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I keep thinking Blades might be able to be hacked into a G.I.Joe game with special missions in lieu of heists. I'd have to look at my copy again and see if it could work.
I think cyberpunk would be a good genre for it. You could also flashbacks to splice net running into the adventure on an episodic basis rather than having the rest of the party sit on their hands while the net runner goes hacking.
 
and, of course, you can't beat some Hodgson...
At the center of Blades in the Dark is another mechanic that's actually more important than the retconned flashbacks, and that's what the game calls "clocks." This is a term for something I've seen in a number of other highly-abstracted games like Heroquest and the Index Card RPG, although Blades makes it a more central feature.

Clocks are basically like HP for events, representing accumulating effort or danger. A very common kind of clock would be an alert clock. Every time you screw something up during a heist, this clock would go up one tick, and when it reaches midnight, the guards give hue and cry and run around with lanterns.

The reason that this mechanic is so important is because it makes it even easier for the group to jump into a heist. The retcon flashbacks simplify planning for the players, but the clock simplifies planning for the GM, which is arguably more important.

These are all very good ideas if your objective is to make a heist-driven RPG where players and GM can start playing with almost zero prep. Let's not lie: that's quite a feat, if you think about it. The problem for me is that it removes almost all opportunities for cleverness and surprise from the players and turns them into die rolls. If you think planning a heist and watching your plan fall apart is the fun part, then you will find this game incredibly dissatisfying.

I think this really highlights why I am not a fan of storygames. They put all the emphasis on collaborative storytelling, but player discover is replaced with player invention, and mental challenges are replaced with dice challenges. If generating a story is your favorite part of role-playing, then storygames are your jam. But if you enjoy surprise and challenge, they fall completely flat.

If I was running a pro-wrestling RPG, I'd have it happen in an alternate reality where pro-wrestling is real. Also, the pro-wrestlers would have super-powers, and occasionally be challenged to grapple aliens for the fate of the Earth.





Hey! Kinnikuman! That was M.U.S.C.L.E.S. over here when I was a kid

Bunch of tiny pink weird as wrestlers packaged in small plastic garbage cans. Loved those things
 
I don't know enough about AW yet but I'll assume you're correct, and I do know Leverage but was unaware that Blades was inspired by it. But regardless of questions of origination, my point is that these are essential mechanics for zero-prep heisting, but together they remove a lot of tactical considerations from the players' hands.
The Sprawl, a cyberpunk PbtA, has a somewhat less abstract use of Clocks and "Flashbacks": clocks are actual compounds alert levels Shadowrun/CP202-style, where the mission is over if a clock reaches 00:00 (representing the corporate forces zeroing on the team's position), and "Flashbacks" that come in the form of two currencies, Intel and Gear, where the former allows you to produce useful info on the spot ("Don't worry, I've got the password for this door") and the later allows you to produce useful gear ("If we had a C4 we could blow up this wall... oh what's this in my pocket?"). Both currencies are acquired during the Legwork phase and are tied to a class/archetype sphere of knowledge. Hackers produce matrix/network intel; Mages/Shamans produce supernatural Intel and gear; Fixers produce street Intel and gear; etc. It works really well, and has a strategic element to it, as your team will have strengths and weaknesses depending on the archetypes present.
 
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What do "clocks" do in PbtA games?
 
Thanks for the link Zak.

I like how you articulated the term 'tactical transparency' and provided many examples to clarify it.

In fact alot of that post reminds me how I felt in the early 90s - the earlier 'basic rpgs' were generally viewed as juvenile by that time, and systems were getting more clunky and bloated with skills, talents, and such. Either that or they were starting to go the other way and becoming broad/vague - White Wolf WoD was an example of this.

I couldnt put my finger on what was happening, but I think you articulated it well with many of the points you discussed about declining tactical transparency in rpgs.

I understand that views are polarised between various rpg camps, however I was just pointing out that many gamers just grab what they like and throw it together in a mess on a favourite set of mechanics. Sometimes this works well, other times its not such a great fit.

I'm gonna go through your blog posts, lots of interesting stuff in there, and it will help me articulate my thoughts better so I stop coming across like some gaming newbie (which I'm not, considering I first rolled dice in the mid 1980s)
 
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What do "clocks" do in PbtA games?
It's just a fancy name for a counter. The clock is used to keep track of progress towards completing a goal or causing a complication. Generally, your failures during a heist will increment an alert clock or something like that, while success at safecracking will advance the clock for cracking the safe.

