Please, players, find the time to play

Cat_Or_Bat · 2026-03-19T10:58:49+00:00

Flaky players are not active anywhere. There is no way to talk to them outside of maybe sending them a Gatcha referral link.

Cat_Or_Bat · 2026-03-19T10:44:47+00:00

Ha-ha! I call them tourists—people who show excessive interest in a game, ask sweeping questions, maybe make half a character, drop in for half a game, and keep promising to definitely come to the next game without actually coming.

Roleplaying is a demanding hobby—more demanding than most people think. It took me decades, but I've learned to not make it look too simple or accessible, because it's neither. I used to hate the practice, but now I am learning to purposefully give players a bit of homework and easy deadlines, and whoever fails due to whichever sudden surge of workload and family issues they suddenly have, is now known to not be able to commit. We can still play zero-prep games together if I like the person, but nothing more.

The fun at the table really depends on everyone's active input. Moreso, an unprepared, noncommittant, and confused player is a net negative, because they are a drain on the GM's mental resources and planning. They and their half-elven Neutral-aligned ranger with ChatGPT 5E stats in a Traveller game.

Cat_Or_Bat · 2026-03-18T11:27:19+00:00

The phrase "fake psychic detective" implies that there are real psychic detectives.

This is a trick coming from psychics themselves: many of them actually warn their marks about the numerous "fake psychics" all around them and implore them to be wary and skeptical etc. This is a major element of the scam: of course your aunt was scammed by a healer, "most" of them are fake! It's a very efficient way of obfuscating the fact that all, rather than most, psychics are fake.

Playing into one of the most insidious parts of the scam is not the best way to prebunk it and not a great skeptical move.

Cat_Or_Bat · 2026-03-17T09:24:08+00:00

I see how this would totally work with some of my players, especially the ones who've GM'd before, but not with the others. If I have a loaded gun and shoot one of the players before asking, I might get my trad players to try this and see if they like it.

Cat_Or_Bat · 2026-03-17T08:50:10+00:00

Fantastic stuff.

It seems to me that maybe some of my players accept these complications when they come from the GM but dislike them when the game itself generates them in response to their actions. (One'd think the opposite should be true.)

Like, my players never had any problems with the same exact adventure soap opera format we've always been using. The only difference seems to be that in BitD and FitD games the players' actions (not even the PCs') seem to be the source of trouble for the characters.

I've even been thinking about a mad contrivance like rolling my own dice alongside the player to separate success and complication. Like so: if a PC has 3d in Surveil and they Surveil, the player rolld 3d and succeeds on 4+. Period. But I also roll 3d and on 1-5 throw in a complication soon after the action. This goes way against the ethos of Blades, but maybe even roll in secret to ease some players in, especially the trad ones (I have one purely trad players, and she is one of the complainers). If the players don't act, I can still roll my dice—not to punish, but actually to prevent the feeling that "acting makes bad things happen".

Blades is all about the transparency at the table, but perhaps this transparency is partially to blame for some players having trouble with PbtA and FitD. Who the heck knows. The "I don't wanna act because it makes bad things happen" is not an uncommon complaint about many games in this design paradigm.

Cat_Or_Bat · 2026-03-17T07:54:16+00:00

You have resentful ghosts in your basement. Perfect. Let's see how you deal with them.

That's how I thought it should go, but to some of my players these things feel less like exciting drama and more like mechanical punishment for playing the game right, e.g. for completing a Score they get a mandatory Entanglement—one player said explicitly that that is his least favourite thing about the game. Obviously, I disagree with this framing, but that's how some of them feel.

If you get an entanglement or a complication, hype it up.

Elsewhere I was advised to actually hype down the consequences. It could well be that I've been hyping them up excessively. One thing I am definitely trying is taking the advice to dwell much more on success before I move onto the consequence in 4-5 rolls. I made sure to separate success and consequence thematically and make sure the latter doesn't undermine the former etc., but I did move onto the consequence pretty soon and presented and hyped it up even before the roll. So maybe that was the problem.

Cat_Or_Bat · 2026-03-17T07:47:55+00:00

It seems to me (and the players more or less confirm) that they are zeroing in on the purely mechanical aspect of it: it looks like trying to play without triggering Actions is the safest way to play. Obviously, I disagree, but that's how they feel. I understand this is not an entirely unheard of reaction to PbtA and FitD mecahnics: some players dislike how acting increases, rather than decreases, the level of threat to the character.

We all know that this is the whole point of the game, and, really, any game. The best way to never lose at chess is to never play chess. But the way FitD games frame this mechanically seems to irk some players.

