D&D General Fighting Law and Order

[pemerton]

That works out to be the same thing to me. I don't want special powers in a game beyond what my PC can do.

See, this is weird.

One of the things your D&D PC can probably do is cast fireballs and summon demons. But you don't have those powers at all! Not even when sitting down at the table to play.

 

[Autumnal]

A failure of internal coherence is not a problem I've ever had. Apart from anything else, the real world contains some strange things and there's no reason why this can't be true of imaginary worlds also.

If anything, some just plain inexplicable stuff makes it more realistic. It’s (some) fiction where everything is answered.

 

[Micah Sweet]

See, this is weird.

One of the things your D&D PC can probably do is cast fireballs and summon demons. But you don't have those powers at all! Not even when sitting down at the table to play.

I laugh because I have to assume you're only pretending not to know what I'm talking about.

 

[Aldarc]

I laugh because I have to assume you're only pretending not to know what I'm talking about.

Your PC doesn’t have the power to advocate on their own behalf when negotiating the fiction of their actions and consequences with the GM. So clearly there already seems to me to be a distinction between your non-diegetic superpower outside the fiction and any diegetic powers your PC may have in the fiction.

 

[Lanefan]

Can you see how that might strike someone as a contradiction?

No, because...

This seems no different from my use of Greyhawk maps in Burning Wheel play, or my use of maps of mediaeval Europe in Prince Valiant play: there's some rather high-level geography that everyone has agreed to, and uses to help organise and index basic geographical elements of the fiction.

...as you say right here, some parts of the totality of the game - which IMO includes both GM-side prep and player-side character generation (or "building") - might never see actual play. For example, Greyhawk city is shown on the map and thus is still part of the game even if no character ever goes there or even thinks about it during the course of the entire campaign. Or, a player might note on her character sheet that her character carries a set of playing cards yet those cards might never be mentioned in play - they're just colour in case anyone ever reads her sheet; but they're still a part of the overall game.

An analogy might be that the totality of a hockey game consists of much more than the actual three periods of play; and includes facility maintenance (e.g. if the plexiglass around the rink gets broken during play), player warmups, coaches' between-period team talks, injury treatment, and a whole bunch of other stuff that goes into what you end up seeing on the ice if you're in the crowd that night.

 

[Lanefan]

A failure of internal coherence is not a problem I've ever had. Apart from anything else, the real world contains some strange things and there's no reason why this can't be true of imaginary worlds also.

And every one of those strange things contained in the real world has an explanation for how and why it came to be, and there's no reason why this can't be true of imaginary worlds also.

Just because we in the real world and the players running characters in the imaginary one don't necessarily know those explanations doesn't mean those explanations don't exist; and IMO having those explanations* in place and ready to go should the players take steps to find them is the duty of the GM.

* - and before anyone starts, I don't mean having every little thing explained down to the micro-level. I've found that having a robust model for the in-setting physics, a model that more or less seamlessly accounts for magic, can underpin and launch the vast majority of such explaining a GM will ever have to do, and makes coming up with more detailed explanations massively easier and also keeps them more consistent.

 

[Enrahim2]

I don't know if I understand the question.

If there's established fiction - eg the beggars have been warning that there will be no one to bring in the harvest, and so there is a threat of a famine - then whatever new fiction is established should be consistent with that.

That said, "dropping hints" isn't a big part of BW play in my experience. "Dropping hints" is a GMing technique that I associate with play that is heavily focused on the players, through their play, learning more-and-more details of the setting the GM has prepped, perhaps in the context of completing a quest or adventure that has been set for the players by the GM (and typically mediated to the PCs by a NPC quest-giver).

Yes, I sensed myself that this question was unclear when I wrote it. After sleeping on it I found a more concrete example of what I was thinking about, that seem relatively likely.

