It won me over. Great game, and highly suited to weening players of D&D i've discovered. I don't play regular PBtA games though (2d6 1-6 / 7-9 / 10+). Forged in the Dark is quite a bit different from it, and I think better personally. John Harper credits Dishonoured as a major influence in the beginning of the book. If you don't like 'success with a consequence' as the core of a game then yes, you're not going to like Blades or PBtA. That concept is the engine of this kind of game. I like it a lot personally - though it does put a lot of pressure the GM to be good at improvising consequences, which can be tough for a GM coming from running pre-written adventures in 5e. As for Blades: you can't really deep dive into the fail / success with a consquence / success system without going deep into the controlled / standard / great effect system that the GM uses to 'balance' it. That's where the GM gets 'control'. The GM NOT calling for an action roll is an essential part of the game, and it works great. Also Blades doesn't have 'classes' - you can put stats where you want and get any special ability from any other sheet. So it's not limited - nor is it hacking the game - its already in the rules as written (see 'veteran advances). No work needed. The restrictions you describe are not in there. No breaking of the system needed. Quite a few technical errors in this video, you made a bunch of rules errors and important omissions :( Did you play it or just skim the book? I enjoy your videos a lot normally! But this one ... seems a bit like a gripe based on assumptions having not played it.
Managing consequences is a bit of a learned skill but even the book suggests frontloading the "What do you do?" questions with them. For example, you might say "The thug charges at you with a knife drawn, what do you do?" The obvious consequence is that you get slashed or stabbed! It takes some practice to get used to, but in (most) other circumstances the game suggests you defer to your players for ideas. You don't have to be the sole creator of the story and narrative as the GM of this game, but you are the final arbiter when it comes to making decisions and describing the story.
About the "there already is a Dishonored game" - Blades came out before the Dishonored RPG. I was actually looking for a Dishonored game and saw that the official one was still in development and according to people online, BitD was the next best thing. I prefer BitD to the 2d20 version, but it's not ideal. I'm not happy with the lack of proper combat rules. Dishonored (the videogame) has some very quick and brutal combat, even without the superpowers and half-assing it in BitD just doesn't do it for me :/
I have very limited experience playing games within systems like this one, come to think of it. That being said, for me, this type of system seems good at guiding a group in constructing the story, but it seems to fail at immersing them in said story. So, the end product, if written down, may be worth reading as a book; but the experience itself feels more like a collaborative writing session than living through a scenario. I wonder if my groups are missing something.
I believe you've read the rules wrong when you describe rolls. When you roll for a stat, say, Tinker, you just roll how many dots you have in Tinker. Not Insight + Tinker
I would say you probably shouldn't call it a PBTA game though. Similarly how pathfinder second edition is not d&d even if it is similar. For the game. I guess it's mostly a case of different goals. I really like the fact the system is set out to do only one thing but do that one thing well. Also, I have some other considerations with the gameplay advice you mentioned. For the skills, it is set up for they players to have to convince the gm their skill is applicable and accepts the consequences if the gm doesn't agree. I enjoy the way it invites the players to find their own solutions instead of just walking the GM's obstacle course. Also with the "don't make the pc's look foolish" advice, my interpretation is that they don't mean "don't let them feel the consequences of their actions" as much as "don't let your players trip of their feet and fall down the stairs when rolling to sneak through the hallway". A mistake novice gm's, for whom this advice matters in the first place, do actually name.
About the last part, 100% agree! The book gives a great example of this on page 197, and I'll copy it here: Don't Make The PCs Look Incompetent When a PC rolls a 1-3, things go badly, but it's because the circumstances are dangerous or troublesome -- not because the character is a buffoon. Even a PC with zero action rating in an action isn't a bumbling fool. Here's a trick for this: start your description of the failure with a cool move by the PC, followed by "but" and then the element in the situation that made things so challenging. "You aim a fierce right hook at his chin, but he's quicker than he looked! He ducks under the blow and wrestles you up against the wall." The idea is very at odds with a more D&D-like attitude towards failure. Think of an attack roll from that game: you either pass and hit, which may get narrated by the DM, or you fail to hit and you just move on with the rest of the combat. Blades doesn't work like that. When you roll those 1-3s, you narrate what the character is doing - or trying to do - and then interrupt that action with why it didn't succeed, and whatever consequences spring up from what just happened.
From running the game, the main appeal to me is that it really facilitates improv. Its not quite perfect to my taste by i can't deny that once i got the game going, it became a very powerful "make stuff up" engine.
Playing this game, when you roll dice you're an oracle throwing chicken bones on the floor and then you spout nonsense based on how the chicken bones landed. Its a vibe.
i generally don't like pbta games because I find it very hard to be immersed while I'm playing them. Forged in the dark games are different. the way everything is presented and the way you have mechanical agency as a player makes it far more immersive for me. pbta feels like storytelling and improv acting. but forged in the dark feels like roleplaying. at least for me. - *edit* I should clarify that I find that players making decisions from the perspective of their characters to be important, and this maybe influences that way I run forged in the dark games (currently running scum and villainy). So its entirely possible that I'm not running the game in the way that it is meant to be run. I recognize that you CAN approach a lot of the mechanics from a very meta and out of character perspective, like devils bargains for example, but I just naturally only offer devils bargains that make sense within the fiction. So generally things that the PC's can actively choose to sacrifice in hopes of greater effect, rather than something unlucky happening. Basically, if you approach forged in the dark games with an OSR mentality, I think you can have a lot of fun. I've run ALOT of shadowrun in my time, and I find the heist mission structure of blades in the dark to be a genius way for the PC's the express competency beyond what the players themselves might have. In much the same way that the player does not need to be able to sword fight to be able to hit on an attack roll, players playing blades in the dark do not need to meticulously create backup plans in order to have contingencies ready to deal with complications that arise during a heist.
