Is the Burning Wheel "how to play" advice useful for D&D?

[Nemesis Destiny]

I can help with this right quick.

Beliefs are expressions of your character's ethos. They are cues to the GM that express what thematic content that you wish scenes to be framed around to challenge your character; "We are men of action, lies do not become us."

Instincts are insurance against the GM claiming minor agency from you and framing scenes that would violate important aspects of your characters. They're typically if, then; kind of like readied actions. "If the meek are bullied or exploited then I will intervene."

Traits are purchasable PC build resources kind of like Feats/Theme/Background Material/APs in 4e (kind of). They come in 3 variations; Die Traits, Call On Traits, and Character Traits. Die Traits are traits which affect die rolls. Call On Traits are narrative controls that are called upon by the player during times of need and mandate a roll when there otherwise would have been none. Character Traits are descriptive in nature and mostly color.

Ok, that helps, thanks.

Can you give me examples of how the game might leverage Beliefs or Instincts?

 

[Manbearcat]

Ok, that helps, thanks.

Can you give me examples of how the game might leverage Beliefs or Instincts?

Sure, I'll be pretty generic as the game is intensely mechanical (its no surprise that pemerton loves it given he has an affinity for Rolemaster!).

Beliefs: The "We are men of action, lies do not become us" guy, above? A likely scene to challenge that guy would be one where deception, bluffing, subterfuge appears to be the easier, more assured route to go for success in a conflict.

Instincts: The "If the meek are bullied or exploited then I will intervene" guy? The GM CANNOT introduce a scene whereby this guy is already assumed to have just been standing idly by while a beggar, an orphan, an elderly shopkeeper, etc is being extorted or bullied. He can start the scene right as that happens (and should), but never open with the assumption that it just took place.

 

[Celebrim]

Can you give me examples of how the game might leverage Beliefs or Instincts?

So, BW basically lets the player script custom 'Feats'. Beliefs are like the characters alignment, and in BW they are meant to be tested. The GM is expected to craft situations that force the player to think about his Beliefs and maybe even change them in responce to this reflection. If your belief is, "We are men of action, lies do not become us.", then putting the player in situations where lying is more pragmatic than action tests his belief. Can the player follow through with that belief? Is he really willing to accept the consequences?

Instincts are like a Feat that gives you what amounts to an extra action in a specified situation. This can work both for you and against you. The benefit is that you basically get to take that extra action to interrupt the scene. The downside is the action is basically scripted. Your instincts can work against you, and get you into trouble. How does "If the meek are bullied or exploited then I will intervene" work out if the meek is a street thief, and the bully is an officer of the law? How does it work when you see someone being beaten, and it turns out that the one being beaten perpetrated a terrible injustice on the beater and what you are really seeing is an inversion of their normal power dynamics? Maybe the one getting beaten is actually the pimp of the beater, who is a male prostitute kidnapped and forced into sex slavery and for the first time in his life he's had the courage to turn on his persecuter. Leap before you look is dangerous, and a sly GM will even turn, "I always look before I leap" against you, since he who hesitates is lost, right?

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

Sure, I'll be pretty generic as the game is intensely mechanical (its no surprise that pemerton loves it given he has an affinity for Rolemaster!).

Beliefs: The "We are men of action, lies do not become us" guy, above? A likely scene to challenge that guy would be one where deception, bluffing, subterfuge appears to be the easier, more assured route to go for success in a conflict.

Instincts: The "If the meek are bullied or exploited then I will intervene" guy? The GM CANNOT introduce a scene whereby this guy is already assumed to have just been standing idly by while a beggar, an orphan, an elderly shopkeeper, etc is being extorted or bullied. He can start the scene right as that happens (and should), but never open with the assumption that it just took place.

Thanks again. I think it's clear now. Likely the only thing to make it any clearer would be to read the book and play the game. Sounds interesting.

If it was something a group was interested in and wanted to do, it sounds like those two elements could easily be ported wholesale into D&D, unless they require those mechanics you mentioned in some way that isn't obvious from reading your examples. The qualifiers of group interest from my previous post would still apply, naturally.

 

[Manbearcat]

Thanks again. I think it's clear now. Likely the only thing to make it any clearer would be to read the book and play the game. Sounds interesting.

If it was something a group was interested in and wanted to do, it sounds like those two elements could easily be ported wholesale into D&D, unless they require those mechanics you mentioned in some way that isn't obvious from reading your examples. The qualifiers of group interest from my previous post would still apply, naturally.

