no, my preferences would have nothing to do with this, my capacity to fast-talk and infiltrate in the game would be the same equal bonuses, but they are still equally available options are they not? but if i know the GM who narrates the results of my failures is likely to set easier checks and dole out less severe consequences if i try certain methods how is that not playing the GM?
Oh, I know you are speaking of a hypothetical--I was meaning "generic you." Why would a player do this thing? (Edit: I think I misread you at first; I'll be responding more fully with an edit.)
So, let me see if I understand the situation correctly. To avoid confusion, I will speak of a hypothetical player, Bob, and his GM, Alice.
Bob is playing in a game where the narrative premise includes infiltration of some kind. There are many ways to approach any given infiltration. Bob chooses to play a fast-talking deceptive character, not because that story is remotely interesting to him (he would prefer other stories instead), but rather because he knows Alice enjoys fast-talking deceivers, and thus the fast-talking deception part of the game will be easier to complete. When things come up, Bob falsely states that his interests are to talk fast and deceive, even though he would actually prefer some other kind of story instead, so that he can secure those moments. Alice, believing that he is being honest about his preferences, frames scenes involving infiltration as one part of play. (There will always be other parts, so this is never more than one portion of it.)
Is this supposed to be a
good thing for Bob? Getting somewhat easier rolls on one specific part of one specific aspect of play, while overall getting an experience Bob isn't
actually interested in having and
doesn't enjoy as much as some other thing?
For clarification here, I don't know how Burning Wheel works, but at least for Dungeon World, there's...not really any ability on my part to control difficulty per se, beyond the "talk me through your process" part. All rolls are 2d6+MOD; 6- is a miss (something bad happens), 7-9 is a partial success (you get what you want and something bad, or part of what you want but not all, or one thing you wanted but not another thing you also wanted), 10+ is full success. Once dice are hitting the (digital) table, the difficulty is exactly what it is. If you bring a +3 CHA to fast-talking, or a +3 INT to hacking, or a +3 DEX to lockpicking...you'll have exactly the same probabilities either way. And, at least from my experience as a DW GM, getting
advantageous results, as much as one can do so without directly affecting the difficulty scale, usually involves sharing your enthusiasm and earnestness about something. It would be pretty hard to communicate that enthusiasm consistently if you don't actually have any enthusiasm.
The severity of consequences will generally be conditioned by the roll result and the context of the scene; the former are (as stated) on a fairly fixed scale, and the latter is generally what makes sense for the conflict in question, so it's
not consistently the case that every "fast-talking deception" would have lesser consequences than "crawl through the vents" or whatever. And, as a general rule, while I do have my own preferences, a player being sincerely enthusiastic about something is a HUGE reason for me to listen to what they have to say and work with them to make it happen. (As usual, that "sincerely" is doing work here: I don't tolerate exploitation, coercion, or abuse, which are all incompatible with sincerity in this sense.)
E.g., I love it when someone makes a personal sacrifice to achieve something they care even more about, but that requires that you actually
care about the thing you're sacrificing and that giving it up is a real cost, not a minor one. I'm not really sure how that could be used to "get one over" on me, to "game" me, because
the whole point is that your heart is really in it, at which point, you're apparently "cheating" by playing by the rules and genuinely wanting the same things I want. Which seems like not much of a trick anymore at all, but just....participating in good faith.
