Torchbearer 2nd ed: first impressions

[clearstream]

Ah okay, I can see that. They are definitely an all-purpose resource you can—and must—use quite broadly.

On the subject of all-purpose resources, how has your group been using Nature to date (if at all)?

 

[clearstream]

Right, the process basically goes from boxes to cloud, 'leftward arrow'. I say "I want to get get another check, and I'm facing an obstacle I can easily handle, so I'll describe how I didn't take the time to be careful enough by relying on my quick wits, when I shouldn't have." Now that I think about it, there may be some traits like Hidden Depths which are going to be really hard to cast in a negative light, lol. I guess I could foolishly tough it out instead of preparing well enough in some situation, maybe? OTOH that particular trait seems especially easy to use in a positive way (I mean, who's ever TOO TOUGH, right?).

Your motive is boxes to cloud, but isn't the play in fact cloud to boxes? (You added to the fiction, yielding a mechanical effect.)

 

[pemerton]

Your motive is boxes to cloud, but isn't the play in fact cloud to boxes? (You added to the fiction, yielding a mechanical effect.)

No. This is like Vincent's example of imposing a debuff on a NPC and narrating it as being due to the warm weather: the decision is about boxes (ie to buff or debuff, depending on how the trait is used) and then that generates a leftward arrow (in the fiction, Ruby was distracted by her hunger, or drew upon her innner Hobbitishness, or whatever).

 

[clearstream]

No. This is like Vincent's example of imposing a debuff on a NPC and narrating it as being due to the warm weather: the decision is about boxes (ie to buff or debuff, depending on how the trait is used) and then that generates a leftward arrow (in the fiction, Ruby was distracted by her hunger, or drew upon her innner Hobbitishness, or whatever).

I've read through those cases many times. To me, Vincent sometimes muddies the lines. I think you will not agree, so perhaps it's best to say that I do not assess cases as always clearly or extricably going one way. I see on-surface similar cases assessed as F > S or as F < S, depending on the particulars of play. Perhaps an example is the one of high-ground. Vincent says it is F > S, but you here seem to say that you would analyse it as F < S if the player described a motivation that they sought high-ground to gain the mechanical outcome.

One way to settle things can be to scrutinise where we land. That produces results consistent with Vincent's assessment in many cases, such as that for high ground. The end result in the case at hand is marking the box on the character sheet to store up a check for the next camp phase. Or maybe scrutiny doesn't belong on where we land... I'd be curious about the reasoning for that, if so?

Coming back to the case at hand, the written description feels a little unnatural to me. If as I think the razor is how it is played at the table, then it could be

Player - "I work quickly, not worrying about being careful."

Assuming it's a context where working quickly isn't needed and being careful would be beneficial, then...

GM - "Sounds like Quick Witted is working against you, lose one die and mark a check."

I feel like that is fiction-first. Player said what they were doing without invoking mechanics. GM translated that into system. F > S. There's a possible assumption - and not a bad one - that players are adopting a more systematic attitude to TB. Thus driving their play from system. I'm not sure it has to be played that way. If player motives matter to the arrows analysis, then why does the case at hand not produce S > S? The underlying Hobbitishness only joins the timline if it is narrated now. And if it is narrated now, then F > S. Are you saying that the written fiction rides and thus is sufficient? That seems like a view with many difficulties to me.

For me, this all suggests a very great divide between PbtA and TB. The former gets system largely out of my way. It's not so much that it lacks system - in fact, I see the system as very concrete and refined - even extensive - but more that it focuses system on specific jobs and makes it orthodox and streamlined so that it's not in my face. TB puts an elaborate system, replete with hefty special cases (aka idiosyncracies) in my face, and demands I engage with it. Productive of @AbdulAlhazred's systematically constructed play.

Conversely, I'm seeing some parts of TB - once fully learned - get out of our way. Invoking traits and instincts is becoming more natural. But on the other hand, I don't recall anything in the TB2e text urging a fiction-first approach. I bear in mind the text that "It’s about making difficult choices, and it involves exploring the world and your character through the game rules and systems." Still, my vignette above seems possible after the recommended 10 or 20 sessions.

I gather you have a very large amount of experience with Burning Wheel. Have you found a point where system gets out of your way, and you can uphold a fiction-first approach? Or would you say that fiction-first isn't on the table for TB2e? Thus profoundly and permanently separating it from a PbtA game such as DW.

 

[aramis erak]

Thor and Luke both have encouraged players to think about mechanics while framing narrations. Plus, certain things that would result in changes in the character sheet of a PC are expected to be mechanicalized. Work the mechanics with the story and vice versa.

 

[clearstream]

Thor and Luke both have encouraged players to think about mechanics while framing narrations. Plus, certain things that would result in changes in the character sheet of a PC are expected to be mechanicalized. Work the mechanics with the story and vice versa.

For sure. It probably just needs to be considered under a more complex diagram, such as that for Ars Magica.

F (Hobbitishness) > S (motivating availability trait mechanics) > F (decision to go against the trait) > S (suffer the penalty, gain the check)

Perhaps @pemerton is looking at the middle part so S > F.

Where I look at the whole with weight on where it lands so F > S.

Given it's a continuous timeline, we must be mindful about why we choose to cut where we do. If we go against the trait, perforce we suffer the penalty and gain the check, therefore for me it is not valid to cut before that rightmost S. I can accept both F > S and S > S depending on the particulars of play. (We are not forced spend the check, so the pattern terminates after that rightmost, rightwards arrow to S.)

 

[niklinna]

On the subject of all-purpose resources, how has your group been using Nature to date (if at all)?

