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

[pemerton]

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.

In its basic structure and methods - asymmetric participants with one managing scene-framing and the other saying what a particular character in the scene does; and resolving contested actions by way of dice rolls - Burning Wheel is completely typical.

In having mechanics like Steel or Duel of Wits its also - as you say - drawing on the traditions of games like Classic Traveller (1977), Pendragon (1985), Prince Valiant (1989), etc.

It differs from some earlier RPGs in being explicit in its rules text that (i) players must determine priorities as part of their PC building, and (ii) the GM's job is to frame scenes that speak to those priorities. The resolution procedures - say 'yes' or roll the dice, intent + task, and let it ride are the main ones - reinforce and build on (i) and (ii).

It may not be to everyone's taste - few games are - but it's hardly mysterious, or shocking!

 

[pemerton]

But it doesn't matter what the character says, does it?

Or does it?

I mean, this stuff isn't mysterious; and upthread you claimed to be familiar with RPGs other than D&D and its near neighbours. I've posted and linked to numerous actual play examples. Here's one - D&D General - [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting. - and though it's from Torchbearer 2e, in broad outline BW is fairly similar.

Here's another - D&D General - [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting. - which has a couple of examples of the PCs bargaining with NPCs.

And another - D&D General - [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting. - where the PCs deal with pirates, and find themselves having to trade away their silver bucket for passage.

 

[Bedrockgames]

It's placing the GM's conception of the setting above the players' ability to engage with the setting in play.

Look, if you dislike it. That is you. But I think this sort of ability by the GM to do strong characterization of NPCs is vital for the players engaging with the setting. That is what makes it interesting when they march up to a gambling hall with aims of brow beating the proprietor: maybe they know about the guy and have heard he is a tough cookie, maybe they haven't heard anything and it is a surprise, maybe they gathered information and learned he is stubborn but also found out what kinds of things impress him. Real people are going to sometimes have hard lines, and I think these kinds of moments, where PCs are negotiating or coming into conflict with other characters are greatly enhanced if there are sometimes hard lines in place that the players have to work with or around. Part of having agency is dealing with the world in front of you.

Like, why is it so important that the guards are unfailingly loyal? Why must this be secret from the players when it could just as easily be shared? What purpose does that serve the game? Not the setting... the game.

It doesn't have to be secret. It simply depends on the situation. A lot of guards who have traits like this, those will be discoverable facts in the setting. But it might not be. It depends on the NPC. You are trying to give the GM the greatest freedom possible to invent characters. And there are other principles in play. The GM isn't expected to just take this and use it to be a jerk to the players. If that is a problem, it is a problem. But I find it very unpleasant to play systems where the problem of bad GMing is solved by limiting what good GMs can do. And I am not saying such systems are bad. I am sure people like them. But try to understand some of us see value in this approach

 

[Bedrockgames]

Not the setting... the game.

Interacting with NPCs is part of the game

 

[pemerton]

BW games take place in a setting where characters hesitate before murdering the innkeeper in cold blood,

I know, it's a pretty outrageous setting to posit that cold blooded murder might require someone to screw up their courage!

 

[The Firebird]

I think it's pretty generalisable to the original dungeon-crawling game. I imagine my character with nothing but their arms and armour, a pack of supplies, perhaps a trusty fedora. I say what they do, the GM tells me what happens, if there's disagreement we roll the dice. As Baker describes, the PC sheet gets built up as we need to record more details of the resource/capabilities I (as a player) am allowed to bring to bear (as the design grows more sophisticated).

The wargame-y stuff is different, I'll agree, but D&D took a while to integrate those two components (eg originally my STR stat didn't influence the wargame-y part of resolving combat).

Is the activity "make moves within the fiction; when necessary, use rules"? Or is it "play the game by the rules; when necessary, the referee adjudicates"?

I think it's the latter, especially if you consider "the players describe their action and the referee describes what results" as a rule.

It seems to me you are drawing a sharp distinction between game rules and rules for resolving the fiction, that I don't think exists. Certainly if a player yells out "and now the guard on duty trips over his feet and lets me sneak past!", they are breaking the rules.

