This came from djWheats really good roll to find a contact/information to deal with Grace. His rolls success was getting something that would do just that. Easily dup her into meeting basically wherever they wanted.
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Yes. What it looks like it up for Wheat to figure out. If there’s nothing Cattaby can do to resist, then she can’t resist.
Yeah, I skipped that since it was implicit and clearly understood by the group already. We’ll usually be explicit about that procedure, but not 100% of the time.
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Regarding all the hypothetical stuff:
I could have made Grace a serious threat, sure. But that’s not who she is. She’s a lower-Tier extortionist who’s overconfident from all her successes. So that’s who I played. She was still pretty baller, in her way. Talked her way out of a torture room without even raising her voice. 
As a Blades GM, it’s not my job to orchestrate challenges, it’s my job to portray the world honestly.
Some things will be easy. Some things will be crushing. Some things will be in-between. We play to find out how it goes. I won’t be directing “the story” to make it turn out a certain way.
And – to reiterate once again – it’s easy to gloss over those 6s and imagine that the PCs are waltzing through problems. Cariless was is serious danger in his gambit against Grace at her favorite joint. A 4/5 there wouldn’t have just been a worse position, it would have been a room full of people turning on him at once. He had the balls to go for it, and he hit the 6, so he got what he wanted. The fact that he could do it with a couple rolls reflects that Grace is lower-Tier and doesn’t have layers and layers of security – she relied on her reputation and the fact that sane people don’t risk their lives on a long shot (unlike Mr. Firm).
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As always, thanks for the awesome and insightful responses 
Specifically regarding my last post, this is important for me to stress: That post wasn’t intended as a “gosh they’ve got it too easy” post. I think that ground has been well-covered before. The point I was trying to express was that the stories being told in that particular episode, felt to me like stories of execution, rather than struggle - which can be a dark tone for a game to strike.
I’m kind of wondering if there’s something inherent in the game dynamic that weighs games in favor of going this way (particularly with Assassin crews, as I mentioned) – if this is some kind of emergent property. Emergent properties in systems and games are something I find immensely intriguing
Or, if this is simply what caught the attention of this particular group, this particular episode – and this won’t necessarily be a regular feature on the series, or wouldn’t be particularly likely to recur in a different group of Assassins.
It kind of stood out to me this episode because, well, two different murders, two different characters taking center stage. It seemed more like a pattern than a one-off.
As I said, emergent properties are fascinating to me, and I’m always interested in seeing how different game systems aim players in directions that may seem only subtly different, but actually wind up leading to totally different tones and styles. Blades is extra compelling to me, because right out of the box it has so many different play styles (the huge variety of crew types, and soon enough, hacks and playsets as well…) – so it’s a fantastic playground for seeing the small differences add up
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This is something that can only been seen in hindsight. Since we’re following the fiction and letting the dice speak, we won’t know what sort of series we have until it’s over. We can guess at potential patterns, but the sample size is so small it’s meaningless.
I like emergent properties, too. There are lots of elements of Blades that only emerge in play. But it’s far too early to draw conclusions about this series.
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