After a session of actual play, here are the main complaints my group shared. Their conclusion was that they would only play this again if we house-ruled the hell out of the “Action, Effect, & Resistance Rolls” page. Even then, some elements left them cold. Here is what they had to say, summarized. First, a link to the play report:
https://fictivefantasies.wordpress.com/2015/04/18/blades-in-the-dark-adventure-summary/
TO BE CLEAR, I don’t want this to come across as me saying the game is terrible. Instead, my goal here is to share the feedback of my group. They do not want to play the game again, and these are their reasons why. Every game is not for every player, and I’m not suggesting this game is “broken.” I do feel it may be helpful to share their perspectives. I understand and accept that these problems may stem from me misunderstanding the rules, or “doing it wrong.” Still, I want to share what my players shared with me during and after the session (sometimes with heated enthusiasm.) I’m really not sure which category is best for a discussion like this, so we’ll go with “Rules (Official.)” On to the feedback!
SIX IS TOO MUCH TO ASK. They felt that being punished for anything but a six, which could fail to materialize with any number of rolled dice, made their characters feel incompetent and vulnerable. In a sneaksy game, once you are detected, once things escalate, de-escalating them is really difficult if it is even possible. Having dangers manifest on anything but a six means if you’re around people and alarms and traps, escalation is pretty damn likely. They disliked this. In play, this worked predictably; a danger manifests, now the DM thinks up more dangers, and they manifest, and the situation gets more and more difficult with very limited tools to de-escalate. After all, on anything but a 6, more dangers will manifest.
YOU NEED SIX TWICE IN A ROW. Even if you get a 6 on the action roll, if you don’t get ANOTHER 6 on the Effect roll, you are still much less effective. Even a critical success can be reduced to a partial success for effectiveness. They found this demoralizing.
DICE POOLS WILL NOT BE BIG ENOUGH. Tied into the issue of needing a six, your maximum dice pool for an experienced character is 4 for an action, +1 for background, +1 for a tool, maybe +1 for having them overmatched; that’s still 7 dice, and incomplete success if none of them turn up a 6. They compared that to, for example, Arkham Horror. There a 5 or 6 is a success, and dice pools can get higher than 10. And you STILL get screwed by the dice sometime. With the combination of the tiny (often 1 or 2) dice pools and the need for a 6, they were pretty demoralized.
TRIPLE JEOPARDY. For a flashback, you can take triple jeopardy. FIRST, you take stress for a bad situation, avoiding consequences. SECOND, you take stress to have a flashback, no matter whether it turns out to be helpful or not. THIRD, you can be asked to make rolls and accept consequences DURING the flashback. The fact that the characters could actually be in a worse situation because they triggered a flashback made the players leery of using them often.
For example, one character used a flashback to trail an important NPC, then she got challenged to a duel, and she used her armor up to defend against an injury in the flashback. In the present mission, the armor is still used up. And, of course, lots of other bad things could happen.
In another example, one character used a flashback to bribe a bluecoat, who did not take well to the offer; he didn’t push, but he did snap back to the present down 2 stress from making the attempt. His already desperate situation was that much worse.
BIGGER GROUPS ARE DISPROPORTIONATELY PUNISHED. I had two players. However, when I explained how the group actions worked, they were appalled by the levels of stress that would flow to the leader, or to the party, if EVERYONE was rolling and needed to not roll 1-3, or if the leader didn’t roll a 6 and all those people would absorb stress.
The main objection there was that you could have a group getting stressed out by not doing much. Ideally you want stress to be connected to awesome flashbacks or derring-do; but after two not-perfect lock picking sessions and a not-perfect climbing session the group could have racked up a lot of stress for not-particularly-stressful activity. Is that wrong? They didn’t care so much about that, but as PLAYERS, they didn’t like the idea at all for how they play.
ROLE PLAYING NOT INTUITIVE. This may be my fault; when they wanted to do things, I called for rolls. However, this led for a session where the players did not portray the characters talking to each other or NPCs. Things were handled in an abstract way. It was definitely a roll-play focus; which action to use? What effect? The dice then determined how it worked.
There was definitely game fiction going on; I relayed to them the situation, but in terms of whether it was controlled, risky, or desperate, and what actions might be most appropriate to use. They never got into the skins of the characters. Their decisions were driven by what was on the sheets, not what was in the character’s minds. I’m not sure how I would pull them from that mindset, considering the abstraction requests a GM keep the game moving by setting the scene and resolving it and keeping things from bogging down.
The characters were still distinct, and had goals and such, but they were much more marionettes dandled by the players and less masks the players wore. Your mileage may vary, that was just an observation from the experience.
IN CONCLUSION. I think this is a really interesting game! I am not saying it is bad, or broken. I AM saying that I will not be able to run it with my group again unless I roll up my sleeves and tinker with some of its internal mechanics.
Why bother sharing this at all? My intent is not to be abusive, but to share specific “ouch” points from my group, and their insights in playing it. Maybe the community will chime in a chorus of how I was doing it wrong and these things should not apply, or maybe there is a flash of insight that knocks half these things out of consideration. In any case, I hope this report serves as food for thought for the game designers, and others who are preparing their own games.
https://fictivefantasies.wordpress.com/2015/04/18/blades-in-the-dark-adventure-summary