Is there enough setting to bother with getting it to use in another system? I like what little I've heard about the location... or would the Dishonored book be the same but better?
At 19:00 in you get to the core of what makes PBTA bad as a RPG, but as I have noted good for what it really is and who its target audience is - collaborative fanfiction. This system is the equivalent of picking a topic and going round robin writing fiction. At least ths book isnt a focus on pervy crap.
imo thats actually what separates forged in the dark and powered by the apocalypse. forged in the dark actively asks the players how much they care about a particular roll and gives them mechanics for making sacrifices for increased chances of success. This, to me, allows players to actually roleplay (that is, approach the fiction from the perspective of their character, rather than from the perspective of an author).
You didnt try? This game powered up all my Heist-Games. Cyberpunk, Shadowrun... whatever. Its great! Even I will never love the setting. I´m thankful for the mechanics and tricks it provided for my GM-Toolbox...quite mighty. I don`t play pbta.
Not sure if you read these, but I have a genuine favor to ask. Could you give a real concrete example of your critique of how the systems are too tightly coupled and how modifying one can bring the whole thing crashing down? I don't understand this at all. I am currently working on porting BitD to a different time/setting/genre and it has been super, super smooth. I was able to apply pretty much everything without issue, dropping what didn't feel right and sprinkling in what was missing. But after watching a couple of your videos, I am wondering what I am missing. All of your other takes, I have no problem with - we each have our own preferences and I respect that you have your own tastes and that is cool. I agree on a few, disagree on more but in the end those all feel like 'what do you want to get out of your Friday evening' type stuff. But this one feels like an actual mechanical thing that has me worried that I am missing something crucial.
Hi, checking in 7 months later. did you ever end up running into any issues? I personally feel like blades in the dark is very easy to adapt to other settings. The action roll is tied to a bunch of other systems in the game, but most of those systems are setting agnostic, so you can easily change things up.
Pretty much anything by tversky and Kahneman in behavioral economics. On gambling, gamblers fallacy and risk aversion are applicable to dice based games Hope this helps
Lets see if I can convince you, if not actually liking a PbtA style games at least understand them enough to have fun playing a game. As I understand it PtbA style games sit on the intersection of simple and class based. The only way to make this work is to narrow the scope of the game considerably locking down setting, themes, tone and conflict. This has the advantage of allowing every element of the game to re-enforce setting, themes, tone and conflict in a way that you can't for a game that is designed to be flexible. In my experience playing games with wider potential scope, the first thing you do is sit down collectively and figure out setting, themes, tone and core conflict, and then make choices about character or campaign that fit into those things. This really helps ensure that everybodies expectations align and we aren't fighting over what we want the thing to be. With the PtbA style game these steps are more or less done for you. If you don't want that particular combination of elements then either look for a different game or take the SRD (IIRC for "Forged in the Dark" for Blades in the Dark) and populate it with classes and other elements that re-enforce the type of fiction you are going for. As far as being a story game, PtbA style games have two main things they have going for them. Relatively light mechanics make it easier to carry everything you need to know in your head, making it easier to get into a flow state with playing a character, getting immersed in the story and A setting which is detailed enough that there are always landmarks you can improvise off of but not so detailed that you feeled compelled to stop and look up the official lore rather than invent your own details. With blades specifically both the flashback mechanic and the fact that what is in your load out is decided as you need it help with the story telling aspects. With regards to some specific things you said in your video. The base chance of succeeding (with or without a complication) is 25% you have to have invested at least one skill pip to get a 50/50. The reason for prefering "Yes and…" to "No but…" is that "Yes and…" keeps the forward momentum of the story while at the same time as building tension which is the story structure that Blades is going for. One of the other things that is very noticable is the lack of reroll mechanics, the fact that you have to decide what you are willing to pay in order to win before you know the outcome does a lot to build the tension. The reason I would choose Forged in the Dark as the starting point for my own RPG setting is if I wanted the feel to be fast pace action, where the situation is always changing and the tension keeps ratcheting up.
Meh... I bought this ages ago after all the 'hype'. On paper it sounded cool, but after I read the rules I thought of it more as a tactical robbery game with very little roleplaying. I could play Dungeon World, incidentally, but this is too fiddly and I dislike the downtime system - it feels very mechanical. Just not my style... I do however like the tone of the game world just not the way it's supposed to be played. That's another reason why I didn't bother with A/Stare 2e when I heard the rules were based on this.
