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

[Celebrim]

Going back to pemerton's original post, the question seems to be, just how much mechanical support must be present for an RPG to most readily optimize its core "play style assumptions"?

Depends on what those core play assumptions are. If the core play assumption is, "Players have a challenge agenda, and the gameplay supports tactical combat where player decision making heavy outcome on success.", then the answer is "lots". But if the core play assumption is left unsaid, the answer can be "none". Certain gaming styles - namely those more derived from theater games than table top wargames - depend very little on rules as RPG players typically understand them and as such can be played with pretty much any level of mechanical crunch. Those styles actually depend more on preparation methods, and/or player expectations.

Note also there are certain types of wargames, usually ones played on a strategic level, that also have very little mechanical crunch, but run on scripts and judge arbitration. If you play a game derived from that, say simulating an intrigue heavy political thriller, you may or may not need mechanical crunch depending on table expectations.

And, as I've played 8 hour D&D sessions with ZERO dice rolls before, full on Thespian theater games doing setting and character exploration.

Is it enough to simply add advice like Burning Wheel's to a game like D&D and expect a change in player approach, or does the system need to back it up with real mechanical impetus?

The examples of play, modules you publish, and expectations of play that you set will probably do more to determine how your game plays (and indeed, even if it is played) than all the mechanics you produce. That said, certain experiences will be best captured if there is some concrete connection between play and mechanics. However, just because the mechanic informs a certain activity, doesn't mean it will actually create a particular experience of play. If you are wanting to create a game where you want players spending a lot of time acting in character and engaging in witty banter and gets in touch with thier characters feelings, it doesn't necessarily follow that intricate rules for resolving social conflicts and spending a lot time book keeping changes in the players internal mental map will create that experience of play. Instead you might find the metagame of selecting choices from the rules is at some tables used to fullly or nearly fully substitute for the now no longer strictly necessary in character role play.

Likewise, if the agenda of play you want to support is Fantasy, where the player experiences being a particular character, it doesn't necessarily follow that providing a huge number of customizable options that tie to ever conceivable sort of character or background imaginable will end up supporting that experience at every table. Some tables will instead take the same rules and use them to support Conflict agendas where they create highly optimized characters with no attachment to who the character is only what the character can do, and then happily play an antagonistic game where they try to beat thier GM with their power gaming.

The real issue IMO opinion is creating a game were you are aware of the multiple agendas and can support one without breaking the other. And if you know you can't support an agenda, then you better be real upfront about it (and you better not expect to sell a lot of copies of your game either).

 

[pemerton]

Am I the only gamer who reads a Forge-speak article and can't understand a single word of it?

Probably not.

Ron Edwards' main goal is (i) to try to describe what is particular to a certain sort of RPGing - what he calls "simulationism" - so as to show that it is not the only viable approach to RPGing, and (ii) to try and describe some other approaches - what he calls "narrativism" and "gamism".

In the particular passage that you queried, he is trying to articulate some distinctive features of classic-D&D influenced gaming: especially the idea that the GM is responible for all description and narration (this is what Edwards is talking about when he refers to "exploration), and all the players are responsible for is making basic play choices for their PCs (eg Do we kill it or run away from it).

Edwards' interest in this particular issue is connected to his broader and longer-term interest in designing games in which players excercise genuine authority over the content of the shared fiction - ie description, narration, "the plot" are not the sole purview of the GM. It turns out that designing that sort of game is a bit trickier than might at first have been thought, but there are various designs that succeed at this. Burning Wheel is one of them.

 

[pemerton]

Is it enough to simply add advice like Burning Wheel's to a game like D&D and expect a change in player approach, or does the system need to back it up with real mechanical impetus?

At a minimum the mechanics need to make room for the play you want.

That is one problem with 2nd ed A&D - its play advice is all about this heroic fantasy story stuff, but its mechanics really don't support that very well, resulting in GM force as the catch all solution, both via explict GM advice text, plus adventure design (esp some of the Ravenloft and Planescape modules) that will only work if the GM exercises maximum force.

 

[Abraxas]

At a minimum the mechanics need to make room for the play you want.

That is one problem with 2nd ed A&D - its play advice is all about this heroic fantasy story stuff, but its mechanics really don't support that very well, resulting in GM force as the catch all solution, both via explict GM advice text, plus adventure design (esp some of the Ravenloft and Planescape modules) that will only work if the GM exercises maximum force.

Just wanted to comment here - I disagree with your assessment of 2E AD&D. To this day, the most memorable games for the group of people I have been gaming with for the last 30+ years were during the 2E era. It supported heroic fantasy very well IME. I think Celebrim has been on the right track and there are a host of other factors that have a much greater impact on how your game ends up playing at the table than simply mechanics.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

There is a huge difference between "D&D-ish" and "Plays like D&D". You can make BW, via Burning Thac0, the former but not the latter. This is because there is no appreciable advancement in BW without exercising the BW reward cycle--use your beliefs, instincts, and traits to get into trouble, get fate and other points, then use the points to get out of trouble, thereby giving you a shot at advancing the skills.

