36. Fortune Rolls - Creation, Disguise, and Third Base
“The fortune roll is a tool the GM can use to disclaim decision making” used in two situations:
“When you need to make a determination about a situation the PCs aren’t directly involved in”
“When an outcome is uncertain”.
Fortune Roll - Blades in the Dark, p34
Truth is a fascinating concept to me in Role Playing Games. This idea that sometimes we seek the logical conclusion and sometimes we seek to be surprised or have our expectations upset. But also the idea that we, as GMs, are often responsible for inserting a degree of antagonism into our player’s narrative, which I have previously described as playing the ludonarrative heel and jobber. It is explicitly the GM’s role to generate the threat of consequences that the players overcome. I say generate there, where Blade’s text says “Consider” and “call the positions as you see them, but open to revision”. Blades as a text talks about the GM identifying the risks that are present when really what’s happening is that the GM is creating fiction and making very real decisions. Nothing is real, this story is incredibly flexible, and the consequences that are chosen to interact with the endogeny of Blades are a choice.
For example, when our PCs come across an intended assassination target, we as GMs are fully in control of the decision that NPC makes. We are in control of the threat that we place at our players (and the threat influences the action and the position/effect and the consequences, so really, the GM is “directing”[1] the general flow of the game):
“She snaps her coat open, stepping away from you, drawing her pistol. She’s cocking back the hammer now, in this slow-motion moment—the muzzle leveling at your face. What do you do?
His eyes go wide when you walk in and he curses as he leaps out of his seat and runs full tilt for the back door. What do you do?”
both from Telegraph Trouble Before it Strikes - Blades in the Dark, p191
Whether the NPC fights or runs is a choice placed at our feet as GMs. In Blade’s grandpappy Apocalypse World 2e[1] (have we collectively decided on the gender of role playing games? Like cars and boats are women, we know that to be true) we select from Moves, with the knowledge that “Each move on this list forces the character to react, which leads naturally to the MC making a move as a reaction to their reaction. That’s the engine that makes the game move forward. But it’s more than the propelling of plot, as I said earlier; it’s the revelation of who these characters are through the choices they make and the actions they take.” (Daily Apocalypse 50, MC Moves, D’Angelo, 2017). There are no wrong answers, and so an AW2e MC who is forced to choose between “Inflict Harm” (Blades Example 1) and “Offer an opportunity with or without a cost” (arguably, Blades example 2) can choose either knowing that they’re still playing the game as intended (and therefore can expect results as intended). Threat moves and the like solidify this.
[1] Apocalypse World 2e is often used as a comparative for BitD, they share lineage and (arguably) genre. It’s use here is specific, because (as we’ll see later in this discussion) AW2e does not offer the MC the ability to defer decision making to dice as the fortune roll does. This deviation is significant enough that we can use it to explore why Blades has introduced the Fortune Roll, and what it means to the act of play
However, the Blades GM is fully empowered to have either of those results happen. Or perhaps a third result. Or to just have the NPC surrender and say “damn, you got me” and then have the score resolve. Or generate a new threat-action cycle altogether (‘Okay, you assassinated her. Somewhere, far off, in a frequency that crosses the barrier between life and death but ignores human eardrums, the bells chime their ghostly silence. You’ve got a body, the spirit wardens are on their way, and someone who died at your mercy like this is likely to be a vengeful ghost. What do you do?’). So long as it “follows the fiction”, the Blades GM is empowered to not worry about rules and administrating the game, but rather to consider (and, I’d argue, primarily to create) the fiction.
“Let everything flow from the fiction. The game’s starting situations and your opening scene will put things in motion. Ask how the characters react and see what happens next. NPCs react according to their goals and methods. Events snowball. You don’t need to “manage” the game. Action, reaction, and consequences will drive everything.”
GM Principles - Blades in the Dark 193
However, Blades does not provide the MC a moves list, which creates a different flow of play:
When reviewing the two side by side, we can see that among a few differences, the major change is the removal of a GM endogeny step for Blades in the Dark. A Blades GM is not (by text) considering rules, but instead driven by the fictional demands of the setting (and, in the same way, so long as they hew close to the fictional tone, they will produce the desired game). The “GM Actions” of Blades (p188) are much more supportive and much less directive. The GM is not restricted to the Blades GM Actions in the same way that PbtA MCs are traditionally locked into their moves.
If we were to try to be specific and accurate in the verbs used, one could say that Blades in the Dark GMs are creating fiction, or extending fiction, whereas AW2e MCs are interpreting or communicating rules positions through fiction. I would argue that this is tied to the multiple meanings of the term “first” (as in “fiction-first gaming”). Wherein First can mean “happening or acting before all others; earliest”, or “ranking before all others; foremost in rank, quality, importance, etc.; principal.” (Collins Online Dictionary). This creates a fascinating Who’s On First routine where it’s not the double-meaning of Who that generates confusion, but First.
Blades is Fiction-First because the Fiction is First, but in AW2e (which is Fiction First) the Fiction isn’t First, instead the Fiction comes First but the Mechanics are First. Of course, you can play AW2e Fiction First, and you can put the BitD Fiction First, but then you have to remember that even though the Fiction is First, the Fiction is not always First. THIRD BASE!
Blades in the Dark GMs are given a free-hand to create fiction (so long as it exists within the established narrative, “haunted brush”, and “industrial sprawl” (GM principles, p193)), focusing on the principalness of fiction. AW2e MCs are only given authority to frame their moves through narrative, focusing on the principalness of the moves (which are written to be interpretable and applicable) and instead using fiction as the “narrative wrapper” (Screw Narrative Wrappers, Danksy, 2014 - which I link mostly as a reflexive statement to everyone who cringes hearing the phrase). Fiction is the show, but moves are the script[2].
[2] I have deleted a paragraph that describes the AW2e approach as more aligned with MDA (Hunicke et al, 2004). I haven’t really taken an MDA lens to Blades yet, and would like to do that before clouding the waters. I also am concerned with giving MDA any degree of focus in this blog without the ability to more carefully unpick why MDA is useful but also deprecated at the same time.
In Blades, the MC creates and decides. In AW2e the MC interprets and disguises.
In Blades, the fiction is given primacy. In AW2e, the fiction is given immediacy.[3]
[3] This is actually way more nuanced than this soundbite so maybe chill out a bit, eh?
Next week, I want to talk about why this difference in GM authority presupposes the creation of the Fortune Roll, an element (intentionally) absent in the comparator of AW2e.
Mark Experience,
Sidney Icarus
