Keith Stetson some very quick thoughts on the Blades clocks and why they work (ish) for me:

* I think it’s a great visual to have on the table to remind folks about both their goals and ambient threats during the job.

* Ticking down clocks gives me a way to bleed off failures/complications into an abstracted “later but game-changing” space. One problem I, personally, have had running PbtA-style games is that I tend to escalate soft moves into hard moves pretty fast. I like the one-shot amped vibe! But it’s frustrating to players. Blades and I assume The Sprawl I think implicitly includes “make them feel like badasses” under the “be a fan of the characters” aegis, and jobs spiraling into fiascos does not serve that principle.

* I think there are some best practices, at least on the Blades side, to having enough but not too many clocks up and running at once. The system can’t protect us from over/underusing them.

* In The Sprawl there are lots of clocks, but they don’t get created ad-hoc, I don’t think, the way they do in Blades. So it’s kind of the best of both worlds: you have abstracted counters for tracking total failure vs. total success, as well as a few standby clocks (Corporations each have a clock, as do Threats) into which you can bleed off failures/complications. But you don’t run the risk of having a table with like 20 clocks that nobody can keep track of.