Ayeah! Did a double cartwheel when I saw the Claims chart! Now, while I get me some ice, there’s this thing about Details:
If the GM assesses the strenght of a detail, is it arbitrary, right?
What if players start to think for an hour over THE BEST POSSIBLE DETAIL?
IF the party is fast&furious, I don’t mind running half a session (with rolls, actions, and story) tracking THE detail, and the other half doing the heist proper. It’s fun.
Otherwise, yaaawn!
How does it work?
I don’t understand Diego? How does it become boring?
The GM’s assessment is based on the fiction established and the conversation with the players… If they think about it for an hour, I would assume that was before the game? During the game, the planning and choice of detail should take like, 5 minutes tops, yeah?
Even if the players do game the system and end up with a strong approach to the engagement, it doesn’t guarantee a successful roll, and there are only three outcomes anyways. All of which enhance the story through complication and troubles! (Except for the complete success). Its a quick way to ‘set the scene’ or open up the heist ‘in media-res’.
The rest of the heist happens as it always has, with teamwork, obstacle clocks and consequences.
Hope that helps?
Nathan Roberts
, I had a similar reaction as Diego Minuti . Flashbacks and the plans speed up play considerably avoiding CYA behavior. An incentive to find the “perfect detail” OOC is IMHO counterproductive.
So far the game has also greatly empowered the character players to tell the story instead of the GM. Qualifying the detail no matter how much discussion happens is now purview of the GM. There is actually an incentive to declare a detail sub-par in order to increase the GM’s play-time/narrative control. I predict that many groups will experience increased frustration.
Yeah, it’s boring if the players DON’T play, and spend time judging opportunities and possibilities. After a TWO hour session spent in front of an unused artifact, I quit GMing Inverse World
I still don’t get it gentlemen 🙁
I really want to understand! Why is it frustrating?
The engagement roll simply sets the scene with a little complication (based on the detail the players provide and a roll). How is this boring? And why would they spend hours on talking about potentially being separated / a new threat / or losing the initiative? Its really not that big a deal considering all the action / resist rolls they have ahead of them in the actual score is it?
Nathan Roberts
That’s the ideal case. Change your view from how the rule works great to how it might break.
Players often tend to focus on the decision now. Instead of a narrative detail that helps tell the story, there is now a mechanical risk of the narrative going badly based on their detail decision and the GM’s good or bad will. So players now focus on mitigating that effect.
If your plan is to swarm the two guards with your 4 cutters, it is bloody boring and inconvenient if they are now two separate sets of cutters that can’t swarm (or they wouldn’t be separated). Now they have to come together again. It’s not that that can’t be fun as well, but it is not the narrative/action we had already decided on. At best it’s a fun delay, at worst it’s a derailment of the story. In either case, the story the players wanted (as per their detail decision) to play is deferred.
Oh, Ok Christopher. I understand now.
But, even in that case, our group would LOVE that outcome. It can’t be a de-railment when you are playing to see what happens!
So the players debate a little and come to a consensus on their plan…. Say the classic infiltration. They decide that the detail, the point of infiltration is the rooftops, swarming the guards as you’ve described.
So the GM decides its weak, or rushed – maybe because in the fiction the players are pushing the characters to make a quick score since their territory is under threat and they need to make a fast score…
The engagement roll goes poorly and the GM gets to choose two. Now don’t forget, like in all things Blades All the players are equal participants at the table. Both Audience and Author. Everyone can chime in on what they think would be cool for this unforeseen narrative twist.
So the GM chooses to go with an unseen threat and to separate the crew. Bastard!
But then sets the scene, talking with the players as they do so.
‘So how do you make the rooftop of the Dimmer Sisters Lair? Its like a belfry tower and lurching in the distance…’
‘Oh easy, we have ropes and grapples and shimmy across bilge rat style: I’m an ex-sailor after all! We’re gonna swarm their paid mercenary rooftop guards!’
“Huh. Well, as you scamper across, something tugs on the line, like a spider testing its web, and the others peer at you dangling halfway across the gap, the cobbles far far below, and a huge menacing figure standing on your grapple, slowly prying it out of the tiles…’
Suddenly we have a brilliant opening scene as the crew now have to meet and overcome a new obstacle in the hulking brute. My group and I LOVE this sort of emergent play. It makes the game. After playing so much Burning Wheel / Mouseguard / Apocalypse World / Poison’d / Sorcerer / Fate, failing forward is ingrained in our psyches as the way to make a role playing game sing.
As John says in the rules:
No plan is ever perfect. You can’t account for everything. This system assumes that there’s always some unknowns and trouble in every operation; you just have to make the best of it.
I’m not sure I follow the examples at all, but it sounds like people are worried about the PCs spending a ton of time thinking about a relatively trivial detail with low mechanical impact?
Nathan Roberts
, you’re essentially telling other groups that they’re “not playing it right”. You’re also rationalizing: it works for me, it should work for you. But a mechanic has an effect and a purpose. If the purpose does not match the effect of the mechanic, the design or explanation of the mechanic is poor.
Your example is another exercise in looking only at when the mechanic has a desirable outcome. Your argument is dangerously close to saying: the car works just fine as long as there is no water on the road. Moreover, this mechanic is not the only way to arrive at the same story.
When I GM, I will only roll engagement if all players want me to.
BTW, calling a probabilistic mechanic “play to find out” or “failing forward” is somewhat naive, don’t you think? You wouldn’t call Russian roulette “failing forward”, would you? Engagement is predictable, built-in failure.
Hey Chris, I never said anyone ‘wasn’t playing it right’. I was simply describing how the rules as written will work for our group (with an example). It makes sense to us. We don’t see the mechanic as problematic, I’m sorry that you do. John does appreciate the feedback.