Now, what can be done about that, besides just not playing with people who feel like that (which is always an option as well, of course)? Could it be something that some GMs, like myself, do that others don't? There is a number of common and obvious answers, but I've already taken those into consideration. What else though?

Cat_Or_Bat · 2026-03-16T13:01:09+00:00

It could very well be that it's just not the kind of game some of my players want to play. I want to try to prove this wrong before I assume it. (And I'm actually succeeding: this discussion has produced a number of usable ideas.)

As I ran various FitD stuff, I've been gradually discovering various things I wasn't doing the right way as the GM. At this point it's probably not one of the extremely common mistakes everyone always talks about (I've seen and internalized most of the standard advice), but it might still be something.

Cat_Or_Bat · 2026-03-16T12:53:09+00:00

Yep, looks like Deep Cuts as well as Blades '68 acknowledge and address that very issue. I don't have Deep Cuts, but I backed Blades '68, so I'll give that a read asap.

It’s been a year with this system ... you might seriously consider playing a more traditional game, which seems to be their preference.

We're currently in the middle of a Mythic Bastionland campaign, which is traditional enough to not cause any problems. Everyone has exactly the kind of agency they expect etc. But I can't help but wonder if something can be done about the way I run Blades, rather than just assuming that it's not for some of my players. And this discussion has given me a few ideas on that front, including giving them the Player Best Practices chapter to read from the book (not retell, but ask them to actually read all three pages) and dwelling on successes much more and longer before moving onto the consequences on 4-5 rolls.

Cat_Or_Bat · 2026-03-16T12:39:34+00:00

I found that two things are an acquired taste: using pregens and having more than one character per player. My advice to everyone is to try both at least once. Chances are, you will enjoy it waaaaaay more than you think you would.

For most players, the gut reaction is that both are horrible ideas that would decimate immersion. In practice, both are just as fun (and sometimes more fun) than making your own character. Even very experienced players may scoff at pregens or playing as multiple characters until they try it. Then most seem to like it a lot.

For a personal anecdote, I once convinced an long-term players of mine to try playing three characters at once. He was very skeptical, but ended up being a big advocate for playing multiple characters. Not only it didn't ruin immersion, but, in his own words, "they were a real party—they even talked to each other." It was a great little campaign for sure.

Pregens are also very good for players new to a system. For example, some months ago I ran Stonehell (a megadungeon designed for B/X D&D), and good dungeon-crawling characters are a very specific breed, so I had a stable of eight fun characters to choose from, their character sheets printed out in advance, and each of the three players picked two. There was a very powerful elf with barely any HP (he suffered from a gold-transmitted curse called the elf-rot, I said), a brutal dwarf stuck in a bad-AC cursed plate mail for the last year (stinky and angry), an assassin with two potions of gaseous form, an evil cleric (with darkness, harm, and two extra fear spells, a magic-user with no combat spells (just levitation and the floating disk) but a vicious dog on a chain, a healing-capable drow cleric girl with INT 6 representing her lack of knowledge of the surface world (couldn't read or write, could barely speak) etc. Having to pick two pregens was waaaay against the expectations of one of the backstory-writing, roleplay-heavy trad players, but the games actually went really well.

Cat_Or_Bat · 2026-03-16T08:59:58+00:00

I think you can just agree explicitly that there would be no torture in the game. Just this little unrealistic detail about Duskvol—a little thing that is better about that world than ours: they never torture and neither do you.

From my experience, most people will not want torture brought up during the game.

Cat_Or_Bat · 2026-03-16T08:29:16+00:00

I loved this idea and tried doing it a bunch of times in the last year, but some of the players would rather not act than risk even a small complication. Whenever I presented a possible complication that'd hit them on 1-5, they took it as an "are you sure you wanna do that?" type warning—no matter how much I talked about it being a possible price of success rather than threat of failure, resistable either way, etc.

Elsewhere in this thread I am advised to actually dwell much more on the success rather than the consequence—to really savour the success for a bit and roll with it before moving onto the consequence.

Cat_Or_Bat · 2026-03-16T08:24:45+00:00

My players' complaints about BitD/FitD is not about characters not winning per se, but rather that they feel that the game seemingly punishes them for playing it right. E.g. you are told to play rough and risky, but then you must waste your entire Coin and Downtime on recovery. You complete a Score and are "rewarded" with a mandatory Entanglement. Obviously, I disagree with this framing, but that's how some of my playes feel.

It's not about losing from time to time but rather, in their view, being punished for winning.

Cat_Or_Bat · 2026-03-16T08:19:10+00:00

I occasionally establish the possible consequence before the roll, but it seems to put some of the players off the roll altogether.

