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#213

I think that timezones are a minor issue rather then the main source of the problem.

BitD do not enforce attachment to characters. Most system Adam GMs do, and if they don’t, Adam strongly pins the players to the characters, day 1.

In BitD you do a hell of a lot of planning. When the action begins, you make a retrospection to planning again. You always remain zoned out, detached from your character, unless you specifically try not to be or the GM does it for you.

Adam does this thing that Joss Whedon does in Buffy - when a character gets into a mundane situation that does not involve magic, killing or shadow dogs, he still GMs by exploring how that situation affects the characters. A conversation with a flirtatious dwarf on the balcony or watching you react to Rajani having a girlfriend - something that has nothing to do with story, mission or mechanics.

BinD is John’s baby and he always returns to the rules, and the effect is, even though they have those badass portraits and 11 weeks behind them, the characters in Blades still remain very much a blank canvas. And for chrissake, it’s Wheat and Geoff’s characters. Shouldn’t have happened.

You will not get higher viewership by moving the show, not as high as you wuld like. What you can do though is put Adam there. He can do his stuff there, he and John do have a chemistry, and you already have a lot of Blades sessions where a player sits out. John has to work Adam in, but they are both pro storytellers. It will not be an issue. And people are yelling to see Adam play a character, so you’d kill two birds with one stone.

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#214

simply put, in nebula jazz you have people like Jesse, Strippin, Dodger, each with a follower base that dwarfs Geoff/Anne/Zeke/Johns combined follower-bases (basing on twitter for example). Same with court of swords: GassyMexican is far bigger than the combined people in Blades. Court of swords has also had Day9 which again is a HUGE signal-boost. I think it basically comes down to this.

#215

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=constructive+criticism

For the people who need a reminder on what constructive criticism is.

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#217

This is only half of the reason.
The big Twitch stars are why people come.

The way the system/GM/players highlights cool, badass and sexy characters is why people stay.

The viewership wasn’t bad to begin with. There was enough artwork and ads for people to join the show. But for me the show never got it’s velocity.

If you tell the Blades story so far, it sounds amazing, but the storytelling is hidered by the ruleset, and that’s why we never get a ‘Are you ready?’ moment from Marcus or a SpikeSpace walk moment from Geoff. We never are in the moment. It’s planning for the moment and living the effect/repercussion of the moment. The moment never happens on the show.

RPGs are a conversation. With Adam it’s bathing in the feeling of a situation, exploring the emotional angles of every choice. Sicarian is about to go for a spacewalk and Adam gives him a little scene with one of the female Pfotenhauer officers, building up the fear, the uncertainty of the situation, allows Geoff to express fear/courage, to be a badass (what Geoff does best) and a ‘maybe we meet again, if you live through this’ type of romance.

In Blades it’s discussing how awesome it would be to do something and how to do it, and then discussing how awesome it was to do it. You barely see the moment it’s being actually done or feel what charactes think when it happens. If anything, you see their actions, and while behaviorism makes for a deeper experience, only a sublime group of viewers will find it entertaining.

Wheat or Geoff are ready to express their characters, but BitD is just not the system that encourages that. And John, being a strong advocate for his system, is not helping.

2 Likes
#218

I’d heartfuly agree if it wasn’t for the fact, that we had shows in similiar hours before that had immense viewership. If you think a show is good, you make do with the timezones. I watched all of Swan Song live, and I am in Europe.

#220

sure John has a more mellow and laidback style than adam. and the ruleset is a bit different. but if you switched out the nebula jazz cast with blades in the dark, the GMs and the characters staying the same, the viewership still also switches I believe. Blades in the dark has plenty of amazing roleplay moments, case in point Zeke-Anne a couple of episodes back. there’s certainly nothing wrong with the acting or the effort. the system is the least important part of the equation, it’s the personalities which both shows have got plenty of. It’s just a different level of signal-boosting when someone with 400 000 followers tweets out “hey guys, about to play some pnp! check it out” than someone with 40 000.

#221

That’s the thing. for me (Europe, remember?) I have to bother to watch. If I don’t bother enough, I end up sleeping or watching something else instead. That being said, you’re right for the most part.

Absolutely right. But then, Blades started with a gigantic viewrbase. It dwindled because people didn’t bother enough to watch. At the end of the day if something is entertaining, you’ll gonna watch it.

And don’t tell me you need a prompt/tweet to invite you to a rollplay show you like. If you like it, you can’t wait to see it and you’re there way before the countdown starts.

It’s people being bored and not bothering to watch what’s the main cause. And that is because the entertainment value is lower, and that is because there’s less characters to be invested in because of how underdeveloped the character-based storytelling is.

What hooks people to Swan Song are personalities of the players, but also personalities of the characters. BitD allows to show them, but does not enforce it. Wheat tries to present that, but John does not enforce it and we end up with a game about planning mostly. When we get to the action, everything is preplanned, players don’t make interesting choices, and interesting choices is what (according to Sid Meyer) makes interesting gameplay. You get bored, you’re not really interested in what will Wheat do next or if Geoff succeeds, and you don’t really wait for the next episode and end up forgetting about it and not watching. That’s how I stopped watching Blades, and sure, the timzezone is a killer, but I was eager enough for Swan Song to overlook that.

P.S. All this talk about Blades actually makes me want to watch the 4 episodes I missed. But 16 hours of my time when the last episodes didn’t grab me is a tough choice.

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#223

This “conversation” is over.

@Bezier123 tone it down. You have said more than your peace, now end it. This is the final warning.

PS. since you are not omniscient, you can’t be the mouthpiece for everyone that ever watched Blades.

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#224

I am sorry to anyone that got offended by my posts.