I was simply curious at trying to understand what you and your group experience to be ‘an undesirable’ (story/mechanical) outcome. I hear you and understand now, thanks.
If it doesn’t work for you, you sound like you have a good handle on how to change it and make it work, and that’s great. Your solutions seem fine.
By the way, doesn’t the whole Blades system expose built in failure / success with complication? I would consider it a feature of most ‘play to see what happens’ style rpgs of the last few years. Our group sees these mechanics as a feature, not a bug.
Ok, suppose your players don’t WANT to be in such a heavy mess at the start of the game (I’d LOVE it, tbo).
They will discuss the BEST POSSIBLE way to give the BEST POSSIBLE DETAIL. In some grups, this can lead to a 30 min chatting. Or more.
And dont’ tell me this is a case beyond the rules system. This game advertises as a good medicine Vs too much planning. John said it.
My friends are very… special:
“so, we’ve a lair?”
Yeah…
“Ok, we want it Hidden, Well protected, AND with quarters, to best hide in!”
So, you ARE going outside, anytime soon?…
“Are we already short of supplies?”…
I’m not sure if I am looking forward to players running a series of smaller scores to improve the engagement roll on a bigger score, or if I’m worried that they’ll do that for every gorram score they attempt. I’m wondering if engagement rolls might be better as a spice you can add in sometimes, but not infused into every score – just some of the more unpredictable or important ones.
As far as the harm system, I just wanted to weigh in that I really liked the previous system, altho I like there being other penalties than die penalties – a previous poster did good in saying it might change a risky roll to a desperate one, etc. Wondering if there is some good hybrid…
Okay, I’ve done the homework now, and I really REALLY don’t think engagement rolls are a problem. Why? Because at the end of the day, no one is really deciding anything here. I think the problem is actually the formatting of the chart. It shouldn’t be
1D Weak, rushed or deceived
2D Average, nothing special
3D strong, useful details
etc.
It really should look more like:
1D: Weak – The crew is rushed or deceived
2D: Average – Nothing special here
3D: Strong – The crew has useful details
4D: Exceptional – The crew can exploit a vulnerability
This pretty much eliminates judgement calls, etc. Sure, I guess you can argue about whether a detail is “useful” or not, or whether it’s “just” a “useful detail” and not a “vulnerability you can exploit” but the DM literally CANNOT downgrade you below average unless you are rushing or actively deceived. And similarly, there’s nothing the players can really do to slide the scale either – unless they can come up with a good idea for a ‘setup score’, but THAT is the one place I think GM discretion comes into play, because the players will still have to explain what kind of other score they’re going to try in order to get those useful details. They can’t just say “We want to get some useful details for our next heist.” So if they can come up with something cool, awesome, they get a bonus and you get another cool score. If they can’t, tough bananas, they’ll just have to roll at average.
So I think the chart confers the rule poorly, but I think the rule, as it sits, is strong.
Oh and uh, John Harper because this feedback might be valuable.
Thanks for the feedback, everyone.
The point of the engagement roll is to reduce the armchair planning even more. If you know that every operation encounters problems, you don’t need to waste time trying to mitigate everything with conversation before the operation starts.
It’s a very naive quality of some gamers (IMO) to assume that perfect planning = perfect execution. That’s not the way the world works, and that’s not how it works in this game. No matter how perfectly you think you’ve planned something, it can instantly go to hell as soon as you arrive on site. This is one of the core concepts of special operations, which Blades is all about.
It’s funny that this mechanic as currently written will push some groups to debate for hours to come up with the 4D detail. Funny, but unacceptable. I need to revise the mechanic to kill that dead. I like Mike Pureka’s revision — might go with that.
Glad it’s a useful take on it. 🙂
I think flashbacks are the key to successful heist stories in Blades in the Dark. If PC groups don’t plan, everything degenerates to run-and-gun. If they do plan, no matter how exhaustively they do it there are inevitable complications that nullify hours of jawing. How do you find the fun buried in all that?
The key is to give the characters what they need to make a decent go of it. Don’t punish them for under-planning, and don’t reward them for over-planning. Instead, give them the planning they needed ahead of time, when they need it in the heist.
I’m a fan of the structure.
My favorite definition of experience: “What you get right after you needed it.”
I’ve never known a GM who didn’t introduce a challenge into just about every plan.
The other thing that is rubbing me wrong after more thought is the nature of the mechanic. Most mechanics flow from the fiction. Engagement forces fiction to my mind too reminiscent of random encounter tables.
I think the goal of SNAFU can equally be a narrative component decided by the group as the detail. That also might improve player buy-in.
Christopher Rinderspacher One of the joys of GMing for me is interpretation, rather than just creation. I like to take some disparate elements and harmonize them, the creativity of that engages me. So, I don’t have the aversion to randomizing that you do, and that colors my perspective.
Also, I like getting stuck in and getting right into the heist. The engagement roll provides another detail, something else in place, so as my back-brain is putting the heist together there’s (potentially) other details to pull the players in and get them problem-solving right away.
I’d rather hit my players with complications than ask them to work against their characters’ best interests and make up reasons their plan isn’t working smoothly.
I love random encounter tables. 🙂
Hmmm, 3 Sessions (12h of gaming) and the morning of the 3rd ingame day just started for my gamers, they succeeded 1 Heist (by accident) and we spend the whole 3rd session on vices and information gathering and setting up more protection for the Lair (with the new coins from the job).
I never realy come near to the “Jump right into Heist” situation which you all seem to care about so much. Somehow I never arrive there. But my players are happy with it anyway.