 

[TwoSix]

Guess what? I had to go look up what he was known for. I don't know the names of comic artists or film directors most of the time either.

It is possible to like games, and know tons about them and how they are played, without giving a hoot about the names of designers.

If you are going to be "suspicious" of people for not knowing names of people they've never spoken to, that's sounds like a problem for you, not for anyone else.

Everyone here is of course welcome to weight my opinion by whatever metric they deem fit, based on their opinion of my posting history.

 

[Lanefan]

Come on, Lanefan. You've been involved in these conversations for literally years. Have you really not realized by now that folks play games for different reasons?

Is it really so hard to imagine other approaches to play? Especially when years' worth of explanations and examples have been provided to you?

Player agency within the setting is the main antidote to railroading, so it seems odd that some of the most strident anti-railroaders are also eager players of systems that intentionally deny some of that agency.

Looked at from a different angle it's almost like low-grade system-based railroading instead of DM railroading. I fail to see how one is any better than the other.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Hmm, maybe the term 'railroading' wasn't used for that, but the idea of a guard being unbribable at all has been criticized extensively.

Yes, in context of its potential impact on a larger view of play. Like when you consider all those kinds of things I mentioned in my post, and possibly many other factors.

If a GM decides that a guard or group of guards is unfailingly loyal, why is he doing so? What does it mean for the fiction of the game world? More importantly (if we're concerned about player agency) what does it mean for play?

Why is it important for the GM to maintain that these guards cannot be bribed? Why is it important that this information somehow be hidden in some way?

Like, as GMs, aren't we largely responsible for what the players know about the setting? Or even what they can learn about it? And I don't mean like world lore, though I would include that... but more importantly I mean about the physical and social circumstances of the characters at every moment of play.

So much of that comes from the GM. Punishing players, or letting play grind to a halt because they don't know something just seems counterproductive. The justification that's used is often "well the characters wouldn't know that", but I think that's BS. Let's play the game to see how things go, not rely on a bunch of things outside of the players control to determine if they succeed or fail.

Let the players play the game.

I can understand it, and I expect @Lanefan gets it too. That doesn't stop it from coming across to them as a violation of the ability to make your PCs decisions, or their feelings about that.

I don't know. Categorizing it as a violation when it's a known potential consequence that the player is willing to risk and decides to proceed seems like you're not quite getting it, Micah.

So, player agency gets sacrificed on the altar of efficiency. Bleah.

Whenever I hear talk of "move play along" or the like, I imagine a DM impatiently looking at a clock and thinking "We're behind schedule - we have to get through six more pages of adventure tonight and all they want to do is argue!". To me, unless it's a con game or similar that has a hard-set time limit, there should never ever be a 'schedule' of havng to achieve x-amount of in-game progress in y-amount of real-world time.

The campaign lasts as long as it lasts, and if it goes ten sessions longer because of all the in-character roleplay they did, to me that's a very strong positive - it shows they enjoy roleplaying the characters they've got - rather than something to complain about.

Didn't you once talk about how you had an entire session where the party went out and painted the town red or some such?

Bleah.

 

[pemerton]

Regarding your last point, I'd point back to the compromise results in Si Juk Pt 4, bearing in mind the limits of APs -- the narration and descriptions do influence the fiction and results and should influence the outcome of the encounter in the fiction.

To elaborate on this: What is said by the PC is task. It has to be appropriate to intent. And intent is what then shapes outcomes.

In a Duel of Wits, or the similar extended contests in Torchbearer, the way that task, intent and outcome are mediated is more complex (as one would expect in an extended resolution system). There are multiple tasks, and intent can (in my experience) unfold or precisify during the course of resolution; and - as you say - this all shapes the compromises that are reached at the end.

People who are just making up outcomes without regard to the tasks and their intents during resolution are like the Apocalypse World GMs John Harper blogged about, whose hard move is to have ninjas drop from the ceiling: The Mighty Atom They need to work on their play!