My group has used them for 4e since we started. 4e has tons of cues built into to PC build resources but the specificity of Beliefs is very helpful. Even more than that, Instincts are exceedingly helpful when your table agenda assumes that your GM is going to wrest minor agency from players in establishing scene Bangs and when players are allowed authorial control to occasionally interpret and narrate their own intra-Skill Challenge resolutions (and those resolutions pressure other players).

My group is pretty heavy on the thematic, genre and ethos coherency/coordination, however, and I demand a lot from my players (and they gladly and effectively give it). Definitely on the far end of the spectrum. I suspect the percentage of ENWorlders who would like my games is relatively small.

 

[Celebrim]

If it was something a group was interested in and wanted to do, it sounds like those two elements could easily be ported wholesale into D&D, unless they require those mechanics you mentioned in some way that isn't obvious from reading your examples. The qualifiers of group interest from my previous post would still apply, naturally.

It would be pretty easy to port into D&D. A Belief would give you like a +1 bonus on all rolls when you were in a scene that tested your beliefs and acting in direct accordance to your beliefs. I'd give you a penalty like say -4 when violating your belief, but then after 24 hours I'd let you take a new Belief if you wanted.

An Instinct would be like a 'Held Action' that let you take an immediate action whenever the condition was triggered. Only you had to take the action.

Now on with the Greek Tragedy.

The danger in D&D with freeform mechanics like that is that given D&D's wargaming roots and tactical crunchiness, you'd have people taking beliefs and instincts solely to power game. It would probably only work with some groups.

 

[Celebrim]

Even more than that, Instincts are exceedingly helpful when your table agenda assumes that your GM is going to wrest minor agency from players in establishing scene Bangs... I suspect the percentage of ENWorlders who would like my games is relatively small.

Yeah, I noticed the way you framed the idea of an instinct it was protection from something that in any of my games NEVER occurs in the first place. I never ever narrate a scene based on an assumption about what a player does. I never as a DM have player character agency and so instincts in that sense are meaningless. Instead, I see them more literally as the ability to react faster. If I was going to run BW, and I have big issues with the system unrelated to this topic, but I were to, a player that has the instinct, "If the meek are bullied or exploited then I will intervene", not only never would be assumed to have been standing around but would be assumed to always arrive in time to intervene. He's never forced to witness something he can't intervene in. He comes around the corner and there is blind folded woman about to be executed by a man with a big sword, he can always interrupt, and indeed always must interrupt. The guy may turn out to be Athos and the lady Milady de Winter, but that's life.

 

[Manbearcat]

@Celebrim Sure. Its not for everyone and you have to have a clear, coherent table agenda and a firm, overt social contract to do such things.

My conflicts are primarily about the stakes involved so there, I have minor advantage in that, assuming we're all on the same page regarding thematic content (and do's and don'ts) I can wrest very minor agency from players and, in doing so, confirm that certain challenging content will materialize (if those are the stakes that myself or my players want tested). Otherwise, scene openers are always left up to fortune resolution and player decision, thus crowding out certain possibilities or minimizing the prospectsof them manifesting.

If I want an Indiana Jones chase scene (or I know my players want/expect a chase scene), then rather than skulking through the temple to secure the idol from the snake men, I open the scene with the Master Thief emerging from the temple with the idol, a pack of hyenas yapping and engaging his staked horse and alerting the attention of the snake men! He's a Master Thief so I'm working off of the assumption that he was successful (PC build cue). So long as I'm not violating their expectations, and the chase scene is what is important and turns out awesome, then we're good to go!

Again, not for everyone though. And takes a lot of clarity regarding thematic and genre expectations.

 

[chaochou]

Ok, that helps, thanks.

Can you give me examples of how the game might leverage Beliefs or Instincts?

I think it's important to understand that in BW, Beliefs, Instincts and Traits are the cornerstones of character progression. Someone else may want to explain it. But then they may not do a very good job, so I think you'd be better off spending the 25 bucks or so and buying Burning Wheel Gold to see for yourself. It's an extremely good game.

Alternatively, Google Lady Blackbird, download it (it's free), print it out and run that as a one or two session shot. See how that goes down. You'll see how the game is driven almost exclusively by the player's Keys. Without Keys there is no game - nothing for the GM to do, no scripts to follow, no situations or scenes to set up, no plot to keep the players on. The onus is on the players to make things happen, crazy things, funny things, dramatic things, tense and angry things. It's all derived from the Keys, as expressed by the players. Keys in LB operate very much the same way as beliefs in BW.

