So someone on the Blades in the Dark discord broke down Position and Effect into what I thought was the easiest to describe metric, so I decided to make a chart out of it (because I’m a visual person and I imagine other folks are too).
I don’t think we’ve been doing it wrong, but I definitely think that this will help me conceptualize the two “levers” of the system.
I’m doing this section right now for WITCH, my cute-witches hack of Blades, and I felt compelled to simplify it even further. I renamed the positions Boring, Risky, and Stupid for this particular hack.
Effect tells you about the positive results of the roll, position tells you about the negative ones.
Boring positions or Limited effects are 1 tick. Risky positions or Standard effects are 2 ticks. Stupid positions or Great effects are 3 ticks. A critical is 5.
If you didn’t get a Full or Critical success, the Mentor picks what happens, based on the fictional situation. If you’re not sure what to pick, choose one from this list on a Partial success, and two on a Bad Outcome.
You hesitate or falter. You can try a different approach at no penalty (Boring only)
There’s a consequence (reduced effect, immediate fictional complications, mark ticks on a progress clock that’s bad for the PCs)
You’re put in a worse position next time (going from Boring to Risky to Stupid)
You lose the opportunity (Stupid only)
This did away with the multi-dimensional tables from Blades and let me decouple some of the other systems (like Harm, which may not see use in this hack).