It's a nice and simple abstract mechanic that allows the GM to handwave the specifics of an ongoing situation or activity. A number of games have similar mechanics for tracking progress on an ongoing task (Heroquest goes all-in on this), but Blades (and apparently other powered games) encourages the GM to track more general conditions that way.

For example, a traditional game would represent a heist by introducing a map of the location with guard schedules, security measures, etc. In Blades, the GM wouldn't bother with a floorplan, but instead describe the location more generally. PCs would give broader instructions in response; instead of a player saying they are checking a certain door and turning left, they would say they are looking for an entrance and then quietly searching for the vault. The GM would then make appropriate stealth rolls, and if you fail, the alert clock goes up by one or more ticks. When it hits midnight, things get hairy in the predictable ways.
 
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Hey! Kinnikuman! That was M.U.S.C.L.E.S. over here when I was a kid
When I was living in Japan in '86, I freaking lived for Kinnikuman. My Japanese was pretty piss-poor, but I was able to follow this show pretty well, to the point where I was really enjoying the humor. I'm not really versed on M.U.S.C.L.E.S., but in the original show, Kinnikuman starts as a kind of goofball moron who screws everything up. Part of the fun for me was watching him slowly become less ridiculous and more competent. But then I missed the original dumbass Kinnikuman who flew through the air by the power of his own farts (really).
 
For example, a traditional game would represent a heist by introducing a map of the location with guard schedules, security measures, etc. In Blades, the GM wouldn't bother with a floorplan, but instead describe the location more generally. PCs would give broader instructions in response; instead of a player saying they are checking a certain door and turning left, they would say they are looking for an entrance and then quietly searching for the vault. The GM would then make appropriate stealth rolls, and if you fail, the alert clock goes up by one or more ticks. When it hits midnight, things get hairy in the predictable ways.
Edge, only now I see what you were saying. And I agree, yes, this "substitute actual roleplay with rolls" is something Blades do that our group didn't grok. We never used clocks in this way, only in the more "concrete" ways presented.

I find the concept of Clocks as explained in AW more concrete and less "stoeygamey" btw. There, it's just a countdown you attach to important Fronts or Threats (Factions, NPCs, Places, etc) to simulate their agendas or states evolving in time, specially if the PCs don't do anything to tamper with them.

So, the Mud Pit village in the bayou to the south could have the following clock:
3:00 Start of infectious disease
6:00 Disease spreads
9:00 First deaths
11:00 Population decimated
12:00 Disease spreads to nearby community (PC's ?)

So after some unit of time decided by the GM, he progress the clock forward one tick. It's more of a Sandbox/world simulation tool than a storygame one, as presented in AW.
 
I find the concept of Clocks as explained in AW more concrete and less "stoeygamey" btw. There, it's just a countdown you attach to important Fronts or Threats (Factions, NPCs, Places, etc) to simulate their agendas or states evolving in time, specially if the PCs don't do anything to tamper with them.
This sounds much more to my tastes. Abstractions are good for handling large scale stuff that you don't want to handwave.

I don't think that the premise of Blades ultimately works for me. If I was to play a heist scenario in an RPG, I would be anticipating exactly those things that Blades abstracts into the ether. I can totally understand how it can work if you want to jump right into Steampunk Oceans 11 without a week of GM preparation and three sessions of player planning. If that's the itch you have, Blades in the Dark will scratch it into oblivion.

I think a lot of other Powered games are amenable to adopting their mechanics on a sliding scale. I was reading Z Zak Smith's playthroughs/takedowns of AW and DW, and while I'm extremely sympathetic to most of his criticisms, there were a few elements that I think made more sense to me when I assumed that you could throw out whatever you don't like. The list of allowable PC descriptors and names exists purely so a player could choose to blast through the character creation process in record time. Any reasonable player could just make up whatever, and a good GM will houserule the resolution system to taste.

Still, it would be nice if the game told you that. Perhaps AW or DW does, but Blades doesn't really. At least, it doesn't give the impression that the rules are made to be hacked. But those rules really aren't made for heavy modding. If you throw out the clocks and the flashbacks, you might as well play another game.
 
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You can plug many of the novelty mechanics into whichever game you play.

