Sell me on it?

Sell me on it?

Sell me on it?

I really want to love Blades. The general idea, and a fuzzy idea of the mechanics, sounds awesome. But when I dig in, and really read the rules (twice now), I come away thinking, “ufff, complicated.” I know it’s not exactly PbtA, but I have the feeling it’s lost so much of the simplicity and openness of most PbtA games, and the loss of that stuff hasn’t bought me many advantages that make me want to run it.

I feel like I probably haven’t grokked it, and maybe missed something in my imagining of how it runs. And admittedly haven’t tried running it.

What am I missing?

12 thoughts on “Sell me on it?”

  1. Well, for one, Blades IS crunchy compared to most narrative driven games.

    So one of the benefits for me: in all the PbtA games I’ve run, I’ve never found a way to really put the players in danger unless they actively desired it. That’s fine, because PbtA games tend to be about drama and discovery more so than action and danger.

    In Blades, my players characters are risking their lives and their souls on a daily basis. Yeah it’s still hard to kill someone off, but there’s always a trade off for one more day on the streets. That give and take is what allows for the gritty setting and it encourages a special kind of drama.

    What’s more: the rolling dynamic, weighing risk and effect, bargaining for success, making devil’s bargains, does an incredible job of making each roll feel weighty.

  2. Hey Matt!

    I recently wrote a piece explaining what’s so great about Blades. I think it’ll give you a great idea of what’s special and interesting about the game, and whether it’s something that catches your fancy 🙂

    If you have any more questions, or wonder “but how does {thing} work,” I’m more than happy to try and answer…

    http://bigor.org.il/blades-in-the-dark/

  3. Also, a lot of how I’ve figured out the game’s nooks and crannies is by watching the online games John Harper has run:

    Bloodletters (a crew of hawkers, selling demon blood as a drug): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsmw4wC7iOE

    Rollplay Blades (a crew of ruthless assassins): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNzpg-qdZ0g

    I can tell you I often don’t have patience to watch recordings of other people playing, but both these series are really fantastic and fun to watch. An episode or two will really give you a sense for how the game flows. (Beware, they’re addictive.)

  4. I haven’t really read the rules super thoroughly (that’s for the players imo). I run it the same as AW, really. NPCs / Factions with wants, and escalate until the PCs say “No, you fucking don’t” then make with the dice. The only add-on is that you don’t say “hey Dremmer you going aggro?” , they say “I’m wrecking his shit,” then I say, “sure that’s [controlled, risky, desperate], and given the fiction it’s [limited, standard, great]”.

    We do follow the rules about engagements and payoff-heat-entanglements, but that involves me looking at the handout and going through it at the start and end of each score.

    The other thing is that you can, if you want, think of scores for them to do (usually the dirty work for the Factions). My players are self starting chaos hounds, so mostly I just react, then do some light prep in terms of NPC ideas and movments (a la GM turn in SwN).

    Honestly, I find it easier to run than AW. More accessible, less intense, the heavy lifting is already done for you if you don’t feel like heavy lifting (ie world-building).

  6. John Harper The players will flag parts of the system they’re interested in, when they do I assign mastery of that stuff to them. I don’t see the point of memorizing grappling rules if no one wants to wrestle.

  7. Ariel Cayce I’m a rules nerd (but not a rules lawyer) and I still sorta do the same thing. For example the crafting rules I just printed out on the back of the Leech’s character sheet and I just sort of hand off certain references to specific players at the table and let them sort things out on their own when appropriate.

  9. Thanks for the links Ziv Wities. After watching a few hours, and seeing how often John Harper himself had to refer to the rules he wrote to be sure of how a mechanic works, it seems I didn’t miss anything – Blades is a crunch too far for me. Cool mechanics I totally appreciate on a game design level, but not something I’d want to run or play. Enjoy it crunch-lovers!

  10. Haha, for the record, we do the looking up of rules and step-by-step stuff on streams so the audience can see how it’s done and follow/learn the system. When we say, “Let’s look that up and see how it works,” it’s just a bit of theater. 🙂 We already know how it works.

    But if it’s too crunchy for you, that’s totally understandable.

    I’d say Blades falls on the crunch spectrum lower than Burning Wheel and higher than Dungeon World. Similar to Mouse Guard’s crunch? Something like that.

  11. John Harper is was more the pauses where you were clearly looking stuff up. Not at all dissing you or the game, or the videos, which I’m still enjoying watching. It’s a time thing: do I have the time and brain cells to learn this well enough to explain it and run a flowing game? PbtA’s make it up and roll when it matters is just my speed. It’s not you man, it’s me. 😉

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