I just ran a test session and have a few questions, if anyone would like to help out that would be groovy!
1. What effect does ‘Fine’ have? Does it give another d?
2. Is it normal to have 50% of the crew suffer Trauma in a score?
3. What happens to a traumatized PC in the middle of a score?
4. Can you resist the result of a 1-3? (Can resisting turn it into a success?)
5. Devil’s Bargain + push + help = is that possible?
6. Flashbacks – I.e. If the ‘steal a canoe’ roll had failed in the flashback would there have been a canoe at the exit?
7. What requires a roll and what doesn’t? i.e. The ‘Silence’ potion. The Trance Dust. The grenade. Is it only required if there is a chance of failure?
8. If you get a trauma on a flashback, does it apply to the current scene?
9. What effects do heavy weapons have over regular weapons?
1. It improves effect, but doesn’t add an extra die
2. That seems high to me, but that’s just my take.
3. They are “taken out of the action” p. 13
4. No, you can resist the consequence of the failure, but you still failed
5. Devil’s Bargain OR Push, but not both. And then someone can Assist.
6. Probably not, or it it has a hole in it 🙂
7. All those are just objects. When you use them you’d make an action roll to see what effect you achieve.
8. If you trauma out on a flashback, you’re out of the whole score.
9. Heavy weapons are described under the Cutter Items on p 63.
I’d say 8 is debatable and might vary depending on context. You could argue that the trauma happened before the score, and the character has then recovered enough to participate (it might stop them doing any further flashbacks, though). Or you could say its a delayed reaction, and instead kicks in during the current scene of the score. There are other possibilties, but those two make the most sense to me.
6. The canoe is totally there, and so is it’s owner… There are better ways to complicate the PCs lives other than squashing their clever plans completely.
8. Continuity is always in risk of imploding when characters are taking stress and harm during flashbacks.
Should you retcon all those rolls that should have been in the penalty from harm? Do you retcon all the actions of a character who would have been recovering from trauma?
I think it’s worth explaining that to the players; that not breaking the game is worth taking a Devils Bargain over versus Pushing themselves.
1. Fine increases quality by 1, to Tier+1 usually (unless you also have the corresponding crew upgrade, then it’s Tier +2). This may or may not increase effect; but relative quality is definitely a factor in effect considerations, see the chapter on effect.
2. That seems rather high, but with new players who don’t know how to manage their stress effectively and try to resist everything, or a tough score, it can definitely happen.
4. Absolutely not. A 1-3 means (usually) that you fail AND things get worse (consequences). You can resist things getting worse, you cannot resist the failure.
5. You cannot gain an extra die from a DB and push for an extra die. You can, however, take a DB and push for increased effect.
4. Not exactly to the same extent as the combat game in, say, D&D, Blades still is a resource management game. The [mechanical representations of] player characters are resources, too. Much like the first death starting a vicious cycle that leads to a TPK, losing one PC to Trauma means other PCs will need to step up and use more of their resources to cover for the problems the Trauma’d PC would have dealt with. They are therefore more likely to run out of resources themselves and get Trauma’d out.
In the case of Blades, this kind of mission will remain in the players’ memories, but it won’t reset their progress to zero. It’ll typically give them a bunch of XP through desperate rolls, and give them an additional XP trigger through Trauma for the long term.The additional XP will lead to better action rolls, leading to less need for pushing, and better attributes, for better results when they need to resist. Meaning less resource tax and less of a chance of them getting Trauma later down the line.
So, basically – I honestly can’t say if it’s normal or not, but I can say it’s understandable if it did happen and that it is not likely to become a long-term problem in a campaign.
Thanks everyone for your commentary! I believe my players will figure out how to manage the ole stress a bit better and that there is a great deal of risk with the resistance roll.
I still gotta wrap my head around how one could fail but resist the consequences. What about this example?
P – I’m going to jump that gap!
GM – Why is it such a dangerous gap?
P – The bottom is 100 feet down
GM – Cool, roll.
P – 1,2,3
GM – You fall and die on the stones below
P – I want to resist that
GM option 1 – You make it, but your weapon clatters away from you
Gm option 2 – you fall, but instead of dieing, you take level 3 harm – Broken Legs
Are option 1 and 2 both valid?
1 doesn’t work, since it negates the failure. However
GM option 3: okay, you don’t make it, but you manage to hold on to a ledge 3 meters below your target. Instead of dying, you lose your weapon, take level 2 harm “shredded skin” from abrasions, and you’re hanging on somewhere from a window ledge. What do you do?
would work. You can even leave out the harm, if you want to be nice.
Always remember to consider both the Position (how bad are the consequences on a 1-5?) and Effect (how good are the results on a 4-6?) of a roll before the player rolls, so that whenever possible (especially in Risky and Desperate positions), there are consequences besides “you don’t succeed”. If the only consequence is “you don’t succeed”, that’s less interesting and makes resisting a moot point because they can’t resist their way from a failed roll to a success.
In your example, the intended effect is making it to the other rooftop – because the player failed, they don’t get their intended effect. But their consequence was, essentially, Level 4 Harm – resisting can reduce that consequence (or, at the GM’s discretion, avoid it completely – maybe they realize they misjudged it at the last moment and catch themselves on the roof they were leaving). So option 1 is not viable, but option 2 is.
Jakob Oesinghaus So I can give multiple consequences, and they have to roll to resist each one, if they wish?
Jordan Kolbeck Correct. You’re allowed to assign multiple consequences. Depends how cruel you want to be. But they all need to make sense in the fiction.
Yes, you can assign multiple consequences for one roll. It even says they can be resisted separately, but a given consequence can only be resisted once.
So for example, if someone resists Level 3 harm and the GM says it’s reduced to Level 2 harm, that’s it, they can’t keep resisting it down.
However, if one roll results in Level 2 harm and dropping their sword, they can make two resist rolls, one for each consequence (or accept one and resist the other, or resist both)