I remember my cousin being GM and using a countdown clock years ago to build tension, and he used an actual clock. It was kinda the same notion - achieving milestones gave us bonus time, and fumbles lessened our time. It was a really cool gimmick, it made us sweat, very dramatic and nail-biting.

However it's nothing new, this was the early 1990s when we did it.
 
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I think this Flashback notion for heists sounds really cool, especially emulating scenes like you see in heist movies.

However I think ir's also a novelty mechanic that I would only use sparingly with my group.They would initially find it fun, but using it too much would take the shine off it, and I think they would eventually feel ripped off if every heist was portrayed that way, as they do like to plan expeditions and such. So for my group it would be a novelty mechanic I could port into a preexisting game, but it would only be used a few times.

If its a defining feature of Blades then that's cool - but that will likely make Blades only a novelty game for us, rather than one of our mainstays.
I can live with that.
 
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[ . . . ]
Still, it would be nice if the game told you that. Perhaps AW or DW does, but Blades doesn't really. At least, it doesn't give the impression that the rules are made to be hacked. But those rules really aren't made for heavy modding. If you throw out the clocks and the flashbacks, you might as well play another game.
I'm not sure I'd play Scum and Villany, but it was an interesting read and I'm thinking of grafting the flashbacks onto FATE (and using clocks for that matter) for a game I'm already doing.
 
That's pretty much what I'll do as well.

I initially bought Blades In The Dark thinking it was Fate Core anyway, and I picked up Scum & Villainy a month or so later just to support my local store. Given that my group won't want to system-hop yet again, I have better chance of actually using these books if I plug bits of them into Fate Core.

I want to give it a shot RAW one day, but probably won't get the opportunity.
 
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I think a lot of other Powered games are amenable to adopting their mechanics on a sliding scale. I was reading Z Zak Smith's playthroughs/takedowns of AW and DW, and while I'm extremely sympathetic to most of his criticisms, there were a few elements that I think made more sense to me when I assumed that you could throw out whatever you don't like.
Apocalypse World text is very assertive in that, if you don't play the game as written, you're not really playing AW (though it does give advice on how to create your own custom moves in the end, so take that as you will ). Blades on the other hand, presents itself as prone to modifications according to the group tastes. My take is that those rules are too central to the respective games to be optional, but who am I to contradict the author..

The list of allowable PC descriptors and names exists purely so a player could choose to blast through the character creation process in record time.
Not only that. The descriptors exist to communicate an implicit setting and style that pervades the entire book. The names (Mother Superior, Baaba, Vonk the Sculptor, Big Fucker), looks (masochistic wear, obese, small pig eyes), Moves (NOT TO BE FUCKED WITH), art, prose, etc all evoke this style. You may not like it of course, but it's clear what the author is trying to do just from leafing the first pages of AW.

Then comes Dungeon World and use the exact same structure to describe something everybody is completely familiar with, and it just sounds... silly and unnecessary, frankly. :tongue:
 
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Apocalypse World text is very assertive in that, if you don't play the game as written, you're not really playing AW (though it does give advice on how to create your own custom moves in the end, so take that as you will ). Blades on the other hand, presents itself as prone to modifications according to the group tastes. My take is that those rules are too central to the respective games to be optional, but who am I to contradict the author..


Not only that. The descriptors exist to communicate an implicit setting and style that pervades the entire book. The names (Mother Superior, Baaba, Vonk the Sculptor, Big Fucker), looks (masochistic wear, obese, small pig eyes), Moves (NOT TO BE FUCKED WITH), art, prose, etc all evoke this style. You may not like it of course, but it's clear what the author is trying to do just from leafing the first pages of AW.

Then comes Dungeon World and use the exact same structure to describe something everybody is completely familiar with, and it just sounds... silly and unnecessary, frankly. :tongue:

This is something about AW that few of the other PbtA games do. Communicating the style of play via the way the rule set itself is written. Off the top of my head Bluebeard's Bride and 1%centers do this. Although most of the better games do have the conversational approach though that can make the rules clear and accessible.
 
My take is that those rules are too central to the respective games to be optional, but who am I to contradict the author..
The GM! You are the painter - the rules are merely your pigments.
The names (Mother Superior, Baaba, Vonk the Sculptor, Big Fucker), looks (masochistic wear, obese, small pig eyes), Moves (NOT TO BE FUCKED WITH), art, prose, etc all evoke this style. You may not like it of course, but it's clear what the author is trying to do just from leafing the first pages of AW.

