D&D General Fighting Law and Order

[bloodtide]

That said, from reading further updates scattered through this thread by the OP, it seems that game is kind of on life support if still going at all; the original DM bailed, as it seems did all but two of the players.

Oh...yea

Update!

So guess the group of players got together on Sunday. They still want to play D&D and still want to stay together in their group. They were getting kind of bored of their characters and the adventure...but kept going on as their DM was all their "best friends".

The final agreement was I was an "ok" DM.

They are "thinking" of looking for a new DM, but that is a long shot. The DM shortage is real.

So that leaves them with the choice of simply not gaming, until they find a DM....and that could be never. Or, having me DM.

Guess they all plan to show up and talk to me about it on Saturday. Sigh...

 

[Old Fezziwig]

OK, so I'm assuming in BW, spellbooks aren't "needed" in the same way they're needed in most other games (I would gladly read the BW book and play the system, but it's not available except in expensive dead tree format, which is inconvenient for me and my players to use). If so... that would have been nice to know way back then, because I think the rest of us were assuming that this book was, like, useful treasure to be found that was needed for Aramina to be able to cast her spells and that not finding it was tantamount to hindering her progression as a caster.

Maybe. BW leaves the question of spellbooks to setting and/or types of magic used. In the last BW game I ran, it was a setting question: we used Sorcery from the main books, and magic was mathematical (think DC's New Gods and the Anti-Life Equation).

The other thing to note is that looting and treasure isn't handled the same as in other games, either. It's not a primary driver of play (unless, of course, it's related to your beliefs, instincts, and traits or the situation at hand).

You're probably clocking this by now, but BW is a game that's less forgiving of approaches that aren't in line with Luke Crane's intended approach. I agree with pemerton when he says that the procedures are relatively robust — they are! — but the game can be fragile. D&D can handle a variety of approaches, and BW really needs to have its core loop intact to work.

That's not how pemerton phrased it--when combined with other things they've said, they seem to have suggested that having the GM decide if there were spellbooks or not would be railroady, because it was fiction the players weren't involved with.

I agree with that, probably generally, but certainly for BW in particular. Why would the GM have decided that there were spellbooks there ahead of time? They weren't playing a game about Evard's spellbooks. Aramina's belief is nonspecific. Evard's spellbooks are as good as any other. I don't think this is radical, but, for me, a good deal of BW GMing is about being open to possibilities and knowing what NPCs and PCs want. The game sings when you have that down.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Gotcha.

They had huge valuations but the g.p. value didn't translate 1 = 1 to xp. I think* it was a 10 = 1 translation, and even then only if the item was sold.

* - I've never used xp-for-treasure so I'm going by memory here.

I don't remember a 10:1but there are various small details I may not remember since its been 30 years since we played 1e. I think you are correct though, you only got XP for items you didn't keep and use. Given the amount of random magic items and such there's a pretty good chance you will sell a few, and given their high prices they can easily be a large majority of treasure value. Also a smart player will often wonder if a somewhat useful magic item is really a better deal than hiring 100 men-at-arms to deal with most of the problems encountered... Actually I always found war dogs and a few trainers to be the best deal of all!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

To me, a random or randomly-made decision is still a decision.

The problem with that is, now you can describe accidentally falling down a hole in the floor as a 'decision'.

Thing is, in most of those real-life situations the information a) exists and b) can relatively easily be made available to the decision-maker.

Could be made available, yes, but when it is NOT available, then persons are generally not considered to have intention, and if you can not exercise intent (agency) you are not free to decide. Honestly, I fail to see what is so terrible about accepting the universally understood meaning of agency.

In a game setting where you get to the end of a hallway and find three identical doors, a) might not apply (as in, nobody knows what's beyond any of those doors) and b) quite often doesn't (as in, their investigations etc. turn up nothing useful); yet a decision must still be made between the options Door 1, Door 2, Door 3, turn around and go back, or do nothing and wait.

Or do you flip a coin? Here's the problem, in a general sense, with the idea that some random stochastic process can represent agency (free will essentially). Every molecule composing the Earth, the whole Universe, undergoes random Brownian motion. Each one will move from place to place over time. Are we to assume that these are 'decisions' and thus that every speck of the universe has agency? I'd call that a meaningless definition. I get that people will try to argue we are only talking about "agency within a game", but that just circles us back to the original question, WHY have this special definition that is not used anywhere else, and which serves no purpose I can fathom EXCEPT to make highly restrictive play situations sound better?

