Hello, fellow gamers. I have a thought about BitD rules which I would like to share with you.
After running eight sessions of Blades, I’m really liking the system. It’s pretty complex and it requires more system mastery than I thought at the beginning (or at least pbta experience), but every rule makes a lot of sense and supports the game style really well.
My only issue is with dice mechanics. Although they do look beautiful and elegant to behold, I have found two problems.
1) it’s difficult for players to understand the probabilities of outcomes at each level, which leads to players not getting when they should push themselves, which I think is important for players to be able to, in order to manage their stress and other resources meaningfully. It might get better with experience, but it requires a lot of it.
2) by comparing the dice probabilities with the standard PbtA dice mechanics (level 0 being equal to -2 with the standard PbtA 2d6), I found that the chance of success is about 10% higher across the spectrum, at the expense of failure. Success is usually the most boring outcome, so I find the die roll outcome not as interesting as with PbtA dice, especially combined with issue #1. At higher levels, the chance to fail is too low, and the chance of critical success remains low even at higher levels.
A potential “fix” would be to roll 2d6, and take the level (number of dice) as a bonus to the roll, with a result of 8- being a fail, a 9-11 being a mixed result, a 12-13 being a success and a 14+ being a crit. (That is to account for a -2 difference between PbtA stats and BitD dice.)
Yes, adding and removing dice looks much prettier than just adding bonuses, but I feel the 2d6 curve of PbtA gives a better flow to the game.
My question is: has anyone else felt the same issues? Do you think that this house rule fix is worth it, at the expense of the elegance of system?
1) Really? The players in our game have only had difficulty with the odds for rolling and taking the worst.
2) You’re meant to be competent badasses, so I’m comfortable with success being strongly likely.
I agree with Benjamin on 1): I always know my odds of success in blades, they’re 1-(1/2)^{#dice}, unless I have 0 dice, in which case it’s 1/4.
Now, odds of a 6 are harder to calulcate, but in my book that’s a feature, not a bug.
I’m not sure I see the utility in calculating the exact odds of success, unless your players have some desperate need to know them. As a math-averse person, I find that the position and effect system communicates when I should push myself perfectly well, and in plain language.
If I have zero dice in an action rating and my position is controlled, I know that any consequences from failure or a mixed result will not be particularly severe, and that means I probably don’t need to push myself unless I really care about a successful outcome or increased effect. If my position is desperate, by contrast, I’m almost certainly going to want to push myself to avoid the consequences of failure. Seems simple enough.
As for your PbtA hack, it seems unnecessary to me, but I guess you might as well playtest it.
Ok, guys, thanks for the feedback 🙂
Daniel Kušan Well Daniel, you’re not alone : in my hours of thinking on this game, I have had the exact same relations as you on the dice system and arrived at the exact same conclusion ! (and many others too)
A B And here are the probabilities in percentage for the number of dice you’re rolling… I’ve rounded up or down.
Dice/Miss/Limited-Success-Critical/Total prob. of success
0/75/22-3-0/25
1/50/33-17-0/50
2/25/44-28-3/75
3/13/45-35-7/87
4/6/42-39-13/94
5/3/37-40-20/97
6/1/32-40-27/99
A B I’m glad you thought that as well. Here’s my table comparison with standard PbtA 2d6. Notice how 3d is a lifesaver to push yourself into. There is only 13% chance to fail compared to a whooping 42% chance to either succeed fully or crit. Standard PbtA rolls, while maintaining a similar percentage of mixed results, has success and failure more evenly spread out across the spectrum. But Blades dice is more geared towards success. If you get above 2d and have enough stress to dampen or resist possible consequences of a mixed result, you can do anything you want.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/97RpIIY4iBJp1Gv8qKw4CrPRrnlENEMeQThwH4H760g5Uib_EUK5NvdrA8PMvLYMg3RiWLMjKsD6sA=s0
+Daniel Kušan+A B Not that the two progressions directly correlate (because each system handles character development differently) but as I read your table I noticed something interesting about the “break point” at 3d where failure becomes vastly less likely and quickly becomes disappearingly unlikely. I noticed much the same thing arise at a +3 stat in my Apocalypse world game anecdotally (and now statistically), but in that case, failure is ever-so-slightly (1%) more likely while the success results are “swingier” (it’s easier to crit than in Blades at +3, for one thing). This raises the question, I guess, of why we want more failure. Does the reduced possibility of complete failure suggest a lack of challenge or credible hardship?