Then comes Dungeon World and use the exact same structure to describe something everybody is completely familiar with, and it just sounds... silly and unnecessary, frankly. :tongue:
You're right on both points, but I prefer that these details seems much more dispensable in DW. I already know how to GM a fantasy campaign; a post-apocalyptic game needs to have a specific and distinct setting to capture my interest.

Incidentally, that colors (or is colored by) my views on DCC vs. MCC. But I digress!

While I respect your humility regarding the intentions of the author, my philosophical approach to GM'ing precludes that. I'm running the content, it's not running me. I'll use one heavily-modded rule system with a setting that consists of three different published settings that have been hacked and mashed together with one of my own from a campaign when I was nineteen.

If I had to rank these three games in terms of how amenable they are to modification, I'd say that Dungeon World is the most flexible and Blades in the Dark is the least. I mean, you can easily hack any of them as much as you want, but I not necessarily without losing what makes them special (such as they are).
 
PTA creators don't really believe in putting money into art (Bluebeard's Bride being arguably an exception, though still it's short), and none of them are artists.

As a consumer, this is my biggest quibble with PbtA games. Evocative artwork is what draws me in, grounds me in the lore and sells me on buying a copy.
 
Nah, Apocalypse World communicates it's attitude and style amazingly well through the text/descriptors/playbooks/etc (even the simplistic pictures adds to it in their own way). So I don't agree with the criticism in this case.

But I agree other PbtA games needed better art. Blades in particular would really benefit from a Vampire-like visual treatment. The "bearded friends in photoshop" is spot on and some pieces are really embarrassing.

Btw, I see City of Mist has some very good art pieces. Don't know how consistent it is in the book though. Anyone here have it?

images
 
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Blades in the Dark sucks if all you are interested in roleplaying a character. Does not lend itself to "here what I do, tell me what I need to roll." The setting, premise, and character creation process are very atmospheric and interesting. It just the execution during the session is excruciating beyond belief unless you are a wanna-be author of weird steampunk heists.

I tried to play a session a few months back with a good friend who a fan of these types of games. While I don't play regularly with him, I know from previous experience that for him and his regular group it probably would come off as a formal process where a group sits in a circles and spitballs story ideas for weird steampunk heists.

I have no doubt it fun for him and his regulars but it is not traditional roleplaying.
 
"Imagine a world where Neil Gaiman tried to write like Warren Ellis, populated by people who look like storygamers rendered contrasty via photoshop, only thinner and with hair ".
What low effort shit. 1/10. :yawn:
 
Nah, Apocalypse World communicates it's attitude and style amazingly well through the text/descriptors/playbooks/etc (even the simplistic pictures adds to it in their own way). So I don't agree with the criticism in this case.
Exactly. Art is a lot more than just the pictures. And don't get me wrong, visually seeing how the creators visualise a setting can be very important, but a lot of the setting in AW is the archetypes that live in AW rather than the world detail itself, so this approach works for it; I probably wouldn't want more detailed pictures than the book has.

Not every approach is necessarily right for every game, AW's approach works fine for AW.
 
Nah, Apocalypse World communicates it's attitude and style amazingly well through the text/descriptors/playbooks/etc (even the simplistic pictures adds to it in their own way). So I don't agree with the criticism in this case.

But I agree other PbtA games needed better art. Blades in particular would really benefit from a Vampire-like visual treatment. The "bearded friends in photoshop" is spot on and some pieces are really embarrassing.

Btw, I see City of Mist has some very good art pieces. Don't know how consistent it is in the book though. Anyone here have it?

images

I have the quickstart and the art is plentiful and at the same level as that cover.
 
Blades in the Dark sucks if all you are interested in roleplaying a character. Does not lend itself to "here what I do, tell me what I need to roll." The setting, premise, and character creation process are very atmospheric and interesting. It just the execution during the session is excruciating beyond belief unless you are a wanna-be author of weird steampunk heists.

I tried to play a session a few months back with a good friend who a fan of these types of games. While I don't play regularly with him, I know from previous experience that for him and his regular group it probably would come off as a formal process where a group sits in a circles and spitballs story ideas for weird steampunk heists.

I have no doubt it fun for him and his regulars but it is not traditional roleplaying.

I don't see that as coming out the rule set just how that GM approaches it, nothing you describe seems tied to what I've read in the book which like AW is very much "here what I do, roll when needed." The only unusual mechanic is the clock and the flashbacks.
 