 

[Umbran]

Are you able to say what you think is better about RPGing in which the players establish dramatic needs for their PCs by drawing on the setting material authored by the GM, rather than by just brining them to the table themselves.

So, I'm not them, but I have a thought. And it isn't a thought about one always being better than the other. But one word does come to mind:

Inspiration.

People around here sometimes talk as if every player is constantly a veritable font of cool ideas. But that's not always the case. Everyone can use a boost now and again, a partner to work with, something to riff off of. And GM-authored material can fill that space nicely for a lot of folks.

 

[Faolyn]

I don't know what you mean by "purpose". Where are you envisaging this purpose coming from?

Typically, GMs put down objects, potentially important ones, in a location for PCs to interact with in some manner, such as to take, destroy, or use. Spellbooks are usually considered important objects--although apparently not in BW.

So I guess the next question is, can a GM in Burning Wheel decide to place a spellbook (or any other object) that is designed to be interacted with by the PCs without the PCs have to declare that they want to use such an object? I'm guessing no, because you described my MotW idea as not being what you would like to play--which strongly suggests that this game is incompatible with mysteries, horror, twists, unknown assailants, or unforeseen circumstances, which is the type of game I like playing and running.

I'm pretty sure that I already explained, upthread, the basics of how this particular episode played out:

This is an example, not really an explanation as to why things happen.

When Aedhros tried to stab an inkeeper, and hesitated at the actual prospect of committing cold-blooded murder (at the table, I failed a Steel check that my GM called for); and then Alicia took advantage of that hesitation to use Persuasion (a spell very similar to D&D's Suggestion spell) to tell Aedhros not to kill the inkeeper; there was no calculation by me (playing Aedhros) of who was the best at murdering innkeeper's; nor did Alicia make a calculation as to who was best at sparing them. This was about a clash of values between two people both at the bottom of the social pile, but only one of them (the Dark Elf) willing to murder as a result.

Wait, hang on--your ability to choose to act was hampered by a die roll?! That sounds... highly suspect and definitely not something I would want in a game. The doc you linked doesn't include the full description of the stat, so am I misinterpreting what you're saying here?

 

[pemerton]

you are conflating everything that isn't your preferred style with railroading, which is almost universally considered to be bad GMing. In other words, you are, unintentionally or not, calling everyone else a bad GM.

I am talking about my experience of play.

Suppose that person S is a GM. Some players play a game with S GMing them, and enjoy it. Others play the same game with S, and don't enjoy it. S asks "Why didn't you enjoy the game?" Those other players reply, "It was too much of a <insert negative description here>." The least useful and meaningful thing that S could do would be to quibble with those other players over the description they've used, on grounds that S doesn't agree with them that the game fits that description. Obviously S doesn't think that S is a bad GM running a bad game! But, given that - as many in this thread have pointed out - tastes and preferences are diverse, S's confidence that S is a good GM using good techniques to run a good game is no guarantee that people will agree. And pointing to favoured online definitions of various adjectives used to describe RPGs won't change that.

So, in the spirit of the parable about S, I am not asking anyone to describe themselves as a bad GM. But I am making it pretty clear that there are some approaches to RPGing which, if they are used, will make me leave the game because for me it has various negative qualities that I have ready-to-hand adjectives to describe. And this is not conjecture - I've done it, on three occasions.

You talked about going to different countries, some of which were very different. Were you a space alien there? Did you require "levers" in order to act?

No, you weren't. You may not have known the customs and traditions, but you learned them.

But not by being told by an omniscient narrator, except on those occasions when I actually looked in my Lonely Planet.

And in a RPG, you learn things, in large part, by asking the GM for the information. This doesn't mean that they are dependent on the GM to give them "levers." All it means is that the player wasn't the one to make the setting.

This means that all the imagination is coming from the GM. Given that RPGs - at least as I enjoy them - are a form of shared imagination, this is a fail state.

So, serious question: how much can a GM make up before it becomes too railroady for you?

What unit of measurement are you asking me to use? I mean, I've told you how I enjoy play. I've posted multiple examples. I've linked to actual play threads. Are you really saying that you don't get what sort of play I enjoy, or understand how the different participants - players, GM - take part in it?