PBtA games are just not my cup of tea. The way the moves feel like I am being pigeon-holed into some other person's terminology, a terminology that my brain can't seem to wrap itself around, pushes PBtA games out of my comfort zone. Still, there is obviously a market for that system, and many people seem to enjoy it... so... to each their own
Funny you say that, thay was the reason why I brought all the PF2 books I had into the game store for credit. Pathfinder 1e was fine, but 2e tried to both be clever AND appeal to the vocal minority on social media (WRT terminology like class or race being offensive) and the result was a layout that just broke me mentally. Even common terms got new labels, standard gamebook layout was out the window...even if I liked the lore and mechanics revisions (I didnt) I could not grok the game. As for PBTA, its less a RPG mechanic and more a co-op fanfiction effort. Every aspect of its concept centers around that conceit. As others say it has its fans but not me. From those I have encountered that like PBTA, they likely say the same for me 😅
@@cthulhupthagn5771 Oddly enough, over this past weekend, I also gifted my copies of DungeonWorld (can not stomach the author) & Blades in the Dark to my local gaming store... and I have been on a real bender here of late to get as many of the Pathfinder 1e books as I can. Pathfinder 2e is a little off-putting to me... with the inclusion of many "trendy" topics. But, as I have said, there are plenty of people who enjoy those games and their respective newer versions... I'm just not one of them.
@@PostmortemVideo to role play in a structured manner according to prescribed rules, which is what PbtA and Forged in the dark games are. Do you also not understand what a game is?
@CD-zd6zr, this is a cooperative writing exercise. Unlike RPGs, where you immerse yourself in the characters and their actions in a reactive world, here, you play at a detached meta-level without immersion and with a system that fails to have internal consistency or to react properly. This is the same problem that dogs all the pbta dross, and lord knows, I've given it more than a fair shot.
@@PostmortemVideo so you have a very narrow definition of RPGs and games and are using that to justify not enjoying them. You can just not like something, that's fine. But you think that the only RPGs are simulation RPGs. PbtA and other such systems are not simulation games. They are narrative games. Example: In a simulation game a wizard is going to fail to break down a door because the in universe character is weak. In a narrative game a wizard is going to fail to break down a door because that's the kind of character that would fail to break down a door. Same outcomes different reasoning. Both involve chance and structure based upon rules. Which is what makes a game a game. Again you don't have to like a given game, but to deny they are games is just fucking cringy gatekeeping shit. We get it, you're edgy.
@@CD-zd6zr Of RPGs, yes, of games no. The clue is in the name 'Role-Playing'. These things aren't really RPGs and as such have even been given their own nomenclature that tacitly admits this - story games. Nor am I necessarily saying there's anything wrong with story games per se, they're just not RPGs. For me, these games are sold under a false title and produce a type of play I find deeply unsatisfying and anthetical to the primary goal of an RPG - immersion. It's not even genre emulation. We get it, you're a pretentious arsehole.
A core conceit and failing of PBTA is a lack of improvisational rolls The system is strictly defined by what exactly matters (in the designer's opinion), and everything outside of that narrow focus is considered to not matter or at least not be important enough for a "move". I don't play a game to metaphysically fight with a designer. As a designer, if you can't help me, get out of the way. That's my entire treatise on game design. These narrow games aren't for me because they could practically play and run themselves with simple procedural generation and simple procedural determination. The "game" with PBtA is players attempting to get the GM to call the right moves that will help them the best for a situation. Neither party ever enters immersion, always standing outside of the game space and manipulating it like the coach on a baseball team. I'm simply uninterested in throwing call signs from the dugout like this. Put me in coach, I'm ready to play. This criticism may not be as relevant to BitD, but there are still meta-procedures built into the game that bother me, for a quick and easy example Downtime (p. 145). Downtime says it's a break for the players, then explains a rigorous fully defined 4-step multiple-substep procedure for how Downtime happens. It's like having your wife plan every 15 minutes of a week-long vacation. Step 1 is the Payoff (p. 146). No big whoop, but immediately after it discusses crime bosses you have to pay off (or not) and the player is supposed to ask the GM then modify their payout accordingly. Zero roleplaying in this step. 100% meta. Even the payout is in "coin", a metacurrency instead of an actual in-game currency. There's a minor amount of lip service to potentially roleplaying the encounter (with express permission to not bother if nothing interesting is going to happen), and another meta-variable clock that starts should the group decide not to pay. It's implicit this clock is viewable by the players, so there's a lack of surprise in the system. Right after the lip service to roleplaying, the book chastizes the GM "Don't have Mr Johnson refuse to pay the players or instead lure them into a trap, etc." Taking away something the fiction could demand given the right circumstances. And be "interesting", meaning that if there were complications this system as presented would stereograph them by the GM's lack of skipping the payoff. I'm not saying it should happen every time like Shadowrun or Cyberpunk (lol), but if an up-and-coming politician hires some assassins to kill a political rival and doesn't want it to get out, there's really only one way to solve that problem from his PoV. And it should be up to the players to set up the requisite blackmail to keep themselves out of the crosshairs. I may be old-fashioned, but I think the fiction should come first, and mechanics second. If the mechanics don't fit the fiction, get new mechanics. This is why I don't like BitD, like other PbtA games it's so bureaucratic/procedural and dry/hollow/soulless. Abstraction is fine. HPs and AC are both abstractions. It's the procedure that makes me dislike these games. The procedure feels like the game designer backseat GMing the entire time. I think you're spot on that the lack of failure, or rather lack of meaningful failure, is also a big problem with these games. Dice pools using muddy math are a convenient way to hide actual percentage chances, this is why I dislike all die pool systems. They all suffer this problem to some extent. I think your point on fixing the game system requires essentially developing it into a traditional RPG is right on. Traditional RPGs aren't broke, these games don't fix them, it's the other way around. Thanks for the review, Grim