I mis-used it as if it were a trait to add dice to a Lore Master roll, thinking I could say I was boasting about how great at divination my character was. Nature descriptors aren't like that, though: Boasting really is just about straight-up blowing your own trumpet. I don't think any of the other players used Nature, but I have been wrong about many things Torchbearer.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I've read through those cases many times. To me, Vincent sometimes muddies the lines. I think you will not agree, so perhaps it's best to say that I do not assess cases as always clearly or extricably going one way. I see on-surface similar cases assessed as F > S or as F < S, depending on the particulars of play. Perhaps an example is the one of high-ground. Vincent says it is F > S, but you here seem to say that you would analyse it as F < S if the player described a motivation that they sought high-ground to gain the mechanical outcome.

One way to settle things can be to scrutinise where we land. That produces results consistent with Vincent's assessment in many cases, such as that for high ground. The end result in the case at hand is marking the box on the character sheet to store up a check for the next camp phase. Or maybe scrutiny doesn't belong on where we land... I'd be curious about the reasoning for that, if so?

Coming back to the case at hand, the written description feels a little unnatural to me. If as I think the razor is how it is played at the table, then it could be



I feel like that is fiction-first. Player said what they were doing without invoking mechanics. GM translated that into system. F > S. There's a possible assumption - and not a bad one - that players are adopting a more systematic attitude to TB. Thus driving their play from system. I'm not sure it has to be played that way. If player motives matter to the arrows analysis, then why does the case at hand not produce S > S? The underlying Hobbitishness only joins the timline if it is narrated now. And if it is narrated now, then F > S. Are you saying that the written fiction rides and thus is sufficient? That seems like a view with many difficulties to me.

For me, this all suggests a very great divide between PbtA and TB. The former gets system largely out of my way. It's not so much that it lacks system - in fact, I see the system as very concrete and refined - even extensive - but more that it focuses system on specific jobs and makes it orthodox and streamlined so that it's not in my face. TB puts an elaborate system, replete with hefty special cases (aka idiosyncracies) in my face, and demands I engage with it. Productive of @AbdulAlhazred's systematically constructed play.

Conversely, I'm seeing some parts of TB - once fully learned - get out of our way. Invoking traits and instincts is becoming more natural. But on the other hand, I don't recall anything in the TB2e text urging a fiction-first approach. I bear in mind the text that "It’s about making difficult choices, and it involves exploring the world and your character through the game rules and systems." Still, my vignette above seems possible after the recommended 10 or 20 sessions.

I gather you have a very large amount of experience with Burning Wheel. Have you found a point where system gets out of your way, and you can uphold a fiction-first approach? Or would you say that fiction-first isn't on the table for TB2e? Thus profoundly and permanently separating it from a PbtA game such as DW.

Right, what I was saying to @pemerton was that I was seeing it as "Hmmm, I want to get a check for Quick Witted." I take a 1d penalty and make my roll, including the penalty and pass, so I note the earned check, and explain it as "I was going fast and not being careful." I agree that fiction plays a part here from the start in that my action requires proper fictional position, but I think that's sort of a ground rule for most everything in an RPG... As you point out, it feels rather different from a PbtA move, like in DW, where you are told you MUST start with the fiction, though certainly it gets close to splitting hairs when you, for example, decide you're going to invoke DR and start 'looking at stuff' with the clear intention that the GM will recognize your fiction as being an invocation of that move.

I think it is safe to say that all the talk of boxes and arrows and whatnot has THEORETICAL MERIT, but we should not over play things there. Real play is not so clear cut that we can always unambiguously analyze every element of every instance of play.

 

[pemerton]

I posted another actual player report.

Here are my concluding thoughts from that post:

I enjoyed this session. We got to see a lot of the game's subsystems in action: a reasonably extended conflict; camping; journeying; and a town phase. I was happy with how I handled the failure and consequence narration, including the weaving in of the friends and enemies (in both cases the players made this easy).

For me, it reinforced my view expressed in the other thread that this is not really a "story now" engine: it's all about super-skilled play plus testing your luck with the dice. But it also confirmed my view in that thread that the colour in the game is really strong: in this session we had the camp in the ruined tower, the journey with an inadequate guide, the stay in the houses of healing but the dwarf remaining angry, the dreams of the Dreamwalker, and the feud with Ebenezer. How many FRPGs can have a whole story cycle between vindictive Dwarf and arrogant scholar play out over the course of a reasonably brief period of downtime resolution? And not as any sort of accident - it shows the design of the system at work.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think, after starting another adventure in TB2 I definitely find that the way I approach it at least is from a mechanics standpoint. I find I'm deciding how to deploy my character's mechanical attributes in a way that produces effective results, and then working out how that can be extracted from the current fictional position and my conception of the character's personality (which is already rather heavily embodied in attributes like goal and instinct as well).

That makes it pretty distinct from, say, Dungeon World, where IME the use of mechanics was much more an outgrowth of the GM and players generating the story. Like, you would decide what to do in DW, and then someone (the GM in theory at least) "Oh, that's an XYZ move." Yeah, you can definitely act in ways that hopefully produce optimal moves and thus better outcomes for you as a player, but in general it seems like that is a lot less explicit than in TB2 where you better always move in a way that is both strategically and tactically well-considered. TB2 is aiming to grind you down, and you're aiming to dodge the grind and make enough payday to have resources to survive the NEXT grind. In DW you are just ALWAYS IN TROUBLE, there's not really a sense of being ground down, certainly not in such an explicit way. DW characters will always have a way out, TB2 characters could well reach a point where death is the only possibility, no matter what you do.