Whereas the classic D&D dungeon crawl is about avoiding trouble as much as possible--strategically and then via finesse or fast talk if that breaks down--so that you get the treasure, and thereby gain levels (power). Obviously, that changed some when killing monsters became a stronger source of XP than treasure, but there's still no incentive to get into trouble on purpose.

That's not to favor one over the other. I rather like both at times. But they are nothing alike in play.

 

[Celebrim]

There is a huge difference between "D&D-ish" and "Plays like D&D". You can make BW, via Burning Thac0, the former but not the latter. This is because there is no appreciable advancement in BW without exercising the BW reward cycle--use your beliefs, instincts, and traits to get into trouble, get fate and other points, then use the points to get out of trouble, thereby giving you a shot at advancing the skills....[In D&D] there's still no incentive to get into trouble on purpose.

In D&D, why not just stay back at the Keep? Why ever search for the Caves of Chaos? Why are we on the borderlands at all? Isn't it because if you don't assume risks, you don't recieve a reward?

In one game system, you take on risk, get yourself out of trouble, and then recieve a reward. And in the other game system, you take on risk, get yourself out of trouble, and then recieve a reward. There is some mechanical change, that direct flow of narrative empowerment for taking on risk doesn't occur, but both system incentivize risk taking (up to a point). The way you call out metagame markers to the DM changes. But I'm not convinced it is that different. You think BW is unique because you think there is no mechanical equivalent. But mechanical equivalents aren't always the aesthetics of play in an imaginative game. There is nothing that stops a group of D&D players from playing a character centric narrative about characters struggling with their beliefs and instincts. As early as the late 1980's, I was backgrounding my PC's with proto beliefs and instincts - things like, 'I'll never avoid an oppurtunity to kill orcs' - that had me acting in ways that weren't tactical because I was interested in the story, and in adding to myself an extra challenge. There was no rule involved. There was just no rule that said I couldn't restrict myself. Equally early I was giving nightly XP awards to the best RPer - partly to encourage it, partly because I was the DM and I could give out any XP I wanted, but partly because I'd dropped the requirement to train between levels where, DING, Gygax had originally snuck in a story award for good RP (shortened training time, therefore faster leveling) and I wanted to replace it. But even before I started giving out that reward, players RPed. I think it's a little pretentious to think that no one was role playing until someone invented mechanics that encouraged them to do so, or that mechanically enforced RP is necessarily better than free form subject only to the sometimes hard constraint of what the player believes his character would do. I've seen a D&D campaign that had intraparty Romance and a player retiring a character because the character had gotten pregnent and the player believed that that is what the character would do. How's that for beliefs in action or 'failing forward'?

If I told the story of the two games in a way that was free of meta-descriptors - no mechanics, no out of game frame of reference - could you tell them apart?

Now, don't get me wrong. I believe BW and D&D can and usually do play very differently. And I can think of a few things that the mechanics tend to prevent from happening in the two systems because of the different fortune mechanics in them. But don't mistake, "How I play the game.", for "How the game can be played."

 

[Crazy Jerome]

No, I think D&D and BW are different because I've played all versions of D&D, some of them quite a lot, and I've also played BW and seen firsthand exactly why it is different. This has nothing to do with role playing pretension, and that you even suspected I was being a role playing snob by my comments further reinforces my belief that you haven't played BW. No one that had played BW would ever say that it played anything like D&D.

I roleplay in D&D. I roleplay in BW. There is sufficient overlap in what happens that we can talk about them both as roleplay (e.g. speaking in character) and sufficient differences that the experience is very different. Saying that they are alike because they share roleplay is like saying that hard-core folk music and avant-garde classical are alike because they are both music.

Told the story without mechanics is a meaningless measurement to me. That's a big part of the point. If I wanted to tell the story without mechanics, I'd simply tell the story. It's the experience of how they story gets told, and what that produces at the table. It's as different as, if you'll pardon yet another analogy, walking around the hill to mountain climbing to flying to driving the long way around.

Not a question of better, but different. I supposed that you might torture BW into playing something more exactly like D&D in experience, but I have to say that it would be a fairly dismal prospect. You'd have a lot of overhead in mechanics that now would be providing no payout at all, and meanwhile you'd be missing different overhead in other mechanics and having to make up for it.

I ran a couple of long D&D-ish campaigns using Fantasy Hero over the course of several years. Fantasy Hero is a lot closer to D&D than BW will ever be, mechanically. And we deliberately ran those games to be fairly close to D&D. But even in that one, we were conscious that we were using FH instead of D&D because we wanted something D&D-like that had no Vancian spell slots or forgettable magic, had custom "class packages" that were very flexible, was generally skill-based, etc. So we knew which way to flow when there was a question. Magic missile is not auto hit because there are no auto hits in FH. But we'll have some low-powered but scalable spell that only a wizard can get that shoots out magic darts because D&D has magic missile. Same tropes, different way to explore them.

 

[Manbearcat]

In D&D, why not just stay back at the Keep? Why ever search for the Caves of Chaos? Why are we on the borderlands at all? Isn't it because if you don't assume risks, you don't recieve a reward?