Imagine the characters traveling to town. The GM narates how they are passing several farms that is abandoned. The players make a note of it, but decide they want to go to town before investigating further. They then arrive at town, and the GM narrates a gathering of beggars. The GM has the idea that the beggars should be connected to the abandoned farms, but fail to make that explicit. The player then indicate that the beggars are indeed circus professionals. (@AbdulAlhazred I believe even in PbtA games this could happen trough the answering of a less direct question than "who are the beggars?" like as an answer to "what do you do?" - "I recognize the beggars as my old circus friends and go over to greet them")

Such a move from the player side wouldn't obviously contradict anything explicitely established, but accepting it into the fiction would change the established fiction of the empty farms from a setting backdrop where the GM has a fair idea of what is going on to a mystery where none of the participants at the table have any good idea to what could be the answer.

Mind you, no obvious incoherence has yet appeared, and as such I suspect this is the intended mode of these games - that mysteries without known preplanned answers is a norm, and hence an established fact being "escalated" to one is just par for the course. But it would be nice to get that suspicion confirmed or get a explanation how the games avoid this from someone with some volume of actual play experience.

And this is also not meant as a criticism. Lost for instance was immensely popular, and turned out to basically live and breath on these kinds of latent mysteries where only those central to the immediate character story advancement get resolved. However if this indeed is the prevailing mode of play, it is good to be aware of it up front, as Lost also showed us that people signing on to it expecting an experience with all mysteries having planned solutions could have quite negative reactions when they learned the truth

 

[pemerton]

I laugh because I have to assume you're only pretending not to know what I'm talking about.

I don't really. I mean, I could try and state it in a way that I think makes sense, but that can be a fair bit of work, and I mightn't get things right.

I keep trying to talk about processes of play - things that people who are sitting around a table, playing a game together, do and say. I get confused when you and others think that we can obtain information about those things by focusing on what happens in the fiction. And vice versa.

The two are completely independent. From how the fiction is established at the table - via the processes of play - nothing follows about what is happening in the fiction.

Here's an example:

Suppose that the GM decides to describe Thurgon finding some letters from the child Xanthippe to Evard, because (i) Thurgon's player failed a check, and (ii) the rules of the game tell the GM that, in such circumstances, they are required to describe something happening which is contrary to the intention that Thurgon's player had in declaring Thurgon's action. In this situation, it is true that decisions made by Thurgon's player (ie to declare an action for Thurgon with a certain intent) and certain actions performed by Thurgon's player (rolling the dice and getting a fail result) cause the GM to describe the fictional event. But it is false to say that, in the fiction, Thurgon looking for some spellbooks caused letters from Xanthippe to Evard exist. In the fiction - as I would have thought is obvious - the letters, written by Thurgon's mother when she was a child, came into being before Thurgon was even born, and he played no role in causing them to exist.

Upthread, @CreamCloud0 appeared to assert that it is axiomatic that if things done by me, Thurgon's player, at the table cause the GM to establish certain fiction about (say) letters, then it must be that in the fiction Thurgon caused those letters to exist.

But in fact that is not axiomatic at all, and is in my view obviously false.

Here's an example from AD&D: at 10th level, the AD&D ranger is able to attract followers. Let's suppose that one of those followers is a 3rd level Dwarven fighter. In this case, the player of the 10th level ranger declaring I've reached 10th level - what sort of followers do I attract? causes the GM to roll on the followers table, and tell the player about the Dwarf who comes to serve with the ranger. It is now obviously true that, in the fiction, this Dwarf was born, learned to fight, and problem did various things to reach 3rd level. The only reason the GM is making all of this part of the fiction is because the ranger's player caused the GM to do so. But no one supposes, therefore, that in the fiction the ranger caused the Dwarf to be born, to learn to fight, to reach 3rd level, etc.

The difference between the AD&D situation I've just described, and a Burning Wheel Circles check, is simply that in BW every player's character has a Circles score, and can declare an action to look out for someone they know, at any time it makes sense in the fiction. And success in meeting such people is gated behind a dice roll rather than an auto-ability that can only be used once, upon gaining 10th level.

The difference between a Circles check, and rolling to find spellbooks, is simply that the former deals with the topic of "finding people you know" and the latter deals with the topic of finding spellbooks. But the process is the same.

