D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[Maxperson]

But that was the whole point of the example: if there is conflict, then a coin is tossed, or die rolled, or whatever, to see who gets their way.

Then there is no game. It's just free form roleplay. And it still doesn't cover me just negating the roll 2 seconds later by negating it and then rolling again. And if I lose, doing it again, and again until I win. And the player could do the same.

It's a nonfunctional "game."

 

[Micah Sweet]

It's difficult to say for sure based on what you shared, but going on just that information... there's nothing that speaks to what the players want out of play. Why were they pursuing rumors of Dark Elves? What might connect them to the Raven Marks? Are the players interested in the idea of rebellion or some kind of struggle with the downtrodden? Or in exposing thieves who might be masquerading as rebels? Is anyone in the party affiliated with a nature deity or have some kind of goal to protect nature? Anything that would connect them to the conflict between the loggers and druids? And so on. What about any of these things speaks to the players and their characters?

Again, there's nothing wrong with any of it. But it seems like a menu of GM options and the players get to choose from it. That doesn't really seem all that player driven to me.

If the players can choose to interact with the world however they want through their PCs, and they choose to bite at one of the adventure hooks provided by the GM, that is IMO player-driven, because it was the choice of the player to follow that hook. If going off-road is always an option, how can it not be player-driven play?

 

[The Firebird]

I saw no rantiness in that quote. You also should heed your own words, your recent posts about Baker do not sound like you are open to other opinions, see

I mean, stuff like:

"We're held back by our loyalty to the broken old historical approach, it blinds us to what's really going on. We collectively need to do character sheets and what they're for a whole lot better, if we want to accomplish anything."

"It's a misleading historical mistake to call the process and the paper "character-" anything. If you want to get anywhere, if you want to understand, if you want to create anything at all, you have to let that old error go."

He's not writing as someone making an argument, but as someone lecturing his followers on the errors The Other People are making. It doesn't come off well. Imo.

 

[Maxperson]

"I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favourable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption it is the other way against holders of power, increasing as the power increases. Historic responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility. Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. [...] There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it." Lord Acton, to Bishop Holden

And now you conflate authority over a game with authority over people.

 

[Micah Sweet]

To me, it seems a matter of "the DM is presenting lore, and wanting the player to choose to be interested in a portion of the lore."

That can work with certain motivated players, but I find it easier to get player buy-in when they invest in the setting.

What do you mean, specifically, by players "invest in the setting"?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Wait, what? The game doesn't allow the players to roleplay out a situation on their own? They have to roll the dice and adjust their behaviors to what the dice say? Am I understanding that correctly? I think I am, because I googled it and found more questions about it on the BW forum that seem to say yes, BW constrains your character's behavior, but I want to make sure.

I can't address anything else in your comment until I get clarification on this. Because if this is the case, (a) I cannot imagine why you think that "Burning Wheel supports player-driven RPGing" when no, it doesn't--even if it only takes over during duels of wits or at times like that, the game is very much not letting the player drive even their own characters; and (b) this game just moved from "not something I'd want to run but I'd play it" to "game I will not touch with an 11-foot pole."

That does sound really not fun at all!

 

[Micah Sweet]

Sure, I somewhat agree with that, although the knight being in love with the king could easily be the result of a rule.

But I still disagree that a game entirely bound by resolution processes is more like chess. As long as the gameplay requires a shared narrative space to function, it's at least RPG-adjacent.

RPG-adjacent is the term I would use personally, yes, for such a game. But that's just my subjective assessment and has no value outside of that.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I think @TwoSix was alluding to something like this:

I say, "my character, this guy in Thatcher's london, who has everything to lose, he goes to his lover's flat and convinces him to keep their affair private." You say, "y'know, I don't think that his lover is inclined to keep their affair private, do you?" And I say, "no, I suppose not, but my character is desperate to convince him anyway. In fact, he brings an antique revolver with him in his jacket pocket, in case he can't."​

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(Look, just look: the character has no "character sheet," but he's a whole character, fully realized. I can play him effortlessly.)​

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How do we decide what comes true?​

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We can simply agree. That works great, as long as we really do just simply agree.​

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We could flip a coin for it. Let's do that: heads my character convinces yours to keep their secret, tails he murders him instead.​

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Or y'know, that's a lot to deal with. Let's have a rule: whenever a character's life is at stake, that character's player gets to call for one re-flip of the coin.​

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On the other hand, isn't my character's life at stake too? His wife, his kids, his position, his money, his everything? Which should have more weight between us, your character's life or my character's "life"? Shall we go best two of three, or is that setting life and "life" too equal?​

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How about this: we'll roll a die. If it comes up 1 or 2, your character will refuse and mine will kill him; if it comes up 3-6, your character will agree to keep the secret and (unknowingly) thereby save his life. It's unequal because my character killing yours is less to your liking than your character ruining mine's life is to mine. It's unequal to be fair to us, the players.​

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Notice that we haven't considered which is more likely at all. We probably agree that it's more likely, in fact, that your character will refuse, so my character will shoot him. But that doesn't matter - either could happen, so we roll according to what's at stake.​

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Also, notice that we aren't rolling to see whether your character values his life in the face of my character's gun in any way. We're rolling to see if your character agrees to keep the secret without ever knowing about the gun, or if he refuses without knowing about the gun and my character shoots and kills him.​

In other words, (i) the participants clarify what is at stake in the situation, and then (ii) identify if they disagree on how it should unfold ("what comes true"), and if they do (iii) toss the coin, roll the die or whatever.

I would say that this kind of exercise in collective storytelling is fine, but it has little resemblance to D&D. It is in fact closer to the old pencil and paper game Consequences.

 

[thefutilist]

Then you use a definition of railroading I neither understand nor accept.

I had thought we were quite clear at this point that "railroading" means any action, whatever that action might be, which forces a particular outcome to occur within the fictional space.

By your lights, a DM who wrote a 500-page setting bible containing copious detailed notes about every possible visit-able location could not be railroading, no matter how many things they nix in advance. Nor would it be railroading to be running Dragonlance and telling players which character they will play and what scenes they'll play through--after all, it would be the players ignoring established fiction to deviate from what the Dragonlance novels tell us!

Players can railroad as well. Railroading is primarily a state of mind, an approach to the activity that prioritises plot. Failure to understand that leads to the following conflation:


The guards can't be bribed because I don't want them to get past the guards (railroading, plot centric)

The guards can't be bribed because they're loyal to the King.


They both have the same plot effects (you don't get past the guards) but only one of them is railroading.

 

[Old Fezziwig]

That was my impression as well, and to me it would make the game feel like one long skill challenge. What you're asking seems logical, if there isn't room in the rules for a GM to just make a call then everything falls back on the dice.

There is room for GM to make calls. At every moment of play, the GM is supposed to be attentive to whether something's at stake or not. If there's not, the answer is yes if it's a question from player to GM and RP continues, etc. It's not until that point that dice are rolled.

Upthread, in #4005, I posted a link to some APs. The links about Master Si Juk are good about showing when and how dice are rolled and what happens before then. My memory is that BW's antecedents are pretty typical RPGs -- Shadowrun, The Riddle of Steel, Pendragon -- and I found that how things worked in play is more typical than I expected.