I keep holding back on my players and then nothing happens.

I keep holding back on my players and then nothing happens.

I keep holding back on my players and then nothing happens.

Help! 😛

(I’ve been playing Blades for the past 7 months, this is a “teach me to waste away all within me that is kind, patient, and forgiving” question, not a “how do I use the system” question)

21 thoughts on “I keep holding back on my players and then nothing happens.”

  1. You are a player too Adam Sexton! so tick down those clocks that you are interested in! Plus I’ve recently had an epiphany that explicitly calls out the concept in blades of ‘taking the initiative’. I now say it out loud – its almost as subtle a mantra as ‘so what do you do?’.

    When the players have the initiative I say: ‘[establish scene / situation] So now you have the initiative, what action do you take?’

    If I take the initiative from the players, I say: ‘So now I have the initiative! [establish really bad consequence(s) for the players to suffer] Do you resist? How?’

    This is augmented by passing an initiative token – currently a steampunk nerf flintlock. It formalises the conversation back and forth as outlined on p.5 and provides a framework for you as the GM to have concrete permission to bring the hammer down.

  2. Mark Cleveland Massengale It’s like I telegraph trouble, and keep telegraphing it, and keep telegraphing it. I think I know how to hit them hard, but I keep trying to be nice because… that’s who I am.

  3. My go-to on 1-3 Desperate results has been trending towards “kill the PC but be lenient with resistance results”. And I like to escalate position on controlled or risky 1-3 results if possible. Gives more of a slippery slope to events, and it gives them more chances to burn stress getting out of it.

    I find combat fairly easy? I admit I have more trouble in the moment with ghostly or subterfuge consequences, especially in a way that doesn’t just slide into combat.

  4. Adam Sexton Hm. This might help: It’s a back and forth with the players, ultimately. Every consequence conversation can feel ineffectual when you never actually bring down the hammer. So be un”kind” im”patient” or un”forgiving” and don’t feel too bad. Since I came to revelation about consequences in this game, I view these conversations to really be about “Here is what will happen if you fail: what are you willing to risk to avoid this?” and when they fail: “What are you willing to pay to avoid/reduce this failure?”

    This might apply to you: you could announce more immediate badness, making it automatically easier to apply in the current situation: “If you roll 4-5 for this, then you will summon the spirit to your side but it will cause harm to your psyche, and if you get 1-3 then you are getting hurt by the other demon you’ve been avoiding..” and we find out our answer quickly thereafter via the harm and stress taken to mitigate that

    Also, use the GM clocks as story starters, and describe the events which show the clock’s progression (at the outset of a downtime phase or whatever), then when your Danger clock fills, describe the danger coming to pass. And, well, if they didn’t set themselves up to resist it, but they want to have the chance despite ignoring the incoming badness until now, give them their flashback if they can take the stress, and you have discovered the answer that way instead (or maybe they lap up their delicious consequences greedily, I don’t know 🙂 )

    Hope that helps

  5. When they roll less than a 6 on a desperate roll, I like to give them a choice between 2 horrible outcomes. If I can, I make one weird with long term implications (possessed by a shard of a forgotten God) and one straightforward with really nasty shorterm consequences (stabbed in the throat). Players choice to suffer now or suffer later, they almost always choose later, which is usually the most fun anyway.

  6. Great advice Mark Cleveland Massengale! But its more immediate than that. Consequences aren’t what is about to happen. They ARE happening – its up to the players whether they endure duress or not. John Harper  Describes this really well in an Old Blades Q+A podcast in which he talks about the games influences in this regard – namely Vincent Baker’s In a Wicked Age and Poison’d.

  7. Its one of the joys of the system as the GM to push the players really hard and see what choices they make. As Adam Schwaninger says, you may say as a consequence that the player’s character dies a horrible death, or social ridicule, or loss of lair and cohorts. The player always has the option of resisting these consequences. But its when they acquiesce, and shrug and say ‘damn your consequences, bring it on!’ that the game gets interesting. They may die and become a ghost, or lose everything and switch playbooks, or change their outlook dramatically on their position in the world.

    Its a wonderful mechanical structure that drives fantastic scoundrel stories.

  8. I want to also say another one of my mantras which I’m using to transform my GM style is, “Run NPCs like every PC you’ve ever seen, and run Factions like every Crew you’ve ever seen.” I’ve been trying to use that to hit harder but I forgot in today’s session.

    As usual, my attention is so split between several thoughts, that I’m perpetually confused

  9. Look. My first RPG character was a cleric of Desna. I gotta work REALLY HARD to train the aerie-faerie shit out of me and not just transform into a glittery butterfly at the table.

  10. Does it help to frame it as “they showed up to play a game with tension and conflict, and if I’m not doing my best to give them that, I’m not actually being nice”?

    I get feeling bad about “hurting” your players, but you’re not; you’re “hurting” the characters. You’re making something awesome for your players. Or you would/could be, if you could just put “what you implicitly promised to do for the people you play with” over “staying in your own comfort zone”.

  11. You can work with Desna. Freedom and exploration and butterflies and all that? How would a butterfly/fairy-themed demon turn that philosophy into a tool for ruin and manipulation?

    Butterflies are poisonous as shit*, too, so keep that in mind.

    *I shouldn’t believe everything I heard in Venture Brothers.

  12. Players: “So, do any police catch us on the street on the way over?”

    Me, as a Blue Morpho butterfly secreting dream essence, “NO> THEY LOVE YOU> COMEJOIN EM IN THE SKY WE WILL HAVE A SWEET MELLOW PARTY IN A NEBULAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAADUDE.”

  13. Being mean in PF and being mean in blades are two completely different things. In PF our DM burned down our home base pretty much the day we bought it, and that sent a message that we just aren’t allowed to have nice things. We were all super bummed because there was nothing we could do about it.

    In blades, if a burned down the players lair, they would just say “No you didn’t!” And we’d have a whole session where they tell me why I’m a big wrong idiot. Players love that.

  14. And I’m saying you can’t really be THAT guy in blades. PCs are more or less invincible in Blades (until they run out of trauma to take). More importantly, the ability to resist lets them decide which consequences they’re comfortable accepting, and which they’d rather you shove somewhere unpleasant. Power to the players!

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