And a follow-up question: how does your preferred gaming style deal with mysteries, horror, and other elements that normally require the players to not know what's going on?

In a thread that you participated in a year or two ago I made a long series of posts, some in reply to yours, explaining how a mystery might be set up and adjudicated in AW. The first of those posts is here: https://www.enworld.org/threads/thoughts-on-apocalypse-world.682898/page-12 Numerous further posts follow that one. They provide a very detailed answer to your question, with worked examples.

Burning Wheel is not identical in procedure, but the basic ideas are the same.

 

[Faolyn]

I agree with that, probably generally, but certainly for BW in particular. Why would the GM have decided that there were spellbooks there ahead of time? They weren't playing a game about Evard's spellbooks. Aramina's belief is nonspecific. Evard's spellbooks are as good as any other. I don't think this is radical, but, for me, a good deal of BW GMing is about being open to possibilities and knowing what NPCs and PCs want. The game sings when you have that down.

In a case like this... because it's a wizard's tower. Maybe it's abandoned because the wizard was killed or imprisoned elsewhere and his tower hadn't been looted yet, rather than the wizard moved on and took all his stuff with them; obviously I don't know the specifics. Having a spellbook makes as much sense in such a location as having a chair or a cauldron or a lab where magical creatures are dissected. If the party went to a blacksmith's shop, it would make sense for there to be an anvil and iron ingots lying around, right? A spellbook wouldn't necessarily be out in the open like an anvil would be, but it makes sense that the GM would have decided that they existed ahead of time (or that spellbooks had been there at one point, but have since been removed).

BW may not be a game about Evard's spellbooks, but presumably it is a game where NPCs have lives outside of the PCs and therefore, their homes and places of work have things in them. At least, I should hope so!

 

[pemerton]

I'm talking about drawing on setting material authored by the GM and from setting material that I bring to the table and from setting material brought to the table by other participants in the game.

As a player in any RPG, I'm best at creating engaging, real-seeming characters when I have a some solid, crisply defined, established ground to build on with plenty of gaps for me to fill in. I don't want everything defined by others, but I want some meat to sink my teeth into. That helps me narrow my conception of a character, with a place in the world and a voice that I can sometimes channel. I love working with other players to establish connections among characters, and, in my view, the GM is a player at the table who can contribute to that shared fiction. I can make interesting and unexpected connections.

<snip>

This sort of prep work -- that is, having setting material that I as DM have authored -- gives me grounding, anchor-points that might not be used ... but when they are used, it works for everyone (that is, everyone at my table, not everyone everyone). My players need those anchors, too. At least most of them do. I need those anchors to build on imaginatively during play.

The following remarks are said with genuine sincerity:

(1) I believe I understand exactly what you are saying. I had the experience you describe working with the default lore in my 4e D&D game.

(2) I believe that what you are describing is even better if everyone takes ownerhip of the setting material, chews around on it, builds on it, and brings it into play. My 4e game was better because the players of the Raven Queen devotees brought their ideas into play (about what that means, about why death and fate matter, etc); because the player of the Eternal Defender was the one who articulated why the Dawn War and the Dusk War, of law vs chaos, really mattered, etc.

And in a BW game, set in Greyhawk, when the PCs ended up in the Bright Desert after a shipwreck and then a falling out with their rescuers, one of the players said "Everyone knows that Suel nomads are as thick as thieves in the Bright Desert - I'm making a Circles check!" Which of course he fails, and so the nomads whom he found included his old nemesis Wassal.

I don't do much setting prep myself these days. But I did do a bit for Classic Traveller - rolling up worlds, some as needed and some in advance. And I just share it with the players, and let them run with it. If our creative visions don't completely align straight away, we talk it through.

I'm saying this not out of a spirit of "conversion", but because - given what you have said, and given that I believe I have understood it - I think there may be a thing you could try that would given you even more of what you enjoy.

 

[Irlo]

I'm saying this not out of a spirit of "conversion", but because - given what you have said, and given that I believe I have understood it - I think there may be a thing you could try that would given you even more of what you enjoy.

Accepted in the spirit intended. Im hoping to play Burning Wheel. I just don’t know who might join me in that!