The thing is, a 5 is supposed to only be a partly success, something that still carries a consequence. You see a similar thing for the 7-9 results in Apocalyps World.
The problem here is that people can resist consequences and if they roll really well on those resists they walk away untouched and that is what happened a lot here, making several of the quite dangerous results look harmless.
Without the resist mechanic, Rune would most likely be dead already.
I’ll start this by saying that I absolutely love Blades, and I watch (well, listen to the mp3’s. Are you able to see download stats for those?) every episode, so any critiques in here are just me spitballing and only because you’re askin for it :P. As a GM who loves reading and listening about GM’ing (the zines, Office Hours, articles, etc), John is great to observe and listen to. I feel he really embodies the “be a fan of the players” style that he mentions in the Blades in the Dark rule book, which I can tell is amazing for the players as they all talk plenty about how much they enjoy playing the game (and inspiring for me, I picked up Blades and after running a session of it, my players loved it too!).
However, I do think that some of the other commentators are not off base in their feeling that this style can lead to a sense of a lack of danger. I think John wants the players to do the dope shit they want to do, and is sometimes a bit lenient with the consequences. I don’t particularly mind this because I like seeing the characters do dope shit also. However, I will say (and this is my only personal critique in this write-up) that I would like to see things not go specifically Carriless’ way quite as well as they have. Carriless is super cool and @iNcontroLTV made a hell of a character, however I feel like the only significant character flaw (his vice not really being a “flaw”, since he totally owns it) we have seen is his hubris (a fun flaw to have) and that hubris has gone mostly unpunished which feels to me like a bit of a lost opportunity from a character development perspective.
I also feel that the feeling of no driving opposing forces in the game is a fair viewpoint. I think John puts it on the players to be the driving force, which I think they do a great job of, but GM-controlled antagonists that persist through episodes/arcs go a long way from a show/spectator perspective in my opinion. We get to know the PC’s super well, but the enemies really only exist as a focus of the PC’s goals and desires.
As for the game feeling like it’s just going through the motions, I think the well-defined mechanics that facilitate downtime / scores are awesome for giving actual structure for the players to decide what happens. If you plop some characters into a town in D&D or onto a spaceship in Stars Without Number or something and just ask them “what do you do?” they’ll be at a loss, since the games don’t have rules for helping them decide what to do. In CoS, when the PC’s [spoiler]got to the monastery town and bought their apartment, the player’s did not really have anything to do until Adam put the town thugs situation in their faces[/spoiler]. In Blades, due to the well-defined options available to the players in downtime, it is a lot easier for them to figure out what their characters spend their time doing when there isn’t an obvious “quest” to do. I really appreciate this and think it has helped a bunch, but I can understand how it can feel repetitive or forced from a viewer perspective.
Anyway, those are my thoughts and observations on why Blades might not necessarily be as appealing to as broad an audience as the other shows. I’m just a rambling amateur though, would find it interesting to hear @AdamKoebel and @OneSevenDesign 's thoughts on it all! But I totally get if that would not be super comfortable to discuss publicly. Thanks for being open in your search for feedback @itmeJP !
The show is really good. The characters are lively. I mainly watch VOD so time doesn’t matter to me.
If you watch it on a computer the Twitch VoD will continue from where you stopped watching live.
Same as most in the thread being from EU watching it live can be a pita. That being said it is definitely one of my favourite Rollplay shows, maybe even my favourite. I mostly watch the VODs for all the shows any hoo.
well… first off… i am european and due to timezones.
I am not able to watch it live.
Also ever since the party did the mission for Wheats character the main plot is just nowhere to be found. The GM in myself says that the players need more investment in the world so they can have better defined goals. ill be honest… i dont know what the main plot is right now… the flashback episode was cool to fill in background and maybe to generate some investment for Anne and Zeke.
I’ve watched every episode up until the latest one but have found myself not really that interested for quite some episodes now. And to be completely honest, there is just no energy in the show. The players constantly have to be reminded of rules, pushed by the GM to actually do things and seem to lack a distinct motivation to actually play their characters.
I also find half the cast not to gel with eachother that well, Zeke and Anne are awesome together but there seems to be a dissconnect between those two and the rest of the cast. They do have a clear path for their characters and know how to play them, as soon as they are in the spotlight the story and energy of the show picks up.
The first episode was amazing, a lot due to Geoff’s clear direction in how the episode was supposed to go and over all being more structured when they did the score. And also the sidestory with Canter was great! Once again, because it was a bit more structured and railroaded. I think the open nature of the show’s structure does not work when not all players are super hype about the show.
Now i may be wrong about all of this but that is the over all impression i have gotten from this.
Also the timeslot, i cba to be awake until 7AM
First off: the show has had amazing, memorable moments; all the cast members are great roleplayers and I love to see them interact; John has a refreshing GM style, that nicely contrasts with Adam’s, it’s nice to see variety there.
However, here is why I am not very hyped about the show.
Sorry that this has been a rather long post and probably has been either said already or is a matter of taste, and thus very subjective. I also want to stress that I think the whole cast is doing a great job and there are great roleplay moments, it just doesn’t seem to click for me as a whole personally.
*or versimilitude, don’t wanna trigger Adam
For me it all boils down to the system and the DM.