It's true that BW uses the technique I've described in relation to 10th level AD&D rangers far more often during the game, and for many more purposes. But this greater use of the technique doesn't change it's structure. It doesn't make it true that it is the PC who is causing the people to exist, the spellbooks to exist, etc; any more than a 10th level ranger in AD&D causes 3rd level Dwarven fighters to exist.

 

[pemerton]

Imagine the characters traveling to town. The GM narates how they are passing several farms that is abandoned. The players make a note of it, but decide they want to go to town before investigating further.

Let's stop there. How does this fit into the principles of BW play, according to which the GM's job is to frame scenes that speak to the player-authored PC concerns (Beliefs, Instincts, etc).

You already seem to be assuming that the GM is at liberty, in terms of the principles of play, to introduce whatever fiction they want without regard to how it speaks to those player-authored concerns.

I'll keep reading, but this opening does make me worry that your example will make little sense in the context of BW.

They then arrive at town, and the GM narrates a gathering of beggars. The GM has the idea that the beggars should be connected to the abandoned farms, but fail to make that explicit.

Once again, you seem to be describing a GM who is not following the principles of play. Luckily, BW has a solution to this, as we will shortly see . . .

The player then indicate that the beggars are indeed circus professionals. (@AbdulAlhazred I believe even in PbtA games this could happen trough the answering of a less direct question than "who are the beggars?" like as an answer to "what do you do?" - "I recognize the beggars as my old circus friends and go over to greet them")

So in Burning Wheel, this would be a player succeeding at a Circles check, or (perhaps) a Circus-wise check. As per what I quoted upthread about the sacred and most holy role of the players, this is a player doing what they've been told to do and invoking the mechanics so as to establish interesting situations.

I actually did something similar in my own play, when my GM introduced a whole Elves plot element (analogous to your beggars), and I declared actions that would bring the focus of the action back onto the things I cared about.

Such a move from the player side wouldn't obviously contradict anything explicitely established, but accepting it into the fiction would change the established fiction of the empty farms from a setting backdrop where the GM has a fair idea of what is going on to a mystery where none of the participants at the table have any good idea to what could be the answer.

Mind you, no obvious incoherence has yet appeared, and as such I suspect this is the intended mode of these games - that mysteries without known preplanned answers is a norm, and hence an established fact being "escalated" to one is just par for the course. But it would be nice to get that suspicion confirmed or get a explanation how the games avoid this from someone with some volume of actual play experience.

It already seems that the players don't care about the abandoned farms. So that bit of fiction will probably go unaddressed - one of the infinitely many things happening in the imaginary world that these characters never learn about or intersect with.

As you say, there is no incoherence here. I don't see the problem.

In AW and DW, this is called "playing to find out" - which of course has the corollary that, if you don't play, you don't find out!

 

[Enrahim2]

It already seems that the players don't care about the abandoned farms. So that bit of fiction will probably go unaddressed - one of the infinitely many things happening in the imaginary world that these characters never learn about or intersect with.

You seem to be side stepping the question by adding the assumption that there is an incompetent GM at play. That the abandoned farms are not relevant to the characters. I see no reason you should make that assumption, as I indeed specified they made a note of it to investigate later. Nothing I wrote exclude the posibility that these abandoned farms are critical to the characters.

Imagine for instance that one of the characters are scouting out for a new place their family can set up farm, as the river nearby their old farm is drying out over the span of years. I guess you in that case would agree that the introduction of the abandoned farms are highly aproperiate, as it serves as both a potential opportunity, and a bad omen tying into this core motivation?

(And just to make sure you don't just change similar focus to the introduction of beggars, imagine another of the characters is all about fighting systemic poverty).

Now, the players clearly care about the abandoned farms and my statement of them just postphoning examining them is further justified. Could you with this backdrop in mind make a new attempt of commenting on the situation? Is my suspicion that the state of the farm has gone from a narratively interesting setting element with a known possible explanation to a narratively interesting mystery with no known possible explanation an accurate description?