Lovely game, Thomas! I've been fascinated by the card mechanics from Crash//Cart as well, but I haven't yet understood the point of basing the amount of cards drawn on the Risk of a draw. I saw it in C//C and I see you've made the same decision. If it's no bother, I would love to know your thoughts. What does that bit of mechanic produce or mitigate? Is there a bit of card math I'm missing?
Thanks, Hendrik! I was also curious about it when I saw it in C//C. "Why mechanize risk when in BitD, it remains purely fictional?" But I found that in play, it provides for interesting experiences so I retained it.
Here's an exhaustive list of why I keep it in the game:
1. It makes High Risk situations feel specially dangerous and exciting.
2. Risk, while it is described as basically Position, is actually a combination of Position and Effect. By mechanically making High Risk harder to succeed, it makes players feel like they should put all your resources into it (Push, Assist, etc) - which is what happens when you've got lesser Effect in Blades.
3. It allows for the Low Risk draw also to feel special and an opportunity to push luck and make an interesting decision. Should I draw one more card? Should I stop?
4. By eliminating variable action dots, I speed up play. (Which is important to me) But I also need variation in the draw because otherwise things felt very stale.
I actually think C//C did something very insightful when it made this. (But by keeping action dots, it made it in elegant because action dots became very unimportant.) In Blades, odds of success are based on your skill, not on the fiction. But what a success means is based on the fiction. This distinction seems important but actually, apart from in structuring the conversation in an interesting way, the actual mechanical result is that you get new ways of achieving "success with a complication". In my game, you are going to get "success with a complication" very often. Some granularity and clarity is lost but it ends up feeling the same at my tables.
Immediately got the game, and shared it. Looks great!
Thank you so much!
Congrats on the game release!
Thank you!
Lovely game, Thomas! I've been fascinated by the card mechanics from Crash//Cart as well, but I haven't yet understood the point of basing the amount of cards drawn on the Risk of a draw. I saw it in C//C and I see you've made the same decision. If it's no bother, I would love to know your thoughts. What does that bit of mechanic produce or mitigate? Is there a bit of card math I'm missing?
Thanks, Hendrik! I was also curious about it when I saw it in C//C. "Why mechanize risk when in BitD, it remains purely fictional?" But I found that in play, it provides for interesting experiences so I retained it.
Here's an exhaustive list of why I keep it in the game:
1. It makes High Risk situations feel specially dangerous and exciting.
2. Risk, while it is described as basically Position, is actually a combination of Position and Effect. By mechanically making High Risk harder to succeed, it makes players feel like they should put all your resources into it (Push, Assist, etc) - which is what happens when you've got lesser Effect in Blades.
3. It allows for the Low Risk draw also to feel special and an opportunity to push luck and make an interesting decision. Should I draw one more card? Should I stop?
4. By eliminating variable action dots, I speed up play. (Which is important to me) But I also need variation in the draw because otherwise things felt very stale.
I actually think C//C did something very insightful when it made this. (But by keeping action dots, it made it in elegant because action dots became very unimportant.) In Blades, odds of success are based on your skill, not on the fiction. But what a success means is based on the fiction. This distinction seems important but actually, apart from in structuring the conversation in an interesting way, the actual mechanical result is that you get new ways of achieving "success with a complication". In my game, you are going to get "success with a complication" very often. Some granularity and clarity is lost but it ends up feeling the same at my tables.