11:20 'even the worst person has a 50/50 chance of success.' Firstly, if you don't have any skill in something you roll 2 dice and take the worst. Secondly, adding your skill to your attribute is NOT how skill tests work. Thirdly, you are ment to be playing competent thieves not 1st level footpads. Forthly, success with complication is ment to be 'bad', so you might pick the lock (a success) but you took so long the security team have turned up (a complication). Letting your players 'off' with weak complications dose not for a good game make. Fithly, players are ment to be courting desaster by trading Risky situations for Desperate ones with better rewards. This is to make the game more 'cinematic' (Mission Impossible) and less mundane (Impossible Mission). It is a story game, so you are playing to make a story. The GM is ment to be more willing to have the player make meaningful additions to the story (Flashbacks), as opposed to what passes for co-creation in most games. If you are at a table where players will abuse this GM level god power then you are not going to get on with the game. The game is grim-dark; you are playing scum NOT heroes, the GM and the player BOTH should be looking to punish them for their evil ways. I found you need zero prep in games because your players should choose what the mission is NOT the GM - Once again player AGENCY not GM dictation. The aim of the game is not to retire your character to a wealthy retirement (If you play the game you would find it vertually impossible to change your strata in society), most characters will end up doing bird, dead/undead, or 'retired' - drunk in a flop house. For these fundamental misunderstanding/mis-reading of the ruleset I have to give a thumbs down (something I never do) as you would expect more diligence from a professional reviewer. Anyone interested in the rules can check my TH-cam where I put the rules on screen for people who want to learn the system: the vid 'Hanging with the wrong crowd' is a good place to start, or 'Blades in the Dark Lets Play' if you want to see what a player designed mission looks like.
Also I'm really tired of TH-camrs saying that they are more focused on the RP aspect of RPG's (ohh la-de-da) & the BitD systems are too meta to allow them to express their inner drama student. I'm my games you can roll one set of dice and complete a whole combat, which keeps it fast and lets you get back to RPin' if thats where your heart is, not meny RPG's can say that. You can also play it board gamey too, if thats your bent.
See recent After-Action Report on Candela Obscura, review of Candela Obscura, and actual play on Grimstreams. CO being a derivative of Barely Interesting Theatrical Doldrums. If you don't like people pointing out the massive flaw in all of these Pitiably Boring Trendy Avarice derived games, work on a version without that gaping issue.
@@PostmortemVideo Thank you for taking time out of whichever controversy you are currently embroiled in to half-ass answer my post. As stated in the comment you have made a number of fundamental mistakes in the rules so trusting your analysis of said system would seem unwise. As you state in your other vids you " roll up characters and test them" - well, you are testing them with rules you got wrong so... maybe you should look at that as a reliable way of experiencing a system. Most GM's do this kind of prep to get a handle on the rules set before they sit down in front of a group. However it is not the same as running a game. For example you could not tell by this method that though Bad Interminable Time Dilation dangles all these 'retirement rewards' in front of the players, its extremely hard to get anything that isn't 'you end up I the gutter, giving bj's for gin'. As for 'Complications' and the poor GM having to think them up all the time - you are once again playing it 'wrong'. The player should be coming up with complications as often as GM OR you should be ticking the 'Big Bad' has woke up clock IN THE OPEN which should be adding tension. Maybe the player could RP how this build up is making them panic or making the baddies more confident? This could add to the RP right? You like that sweet sweet RP dontcha? As I have watched your vids maybe you could return the complement & go watch 'Hanging with the wrong crowd' - I edit my vids down to human timescales so it wont take you as long as any other RPG on youtube. Please don't make me watch any more County Ocean though - I think we can both agree that game sucks.
@@chromeego7903 Point being of those other references, that I haven't remotely changed my mind about the flaws in the underlying system, despite having either misspoke or gotten it wrong in this one, I forget which it actually was, but I did find Big Irritating Taint Dilator to be not especially well laid out or written, which is another issue with Pony Blowing Tit Assaulter derived games.
Why isn't it a TTRPG? It sure ain't a simulation engine, but it's at least as much of a game as board games like Catan or dungeon crawlers like Melee/Wizard
It won me over. Great game, and highly suited to weening players of D&D i've discovered. I don't play regular PBtA games though (2d6 1-6 / 7-9 / 10+). Forged in the Dark is quite a bit different from it, and I think better personally. John Harper credits Dishonoured as a major influence in the beginning of the book.
If you don't like 'success with a consequence' as the core of a game then yes, you're not going to like Blades or PBtA. That concept is the engine of this kind of game. I like it a lot personally - though it does put a lot of pressure the GM to be good at improvising consequences, which can be tough for a GM coming from running pre-written adventures in 5e.
As for Blades: you can't really deep dive into the fail / success with a consquence / success system without going deep into the controlled / standard / great effect system that the GM uses to 'balance' it. That's where the GM gets 'control'. The GM NOT calling for an action roll is an essential part of the game, and it works great.
