31. Setting Position and Effect (1) - Naming the Noteworthy
In the cold light of day, after spending some time asking formalism to please, keep it down, there’s value in coming back to structure. Which is to say that a rejection of strict formalism isn’t a rejection of structure, rules, or mechanical approaches to problem solving, it is an acknowledgement that those things exist in context.
Which is what I love about this page in Blades:
“When you first start learning the game, you might step through the process with
some deliberation, but after a bit of practice, you’ll be able to set position and
effect with a quick “gut feeling” that can then be tweaked if a PC has a particular
ability or item or some other element to consider as a special case.”
I’ve spoken to a few people about the frustrations that I have in games like Blades in the Dark, or Apocalypse World with how much they demand players understand from the top. Say what you will about Dungeons and Dragons 5e, but it’s onboarding is some of the best in the industry right now. If you wonder why experienced D&D players tend to talk about starting at 3rd level (or 4th, after that feat-drop) it’s because they’re essentially skipping the tutorial. D&D starts all classes off with one major action and one minor action. It also starts the character sheet off blank, and let’s players fill in the first 1/3 or so before play, and then build. It’s a system that (while complicated in the backend. Too complicated) makes getting a playable character and orienting to what’s in front of your fairly easy.
Blades and Apocalypse World both give players sheets with a lot of text on them. The tick-box nature of character creation demands that players read through and make informed decisions. Choosing a special ability in Blades in the Dark can be a bit of an overload for some players. Imagine if a D&D sheet had every feat on it, with all the information listed out, and you ticked one off? Level One would be a much slower process. But that’s the joy of Wizards of the Coast’s playtesting budget: You can design a good First Time User Experience (FTUE).
I used to play in this “runoff” Blades game at my locla pub in Melbourne. The D&D table could take 8 people, and when 10 people rocked up, my friend (GM) and I (tempest whisper!) would recruit the new players into our Blades game. And it was a true professional JOY to watch new people grapple with the Blades sheet, including position and effect. It threw too much at them at once, and asked too many decisions that they didn’t have good orientation to perform. For those of you that follow along with my research nonsense: Blades wants players to explore, but if they don’t meaningfully understand their decisions, they can only invoke ritual.
The position and effect conversation is, however, one of the most beautiful moments in a new player’s experience. Firstly, it sets a default. Heck yes, John! This is another of those hard-learned things that I found dragging fighter pilots through years of desk-tactics: Having a default sets expectations! Starting at Risky is SUCH a great idea. Imagine a game that started at “No effect, no risk” and you each have to negotiate up. It becomes highly adversarial quickly, and secondly it creates a structure where the assumption by the player is that if they do nothing wrong, they should never face risk (this is a problem that 5e has for sure, where players start from a position of assumed safety).[1]
[1]I often talk about a fighter pilot that I was doing tactical assessment with. Great guy, but got pissy about failed missile shots, then “bought the merge” in losing situations so often. I wasn’t sure what it was about his decision-making that was getting him into these really shitty chases. So we did some tactical analysis. The secret sauce to changing his risk approach was that he saw every shot as a kill and every friendly action as defeating enemy missiles, and when that wasn’t the case he’d express that it was a flaw of the modeling system or some other external problem. The way we got him out of it was to do everything as a coin flip. No 80% cahnce, no might-as-well-be-certain. There was only the coin-flip, a certain Yes, or a certain No. And we started at coin-flip, so if it’s a certain Yes, they have to talk it UP to Yes. They have to justify why this shot is so good that it doesn’t stay where it started: at a coin-flip. The shift in mentality is truly magical. I don’t know where John learned this but I’m fascinated by his insight. I had to go toe-to-toe with fighter pilots to learn this stuff.
Secondly, by proceduralising the conversation, it creates meaningful moments of interaction around which a player who understands their decision-set poorly can orient themselves before they respond.
Imagine you’re a new player and you experience this:
Quotes here are modified examples from p29. I’ve changed pronouns, tense, etc to move it into a dialogue
NEW PLAYER: ”I’m a scoundrel, facing off alone against a small enemy gang. I want to fight them all! Can I do that? I have 2 dice in SKIRMISH, does that mean I can fight the whole group at once?”