In answer to @pemerton 's OP - I think the advice in BW is very good for running BW. I think it's good for running games driven by player protaganism. But I'm constantly surprised that you run D&D the way you do - perhaps even more surprised that you ran Rolemaster in a similar style. Rolemaster! Full of dense tables, and those remarkably obtuse percentile-ish stat values, and everyone bleeding to death anti-climactically like some wierd Peter Greenaway film. There's a game I never figured out. We found the crit tables funny but the rest of it was, like 'huh?'.

Would you suggest the BW advice for Rolemaster? I think that's an interesting question. I think you may have used it, or evolved into something similar of your own devising, for RM - but would you advise other people to bolt that advice onto RAW Rolemaster? Me, I'm not seeing it. You've said you see thematic weight in Paragon paths and race and class choices and the cosmology of 4e, perhaps as distinct from RM. I respect that, but that doesn't mean I feel the same. I like theme to start up close and personal - greed, grief, sibling rivalry, thwarted ambition, jealousy, unrequited love - all that stuff.

Anyway, I digress. I think the people who will derive any significant value from the advice in BW probably already own it, or will be interested enough to get a copy.

 

[pemerton]

Maybe that's because we usually already know what a D&D campaign will be about. I mean, the only times groups engage heavily in that discussion (IME) is when they are planning on deviating significantly from D&D's "script." "Let's do an evil campaign" "Let's do an all-thieves campaign" or something similar. Otherwise, you're generally free to roll up your Dwarf Fighter start play...many times even without a name.

Interesting points.

I rarely (as in "can't remember ever seeing it") see a player choose a class or race in order to signal something to the DM about the game they want to see.

For me I can remember a fair bit of this. A player plays a dwarf because "dwarf" = "stern, no-nonsense but dependable do-gooder". A player plays a drow chaos sorcerer who worhsips Corellon because "chaos" = "go crazy wild" while "Corellon-worshipping drow rebel" tempers that with "but still somewhat sympathetic and ultimately well-meaning". A player plays a paladin because they want to see tests of faith.

Or, in Oriental Adventures, a player choose bushi rather than samurai because he wants to be a free-wheeling rather than a duty-bound warrior. And then there's the classic all-thief campaign: I think the thief is one of the more hook-heavy classes in classic D&D, and I think one of the reasons for its notoriety is that the standard dungeon adventure doesn't really pick up on those hooks.

What I'm a little less clear on, is what happens after a campaign gets going. Even in groups that start play fairly divorced from dramatic thinking and focus almost entirely on exploration, I regularly see that they develop attachments to locations, NPCs, etc. that become fine foci for dramatic play.

<snip>

Should the rules address or acknowledge that in some way?

I could imagine a version of a PrC/Paragon Path rule that tried to acknowledge or address this. For instance, when a certain trigger is activiated (an ingame event? reaching level 6? the GM deciding "it's time"?), then you get your "attachment" PC feature.

A really primitive version of the feature might be something like - when the thing you're attached to suffers, you take d10 psychic damage unless you step in to protect it, in which case you get advantage on your relevant d20 roll. (The reason I'm going for damage rather than an action penalty is that, in D&D at least, a penalty to action tends to be so significant that it's tantamount for coercion, which is not what you would be looking for here.)

It can be tricky. If a player builds a character with a a really high lockpick score, is it because he wants to engage thievery as a theme or because he doesn't want to deal with locks as a challenge?

I think this is an excellent point.

In BW, this is something where Beliefs and Instincts can do a bit of work. Suppose a roguish PC has a high lockpicking skill, and also a Belief that "All secrets should be laid bare, and all beauty out in the open for the world to see", that is practically instructing the GM to put locks in front of the character, which have things behind them that mere mortals were not meant to know!

Whereas if the PC has an Instict "Never shut a door without confirming I have a way out" then this might suggest that the player doesn't want escape scenes to be a big part of play, and a high lockpicking skill on this PC might send a similar signal: what this PC is about isn't picking locks, but rather not being trapped.

In the end, though, there is probably no substitute for asking - my own preference is not to talk about this meta stuff in the middle of play, where it can interfere with the immediacy of the ingame experience, but before or after the session proper. Or, if the player is not sure about his/her own preferences, test the water one way or another, see how things pan out in play, and follow the relevant cues.

One thing I'd like you to expand upon, if it's not too much trouble, is the part about Beliefs, Instincts, and Traits; what are they in the context of the game, and how do the players go about leveraging these things?

Others have said a bit about this. I've also given an example above of how a Belief and and Instinct might look, and the different signals they might send.

