11. The Conversation and Judgement Calls
God. This is such a great way to kick off the discussion of the “Core system” of Blades in the Dark. The core of Blades in the Dark really is the conversation and judgement calls, more so that almost any other game I know. Let’s talk a little bit about core systems historically, and why Blades is SO interesting to me. But first, a real quick RPG Theory History Digression, The Lumpley Principle
There’s a few things from the Forge that have become deprecated in a specific way. Rather than being proved wrong or incomplete, as a number of Forge-era models and theories have been, they have fallen out of discussion because they have been bettered, improved, or become self-evident to the community of play as it stands. One such discussion (what does “system” mean, really) is a much less contentious chat now than it was during Forge-era. The Forge rolled out a particular answer to this “what is system” discussion, which effectively says: “However your group decides what happens in play, that's your system.” (Baker, 2012)
This seems self-evident, but if you dive into the history of it, and especially some of the more verbose discussions of it, you find why this assertion matters:
“The fictional events of play in a role playing game are dependent on the concensus (sic) of the players involved in order to be accepted as having occurred. All formal and informal rules, procedures, discussion, interactions and activities which form this concensus (sic) comprise the full system used in play. ”
Emily wrote of the “Baker-Boss” Principle here, and the entirety of it shows why this “Lumpley Principle” or Baker-Boss Principle (both of which appear to be different assertions of the same resolution) are important to this discussion. A stated fact can only be “real” (substitute “satisfying” “important” “verisimiltudinous” etc etc dependent on your creative agenda) if everyone at the table agrees that the fiction progresses in that way. If anyone disagrees, then play does not (and cannot) continue as if it were true.
Now, there’s a ton of caveats on this, notably that people can disagree, but still assent because of other tools like divested authority or “the GM has the final say”. The important thing is not agreement as in harmonious and complete understanding, but agreement as in an absence of incompatibility of beliefs and approaches. I would go so far as to say that the assent only needs to be on the terms that the game sets. For example, if, during my D&D 5e game, a GM tells me that my character gets hit in the leg and takes 10hp damage, there is a fundamental difference between whether I assent to the leg hit, or assent to the 10hp of damage. Because the game leverages one to impact the ongoing situation but does not provide the other any weight in The Conversation. Each game’s conversation is different, and thus what needs to be agreed to is different.
I don’t know if I believe John’s assertion that “no one is in charge of the story”. The divested responsibility for who has “final say” is clear: The players have full control over the tone of their actions, and the GM over the consequences. In that sense, they have a shared responsibility for the story (although the GM clearly has a much fatter thumb to place on the scale).
This distribution of authority again appears incredibly trad, which is something that’s coming up a lot in this discussion of Blades. Players can effectively use a standard “pawn stance” to control their character as if they were a game-piece, which isn’t true for a lot of Blades in the Dark’s indie contemporaries. This will again reinforce my going theory that Blades in the Dark’s success and wide reach (specifically for “stop playing D&D and play this” youtube cultures) comes from the reinforcement and proceduralisation of existing trad structures. If System is “how we agree”, Blades’ Core System is the back and forth call-and-response of exchanged Authority. Assent, in Blades in the Dark is “Assent, but only if”.
Disagreement in Judgement Calls is an important part of RPGs in my opinion. If anything could happen, then nothing is believable. In Kriegsspiel circles, the term we use is “Credibility” or “Credible Future” to refer to the fact that by generating some form of consensus (or assent), we create a future that conceivably could happen, and therefore is worth learning from. In Kriegsspiel, without credibility, any value of play is masturbatory at best.
Blades manages this by creating an “Only If” structure:
”I quietly finesse the gun from the sleeping guard’s belt”
”Okay, but only if the position is risky, and you will probably wake him up in the process, so you have limited effect. A failure would wake him without getting your hands on his weapon.”
And now the player reciprocates: “Okay, but only if I spend two stress to steel my nerves and go back up to standard effect.”
The GM: “Okay, but only if you throw dice or risk the worst.”
The nature of this, once laid out, gives me an interesting perspective: Everything is a devil’s bargain. Everything. “I will state that my character does A Thing” “and I will agree that said Thing happens as described, so long as you accept A Consequence”. All discussions in Blades in the Dark are like those rituatlised phrases
But to return to our discussion about getting hit in the leg and losing HP. The original assertion I made was that assent only matters about stuff the game cares about. This is so critical. This is why Blade’s doesn’t have HP or numerical interactions. It doesn’t care about them. It doesn’t need your group to assent on whether a pistol does 1d4 or 1d6 damage, it needs you to assent on whether one is strong enough to kill a guy at 10 paces (ie does the player in this case have limited, standard, or great effect). It supports groups in generating assent by first forcing them to agree on the terms and their impact. It is interesting to me these terms have become codified in Blades’ own usage (desperate is 3 ticks on a clock or level 3 harm, etc). I find it strange to have both a clear rejection of numerical functions, and then to reinstate them under the guise of these non-numerical terms. I think it’s valuable to see other games (Starke et al, 2023) (sorry Rowan! First author traditions are a motherfucker here) breaking down this language away from “level 1, 2 or 3 consequence” vs “level 1, 2 or 3 success”. My own work in an untitled project available only to direct supporters at this point has broken it down into “hard and soft targets”, where Candela uses High and Low Stakes. Because of Blades and Harper’s exceptional formalisation of the discussion, there’s a great opportunity to examine “what we talk about when we talk about position and effect”, and what that conversation can offer us if we take it in new directions.
It’s worth noting too, that while I say this formalises a lot of RPG best practices (behaviour that John states as authorial intent, and which I agree) I’m not saying that this formalisation is the BEST Practice. The Conversation that’s being had is both a product of the game’s systems and intended to drive play in a specific direction (or, as Baker-Boss goes further to say, the Conversation is both a product of the game’s system, and also the game’s system is a product of The Conversation, so far as to suggest the Conversation and the System are one and the same). So, aspiring GMs, aspiring Forgers, I think it’s critical to begin your hacking by deciding what agreements will need to be reached at the table, and then forming a dialogue around those agreements. Blades needs players to buy into the potential consequences of ambitious action, and so it ensures that players and GMs have that discussion beforehand, it ensures that players hear “but only if” and have a chance to say it back.
However, for those of you out there focusing on games with less control over consequences, perhaps a dark military fantasy forged in the dark, there’s an argument to be made that you need not have Desperate, Risky and Controlled, nor do you need Great, Standard and Limited. My personal design being tested next weekend works of the assumption that controlled or great effect just don’t need dice thrown for them. If something is controlled, you don’t suffer consequences, and if something is such great effect you can choose to essentially “go over the top” and just get what you want without rolling. The assertion of the conversation is not particularly “what consequences are you willing to accept on the backend” but rather “what does it take to get this done?” So shifts the conversation, so shifts the system.
