Tag: Carl Gerriets

Some people had expressed interest in Blades in the Dark in the “games you’d like to play” pbp thread. And we had some discussion around the potential difficulties with the game, given that every action roll is meant to have a bit of back-and-forth to determine the action, difficulty and effect level. This is my attempt to speed that up without losing the back-and-forth/ mutually-defined elements of the game.

The instructions to players might go like this:

When you think you are doing something that counts as an action roll, here’s how that works:

1) Remember to think fiction first, so IC you should describe fully what you’re doing that you think qualifies as the particular action.

2) Then, OOC, you can say what action you’re rolling and whether you think it’s controlled, risky, or desperate. Remember that risky is the default, so choose that if you’re not sure and probably most of the time. But also remember you get XP when you try something desperate. You can also decide whether you’re wanting to burn stress or if you’re looking for a devil’s bargain. Then go ahead and roll.

3) The GM will then respond by telling you the effect level you’ll have, and proceed based on what you’ve said and rolled:

a) If they think your action + difficulty are off in a way that would affect the result, they will call time out, explain how they see it, and you can chat until it’s sorted.

b) If they think you’re off in a way that won’t affect anything (like you rolled a critical anyway, or the action you used & the action they had in mind have the same rating), they’ll mention it but go on anyway and tell you about results, consequences, where you’ve ended up.

c) If they agree with you, again, they’ll tell you the results & consequences.

4) You can then proceed:

a) If you think the GM’s effect level is wrong, you can also say so and the two of you can sort it out.

b) Otherwise, you know what happened, you’re free to move forward.

I think this would still allow for back-and-forth when there isn’t alignment, but would allow the game to streamline a little bit each time people are already in agreement. And a lot of “little bits” of speed can add up in pbp.

But I put this here in case someone’s tried it and it didn’t work, or in case people see a flaw in it that I’m overlooking.

Let’s talk a little about resistance rolls. The rules give a range of options, which is cool, but I’m wondering what people have actually done in practice.

When you’ve played, and level 3 harm happens, and someone resists, do you have a ‘default’ assumption for what that means? Is it usually 1 level harm less, or usually harm is avoided completely? Or half each way? Varies from episode to episode, or from series to series?

Likewise, if a bad roll results in several negative outcomes, do you tend to have one resistance roll deal with all of them, or expect separate rolls for each?

And, naturally, why are those your defaults or tendancies, and what effect do you find it has on the game?