Unrelated to my earlier comment, I totally nerded out on those p distributions, thank you SO much for giving me something to overlay on my mental math. 🙂
Daniel Kušan I agree with you about Problem 2. I very much like the probabilities for fresh blades characters. But I have a problem with the way that character advancement adds dice to actions and attributes. After about twenty sessions, me and my group ended our campaign prematurely for this reason. As the probability of success increases, setting position and effect, and inventing interesting consequences is no longer very relevant, since the players will almost always succeed and any consequence will be resisted at three, four, or even five dice. Instead the main way that I as GM was able to keep challenging the players was to increase the number of action rolls per score, by increasing the number of guards, having longer clocks, etc. This eliminates the fast-paced, high-stakes gameplay which is so great with low-level blades.
My take on the problem is this: The probabilities of success, failure and consequences determine the ebb and flow of the dramatic tension in the story. As PCs advance, they should become stronger and able to address tougher challenges. However, the variation of the dramatic tension should remain the same. The PCs become stronger as does the opposition, so the stakes and influence on the world increase but the personal risk and the chance of success remain basically the same. That’s the way it goes in stories told by novels, TV, traditional RPGs, etc. That is not the way it currently works in blades, since the probability of success increases with advancement regardless of the opposition.
Since I like the probabilities for fresh characters, my conclusion is that we should not use an advancement system where the number of dice increases (or the bonuses increase onesidedly). I have been pondering a house rule system where instead the advancement of PCs is tied to the tier of the crew, and the relative tier of the opposition modifies the number of dice for action rolls and rolls against attributes. The idea is that advancement allows you to take on higher-tier opposition, with the same outcome probabilities. Here is a draft for the house rules: dropbox.com – bitdadv-v3.pdf
Perhaps this problem can be better solved by adopting a different GM-ing style? But I don’t see how, for the above reasons…
In both AW and Blades, rolls are less about “failure” per se and more about whether or not bad things happen in crisis. Characters are assumed to be competent, so simple failure isn’t at stake (usually). Increased stats don’t mean avoiding failure — they mean fewer bad things happen during crisis moments.
There’s a pernicious myth among some gamers that “success isn’t interesting”, but that’s not universally true. A boring success is usually a sign that the roll wasn’t called for.
John Harper Indeed. And I would argue that in real life, the vast majority of things we perceive ourselves having done “successfully” fall squarely in that mixed-result range. And, given that everyone reading this is alive, we do most things at least fairly successfully.
Failure can be frustrating if it comes up constantly. But it’s super-dramatic if it hits at just the right (wrong) moment.
I think the system is great as-is, but then I’m into rolling dice pools. I’m not particularly interested in whether the maths is exactly “right”. The game plays great.
John Harper Rebecca W Saul Alexander Thank you for the replies. The issue I’m having is not so much with the decrease of failure, as with the decrease of consequences – precisely that fewer bad things happen, as John puts it. In my mind this decrease certainly would make sense for increasingly skilled protagonists, provided that they kept going up against the same opposition.
However, since consequences drive the drama, wouldn’t you want to keep the expected frequency of bad things more or less constant over a campaign?
Consequences always happen for one side or the other when you make a roll. So consequences are always driving the drama.
It’s part of the myth that only PC consequences drive the drama. NPC consequences do, too.
Also, success often leads to the worst consequences. “You succeeded and killed Bazso Baz. Now you’re hunted by all his allies. Your life is ruined.”