I’m not a fan of the system that is used for the game. Much like the cast I never understood when something needed a roll, what the role was, what a successful one was, etc. The worst part is that this guy is the creator of it so he should have been able to express how it works much easier to the team let alone the viewers. Also because of this the characters stats don’t mean anything to me and thus I’m less interested in the characters and don’t understand what they are doing to be challenging or easy. When I’m watching CoS I know that if Berg gets put into a situation where Adam makes him roll something on Intelligence or Charisma it will be a huge challenge for him and that can help build tension in a situation which makes for great viewing and storytelling. Maybe it is just me that doesn’t understand the system but so far any show that has a non d20 based system just doesn’t work for me.
The second issue that I have is the DM. To me his style is too laid back and again I’m not sure if it is the system but it leaves too much on the players plate to do things. When your players don’t know what they can do or should be doing and then you have a world where you have to pry them to do anything it makes for boring content. Don’t get me wrong I love the roleplay that the characters do but roleplay without plot just doesn’t keep me engaged.
Take my words for whatever you feel they are worth. I was only able to get through 3 episodes of Blades before I gave it up. I do love Court of Swords and try to watch it live (well from 4:30 on).
I watch vods mostly for everything jp related as I’m working most of the time when you’re live.
I started watching Blades in February after hearing the hype on Twitter and AnneMunition’s discord, and watched until I caught up on 1.5 speed on Youtube. I just did a search in Discord to figure out when I started, and here are some excerpts:
2/1/2017:
[12:11 PM] ￭ Kiip ￭: Ok, how many hours is blades
2/1/2017:
[6:26 PM] ￭ Kiip ￭: blades is fantastic
2/2/2017:
[9:01 PM] ￭ Kiip ￭: I don’t have groundhog day ripped
[9:01 PM] ￭ Kiip ￭: I’m gonna have to find the disc
[9:04 PM] [Redacted]: that sounds like work Klip
[9:04 PM] ￭ Kiip ￭: yeah I think I’ll just keep watching Blades instead
2/6/2017:
[12:01 AM] ￭ Kiip ￭: so I want to do something with Blades
2/9/2017:
[8:55 PM] ￭ Kiip ￭: Blades is so cool
2/19/2017:
[8:15 PM] ￭ Kiip ￭: blades is amaaaaaaazing
The Sunday time should work better for me.
I suspect that this Tuesday had a worse turnout than normal because Horizon: Zero Dawn released, Anne was at GDC, and GDC’s NVIDIA panel thing (and waiting for it…) was taking up the same time.
Blades is the first rollplay I have started watching, but I was blown away by how excellent everyone is at acting, how fluidly the system works at getting the characters through situations (especially combat), emphasizing the story elements, setting, characterization, setting up future conflicts.
I also feel John’s GMing style just isnt for me. I think Blades has produced some of the best RPing i have seen from any of the shows that’s perhaps only trumped by Swan Song. However, while the RPing is amazing i’m just not drawn into it. I know the rule set for Blades is such that PCs don’t really have a risk of dying. For me personally, it makes care less for the PCs. Others may enjoy this more though!
Just my two cents
For me Blades is the best show airing right now on Rollplay but, as it was already mentioned, it’s just too late for us europeans. Either we are a considerable part of the viewership or this last episode simply might have suffered from this week’s schedule rearrangements. With the move to another place and some people knowing that this or that cast member are away or have announced they will be going away to conventions and other stuff might have made fans assume there would be no shows. I for one didn’t check the schedule, which makes this completely my fault, and when I realised there would be a show it was already on and I didn’t want to start watching after losing 1 hour or more. But Blades is great, there’s no doubt about it.
edit: after going back and reading through the replies, I’ll follow the example of mediengestalt and I’m gonna add that I really enjoy the focus of the show on the characters and their development, the greatest roleplaying to date on Rollplay, and that combat is generally secondary or streamlined.
I’ve noticed a recurring theme that viewers don’t understand how much impact a given roll has, or don’t feel the same tension as they do in other shows. I wonder how much of that could be helped by having a visual indicator of each character’s Stress level (since it performs a similar function to HP in other shows). That way we can have some idea of where everyone is at during a mission, or how important a downtime action is, etc.
That’s one of the things I find myself often getting confused about. Since Stress is one of the big core mechanics of the game, not knowing how important a character’s actions are WRT Stress leaves you feeling like you’re missing out.
it’s my favorite show you do. Its just at an odd time for me to view. I usually watch the Vod or on Youtube.
Blades got you my sub 
don’t change it!
i also feel like people dont realize just how good this group is rolling…like there has been 5+ instances where they should be in over their head and they just hit clutch roll after clutch roll. that speaks to people not understanding how much impact any given roll has
I would guess a lot of it comes down to understanding the system, was the system ever explained to the viewers? I don’t remember, if it wasn’t perhaps a “newbies guide to blades” is needed.
For sure. And as a viewer it would help to know what rolls are really clutch by being able to see stress levels. It would help me at least.
Love the show my favorite since the original roll play in fact it’s what brought me back to your content. However unless the whole cast is there I’m not very interested in watching. Plus there’s been a big hiatus already then with Ann not being there I just push off until I can watch the VoD later.
I know it’s been due to things out of anyone’s control but the irregular schedule has made it hard for me to stay hyped on the show.
I hope the new time slot works better for everybody.