Also Blades doesn't have 'classes' - you can put stats where you want and get any special ability from any other sheet. So it's not limited - nor is it hacking the game - its already in the rules as written (see 'veteran advances). No work needed. The restrictions you describe are not in there. No breaking of the system needed.
Quite a few technical errors in this video, you made a bunch of rules errors and important omissions :( Did you play it or just skim the book?
I enjoy your videos a lot normally! But this one ... seems a bit like a gripe based on assumptions having not played it.
I ran into similar criticisms with burning wheel, and I think it's down to interpretation and convention
Managing consequences is a bit of a learned skill but even the book suggests frontloading the "What do you do?" questions with them. For example, you might say "The thug charges at you with a knife drawn, what do you do?" The obvious consequence is that you get slashed or stabbed! It takes some practice to get used to, but in (most) other circumstances the game suggests you defer to your players for ideas. You don't have to be the sole creator of the story and narrative as the GM of this game, but you are the final arbiter when it comes to making decisions and describing the story.
6:15 that's not how it works. You'd roll only Tinker for tinkering, and you'd roll only your Insight for resistance.
Which doesn't make much sense either.
Tinker for the action. Insight if the player wants to resist the consequences of not rolling a six.
About the "there already is a Dishonored game" - Blades came out before the Dishonored RPG. I was actually looking for a Dishonored game and saw that the official one was still in development and according to people online, BitD was the next best thing.
I prefer BitD to the 2d20 version, but it's not ideal. I'm not happy with the lack of proper combat rules. Dishonored (the videogame) has some very quick and brutal combat, even without the superpowers and half-assing it in BitD just doesn't do it for me :/
I have very limited experience playing games within systems like this one, come to think of it.
That being said, for me, this type of system seems good at guiding a group in constructing the story, but it seems to fail at immersing them in said story. So, the end product, if written down, may be worth reading as a book; but the experience itself feels more like a collaborative writing session than living through a scenario.
I wonder if my groups are missing something.
I believe you've read the rules wrong when you describe rolls. When you roll for a stat, say, Tinker, you just roll how many dots you have in Tinker. Not Insight + Tinker
Would like to see you review Spire: The City Must Fall
And/or Heart: The City Beneath. Has a more classical (and less political) setup, does weird interesting things with it.
I would say you probably shouldn't call it a PBTA game though. Similarly how pathfinder second edition is not d&d even if it is similar.
For the game. I guess it's mostly a case of different goals. I really like the fact the system is set out to do only one thing but do that one thing well. Also, I have some other considerations with the gameplay advice you mentioned.
For the skills, it is set up for they players to have to convince the gm their skill is applicable and accepts the consequences if the gm doesn't agree. I enjoy the way it invites the players to find their own solutions instead of just walking the GM's obstacle course.
Also with the "don't make the pc's look foolish" advice, my interpretation is that they don't mean "don't let them feel the consequences of their actions" as much as "don't let your players trip of their feet and fall down the stairs when rolling to sneak through the hallway". A mistake novice gm's, for whom this advice matters in the first place, do actually name.
About the last part, 100% agree! The book gives a great example of this on page 197, and I'll copy it here:
Don't Make The PCs Look Incompetent
When a PC rolls a 1-3, things go badly, but it's because the circumstances are dangerous or troublesome -- not because the character is a buffoon. Even a PC with zero action rating in an action isn't a bumbling fool. Here's a trick for this: start your description of the failure with a cool move by the PC, followed by "but" and then the element in the situation that made things so challenging. "You aim a fierce right hook at his chin, but he's quicker than he looked! He ducks under the blow and wrestles you up against the wall."
The idea is very at odds with a more D&D-like attitude towards failure. Think of an attack roll from that game: you either pass and hit, which may get narrated by the DM, or you fail to hit and you just move on with the rest of the combat. Blades doesn't work like that. When you roll those 1-3s, you narrate what the character is doing - or trying to do - and then interrupt that action with why it didn't succeed, and whatever consequences spring up from what just happened.
From running the game, the main appeal to me is that it really facilitates improv. Its not quite perfect to my taste by i can't deny that once i got the game going, it became a very powerful "make stuff up" engine.
Playing this game, when you roll dice you're an oracle throwing chicken bones on the floor and then you spout nonsense based on how the chicken bones landed. Its a vibe.
I am praying that you do have a Road to Damascus moment - but not about PBTA - Great review thank you
i generally don't like pbta games because I find it very hard to be immersed while I'm playing them. Forged in the dark games are different. the way everything is presented and the way you have mechanical agency as a player makes it far more immersive for me. pbta feels like storytelling and improv acting. but forged in the dark feels like roleplaying. at least for me.
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*edit* I should clarify that I find that players making decisions from the perspective of their characters to be important, and this maybe influences that way I run forged in the dark games (currently running scum and villainy). So its entirely possible that I'm not running the game in the way that it is meant to be run. I recognize that you CAN approach a lot of the mechanics from a very meta and out of character perspective, like devils bargains for example, but I just naturally only offer devils bargains that make sense within the fiction. So generally things that the PC's can actively choose to sacrifice in hopes of greater effect, rather than something unlucky happening. Basically, if you approach forged in the dark games with an OSR mentality, I think you can have a lot of fun. I've run ALOT of shadowrun in my time, and I find the heist mission structure of blades in the dark to be a genius way for the PC's the express competency beyond what the players themselves might have. In much the same way that the player does not need to be able to sword fight to be able to hit on an attack roll, players playing blades in the dark do not need to meticulously create backup plans in order to have contingencies ready to deal with complications that arise during a heist.