I personally got riled up because of how ‘timezones’ centric the feedback thread is despite the fact that almost every post reeks of people being to bored to watch or openly admit, that Blades come off bleak as followup to CoS.

To me it is clear, that, while timezones are a problem in it’s own right, the dwindling viewership has much more to do with the fact, that the storytelling in blades is not as heartgripping as we’re used to on Rollplay.

Since this is a feedback thread and I am a viewer, I felt that providing the reasons for which I no longer watch Blades was justified.

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#225

[spoiler]I withdrew this post, since I thought it was not the right place for a discussion. Maybe I was wrong. So here, have it back.[/spoiler]

The answers were timezone centric because every single european has this issue above any issue else. On top of that, even for some americans the time slot was a bit late, as it seems. There are over 220 replies, and 200 215 of them are about timezones. You can accept that fact, or you can moan about it.

The secondary big issue is that we get 8 hours of shows in one day. That’s a big chunk of weekly commitment. Like, kiss tuesday goodbye, if you want to keep up. People choose. And you bet they choose the time slot that is more convenient to them, and not what show they like more.

If people were bored of a show, they’d say that. This is an honest community, if anyone thinks the show is poop, they say that and not something about timezones. So when this topic is timezone centric, you better believe that this is an (if not the) issue.

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#226

To give you my personal experience on the timezone front. I’m in the UK and used to every RollPlay show live, but my situation has changed. I’m no longer unemployed with infinite free time to sink into NA-centric scheduling.

Tastes are a big factor, and while it may not be your thing, the game is immensely popular on its own and was so long before it came to Twitch. But John’s Bloodletters YT/Twitch series is absolutely incredible, and I personally put it on par with Swan Song. Bloodletters works so well because every player knows the game so well, and they can focus their creativity - which will come in time with the RollPlay show. Blades can and does thrive on Twitch, but that’s without the business need for that to translate to 1,000+ people every time, even though I believe it’s fully capable of doing so.

I love Blades and the crew is great, it’s my favourite RollPlay show at the moment, but there’s definitely something missing. Compared to the Bloodletters, the Last Word feel considerably more shallow (only a potential tick for those of us who watch both) because there’s only so many ways you can describe murdering a person for an Assassin crew mission (it can be done well of course), while as a Hawker gang lends itself to more variety just by not being about killing alone.

To the point (in my opinion): The characters of Blades are the interesting part right now, the crew is not, and on top of that assassins are a dull archetype. Whereas the Bloodletters are more economically and socially focused, with murder as a flavour sometimes.

The Last Word are chasing huge targets that are way out of their league with nothing in between (granted it’s a rather young show). There’s very little beyond the crew themselves that the audience has had a chance to latch onto, sure, we can laugh at the murder, but you can’t create interesting relationships and NPCs out of corpses and red puddles.

This thread has made me concerned for the future of Blades, where prior I was just riding the wave and enjoying it. Just putting fresh thoughts to page.

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#227

what’s funny about this is that I barely know how to play Blades. this is all sean / stras and i’m the bumbling idiot who makes bad decisions.

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#228

It’s sooo good. Haven’t watched live because time. Aldo is one of my favorite Rollplay characters of all time.

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#229

Nice constructive criticism on other peoples criticism :wink:

#230

9 times out of 10 I watch RollPlay via VODs because it doesn’t align with my schedule to watch live but I quit watching Blades after Episode 7.

I just don’t enjoy watching the system. I don’t know if it’s something inherent in the system I just don’t like or if it’s only confined to the context of this show. I’d probably have to watch John’s other show and see how it compares. The pacing just feels off and I can only put it down to some of the mechanics because the cast, their characters, John’s GMing and the setting are all excellent. Even though I want to find out more about Carriless in particular, I just can’t motivate myself to watch any more.

Wish I could be more specific, but je ne se quois is all I got.

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#231

Keyword you missed, and please keep on topic.

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#232

Keep in mind that the Bloodletters are all experienced GM’s in their own right, professionally in many cases. You’re not going to catch that kind of lightning in a bottle, and to judge any other game of Blades in the Dark based off it would be folly.

That being said, the deep distraction you see from all the players, especially in the most recent episode is frustrating to watch. You can just see the glazed over look Wheat gives when he’s called on to respond to something, then have to repeat everything, and even then he gets half the details wrong. Even JOHN was sounding distracted and distant, and Zeke’s constant shifting of tone and behaviour for Aldo to be far less studious tough guy and far more brutish boring has me disappointed too.

These things are fixable, and I wish Blades the best. Great show overall. Love the system, despite others complaints.

2 Likes
#233

I love blades, I dont know why anyone wouldnt like it, I do however watch shows as vods while im at work (work over nights and shows are great to pass the time)

#234

As one of the so called “time zone” dudes… i can tell you that I havent even gotten to the point where I know the show good enuff or been around long enuff to get bored. To me its a brand new show that just dosent work for me due to the day of the week and the time slot it currently has.

Yes Adam is not on this show as the GM, and as a big fan of what Adam dos it will have a factor. That dosent mean that another person cant step in and do a good job in another way.

So for me to even get to a point where I can say if Blades is truly something for me or not I would need to go true alot more episodes.

#235

Another notch in your skill set being able to interact with it so well despite that. You could have, and have been fooling me with your manner of play.

Having a player or players in the game as a side to the GM’s role, like a Sean, Stras, or Dan in Court of Swords is a boon to a group’s creative flow. You can be creative, while John, Sean, and Stras can all help minimise the mechanical hurdle within the flow, and it works super well (because you had me fooled on your own knowledge); while with RollPlay: Blades, only John currently provides that benefit and one head can only interact with so many moving gears at once.

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