EFFECT LEVELS
Ok, please be patient, because I STILL don’t get it!
First, determine positioning. Then, determine starting effect. Perhaps, account for modifiers.
HOW do I decide the startig effect? By gut? In my mind, it should be THE ROLL which decides the outcome, not a player/GM. “Sounds like a dominant position with reduced effect.”
WHY?!? If the situation determines the starting effect, and there are no factors counting, why should I even roll?
“Let’s make it desperate, instead” What if a player disagrees?
The modifiers and the way to use them, are clear. The starting point is not.
Please, help.
Starting effect is usually 2. Then you just modify based on quality, potency, scale. For most rolls I just stick with 2.
“What if a player disagrees?”
Awesome. Talk about it. Explain why you think x, and let them explain/defend y. Come to a decision as a table.
But sometimes (as John illustrated in the stream) you’re allowed to say as the GM that you think it’s a more desperate situation than the players realize because you know something(s) that the players don’t. They will have to trust you on that and only argue the situation as is before accounting for GM knowledge.
Kevin Tompos
It’s not so awesome. You must have a common ground, represented by the system, or it’s just players saying yessir to GM, like the worst AD&D. You can’t talk out of a conflict. The best talker is not supposed to win.
As for the stream, I had serious problems understanding it, and gave up. Sometimes I really can’t make up spoken english, which is upsetting. Those notes should go straight in the rule, IMO. Thank you.
Colin Fahrion sorryh but I couldn’t find the reference to this “2”.
It’ should be enough as a starting point; like saying “the starting effect is standard for a dominant position” ecc.
Still not very clear…
I don’t think it’s necessarily about the best talker or everyone just saying ok to the GM. I think it’s about having a discussion as a table to see what makes the most sense to everyone. And if table consensus disagrees with the GM, the he/she should be just as willing as they expect the players to be when the table agrees.
You’re free to disagree, but I really like those discussions where the table gets to talk through what’s really going on, rather than just having to go with what the GM says.
Yeah, I like them too, honestly. But they are subordinate to the resolution system. I really dig the “create an atmosfere of inquiry” thing; but I agree with “instead of talking about our very interesting characters” too. The last is a quasi-citation from Urban Shadows.
Starting effect is a standard effect, which is 2 ticks on a clock. Effect and position are two separate things so starting effect is nearly always standard regardless of position. After that you use quality, potency, scale to modify the effect.
Note as the rules state you can as the GM state that an effect is Limited or Great based on the type of action they are doing. Basically if you think what they are doing wouldn’t do much. But in general I ignore that and always stick to Standard effect with potential modifiers.
I’m a little perplexed by the confusion. Effect level is “standard” unless there is a reason it wouldn’t be. This will tend to be obvious.
Start with just the roll. Dominant, daring, or desperate? This is roughly analogous to how difficult it should be to do whatever it is you’re rolling for; in D&D terms, it might be the DC. The purpose of the roll is to determine if character is successful and what consequences might occur.
If there is a success, then you decide how effective that success is. Assuming no modifiers, the effect is standard, whatever you think that means. If there’s a clock, it’s two ticks. This is when superior or inferior tools, numbers advantages, and whatever edges you can take come into play, as well as a number of character abiltiies.
This is one of the fundamental jobs of the DM in many, if not most, games: what’s the situation, how hard and dangerous is it? Then you assign the proper roll. In Blades, that’s by deciding dominant, daring, or risky.
Ok, thanks, it was not clear to me that starting effects are always standard, assuming no modifiers or exceptional situations (determined by fiction, I suppose).
Maybe the only downside of the game rules’ many iterations.
I think you’ve been playing many games, and you’ve ceased to remember that words mean things even when it’s not explicitly stated in the rules. For example, “standard” mean “used or accepted as normal or average.” 🙂
Yeah, so I will play a lot less, from tomorrow; thanks again.
Diego Minuti????
I have an exemple for you of how it can be a tool for the narration.
À character has sneaked on the ceilling and watch some guardmens (4 segment clock) talking to each other.
Now depending of how the player wants to do it you have among other these two possibilities:
– he wait for them to split, follow one of them, slowly fall in his six and murder him from behind (risky situation, standard effect).
-he suddenly jump on them, blades drawn kill two while landing and the others before they can get their shit together (desperate move [so many things can go so wrong] but augmented effect [if he succeed he kills many guards with only one move]).
If your players are creative, you may have to adjust effect only and not the “difficulty” rating.
Does it help?
Wonderful illustration Heng benjamin, and it allows the players to weigh their own risk/reward! I like how this gets me thinking
Yeah, I think the hard part is getting what is “standard” in a Locke Lamora game.
Once this is set, the “pluses and minuses” find their way in the fiction
Yeah, that’s the idea, Diego. You establish the ‘standard’ baseline as part of the ongoing conversation.
I guess that will need to be stated directly in the text, or else, many people might face the same problem.
Our in-person group did not, but i could not verbalize it, so the internet group was quite bewildered.