@2:41 "In which case, God help you." That's where the like button got hit!
Is there enough setting to bother with getting it to use in another system? I like what little I've heard about the location... or would the Dishonored book be the same but better?
A lot of it is taken from Dishonoured, but it has its own quirks. If you like that sort of thing, maybe.
At 19:00 in you get to the core of what makes PBTA bad as a RPG, but as I have noted good for what it really is and who its target audience is - collaborative fanfiction. This system is the equivalent of picking a topic and going round robin writing fiction.
At least ths book isnt a focus on pervy crap.
imo thats actually what separates forged in the dark and powered by the apocalypse. forged in the dark actively asks the players how much they care about a particular roll and gives them mechanics for making sacrifices for increased chances of success. This, to me, allows players to actually roleplay (that is, approach the fiction from the perspective of their character, rather than from the perspective of an author).
You didnt try? This game powered up all my Heist-Games. Cyberpunk, Shadowrun... whatever. Its great! Even I will never love the setting. I´m thankful for the mechanics and tricks it provided for my GM-Toolbox...quite mighty. I don`t play pbta.
Not sure if you read these, but I have a genuine favor to ask. Could you give a real concrete example of your critique of how the systems are too tightly coupled and how modifying one can bring the whole thing crashing down? I don't understand this at all. I am currently working on porting BitD to a different time/setting/genre and it has been super, super smooth. I was able to apply pretty much everything without issue, dropping what didn't feel right and sprinkling in what was missing. But after watching a couple of your videos, I am wondering what I am missing. All of your other takes, I have no problem with - we each have our own preferences and I respect that you have your own tastes and that is cool. I agree on a few, disagree on more but in the end those all feel like 'what do you want to get out of your Friday evening' type stuff.
But this one feels like an actual mechanical thing that has me worried that I am missing something crucial.
Hi, checking in 7 months later. did you ever end up running into any issues? I personally feel like blades in the dark is very easy to adapt to other settings. The action roll is tied to a bunch of other systems in the game, but most of those systems are setting agnostic, so you can easily change things up.
Pretty much anything by tversky and Kahneman in behavioral economics. On gambling, gamblers fallacy and risk aversion are applicable to dice based games
Hope this helps
Lets see if I can convince you, if not actually liking a PbtA style games at least understand them enough to have fun playing a game.
As I understand it PtbA style games sit on the intersection of simple and class based. The only way to make this work is to narrow the scope of the game considerably locking down setting, themes, tone and conflict. This has the advantage of allowing every element of the game to re-enforce setting, themes, tone and conflict in a way that you can't for a game that is designed to be flexible.
In my experience playing games with wider potential scope, the first thing you do is sit down collectively and figure out setting, themes, tone and core conflict, and then make choices about character or campaign that fit into those things. This really helps ensure that everybodies expectations align and we aren't fighting over what we want the thing to be. With the PtbA style game these steps are more or less done for you. If you don't want that particular combination of elements then either look for a different game or take the SRD (IIRC for "Forged in the Dark" for Blades in the Dark) and populate it with classes and other elements that re-enforce the type of fiction you are going for.
As far as being a story game, PtbA style games have two main things they have going for them. Relatively light mechanics make it easier to carry everything you need to know in your head, making it easier to get into a flow state with playing a character, getting immersed in the story and A setting which is detailed enough that there are always landmarks you can improvise off of but not so detailed that you feeled compelled to stop and look up the official lore rather than invent your own details. With blades specifically both the flashback mechanic and the fact that what is in your load out is decided as you need it help with the story telling aspects.
With regards to some specific things you said in your video.
The base chance of succeeding (with or without a complication) is 25% you have to have invested at least one skill pip to get a 50/50. The reason for prefering "Yes and…" to "No but…" is that "Yes and…" keeps the forward momentum of the story while at the same time as building tension which is the story structure that Blades is going for. One of the other things that is very noticable is the lack of reroll mechanics, the fact that you have to decide what you are willing to pay in order to win before you know the outcome does a lot to build the tension.
The reason I would choose Forged in the Dark as the starting point for my own RPG setting is if I wanted the feel to be fast pace action, where the situation is always changing and the tension keeps ratcheting up.
I do understand them, they don't do what I want from a game. That's OK.
Meh... I bought this ages ago after all the 'hype'. On paper it sounded cool, but after I read the rules I thought of it more as a tactical robbery game with very little roleplaying. I could play Dungeon World, incidentally, but this is too fiddly and I dislike the downtime system - it feels very mechanical. Just not my style... I do however like the tone of the game world just not the way it's supposed to be played. That's another reason why I didn't bother with A/Stare 2e when I heard the rules were based on this.
