18. Pushing Yourself
This doesn’t need it’s own section, but I’m also coming home from Breakout Con and I’ve had a hell of a day. Enjoy a version of Daily Blade where I don’t write for an hour and a half every day.
Four years ago I ran a podcast in which Kyle Thompson and I spoke about Pay the Price from Fellowship. And for those of you who want to learn more about Blades in the Dark you may be familiar with Kyle’s work on Let’s Learn Blades in the Dark. Kyle and I got talking about a concept of, like, Object-Oriented Design. That might not be the right word, but it’s the word we used. Software Developers and Coders get in the comments.
The idea behind this is such:
The game erects a function- an object. A process, a dice roll, an interaction.
That function has clear Name, and clear processes within it.
The function outputs a consistent result. Not necessarily the same result every time, but really similar in terms of tone and role in play.
The game can use the Name of the function to refer to the Procedure and Result whenever it needs.
The process, then, in Fellowship 2e, was that Pay The Price is a long move (that, it its coolest form, got a little longer and more complex). So when other moves want to say “choose a lesser consequence from this long list” it could just say “Pay the Price”. This method of design is beautiful and elegant and there’s a lot of opportunities to make this kind of “call and reuse” design standard in TTRPGs.
Push Yourself has a wonderful function as a Call and Reuse Object. It’s simple: Spend 2 Stress. Get +1D or +Effect. Now every time John wants to say “you get a lil bonus” he can say “Push Yourself”. It’s great. And for a game as systemic as Blades, it’s super helpful. It can also be modified “Push yourself for free” or “Push yourself to do X instead” or (as is in the beautifully named “Not to be Trifled With” Move) you can add “Push yourself” to a bunch of moves to force both the expenditure of 2 stress and the extra die. It’s FASCINATING design of which I’m a massive fan.
I’m eager to iterate on some designs that present a function like this, on which players and design can call back to regularly. It feels like a really fun approach for heavily systemic systems like Magic or Combat Maneuvers.
Anyway. I’m sleepy. Catch you tomorrow, Bladie Baddies.
Header Image "The Myth of Sisyphus" by aallingh is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
