D&D General Fighting Law and Order

[Faolyn]

my guess on their meaning given the context of the current conversation, is that until a player/GM specifically manifests something into the world to exist then nothing is existing, everything in the world that hasn't specifically been decided is a grey featureless blob of in potentia,

this typically grates against the type of person who values a world that exists independently of the players, one where even if the players weren't there to observe it still feels like it would still be doing it's own thing, a world where everything is where it is for a narrative reason and not just because the dice came up sixes so it now exists there because the player wanted/needed it to.

This is definitely my problem with what's being described.

Now, I like the PCs to be important in the game. The game is, in fact, about their characters! They're the main characters of their show, even if there are other people who are more important or more powerful in the world, even if the characters end up being weak and ineffectual. But there is a world, and things do happen independently of them, and I find it very weird for this world to not exist until the PCs ask about it. To me, that's like a video game where the NPCs and locations don't even exist until the PCs load into the area.

 

[Micah Sweet]

But this is a trivial property of all RPG worlds except perhaps Toon. Which is why, as I said, @Micah Sweet's claim about BW becomes trivially false on this reading.

Trivially false to you, perhaps.

 

[Faolyn]

It's jargon because you're using the idea of "the world exists outside of the PCs" when in fact the world doesn't exist. So what you mean is something other than what you said.

Sure it does, unless your world is completely static and unchanging when the PCs are there.

Heck, even 1e AD&D had "percentage in lair" rolls, to indicate that sometimes, the monsters are doing something other than lying in wait for the PCs to approach and get eaten.

 

[pemerton]

So "They're about to enter a wizard's tower. There are spellbooks there" is... too much?

Can you please explain what you mean by this. By that I mean- who are you envisaging "deciding" that there are spellbooks in the tower? How does that manifest in play? What play procedure are you envisaging?

I kind of have to wonder why Burning Wheel isn't a GMless game. Why not have everyone make a character and then let the other players adjudicate any questions that come up, such as "did Thurgon find any spellbooks when he searched?" That would make a whole lot more sense for the style of game you're talking about.

To me, it seems that you do not understand the Burning Wheel process of play - as per the earlier part of this post. So I'm not sure on what basis your make confident assertions about what would or wouldn't make sense for the game.

In addition, this from Vincent Baker seems relevant:

In our co-GMed Ars Magica game, each of us is responsible for orchestrating conflict for the others, which works but isn't radical wrt GM doage-away-with. It amounts to when Emily's character's conflicts climax explosively and set off Meg's character's conflicts, which also climax explosively, in a great kickin' season finale last autumn, I'm the GM. GM-swapping, in other words, isn't the same as GM-sharing.​

Whether the GM - the framer of adversity and narrator of consequences - is the same person for all players, or a different person depending who is playing the protagonist at the time, is a comparatively minor point when we're talking about processes of play.

I mean, plenty of D&D groups have the PCs rotate their PCs from dungeon to dungeon, with each dungeon designed and adjudicated by a different person.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I don't think this is really different for either type of game. The characters certainly know what they know of the world. It "exists" to them in both games. We as players may know some or none of what the characters know until it becomes relevant to play.

The difference is in what the GM knows prior to play.



I was trying to help you understand why someone could see what you said as jargon. It's a quicker way of conveying the idea you were trying to convey.

I don't agree with the assessment, no, mostly for the reason I mention above to Xamnam.

In my view, if the world is created by people who are also the subjects of a story about them, then the world is meaningless outside of those subjects. I do not want to participate in such an activity, in any capacity, which is why @pemerton and I can't really see eye to eye on this. We want mutually exclusive things out of gaming.

 

[Faolyn]

You're describing a process of play here - the GM making decisions about what is or isn't possible within the scope of various action declarations (like "We search for spellbooks") prior to any of those actions being declared - which is simply not part of Burning Wheel.

See, you keep painting BW as a game where logic be damned...

OK, let's go with the wizard's tower for a moment. The PCs enter the tower. Do you, as the GM, describe this tower to them in any way? If so, how? Do you describe the ornamentation, the condition of the first room they see, the style of the furniture? Or do you leave it up to PCs to describe? Does BW care about setting the mood for the area through descriptions? Is it part of Burning Wheel to give the impression of ruined grandeur or lonely desolation or frozen magical potential, or would that go against the game's processes? I ask because all of those would influence how I, the player, would think to search it. For that matter, how did this tower even get introduced in the first place? Did you, the GM, say that there was a tower, or do you wait for the PCs to say "we want to explore a wizard's tower"?

 

[pemerton]

Sheer existence, maybe, but scope thereof is a fair question, and I think the heart of their statement.

