Roll if the result is unclear
This is not the rule for when to roll the dice in Burning Wheel.
To requote (from p 72):
Unless there is something at stake in the story you have created, don’t bother with the dice. Keep moving, keep describing, keep roleplaying. But as soon as a character wants something that he doesn’t have, needs to know something he doesn’t know, covets something that someone else has, roll the dice. . . . When there is conflict, roll the dice.
The rule for rolling makes no reference to
uncertainty at all. It refers to
stakes and
conflict. And this follows from the other key rule (from pp 11):
The GM presents the players with problems based on the players’ priorities.
if you roll well enough the attempted action succeeds, otherwise it does not.
This isn't the rule either. To requote, from pp 30-31:
what happens after the dice have come to rest and the successes are counted? If the successes equal or exceed the obstacle, the character has succeeded in his goal - he achieved his intent and completed the task.
This is important enough to say again: Characters who are successful complete actions in the manner described by the player. A successful roll is sacrosanct in Burning Wheel and neither GM nor other players can change the fact that the act was successful. The GM may only embellish or reinforce a successful ability test. . . .
When the dice are rolled and don’t produce enough successes to meet the obstacle, the character fails. What does this mean? It means the stated intent does not come to pass.
The centrality of
intent is also very closely connected to
player priorities for their PCs, which inform what is at stake in the situations the GM frames.
Not exactly an unfamiliar concept.
Well, they seem unfamiliar enough that you mis-stated them in your post!
It is still the GM who controls whether the outcome is unclear
As I said, that is not a rule.
We know if the outcome is unclear
because the rules call for a roll. And the rules call for a roll
because something is at stake which generates
conflict based on
a players' priorities for their PC. This is the fundamental difference between Burning Wheel and GM-driven play.
how difficult the task is / how good the roll has to be, or is that a group vote? I doubt these can be prescribed for every situation
The GM sets obstacles, by reference to the rules. The rulebook lists hundreds of difficulties, and has strong guidelines for setting difficulties where a difficulty is not listed. As I also posted, the way that players control their dice pools and that PCs advance based on facing a range of difficulties reduces the pressure on the GM to get it exactly "right".
seems to be more prescriptive than D&D but that is usually the case in D&D too, even if not by design
To the contrary: advancement in D&D does not depend on facing a range of difficulties, and players have an incentive to always try and roll with as big a bonus as possible. This is a very big difference between D&D and Burning Wheel.
At a higher resolution level, how is it decided where the Spelljammer ship is, how to get to it, and how difficult it is to get (to) it? If any if this is still up to the DM, then the DM can still very much be permissive or not.
If a player has written the Belief for their PC,
I will find a spelljammer!, then - as per the rules that I've quoted - the GM's job is to frame scenes that speak to this Belief and put it under pressure.
Here's an example, pertaining not to a spelljammer but a different magic item:
pemerton posting as thurgon on rpg.net said:
One of the players had bought rulebooks and built a BW PC (a noble-born Rogue Wizard inspired by Alatar, one of Tolkien's blue wizards of the East).
<snip>
The rogue wizard, Jobe, had a relationship with his brother and rival. The ranger-assassin, Halika, had a relationship, also hostile with her mentor, and the player decided that was because it turned out she was being prepared by him to be sacrificed to a demon. It seemed to make sense that the two rival, evil mages should be one and the same, and each player wrote a belief around defeating him: in Jobe's case, preventing his transformation into a Balrog; in Halika's case, to gain revenge.
<snip>
I had pulled out my old Greyhawk material and told them they were starting in the town of Hardby, half-way between the forest (where the assassin had fled from) and the desert hills (where Jobe had been travelling), and so each came up with a belief around that: I'm not leaving Hardby without gaining some magical item to use against my brother and, for the assassin with starting Resources 0, I'm not leaving Hardby penniless. . . .
I started things in the Hardby market: Jobe was looking at the wares of a peddler of trinkets and souvenirs, to see if there was anything there that might be magical or useful for enchanting for the anticipated confrontation with his brother. Given that the brother is possessed by a demon, he was looking for something angelic. The peddler pointed out an angel feather that he had for sale, brought to him from the Bright Desert. Jobe (who has, as another instinct, to always use Second Sight), used Aura Reading to study the feather for magical traits. The roll was a failure, and so he noticed that it was Resistant to Fire (potentially useful in confronting a Balrog) but also cursed. (Ancient History was involved somehow here too, maybe as a FoRK into Aura Reading (? I can't really remember), establishing something about an ancient battle between angels and demons in the desert.)
My memory of the precise sequence of events is hazy, but in the context the peddler was able to insist on proceeding with the sale, demanding 3 drachmas (Ob 1 resource check). As Jobe started haggling a strange woman (Halika) approached him and offered to help him if he would buy her lunch. Between the two of them, the haggling roll was still a failure, and also the subsequent Resources check: so Jobe got his feather but spent his last 3 drachmas, and was taxed down to Resources 0. They did get some more information about the feather from the peddler, however - he bought it from a wild-eyed man with dishevelled beard and hair, who said that it had come from one of the tombs in the Bright Desert.
So that's one example: frame the PC directly into a situation presenting them with the opportunity to obtain what they want.
There are other possibilities, too: it would depend on the full complement of the PC's Beliefs, Relationships, what matters to the other PCs, etc.
In general, there would be much less "breadcrumb following" than is typical in D&D. The rules of Burning Wheel preclude no-stakes scenes with tests that serve no purpose other than leading to more no-stakes scenes. (Remembering again that what counts as
stakes is decided by the players, via the priorities that they establish for their PCs, and not by the GM.)