Beliefs are about stake-setting, by reference either to other character (other PCs, or NPCs with whom the player has purchased a relationship for his/her PC) or more abstract values. A player chooses Beliefs for his/her PC (three of them is the default number), and various PC features can mandate or leverage Beliefs in various ways: eg all Dwarves must have a relationship, and then must have an oath sworn to that relationship, and a Belief centred upon that oath. Faithful PCs must have a Belief that is a statement of their faith (and if they lose that Belief they lose their access to their Faith attribute).

A player can change Beliefs at any time, subject to GM delay on a change if the timing is viewed as too exploitative. Manifesting a Belief in play earns Fate Points (eg if my Faithful PC worships Pelor, and my Belief is "The light and the flame are my guide", then when I light a torch to make my way through a dungeon I earn a Fate Point; dramatically playing out your inner turmoil when a situation calls for you to act contrary to a Belief can earn you a Persona Point (a type of super-Fate Point); accomplishing a goal set out in a Belief earns you a Persona point. So the GM is expected to set up situations which will create room for all this (being led by the players, given that they choose their Belief; but the players in choosing their Beliefs should of course be having regard to the game concept); and the players then earn Fate and Persona Points by following those leads.

Bcause Beliefs do a range of things in the game, when I look for analogues in my 4e game I'm looking at a variety of different things. Goal-based Belief, for instance, in 4e correspond at least roughly to player-designed Quests.

Or if I think about a Belief based around a relationship, I think of the drow PC in my game who is a member of "The Order of the Bat", a secret society of Corellon worshippers who seek to undo the sundering of the Elves. This was all introduced into the game by the player of that PC, much as in BW you might build your PC with relationships to a secret society with that goal (in BW that's called purchasing an Affiliation) and then build a Belief around it ("Together with my fellow members of the Order of the Bat, I will see the Elves brought together once more!"). I use this hook in designing encounters - with elves, with drow, etc - and the player plays up to it also (eg constantly addressing the Wood Elf PC in the party as "My Elven brother", having secret little conversations in Elvish, etc). Unlike BW, however, there is no mechanical reward to the player for doing this - which also means the player of the Wood Elf has no mechanical incentive to pay it back (whereas in BW, even if he wouldn't earn Fate Points for his PC, he has a mechanical incentive to create situations that feed Fate Points to fellow players). This is part of what I have in mind when I talk about 4e narrativism being "vanilla" narrativism.

But when I think about the Raven Queen devotees in my party - the aforementioned Wood Elf, plus a paladin - who hate Orcus and hunt down undead, they get their radiant damage benefits against undead. So in that sense there is a mechanical pay off to manifesting their Belief in play. But there is nothing in 4e mechanically analogous to earning points for dramatically playing against your Belief - the closest I get to this is setting up conflicts (especially skill challenges, but also social negotiations more generally and some combats too) in which making progess requires choosing fairly clearly one way or the other. The players aren't forced to choose against their Beliefs, but they are at least forced to be made conscious of the need to choose for or against their Beliefs. The simplest examples of these are invitations to negotiate from NPCs opposed to the PCs' Beliefs, in circumstances in which thoe choice to fight rather than negotiation isn't an easy one, for whatever reason (eg balance of forces, social context) applies in the particular situation.

With Instincts and Traits, in addition to what's been said you get Fate Points when you trigger an Instinct so as to cause trouble (it is always the player's choice whether or not an Instinct trigger), or when you embellish your roleplay with a character Trait so as to make life more difficult. An example would be triggering your "Always draw steel when I see my nemesis" Instinct when you meet you nemesis at the court of the king; or suppose you have the Clumsy trait, and suppose also that you have got the key to the concealed rear entrance from the traitor, and you have just crept past the guards and are about to sneak in, then an example would be declaring that your PC is so clumsy that s/he drops the key down the sewer grate as s/he crosses the courtyard.

As the OP indicates, the GM (as well as other players) is meant to have regard to Instincts and Traits in framing scenes. An example in the rulebook is of a dwarf with the instinct "In a cave-in, push the young ones to safety" - if a player builds a PC with that Instinct then the GM is obliged to have a cave in.

(Some Traits are not like Clumsy, and are closer to D&D-style feats or class abilities - the core rules aren't clear on how these other sorts of Traits relate to Fate Points, but later commentary from the designers suggests that when using a Trait can be its own mechanical reward (eg using a call-on Trait for a re-roll) then no Fate Points can be earned from that Trait.)