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A deeper issue is PTA games (and the scene that spawned them) were very into trying to create games which reproduced familiar genres and subgenres very specifically. While D&D is a fantasy game, things atypical of the kind of fantasy lit most people are familiar with happen a lot--like getting killed at first level by a giant rat. Storygamers viewed nontropes and antitropes like this as a bug, not a feature ("violation of expectations").

You need images most when your game contains inventions--that is, atypical things that the book needs to sell you on, that is: violations of expectations. So, for example, nobody would give a fuck about a beholder if it wasn't for the picture so there's a picture-that picture by Sutherland has defined "the beholder" to all of us for decades. Dungeon World doesn't have any inventions--it is simply there to (Adam Koebel's words) reproduce "pop fantasy" --and since we all already know what pop fantasy is, they don't see the need for pictures.

Apocalypse World has room for inventions (for example, in our game we had cobalt-blue radioactive snakes sealed up inside a rusted ice-cream van) but the package itself is just "This is the post-apoc game you kinda expect, invent what you want". So the authors devalue what art can do, since it doesn't have as much of an explanatory function in their games.

This is especially apparent when a PTA game tries to have a creative setting, like Blades does, it has ghosts and demons and.....pictures of the authors beardo friends with gears glued to their heads. Great (or at least distinctive) art makes a setting seem like more than the sum of its genre signifiers: look at Warhammer Fantasy--on paper its just a reworked D&D--but on canvas its another universe entirely because of the power of the art to sell it as a distinctive place.

Bluebeard's Bride is kinda pushing into a less-familiar genre, so needed art to sell that genre as existing--and, to some degree, got it.

Bluebeard's Bride is 130 pages and packed with quite extravagant art, not sure how it qualifies as short. Ditto City of Mist and The Veil which have a lot of distinctive art.

AW could have a lot better art but it came out in 2010, Death Frost Doom’s original release (believe it was 2009) had medicore, minimal art and shitty maps until you and Jez fixed it up in 2014. It was the content of DFD that grabbed people not the presentation. It is too bad they didn’t improve the art for 2e AW, maybe if someone suggests it to Baker he’ll think of that next time.
 
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Exactly. Art is a lot more than just the pictures. And don't get me wrong, visually seeing how the creators visualise a setting can be very important, but a lot of the setting in AW is the archetypes that live in AW rather than the world detail itself, so this approach works for it; I probably wouldn't want more detailed pictures than the book has.
This. The world is supposed to be this canvas the players will paint, but the archetypes are a constant and the true center of the show. Even the name "Master of Ceremonies" implies this (an MC, by definition, is there as a host to guarantee the guests/attractions shine). Because of this, the only way to improve on AW aesthetics would be improving the archetypes art. Depictions of vistas, action scenes, etc. would go against this spirit imo.

And thinking now, maybe Vampire5 style live pictures could work here? Some clan examples are already pretty "apocalyptic". Hehe

Death Frost Doom’s original release (believe it was 2009) had medicore, minimal art and shitty maps until you and Jez fixed it up in 2014. It was the content of DFD that grabbed people not the presentation
What's is this? Always curious to see new art from Zak (and new good games). Tell me more!
 
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I mean why fritter away time on yet another "roll 2d6 when you're done talking" game when you could just make your own?

DC_04_44_Swarm.jpg
Okay, is this a teaser?
 
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Okay, is this a teaser?
ZWEIHANDERING

Whenever you see a forum thread where your game is vaguely relevant, roll +marketing. On a 10+, hold 3. On a 7 - 9, hold 1. Spend your hold to:
* Post a preview of your game
* Con a forum regular into doing marketing work for your game for you

On a miss, hold 1 anyway, but you have to remind us of one of your grudges as well.
 
Ok that's a nice move, but please, let's try to keep this friendly, folks. :wink:
 
I don't see that as coming out the rule set just how that GM approaches it, nothing you describe seems tied to what I've read in the book which like AW is very much "here what I do, roll when needed." The only unusual mechanic is the clock and the flashbacks.

See this, we had keep dropping roleplaying as our character i.e. Free Play to deal with the crap called for in Downtime, Engagement Roll, and Score. The referee is not the problem in this case. He experienced with other RPGs, has run this with his regular group numerous time successfully. Who share his interest in this style of game where the players act like authors.

