Some friends and I are wondering what reasons lay behind the change in die mechanic between Blades and other PbtA…

Some friends and I are wondering what reasons lay behind the change in die mechanic between Blades and other PbtA…

Some friends and I are wondering what reasons lay behind the change in die mechanic between Blades and other PbtA games.

Any of the designers care to enlighten?

15 thoughts on “Some friends and I are wondering what reasons lay behind the change in die mechanic between Blades and other PbtA…”

  5. It’s not a PbtA game, but it inherits some certain concepts from AW. It’s not a PbtA game because it’s not about the kind of things apocalypse world games are about. It’s about risk and luck and mounting desperation and stress in your criminal situation. I ain’t a designer but that’s how I understand it. No doubt Mssr. Harper has a better explanation.

  7. Blades is certainly a PbtA game in terms of its design heritage. I don’t market it that way, but that’s a marketing decision, not a design decision or taxonomic quality.

    (PbtA games don’t have to be “about” anything in particular. See Monsterhearts, DW, Dream Askew, Murderous Ghosts, The Sprawl, Cartel, Masks, etc. etc. The framework doesn’t demand specific themes or genres.)

    The 2d6 dice method isn’t a core element for a PbtA game. Murderous Ghosts uses playing cards. Dream Askew and Undying are diceless. Blades uses a dice pool.

    I developed a dice system that suited the goals of my game, just like every designer does, whether they’re using the PbtA framework or not. I could have designed Blades in a way that would have suited 2d6, but that’s not the way it happened.

    Mainly, I wanted diminishing returns, and the outcome curves on this dice system suited what I wanted. Your first couple of dice have the biggest impact on  your chances. This helps model the idea of scrappy rogues. If you can scrounge up a single die, you get a 50% shot at anything.

    Later on in play, we discovered how fun it was to roll a pool and look for a 6. Do you see it? Hooray! No? Uh-oh! It has a nice feel to it.

  8. Thank you, John Harper. Looking at the curves, I was noticing the same things re: diminishing returns. It also means no negative stats, which is another interesting difference from other games.

    My friends and I on Infrno.net are digging it, like many other folks. Congrats on the recognition at RPG Geek, too!

  11. Note that you can quite easily port this dice pool mechanic into other games for that ‘scoundrelly’ feel. We have been using it in my World of Dungeons game and it works great! Particularly for encouraging help and the musketeer mentality.

  12. Nathan Roberts I’ve thought about this, but most other games of this family have negative stats occasionally. Does World of Dungeons have negative stats?

    My thought was that if 0 dice means roll two and take the lowest, then a -1 score would mean roll three and take the lowest, etc. But at -2 your chances of success are like 6.5%. Much much more difficult than succeeding at 2d6-2.

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