John Harper Speaking from the reality where I killed Bazso Baz, I can confidently state that this is true, if by “all his allies” you mean “CRUSHING GUILT.”
John Harper this may be the consequence of the players’ decision to kill Bazso Baz, but not the action itself. If I was to give my players such dire consequences every time they rolled a six, it would be very unsatisfactory to them. I, as a GM, always do produce consequences (ones that produce drama) from their decisions such as your example, but not at the moment describing the outcome of the roll, otherwise it would mean that it doesn’t really matter if you roll a 6, a 4-5 or a 1-3. I think short-term consequences need to be clear when you roll, like in AW: “Tell them the possible consequences and ask.”
A better example for the outcome of a spefic action would be: “You want to capture Baszo Baz. You roll 1-3, and you accidentaly kill him. Now you’re hunted by all his allies.”
I know what different outcomes of the roll mean in BitD and AW, and that is exactly why I love those games. But my post was about the mathematical probability of getting different outcomes on a die roll, and that the 2d6 curve spreads them a little bit more evenly on a spectrum of 5-6 levels. I see that most people don’t see an issue here and I’m fine with that because I understand BitD dice system is beautiful and catchy. But personally, I feel the dice don’t deliver the outcomes that suit me as a GM, because at higher levels i feel they have too small a chance of a 1-3-equivalent outcome, when they actually don’t accomplish what they meant AND provoke a bad consequence. I feel this type outcome has its value, and I feel that it happens too rarely in BitD as opposed to AW.
Carl Leonardsson Your proposed home rules are interesting in that they try to solve a real problem. However it seems that they take away a interesting piece of any roleplaying which is the advancement of the PCs. Also, I think your “difference in tier”-based mechanic is good and would work for most actions, but not for combat, because it is the domain wirer the abstraction of the Tier system is the weakest and does not reflect “actual fiction”. Tier does just not reflect combat training and proficiency (how could a Iruvian sword master of the Red Sashes be less proficient in combat than a Skov refugee ?) In fact the book says Tier reflects scale, gear, wealth and influence, but not training. There is an exception to this with the various gangs’ quality (and therefore proficiency), which is Tier-based. But maybe I’m wrong and this “exception” is n fact the norm… which would then trouble me because of some incoherencies.
Of course it’s going to depend on the tone of your game, but in my experience, running the game for friends who are very into tough consequences, yeah you may have some jobs where everything goes right. Of course they’ve also had some partial success that result in extra heat, they still have to deal with the faction hits, etc.
But often, for the next job, they become overconfident and start making desperate rolls.
Even on a partial success, a desperate roll is death, unless you resist. To my mind the most dramatic failures come at the end of a long winning streak, when players least expect it. That’s what dice pools do.
John Harper Regarding the longer term consequences (in the general, not rule technical sense of the word) that spring from success: Perhaps reasoning is then that the decrease of (rule technical) consequences works to counterbalance the increase of difficulties caused by success and from just being more thoroughly involved in the world. So that the decrease works to keep the difficulties on a more or less constant level throughout the campaign anyway. I’m still not quite convinced of the merits of decreasing consequence frequency, but I will have your suggestions in mind in the future, either way.
A B Thanks! Yes, I agree that it’s a problem that players may not feel that they are developing their PCs as much. The idea is that the base skill level increases with tier increase, and that relative skill level for individual actions may be adjusted by moving points between actions. But the feeling is not quite the same. I have been thinking of how to address this problem, but not yet been able to…
I had not thought of combat as being a special problem. Perhaps it is. But I think that for any aspect (combat, scale, gear, wealth, knowledge, strategics, proximity of HQ to good café, etc.) the faction tier may not be representative for a given faction. E.g., for arcane gear the Skovlander Refugees are probably no match for the Dimmer Sisters. In those cases it may be necessary to consider tier as being lower or higher for those particular aspects (something along the lines of the “Abstration vs. Details” section on page 169). A question is then how often you have to adjust tier like that. If it is too often then it will be cumbersome to add the appropriate bonus to each roll.