I’ve run a few sessions now (which have been thoroughly enjoyable) and we get the ‘fiction first’ premise of playing which works really well when on a score. However we get a bit of a disconnect once we’re in Downtime as that’s very much a “you have 2 things you can do (or more if you spend coin/rep)”, which is invariably clearing stress plus something else.
As there’s really only one way to do each of the things in Downtime that part, for us anyway, becomes led by the mechanics.
i.e. “I need to clear my stress so I’m going to go gambling” and not “To wind down after the job I take my share to the Red Leviathan and throw bones with One Eyed Jake. Oh, i guess that means I get to clear some stress”
Or “I need to recover my wounds so I’m off to the physicker” and not “I’m fucked! I book a session with Agamemnon the Physicker, so that means I get to do the Recover Wounds action”
Or “I’m 1xp short to advance Resolve, I train in the lair” and not
Or “Our Heat is way too high, I reduce heat by spreading a rumor it was the Lost who hit the Crows” and not “I’m going to spread rumours to implicate the Lost in the raid on the Crows, heh, that means I get to roll to Reduce Heat”
I’ll concede that things not covered by the above has potential to be led by the fiction as it could end up being a Long Term Clock, Acquiring Assets or Gathering Info depending on what it is.
We’re also finding the transition from being on the score to downtime a bit sharp. Like, “you’ve stolen the statue of awesome power from the Crows and made your escape back to your hidden lair” (sorts out Payoff & Heat, rolls for and roleplays the resolution of the Entanglement) “Now you’ve dealt with the entanglement of the bloodied message of your beaten to a pulp Spirit Trafficker contact from the Crows that means we’re in downtime now, what do you do?”
Should I not explicitly state that they’re in Downtime? I guess you have to as technically at that point they’re not on the Score any more as payoff/heat/entanglements has been done.
Should we accept that when it comes to Downtime it’s more of a “pick what you want to do, then roleplay it out or just hand wave it in the case of Training”, with the actual fiction first stuff happening when they’re on a Score?
(Summoning Drew Harpunea as he’s one of the players)
Fiction first goes both ways. to alleviate the tendency to talk in terms of mechanics and clocks, describe the fictional reflection of the ticks on a clock, rather than the actual clock whenever possible. Say “the bluecoats must be closing in; Ludo reports one of your crew’s thugs was brought in for questioning”, not “you have 4 heat and rolled Questioning as an entanglement.”
That being said, I have also noticed the sharp change in pace after scores, and the necessity of informing the players of the ticks for things like recovery or XP. That seems more inherent to the nature of playing a game about stories, and I wish I had a better answer.
I agree that your players are generally going to be giving you those first answers and not the second ones. As the GM you can try and bring out the fiction by asking them questions (When you were gambling did you take a lot of money from someone who might hold a grudge? This is the 4th time in a month you’ve visited Agamemnon, what favor did he ask you for while you were there? Where do you go to spread rumors, and did you hear any interesting scuttlebutt while you were there?). Your players don’t have to take the bait if they aren’t interested, and you don’t have to hit them hard immediately with their answers, it’s just a way to make the world alive. Ultimately I think you’re right though, the game definitely has two distinct play modes, although you can always zoom in on interesting parts of downtime to make them more like a score.
I think this is inevitable with pretty much any mechanic in any game. We’re all going to slide into that at some point.
My trick for combating it in other games has always been to ask the players to narrate some scenes of what they’re doing, even if it’s initially introduced with raw mechanics.
Make it clear it’s a short vignette for them to just indulge in some pure characterization and plenty of fiction will end up falling out of it – and you can weaves that back into tech story as appropriate.
I don’t have the document here right now and I’d not been able to play yet, but I recall AW phrasing that Fiction First thing in two complementing concepts:
To do it, do it
And
If you do it, you do ir
Meaning: to get the mechanics’ effect, declare their fictional trigger; and: if you declare the fictional trigger, the mechanics’ effect happens.
So, when your players say the first thing instead of the other, you ask them: “Cool, what do you do (in the fiction) to get this effect?”
Thanks all for the advice. Yeah, I should keep that AW mantra in the forefront of my mind and not sweat so much about the fiction actually verbally coming first – it comes first in that it should be the priority over the mechanics, but it doesn’t always have to come first.
Hehe, Zangief’s line in Wreck-It Ralph about being a bad guy springs to mind “…when playing Blades the fiction comes first but that doesn’t mean the fiction comes first”
Hi all. I’m one of the players involved in the game being run by Paul Drussel 🙂 its a lot of fun, but I’ve found downtime somewhat unsatisfying and it prompted a discussion last week about why.
Some interesting responses here. I’m not convinced this is a solvable “problem” with the way we’re playing, so much as it is a feature of the way downtime works, which may actually be a good, neutral or irritating dependent on your play preferences. There’s a chance we’re just doing it wrong of course, but if that’s the case why is it only in downtime?
I’ll add that we’ve all played quite a lot of AW, and related PbtA games, and we’re very used to the whole “to do it, do it” thing. When we’re in normal play (like a score) it’s all good. It’s only downtime that breaks our flow or whatever you want to call it.
So, here’s a question…
In downtime, I the player look at my sheet and notice I’m super stressed. My character’s vice is gambling. I then say to the GM “oh man, Skinner is super stressed from that score. She needs to let off some steam. She’s going to go and spend some time at the casino, getting drunk and blowing money on roulette”
My question to you all: What does the GM say at this point and how does the scene progress?