Diagram.jpg

With us, we just wanted to roleplay our character and move on. The main issues throughout the night was lack of desire to do any meaningful downtime and our unwillingness to come up with flashbacks. Basically after the first hour and a half or so, we understood what was going on and were ready to deal with it. The downtime stuff and flashback stuff were distraction. Made more annoying by the fact how our character were interacting was interesting and the situation also was interesting.

After I read the book, my impression is that it is more or less a wargame like Shadowrun Crossfire. A board game with the veneer of roleplaying a character lathered over it. Include Crossfire style missions with distinct phases and goals to achieve. The game is about manipulating the abstract mini-games rather than trying to adjudicate specific actions by the PCs.

And to be damn clear, while it is a terrible traditional roleplaying game, that has nothing to do with whether it is fun to play or not. Just as D&D 4e is a terrible version of D&D, but as a traditional RPG with a heavy combat focus it a lot of fun to play.
 
ZWEIHANDERING

Whenever you see a forum thread where your game is vaguely relevant, roll +marketing. On a 10+, hold 3. On a 7 - 9, hold 1. Spend your hold to:
* Post a preview of your game
* Con a forum regular into doing marketing work for your game for you

On a miss, hold 1 anyway, but you have to remind us of one of your grudges as well.
In Zweihänder terms, I flip the results to succeed at Marketing Tests.

When others use a Marketing Test while talking about Zweihänder in a positive way, they gain an Assist Die. If in a negative way, they must have played Zweihänder and also give critical feedback while making a Marketing Test, or else gain the Something Awful or 4Chan condition. The condition you gain is based on your Age Group.
 
See this, we had keep dropping roleplaying as our character i.e. Free Play to deal with the crap called for in Downtime, Engagement Roll, and Score. The referee is not the problem in this case. He experienced with other RPGs, has run this with his regular group numerous time successfully. Who share his interest in this style of game where the players act like authors.

View attachment 5384

With us, we just wanted to roleplay our character and move on. The main issues throughout the night was lack of desire to do any meaningful downtime and our unwillingness to come up with flashbacks. Basically after the first hour and a half or so, we understood what was going on and were ready to deal with it. The downtime stuff and flashback stuff were distraction. Made more annoying by the fact how our character were interacting was interesting and the situation also was interesting.

After I read the book, my impression is that it is more or less a wargame like Shadowrun Crossfire. A board game with the veneer of roleplaying a character lathered over it. Include Crossfire style missions with distinct phases and goals to achieve. The game is about manipulating the abstract mini-games rather than trying to adjudicate specific actions by the PCs.

And to be damn clear, while it is a terrible traditional roleplaying game, that has nothing to do with whether it is fun to play or not. Just as D&D 4e is a terrible version of D&D, but as a traditional RPG with a heavy combat focus it a lot of fun to play.

Only downtime is dealt with at a high level. Everything else in the diagram is played out. And downtime is really no different than downtime in Adventures in Middle Earth. Or in 5e D&D. As I recall you’re a big fan of AiME.

I get that you may not have liked the break with convention with the flashbacks but as I said there are lots of conventional heist rpgs out there if that's what you want. To complain that a game that is trying something different is, you know, different seems to be a rather pointless exercise. To claim it isn't an rpg or 'really' a boardgame is a tiresome posture probably best debated in another thread as I think has has less to do with PbtA or BitD and more about the widespread resistance in the aging RPG fandom to new games and mechanics.
 
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Only downtime is dealt with at a high level. Everything else in the diagram is played out. And downtime is really no different than downtime in Adventures in Middle Earth. Or in 5e D&D. As I recall you’re a big fan of AiME.

The main issue I have isn't with addition of downtime, it is with the overall structure.

To complain that a game that is trying something different is, you know, different seems to be a rather pointless exercise.

It is when it advertises itself as a traditional roleplaying game and have to focus on other things other than pretending to be my character. I don't have the same complaint of Shadowrun Crossfire because despite the point of game is that you play character cooperating with other playing to complete missions. It is clearly presented as a boardgame. So my exception is to achieve the victory condition per the rules.

To claim it isn't an rpg or 'really' a boardgame is a tiresome posture probably best debated in another thread as I think has has less to do with PbtA or BitD and more about the widespread resistance in the aging RPG fandom to new games and mechanics.

Or sometimes a duck is a duck. It felt like the same class of game as represented by Shadowrun Crossfire for the reasons I outlined in the previous post. I played both, I am reporting the experience.
 