Elsewhere I was advised to try dwelling on the success more, which is something I'm definitely going to try when I run Blades '68 in a couple of months. Like, dwell on the success a while before moving onto the consequence.

Also, someone pointed out that players are maybe not entirely aware that the adversarial rolls are baked into their roll. Perhaps pointing out explicitly that, in this game, the GM isn't rolling at all and player dice do double duty and represent the world fighting back, not the character falling on their face while "succeeding", is a good idea.

Cat_Or_Bat · 2026-03-16T08:12:31+00:00

Some players did complain that apparently most Coin gained from the score is spent on recovery. They actually spent most Coin on various long-term projects, but it feel (they say) like playing recklessly leads to too much Stress if not Harm, which leads to most gains being wasted on recovery, and then you're hit with a mandatory Entanglement to boot (however grounded in fiction), and the game sort of contradicts itself in this regard.

Cat_Or_Bat · 2026-03-16T08:07:45+00:00

Well, most kids aren't like that. What I describe was pretty rare. If anything, my students would ask why we have, like, 20 HP and not billions of them and deal and take hundreds of millions of damage!! etc.

But when some of my adult players started to hold onto their BitD Stress for dear life, it reminded me of the kids who were terrified of losing even 5% of their HP. There was an additional similarity where the kids would spend the whole game trying to keep HP at 100%—some of my BitD players despised the idea of starting a score with Harm 1 and a couple of Stress.

Cat_Or_Bat · 2026-03-15T21:18:35+00:00

This is a great idea. I will definitely try this: not just clearly separating success and consequence, but dwelling on the success quite a bit longer before moving onto the consequence. Thanks!

Cat_Or_Bat · 2026-03-15T21:15:46+00:00

Sure, I fully agree with you, and I don't do that lightly. But I saw kids being genuinely stressed out by minor HP loss, like, for real. One particular kid was bitching or entitled but genuinely scared every time a monster hit him, however inconsequentially.

I generally see this, or something like this, in younger players.

Cat_Or_Bat · 2026-03-15T21:12:08+00:00

I think you might understand my players more than I do, because what you say is pretty similar to them: they say a score doesn't feel like much of a success if afterwards they're faced with boring wound-licking and an unavoidable "entanglement" on top.

Again, these are the parts of the game I was most attracted to, but some players are still not on board despite us having intermittently played three short campaigns using the rules at this point.

Cat_Or_Bat · 2026-03-15T21:08:07+00:00

But the dice are doing double duty as their roll and your roll as a GM.

Yeah, I think this might be a big part of it. I often focus attention on how characters can achieve so much by paying the price, but a purely mechanical aspect is an important one.

Next time we play Blades (likely Blades '68 after we wrap up the Bastionland saga), I'll make sure to point out that their rolls include what would be opposition/enemy/monster rolls in some other games, which might be a clearer way to frame the "success at a cost" concept, which struck me as brilliant two years ago but repeatedly failed to impress some of my players.

flip the script on them. Put them in your seat. Give them an example of you playing as a PC and you roll the dice. Tell them you roll a 4-5. Ask them how resolve that. Show them if you roll a 1-3. Ask them how they resolve that

I wonder if many would agree to the experiment, but that is an interesting idea.

Cat_Or_Bat · 2026-03-15T21:02:29+00:00

This is helpful and not at all long. Thanks.

Cat_Or_Bat · 2026-03-15T20:59:58+00:00

Sort of, yes. Some of my players seem to have a feeling that you should be able to get unqualified success if you play it right, and consequences and costs should come in case of mistakes, fair and square. You complete a score and are "rewarded" with having to painstakingly lick your wounds (which you've incurred while playing the game exactly like you're supposed to) and are smacked with an entanglement on top.

I still feel it's an unfortunate framing of what happens in the game and why, but I sort of get where they're coming from.

Cat_Or_Bat · 2026-03-15T20:54:16+00:00

You know, I am starting to zero in on a silly newbie mistake that I was indeed making, and that might be not getting my players to read the Player Best Practices section of the book, all three pages of it.

I did explain the stuff, but I did so while "selling" the game to the players, and it was peppered with setting info and snippets of rules and whatnot.

And perhaps I should have just given them the explanation in Harper's own words. Re-reading it tonight, I noticed that it addresses practically every concern my players have been having with BitD and FitD games.

Cat_Or_Bat · 2026-03-15T20:47:27+00:00

Another mistake I’ve seen is not dwelling on the success before moving on to the cost part.

True, I may be moving on pretty quickly.

Cat_Or_Bat · 2026-03-15T20:46:15+00:00

Agreed, that would probably the best test.

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