The GM says whatever works for the player and the table. Some people just want to roll those dice and move on to the next score, and some people want to live in that moment. For my table, the game is really about the scores, so we usually zoom out really far from downtime actions unless they’re interesting LTPs or gathering info for the next score. If that doesn’t work for you then you and the GM can narrate that scene in however much detail you would like.
For me, the “… narrate that scene in however much detail you would like” is constrained by being in Downtime, in that I feel I can’t narrate something that has potential to create conflict, it’s like they’re ‘safe’ things for the characters to do, except for overindulging a vice.
It seems any conflict in the specific case of the Skinner’s Vice Downtime action would only happen if she overindulged and chose “Attract Trouble”, which could then be tailored to the narrative so far.
So my options as GM are something like:
1. Skinner doesn’t overindulge, any extra detail I add is colour only and can’t/shouldn’t lead to conflict
2. Skinner overindulges and picks Attract Trouble, I pick an Entanglement relevant to her situation and we roleplay it out, which leads to the question:
can/should Action Rolls be interjected within Downtime or are they limited to when on a Score?
“the GM says whatever works for those at the table” might be right, but it’s not very useful 🙂
Paul Drussel has broadly outlined the “issue” as I experience it.
Regardless of whether we lead with the fiction or not, downtime can feel a bit like an exercise in box ticking: I need to remove stress – I narrate some gambling – stress is removed. The reason for this I feel is the way the game is structured seems to suggest that it is not intended that the GM introduce complications or just follow the characters around in downtime.
In the example I gave, if this was AW, one might expect an MC response to look something like “OK, but whilst you’re at the casino, Dremmer comes in with his gang yelling about how you owe him money and here you are throwing it away on roulette. What do you do?” – The MC would take the situation and add complication, pushing to see what happens.
But in BitD downtime, from the way things are presented that does not not appear to be an intended GM response. Like, if I don’t overindulge, what happens? The scene ends with me having gambled and… that’s it.
This is unsatisfying because its downtime where we get to see who these characters are. If a large part of downtime is me as a player just narrating stuff to erase boxes, with few complications or surprises, then it starts to feel rather empty.
Now, this is fine when all you want to do is get onto the next score, but to me that’s unsatisfying. The scores are fun, but that’s what the characters do, not who they are. Downtime feels like the time to explore who the characters are and what makes them tick, but the way the game is presented makes downtime seem a little like a cut scene we click through to get back to the main game.
I guess my question is, is this intended, or are we misreading the intent of downtime? I appreciate we’re looking at a preview currently, so it may be that we’re missing something 🙂
Did you see the broadcasted games of Blades run by John Harper? Downtime actions can involve roleplaying complex situations, which can and will necessitate action rolls, hefty consequences and additional stress.
I’ll echo Mark’s statement to check out the exploits of the Six Towers Gang on YouTube for an example of a more hefty downtime.
You may not think it’s helpful that I say narrate as much as you’d like, but you don’t see to be taking it to heart. If it’s important for you spend a lot of time exploring your character in downtime than you should do it. Take risks, roll dice, invite complications. Nothing is going to stop you from playing your game that way if that’s what you want. If you’re looking for permission from the rules, you have it.
Mark Cleveland Massengale – no I haven’t seen any of the games run by John Harper. I’ll check it out.
Mark Griffin – sorry, but it’s not helpful to say “narrate as much as you like”, because a) that’s massively vague and doesn’t really give any concrete pointers to how we resolve this, and b) that’s not the issue. I could give a one sentence narrative of my character’s downtime, or I could give a 10 minute in depth description of what she does. Its still the same result if ultimately at the end of it the GM says “cool, erase some stress”. Because the point is that the way downtime is presented, at least to me, is that its less about playing to find out what happens, and more about describing some fictional stuff to justify erasing stress.
What I’m trying to establish is, are we misreading this? Is downtime actually just meant to be like standard play, and complications can arise, and the GM can throw in unexpected stuff, actions are rolled as normal, flashbacks can be used – OR have we got the right of it, and the game is designed such that downtime is less of a focus, more just a brief period of narrated action that we run through before the next score?
Drew Harpunea I’ll take one last crack at this, although I feel like a broken record. By default Blades assumes that downtime is less of a focus, you make a few important decisions and erase a few boxes or tick a few clocks. However, if you would like you could swap it around and focus on downtime, turning it into normal play with complications and action rolls and focus less on the score. John’s Six Towers game has an excellent example of this if you have time to watch it (I think it’s the second or third episode where they do it). You can switch it up whenever, choosing to focus on one during one session and then next the other.
You could also play both parts of the game like the score, and add complications and action rolls everywhere. It’s a tabletop RPG after all, tinker it until it works the way you want. If you do that, you will be making the PCs life much harder, since they’ll be taking twice as much stress and harm as the usually would. Maybe that’s okay with you guys, because a scoundrels life is hard, or you could double the PCs stress bar to make up for more stressful downtimes? You’ll be in uncharted territory there, so you may need to change how some mechanics work or write new ones.
ok cool, and thanks for your continuing engagement 🙂
I think a) watching the play example would be helpful and b) it does look like we just need to basically play downtime like standard play.
Cheers, and thank you for your thoughts on this, it was useful to get other’s perspectives.