GM: “Sure! Though most actions start at Risky/Standard, then we assess. So you’re rushing into their midst, hacking away in a wild Skirmish. In this case, being threatened by the larger force lowers your position to indicate greater risk, and the scale of the gang reduces your effect. So we call that Desperate/Limited. By throwing yourself into the group, on a good roll, you'll take out a few, but you’ll likely take BIG hits in return. Does that make sense?”
NEW PLAYER: “Okay so if the number of enemies is what’s putting me at greater risk [anchor], what if I fight the gang from a choke-point, like a narrow alleyway where their numbers can’t overwhelm me at once?”
GM: “You’re not threatened by several at once, so your risk is similar to a one-on-one fight, but there’s still a lot of enemies to deal with, so your effect is reduced. It’s risky, and your effect for this roll is only limited.”
The phrasing suggested by John defines position and effect by defining what about the situation (factors) is noteworthy. This allows players (all players, but especially new players, or players like me who could use a little mechanical help[2]) to understand the GM’s points of concern, and interface with them directly:
Again, modified from play examples (p39).
CONTEXT: In this session, the GM casually mentions that a Billhook is selling “spark” in a nearby alleyway, and that tips the scale—Arcy, Canter, and Oskarr (the PCs) have had enough! They gather their gang and come out in force to run the Billhooks off. It’s a display of dominance to see who flinches first
NEW PLAYER: “I walk up to the Billhook they’re all staring at and I say ‘You think this is gonna be your moment, but it’s not. Get gone before we put you down.’
GM: “Limited effect”.
See how this leaves a new player at sea? It gives them no action set to engage with, no tools, no pitons around which to tie their rope. Providing a bounded action set is critical to allow for bounded player response. Why is it limited? Do they run ice-water in their veins and we’ll have to actually pull a trigger? If so I could mark off and draw my Fine Pistols. Do they fear nothing but the undead? if so, we could use Oskarr’s Spirit Mask. Or is there just a bigger threat than my character that’s holding them from capitulating? Knowing why my effect is limited is what allows me to….un…limited it!
The quote in text actually does define this. In full, now:
”Arcy makes the opening move, getting up in the face of the first Billhook. She stares him down, ice cold, and says, ”You think this is gonna be your moment, but it’s not. Get gone before we put you down.” Sounds like a Command roll, and that’s what Sean (Arcy’s player) chooses. The GM reveals that this is Coran, second-in-command and the son of the leader of the Billhooks, and there’s no way he can lose face by backing down right away. It’s a risky roll with limited effect.”
With that information I can see that, yknow, pulling a gun isn’t going to get me Standard Effect. Maybe I could give them a sweetener instead:
Not from examples. Text is mine, in this case
NEW PLAYER: “Oh he’s 2nd in command! A decision-maker?! Okay ahhh change tact here. So I do all that. I say “you think this is gonna be your moment, but it’s not. We’re gonna put you down”, right? But while it has all the text of a Command, he’s a mover-and-shaker too, and he’d know this is just fronting and face. I’m not coming in with guns drawn, I’m opening a dialogue. This is probably as close as Arcy gets to a handshake. It’s actually a Sway.”
GM: “Yeah, I mean. He wants you to stop shaking them down, and he knows that you’ve locked him into either fighting or talking here. It’s still risky though, because they’re still a group of thugs, but let’s see which one he chooses. Risky/Standard.”
By naming/describing the barrier, the obstacle, the player could observe, orient, and reattempt in a new way. That’s exciting play! That’s fiction! That’s the kind of play we want to see!
[2] I don’t have a term for this. I’m not sure exactly how to describe it, but I want some sense of framework in which to have the conversation with my players or my GM. I don’t want to make up actions or only talk in fiction or “not worry about the rules”. I want them to interrupt. I want to know where the game wants me to go, and without that, I feel like I’m not cooperating or contributing to a shared pool of meaning. I feel like I’m being “expressive” in a masturbatory way.
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