In one game system, you take on risk, get yourself out of trouble, and then recieve a reward. And in the other game system, you take on risk, get yourself out of trouble, and then recieve a reward. There is some mechanical change, that direct flow of narrative empowerment for taking on risk doesn't occur, but both system incentivize risk taking (up to a point). The way you call out metagame markers to the DM changes. But I'm not convinced it is that different.

This is not accurate. The paradigm of risk assessment and assumption of said risk that you have composed here is not congruent.

D&D presupposes that you have already assumed risk by playing. You make the decision by saying "yes, I'll play". By the default (gamist) conceit, your character has chosen a career as an adventure in a world which aggressively pursues his/her death. This is a passive assumption embedded in the game before any dice is rolled and any character sheets are scribed. The active decisions you personally make (and your character makes through the conduit of your decisions) attempt to (i) subvert that inherent risk or mitigate the damage of that explicitly mandated, default career choice; an adventurer in a world which aggressively pursues his/her death. The system's mechanics do not reward play whereby (ii) you actively pursue an agenda which exacerbates risk or afflicts you with consequences/damage. It punishes you for it. You advance your career by observing (i). You imperil it (progressively until you are surely dead) by assuming (ii) as your M.O.

A Burning Wheel game generally does not have that same default (gamist) conceit by which the world is relentelessly, aggressively pursuing your death (it might, but its not default as in D&D) and accordingly, if you are not risk averse and do not relentlessly deploy mitigation strategies your career is imperiled (as in D&D). Conversely, its assumed (and emboldened mechanically) that an upward career trajectory is part and parcel of active challenge of ethos/M.O./mitigation strategies and the inevitable failure (sometimes basically self-inflicted) that comes with a player's willful assumption and exacerbation of risk and its attendant consequences.

 

[Celebrim]

presupposes...default...conceit...assumption...default...generally...default...conceit...default...assumed

I hear you.

 

[Celebrim]

Told the story without mechanics is a meaningless measurement to me.

The resulting story is the only real measurement for me. How the mechanics work their magic in deciding what stories get made is a very important topic, but the mechanics themselves are meaningless. The only difference between something like BW, D&D, and flipping a coin to determine whether or not you succeed or fail at every proposition (see the world's simpliest complete RPG rules set) is the sort of stories that are produced by the different systems.

That's a big part of the point. If I wanted to tell the story without mechanics, I'd simply tell the story.

Yes, but that's not what I want to do. I do tell stories without mechanics. It's a perfectly adequate way to tell a story if you have one author. The interesting thing about RPGs is that they forge a story together from several authors, or at the very least allow subcreators to experience being in the story living it out with an immediatecy that novels find hard to match.

It's the experience of how they story gets told, and what that produces at the table.

Ok, now that I'll listen to. Tell me more. I'm happy to enlarge or refine my theory. Tell me about the experience of 'how'.

I supposed that you might torture BW into playing something more exactly like D&D in experience...

No, no, no. It's not a question of torture. It's a question of expectations. It's a question what a GM makes of a system when he approaches it and how he imagines preparing for and playing it, and also the preconceptions that a player brings to the table about everything from a system to how to relate to the GM. I'm saying that these experiences of play aren't necessarily being done consciously. Now, I will say that in BW's case the author has gone out of his way to tell you how to play BW in a way that is pretty unique compared to older RPGs. He doesn't just give you the mechanics and expect you to make play with them, but he presents the expectations and guidelines and agendas of play as if they were rules and alongside rules with equal billing and then tells you THIS is the right way to play. That is IMO incredibly insightful, and recognizes something that I don't think was really recognized consciously 20 or 30 years ago.

So I'm hardly surprised that BW played very very differently than D&D; I wouldn't expect anything else. But I think it would be a big mistake to focus on the mechanics and the way conflict is resolved as the major reason why it plays differently.

I ran a couple of long D&D-ish campaigns using Fantasy Hero over the course of several years. Fantasy Hero is a lot closer to D&D than BW will ever be, mechanically. And we deliberately ran those games to be fairly close to D&D. But even in that one, we were conscious that we were using FH instead of D&D because we wanted something D&D-like that had no Vancian spell slots or forgettable magic, had custom "class packages" that were very flexible, was generally skill-based, etc. So we knew which way to flow when there was a question. Magic missile is not auto hit because there are no auto hits in FH. But we'll have some low-powered but scalable spell that only a wizard can get that shoots out magic darts because D&D has magic missile. Same tropes, different way to explore them.

Trivial mechanical differences. I've played different games of D&D that had greater variaty of play than that. For example, I once played under a DM that refused to let players see their own character sheets or know thier own remaining hit points because he disliked the use of metagaming to that great of an extent. Basically all resolution was behidn the screen. Same mechanics. Totally different play experience, and to a certain extent total shift in story. Magic missile being auto hit or not; doesn't signify. There probably were differences in play, maybe even some linked to mechanics, but you aren't convincing me that you've really stepped back and evaluated that idea down to its roots.