice, the riskyness of the move and then special abilities on top of that makes the playbooks not so much defined by the special abilities, but how each player chooses to uniquely personify the class (flagging) through action ratings, effect ratings, special abilities, gear etc… and then propelling these choices through the mechanical iteration of action/effect/clocks/devil’s bargain.
I think the narrative outcome of this interplay is what separates each playbook (and crewsheets) from the other.
I think Nathan is spot on here, and it’s very interesting indeed.
I’m phoneposting at the moment so I don’t have the capacity for as extensive a reply as I’d like, but what I’ll say is that while some good points are being raised in regards to the underlying system of Blades (skills and effects and the use of such), none of those things would be OBVIATED by the playbooks having a more robust/distinct selection of advanced moves that don’t boil down to “add 1d contextually.” The two don’t have to be mutually exclusive.
Nathan Roberts BitD doesn’t have stake setting? Players have complete control over action and effect? I’m not sure those are in the rules as written.
* The MC sets risks, no?
* I’ve found (as a player) that it flows much more smoothly if there is an explicit discussion of risks and stakes.
* How effects work isn’t particularly intuitive; it’s been a stumbling block both times I’ve played. I’m definitely looking forward to seeing more clarification of that in the full game.
Although re-reading your post (yay G+’s dumb phone interface), I suspect semantic and definitional differences might be at play here.
One issue right now with effect is that it’s very intuitive to some players and not intuitive to others, and I haven’t written the text for that latter camp yet (since it’s been so intuitive to many players up to now). I hope to finish the examples pages this week, which should help.
The hardest part of the design process, IMO/E, John Harper!
FWIW, I think it’s the relationship between actions success and effect rolls and the interface between effect rolls and clocks (setting and counting off) that has caused issues in my experience.
Reading that sentence, it looks incredibly banal. I’ll post it in case some part of it is useful anyway!
I think blades is closer to Sorcerer or In a wicked Age, or Poison’d where players state their ‘stakes’ implicitly in their action / effect – rather than having a task / intent / outcome roundtable that a lot of other games tend to encourage.
The interplay between action choice and subsequent effect on any clocks in play is a lovely homage to ‘attack roll / damage roll’, but in blades, you know exactly what you are doing before you roll the dice.
John’s hangout talk with Stras and Jonathan really elucidates this distinction.
P.18 is kinda handy in wrapping your head around the why of the system.
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I’m another person who is not very enthused by a bunch of “+1 to a thing you were probably already good at but that everyone can do” moves. Especially when the last four of every playbook are nearly or literally identical. Obviously, there are important differences between Blades and Dungeon World, but I think it’s a similar problem. I love Dungeon World, but after just a few level-ups, it was clear that the worst, least engaging playbooks were the ones that are just full of “add even more dice to this thing you were already doing.”
Blades in the Dark is lighter, so more palatable in this regard, but much like Dungeon World, once I’ve made/found more interesting playbooks I’ll basically never go back to the originals. I’d rather be much more enthusiastic about the core player-facing component of the game.
As much as the mechanics for any given move can impact the narrative of the game, they really are very interchangeable. This can put real pressure on how players approach the game. One of the more interesting, distinct moves from the existing playbooks is the Whisper’s Strange Methods, because it brings something entirely new to the table. Not everything needs to be that drastic; in fact, it’s obviously not supposed to make you Super Ghost Wizard because that would be stupid and unbalanced. Yet, when someone gets the opportunity to show off the haunted backpack they made, you know it’s because they’re a Whisper and not because their rolls were bumped around a little.
A move that strikes me as a prime opportunity to do this elsewhere is the Lurk’s Scout move. You could expand their reach, causing the move to draw in stuff you normally wouldn’t, maybe progressing a clock that you wouldn’t without Scout because of connections only the Lurk uncovered.
If I had to summarize my point, it’s that I think each playbook should provide new tools to accomplish the crew’s goals, instead of (mostly) just better versions of the tools everyone will have.
All that aside, one thing that could help free up some space for something cooler on all the playbooks is making Daring a universal, free move. It feels like a pretty fundamental part of how these kinds of characters would tend to operate, and it’s pretty boring to spend XP on. If someone doesn’t want their character to come across as a daring individual, they’re probably not going to be falling back on that move most of the time. Then, when they do get desperate enough to make a Daring move, they get more out of it without having to go so far as making a Devil’s Bargain, especially since it’s already sort of a mini-bargain.
Anyway, I don’t want to just be critical. This is already a really fun looking game and all I’ve got is the pitch from the Kickstarter and the Quickstart. Thanks for making it, John Harper!
As far as I understand it, they are not moves per se, but special abilities that affect your move – of which there is essentially only one: act under fire. All the good stuff happens in the fiction – what is your character doing to achieve what?
I might be wrong – wouldn’t be the first time.
It also reminds me of Sorcerer, especially the ‘free and clear’ stage, where the players are discussing and changing their actions until everyone is OK with what’s going to happen – and the potential risks involved.
Exactly Per! I see it the same way. If you approach the game like a ‘world game, well yes, I see the monotony of simple +1d moves, but I think this is a detrimental viewpoint.
I tend to see each +1D as an opportunity to add something flavoured by my character (playbook) to the fiction.
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