I must've misspoke. I didn't mean to say obviate the fiction, so much as the judgment calls typically made by players and GM about said fiction.
In particular, we felt some abilities do too much, some not nearly enough, and some do oddly specific things. So we soldiered on using the vanilla abilities from Blades to get by for a couple sessions more. But yeah, that was our group's experience for the first few sessions.
I mean.. my point still stands though. Take your pick off the Broken playbook. Jury Rig, Pulling the Threads, Fractured Mind, the Carriage, and Interface all missed the mark. For starters. And that's not the only playbook..