PBtA games are just not my cup of tea. The way the moves feel like I am being pigeon-holed into some other person's terminology, a terminology that my brain can't seem to wrap itself around, pushes PBtA games out of my comfort zone. Still, there is obviously a market for that system, and many people seem to enjoy it... so... to each their own
Funny you say that, thay was the reason why I brought all the PF2 books I had into the game store for credit. Pathfinder 1e was fine, but 2e tried to both be clever AND appeal to the vocal minority on social media (WRT terminology like class or race being offensive) and the result was a layout that just broke me mentally. Even common terms got new labels, standard gamebook layout was out the window...even if I liked the lore and mechanics revisions (I didnt) I could not grok the game.
As for PBTA, its less a RPG mechanic and more a co-op fanfiction effort. Every aspect of its concept centers around that conceit. As others say it has its fans but not me. From those I have encountered that like PBTA, they likely say the same for me 😅
@@cthulhupthagn5771 Oddly enough, over this past weekend, I also gifted my copies of DungeonWorld (can not stomach the author) & Blades in the Dark to my local gaming store... and I have been on a real bender here of late to get as many of the Pathfinder 1e books as I can. Pathfinder 2e is a little off-putting to me... with the inclusion of many "trendy" topics. But, as I have said, there are plenty of people who enjoy those games and their respective newer versions... I'm just not one of them.
Great world building, ok system, seems to be way moire adaptibil then PBTA
He’s so biased and so unwilling that he can’t understand it
Its not a simulation game. You fundamentally misunderstand what a die roll represents
It's not a game, really. You fundamentally misunderstand the point of RPGs.
@@PostmortemVideo to role play in a structured manner according to prescribed rules, which is what PbtA and Forged in the dark games are.
Do you also not understand what a game is?
@CD-zd6zr, this is a cooperative writing exercise. Unlike RPGs, where you immerse yourself in the characters and their actions in a reactive world, here, you play at a detached meta-level without immersion and with a system that fails to have internal consistency or to react properly. This is the same problem that dogs all the pbta dross, and lord knows, I've given it more than a fair shot.
@@PostmortemVideo so you have a very narrow definition of RPGs and games and are using that to justify not enjoying them. You can just not like something, that's fine. But you think that the only RPGs are simulation RPGs. PbtA and other such systems are not simulation games. They are narrative games. Example:
In a simulation game a wizard is going to fail to break down a door because the in universe character is weak.
In a narrative game a wizard is going to fail to break down a door because that's the kind of character that would fail to break down a door.
Same outcomes different reasoning. Both involve chance and structure based upon rules. Which is what makes a game a game. Again you don't have to like a given game, but to deny they are games is just fucking cringy gatekeeping shit. We get it, you're edgy.
@@CD-zd6zr Of RPGs, yes, of games no. The clue is in the name 'Role-Playing'. These things aren't really RPGs and as such have even been given their own nomenclature that tacitly admits this - story games. Nor am I necessarily saying there's anything wrong with story games per se, they're just not RPGs. For me, these games are sold under a false title and produce a type of play I find deeply unsatisfying and anthetical to the primary goal of an RPG - immersion. It's not even genre emulation.
We get it, you're a pretentious arsehole.
A core conceit and failing of PBTA is a lack of improvisational rolls The system is strictly defined by what exactly matters (in the designer's opinion), and everything outside of that narrow focus is considered to not matter or at least not be important enough for a "move". I don't play a game to metaphysically fight with a designer. As a designer, if you can't help me, get out of the way. That's my entire treatise on game design. These narrow games aren't for me because they could practically play and run themselves with simple procedural generation and simple procedural determination. The "game" with PBtA is players attempting to get the GM to call the right moves that will help them the best for a situation. Neither party ever enters immersion, always standing outside of the game space and manipulating it like the coach on a baseball team. I'm simply uninterested in throwing call signs from the dugout like this. Put me in coach, I'm ready to play.
This criticism may not be as relevant to BitD, but there are still meta-procedures built into the game that bother me, for a quick and easy example Downtime (p. 145). Downtime says it's a break for the players, then explains a rigorous fully defined 4-step multiple-substep procedure for how Downtime happens. It's like having your wife plan every 15 minutes of a week-long vacation. Step 1 is the Payoff (p. 146). No big whoop, but immediately after it discusses crime bosses you have to pay off (or not) and the player is supposed to ask the GM then modify their payout accordingly. Zero roleplaying in this step. 100% meta. Even the payout is in "coin", a metacurrency instead of an actual in-game currency. There's a minor amount of lip service to potentially roleplaying the encounter (with express permission to not bother if nothing interesting is going to happen), and another meta-variable clock that starts should the group decide not to pay. It's implicit this clock is viewable by the players, so there's a lack of surprise in the system.
Right after the lip service to roleplaying, the book chastizes the GM "Don't have Mr Johnson refuse to pay the players or instead lure them into a trap, etc." Taking away something the fiction could demand given the right circumstances. And be "interesting", meaning that if there were complications this system as presented would stereograph them by the GM's lack of skipping the payoff. I'm not saying it should happen every time like Shadowrun or Cyberpunk (lol), but if an up-and-coming politician hires some assassins to kill a political rival and doesn't want it to get out, there's really only one way to solve that problem from his PoV. And it should be up to the players to set up the requisite blackmail to keep themselves out of the crosshairs. I may be old-fashioned, but I think the fiction should come first, and mechanics second. If the mechanics don't fit the fiction, get new mechanics. This is why I don't like BitD, like other PbtA games it's so bureaucratic/procedural and dry/hollow/soulless. Abstraction is fine. HPs and AC are both abstractions. It's the procedure that makes me dislike these games. The procedure feels like the game designer backseat GMing the entire time.