I don't know what you mean by "scope".

Do you mean the number of sentences about the setting that have been uttered and assented to during the course of play? Do you mean something about what those sentences describe (eg whether they are propositions about furniture, buidings, cities, universes, etc)?

I don't see that this is any different, in principle, in BW or DW compared to a "trad" approach to D&D.

I get the impression from your posts, and @CreamCloud0 and @Micah Sweet's, that you equate The GM is imagining it with It is an existing part of the world/setting. If that's what you mean, it would be helpful to me at least for you to be clear about it. Or if you mean something else, you will have to explain it in some less metaphorical way if you would like me to understand it.

 

[pemerton]

In my view, if the world is created by people who are also the subjects of a story about them, then the world is meaningless outside of those subjects. I do not want to participate in such an activity, in any capacity, which is why @pemerton and I can't really see eye to eye on this. We want mutually exclusive things out of gaming.

Huh? Whose RPGing involves a word created by people who are also the subjects of a story about them? The only ones I can think of are Toon (which I mentioned already, not far upthread) and also Over the Edge (which I didn't think of earlier).

 

[hawkeyefan]

Sure it does, unless your world is completely static and unchanging when the PCs are there.

Heck, even 1e AD&D had "percentage in lair" rolls, to indicate that sometimes, the monsters are doing something other than lying in wait for the PCs to approach and get eaten.

This is a good example. What determines if the monsters are in their lair? Are they in some quantum state of home or away until the dice are rolled? Does this mean that the world is not existing separate of the characters until the dice are rolled? Or that the monsters don't exist?

Could we not treat the existence of the lair itself the same? Many games do this kind of procedural generation... hexcrawls come to mind. The PCs enter the area, and we roll to see what they find there. Treasure is often generated in this way. Many things in trad games are generated this way.

So what's the actual difference? Both worlds are constructs of the imagination. It seems to me it's just the method of how and when things are determined.

 

[pemerton]

See, you keep painting BW as a game where logic be damned...

WTF? Please read my actual play posts, to which I've provided links, and then get back to me.

OK, let's go with the wizard's tower for a moment. The PCs enter the tower. Do you, as the GM, describe this tower to them in any way? If so, how? Do you describe the ornamentation, the condition of the first room they see, the style of the furniture? Or do you leave it up to PCs to describe?

By "PCs" do you mean players? Otherwise what you ask makes no sense to me.

Assuming that that is what you mean, as I've already stated - multiple times, I believe - the GM does the framing in ENworld. But suppose that it had already been established, say via a Wises check, that Evard's entrance hall is painted all in crimson red, then of course the GM would include that in their description.

Does BW care about setting the mood for the area through descriptions? Is it part of Burning Wheel to give the impression of ruined grandeur or lonely desolation or frozen magical potential, or would that go against the game's processes? I ask because all of those would influence how I, the player, would think to search it.

Burning Wheel's approach to resolution, and its corresponding approach to PC build, lends itself to a relatively "gritty" attention to detail. (Compared to, say, Marvel Heroic RP, which relies on broad-brush and trope-y Scene Distinctions.)

I am missing what connection any of this has to deciding in advance of play where spellbooks might be found.

For that matter, how did this tower even get introduced in the first place? Did you, the GM, say that there was a tower, or do you wait for the PCs to say "we want to explore a wizard's tower"?

As I posted upthread, in a reply to you:

In fact, the whole reason Evard's tower became a focus of play is this:

The rulebook, in its discussion of "the sacred and most holy role of the players", says this (Revised p 269; the identical text is in Gold too):

Use the mechanics! Players are expected to call for a Duel of Wits or a Circles test . . . Don't wait for the GM to invoke a rule - invoke the damn thing yourself and get the story moving! . . . If the story doesn't interest you, it's your job to create interesting situations and involve yourself.​

So at one stage, wanting to get things moving, Aramina's player declared (speaking as Aramina) "Isn't Evard's tower around here?" and then called for a test on Great Master-wise to confirm whether or not Aramina's recollection of the location of the tower of this particular great master was correct. The test succeeded, and so Aramina did indeed recall correctly! And in due course, once Thurgon was prepared to go there - he was worried, initially, that it might be a haven for Orcs (like Dol Guldur or Carn Dum in Middle Earth) - the two characters made the relatively short journey to it, where they found it abandoned. That was the GM's narration, as part of framing.

I regard this as relatively illustrative of how BW handles the introduction of setting elements: you can see the interplay of both player contributions (initial suggestions, which all are obliged to take up if the relevant check succeeds) and GM contributions (via framing, or failure narration - in AW/PbtA parlance these would be soft and hard moves).