To be perfectly honest, these days I don't care for "traditional" RPGs because most times that means slow boring procedures that waste my time and add little to the actual game, all because "muh simulation".

So I don't care what people call Blades or PbtA or Pendragon, as long as they continue to exist and I continue playing them.
 
I find that for many it is about what the rule abstract or don't abstract irregardless of the type of game it is. For traditional roleplaying, I been involved with groups that would be annoyed with playing out the trek to and from the dungeon when they exit or enter. I been involved with groups that were trying to make every in-game hour count as they had multiple things going on from in-game day to in-game day. Sometimes is about the kind of abstraction like the various minimalist approaches to account for injury.

With the Blades in the Dark, the character creation was fine, the setting was fine, the choices and method of resolving action was fine. It more abstract than what I go for usually but the "stuff" i.e. the choices one had for character creation was very evocative for the premise. So +1 for that.

If the session continued as a traditional tabletop rpg then fun would have been had by all. But that not how the game flows. Instead it had a specific structure that made it feel like a boardgame.
 
ZWEIHANDERING

Whenever you see a forum thread where your game is vaguely relevant, roll +marketing. On a 10+, hold 3. On a 7 - 9, hold 1. Spend your hold to:
* Post a preview of your game
* Con a forum regular into doing marketing work for your game for you

On a miss, hold 1 anyway, but you have to remind us of one of your grudges as well.

* hands over the internet * - Your winnings, sir. :hehe:
 
I don't think that's an accurate description of why rules you don't like generally exist--"simulation" is very rarely anyone's goal as designer or player, "simulation" as the catch-all reason for any rule whose purpose the reader can't identify is just a received idea from troll forums (even for people who claim to like it and have fallen into the trap of using these terms).

Games usually have these procedures you don't like because they lead to results that either don't crop up in your play because your group doesn't exploit them (if you fail to open a door that means maybe a random encounter and a risk-reward calculation) or ones you don't enjoy the challenge they present (random spells being actually random means you need to take tactical advantage of what you're given, for example).
You may be right. What I can't stand anymore are those super involving procedures like character creations that take half a session or combat systems that take 2 hours to resolve 20 seconds of in-game time, because that rarely translates into fun and becomes just busywork in my experience. Those are not always related to simulation purposes, though, I agree.
 
The main issue I have isn't with addition of downtime, it is with the overall structure.



It is when it advertises itself as a traditional roleplaying game and have to focus on other things other than pretending to be my character. I don't have the same complaint of Shadowrun Crossfire because despite the point of game is that you play character cooperating with other playing to complete missions. It is clearly presented as a boardgame. So my exception is to achieve the victory condition per the rules.



Or sometimes a duck is a duck. It felt like the same class of game as represented by Shadowrun Crossfire for the reasons I outlined in the previous post. I played both, I am reporting the experience.

Not sure where you've seen it advertised as a 'traditional' roleplaying game. Not convinced about these endless claims that trad players are somehow being 'tricked' into playing games. Reminds me of the time some members of the theatre audience freaked at a showing of Cronenberg's Crash. These days with the net all the details you could want on a game are easily available.
 
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What's is this? Always curious to see new art from Zak (and new good games). Tell me more!

I know someone else already kinda answered this but want to say that the revised Death Frost Doom by Zak and Jez for LotFP is terrific. Great art and maps and the changes Zak made improve a pretty good adventure to a nearly great adventure.
 
Not sure where you've seen it advertised as a 'traditional' roleplaying game. Not convinced about these endless claims that trad players are somehow being 'tricked' into playing games. Reminds me of the time some members of the theatre audience freaked at a showing of Cronenberg's Crash. These days with the net all the detaiks you could want on a game are easily available.

I did not mentioned trickery. My friend who refereeing was known to like games like Blades in the Dark so as a group we were prepared for something different. As for advertising it right there in the link you gave.

Blades in the Dark
is a tabletop role-playing game about a crew of daring scoundrels seeking their fortunes on the haunted streets of an industrial-fantasy city. There are heists, chases, occult mysteries, dangerous bargains, bloody skirmishes, and, above all, riches to be had — if you’re bold enough to seize them.
What the company choose advertise it as is irrelevant to reporting my experience and that it felt more similar to Shadowrun Crossfire as a game than it did with the other RPGs I own like D&D, GURPS, Runequest, Traveller, etc. And why it felt that way.
 
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