I think you're spot on that the lack of failure, or rather lack of meaningful failure, is also a big problem with these games. Dice pools using muddy math are a convenient way to hide actual percentage chances, this is why I dislike all die pool systems. They all suffer this problem to some extent.
I think your point on fixing the game system requires essentially developing it into a traditional RPG is right on. Traditional RPGs aren't broke, these games don't fix them, it's the other way around.
Thanks for the review, Grim
There is the fortune roll, but it's unsatisfying.
11:20 'even the worst person has a 50/50 chance of success.' Firstly, if you don't have any skill in something you roll 2 dice and take the worst. Secondly, adding your skill to your attribute is NOT how skill tests work. Thirdly, you are ment to be playing competent thieves not 1st level footpads. Forthly, success with complication is ment to be 'bad', so you might pick the lock (a success) but you took so long the security team have turned up (a complication). Letting your players 'off' with weak complications dose not for a good game make. Fithly, players are ment to be courting desaster by trading Risky situations for Desperate ones with better rewards. This is to make the game more 'cinematic' (Mission Impossible) and less mundane (Impossible Mission). It is a story game, so you are playing to make a story. The GM is ment to be more willing to have the player make meaningful additions to the story (Flashbacks), as opposed to what passes for co-creation in most games. If you are at a table where players will abuse this GM level god power then you are not going to get on with the game. The game is grim-dark; you are playing scum NOT heroes, the GM and the player BOTH should be looking to punish them for their evil ways. I found you need zero prep in games because your players should choose what the mission is NOT the GM - Once again player AGENCY not GM dictation. The aim of the game is not to retire your character to a wealthy retirement (If you play the game you would find it vertually impossible to change your strata in society), most characters will end up doing bird, dead/undead, or 'retired' - drunk in a flop house. For these fundamental misunderstanding/mis-reading of the ruleset I have to give a thumbs down (something I never do) as you would expect more diligence from a professional reviewer. Anyone interested in the rules can check my TH-cam where I put the rules on screen for people who want to learn the system: the vid 'Hanging with the wrong crowd' is a good place to start, or 'Blades in the Dark Lets Play' if you want to see what a player designed mission looks like.
Also I'm really tired of TH-camrs saying that they are more focused on the RP aspect of RPG's (ohh la-de-da) & the BitD systems are too meta to allow them to express their inner drama student. I'm my games you can roll one set of dice and complete a whole combat, which keeps it fast and lets you get back to RPin' if thats where your heart is, not meny RPG's can say that. You can also play it board gamey too, if thats your bent.
See recent After-Action Report on Candela Obscura, review of Candela Obscura, and actual play on Grimstreams. CO being a derivative of Barely Interesting Theatrical Doldrums. If you don't like people pointing out the massive flaw in all of these Pitiably Boring Trendy Avarice derived games, work on a version without that gaping issue.
@@PostmortemVideo Thank you for taking time out of whichever controversy you are currently embroiled in to half-ass answer my post. As stated in the comment you have made a number of fundamental mistakes in the rules so trusting your analysis of said system would seem unwise. As you state in your other vids you " roll up characters and test them" - well, you are testing them with rules you got wrong so... maybe you should look at that as a reliable way of experiencing a system. Most GM's do this kind of prep to get a handle on the rules set before they sit down in front of a group. However it is not the same as running a game. For example you could not tell by this method that though Bad Interminable Time Dilation dangles all these 'retirement rewards' in front of the players, its extremely hard to get anything that isn't 'you end up I the gutter, giving bj's for gin'.
As for 'Complications' and the poor GM having to think them up all the time - you are once again playing it 'wrong'. The player should be coming up with complications as often as GM OR you should be ticking the 'Big Bad' has woke up clock IN THE OPEN which should be adding tension. Maybe the player could RP how this build up is making them panic or making the baddies more confident? This could add to the RP right? You like that sweet sweet RP dontcha?
As I have watched your vids maybe you could return the complement & go watch 'Hanging with the wrong crowd' - I edit my vids down to human timescales so it wont take you as long as any other RPG on youtube. Please don't make me watch any more County Ocean though - I think we can both agree that game sucks.
@@chromeego7903 Point being of those other references, that I haven't remotely changed my mind about the flaws in the underlying system, despite having either misspoke or gotten it wrong in this one, I forget which it actually was, but I did find Big Irritating Taint Dilator to be not especially well laid out or written, which is another issue with Pony Blowing Tit Assaulter derived games.
@@PostmortemVideo No arguments from me there.
He’s so biased and so unwilling that he can’t understand it. I would absolutely abhor having to play with this individual
I liked the setting and making the gangs characters in their own right.
The rest was a smidgen meh.
I prefer to call PBTA and Blades in the Dark "Collaborative Fiction Procedurals Using Meta Mechanics" ; so a CFPUMM. It sure ain't a TTRPG.
Why isn't it a TTRPG? It sure ain't a simulation engine, but it's at least as much of a game as board games like Catan or dungeon crawlers like Melee/Wizard
@@torstenoakes exactly. It’s a boardgame it’s not a TTRPG
What a bad take