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

[Maxperson]

Okay but now we're getting two conflicting standards which functionally add up to "never bring up anything".

Because on the one hand, we're supposed to never sweat the small stuff. Just let it go. We just had that from @AlViking.

And yet here, we also have never respond to big stuff, because then you're being a selfish jerk halting everyone's fun.

So...when exactly are problems supposed to be fixed? Because the message I'm getting here is "never ever during play, no matter what". And, as I've said multiple times now, things don't get fixed between sessions.

There is no conflict there. Both involve a quick and easy fix or wait until after the game.

Edit: Because I was in a rush and posted quickly.

1) We don't collectively set standards, so trying to use what @AlViking said in combination with what I said is a non-starter. You can't do it and be correct. So no, you are not getting the message of "Never during play, no matter what." That's your invention and if you follow it, you have no one but yourself to blame.

2) I didn't say don't respond to the big stuff. I said wait until after the game instead of being selfish and destroying the game night for everyone at the table. The big stuff can be resolved afterwards.

 

[Bedrockgames]

And as your phrasing shows, they're treated like the villain and there's a lot of social pressure not to do so. I don't consider that a virtue.

I don't know the specifics in his example, but any player in a group can be disruptive. This is going to vary from group to group, but if you are the person that is making everyone else feel like things are grinding to a halt, then there may be a chemistry issue between you and the other players. By the same token, if the other players want things addressed, but you just want to plow ahead, you could be the one causing issues from a different direction. So I think there is some truth here to what @Micah Sweet is saying. There is a reading the room thing that Players and GMs all need to be doing. And if you are making everyone else unhappy with play, then yes you are a problem player/GM

 

[robertsconley]

And as your phrasing shows, they're treated like the villain and there's a lot of social pressure not to do so. I don't consider that a virtue.

The social pressure you mention often reflects expectations around leadership and good sportsmanship, principles that are broadly understood and widely applicable, both in and out of games. When practiced in good faith, these principles can resolve most of the interpersonal issues raised in this thread, including how to deal with individuals acting in bad faith.

There’s no magic solution, of course. Applying these ideas takes real effort and a willingness to engage with others constructively. But it's not as complex as it's sometimes made out to be. Ultimately, no game system can replace the need for personal responsibility and mutual respect at the table, regardless of how elegantly it's designed. That said, designers can still offer helpful tools and insights based on their experience outside of the rules themselves.

In regards to @Micah Sweet's post

If a player wants to grind a game to a halt to address an issue, they can, whether or not the GM or the other players want that. It's actually pretty easy.

Pointing out that a player can halt a session to force an issue isn’t the same as casting them as a villain. It’s a statement of fact about what is happening. Players can disrupt play regardless of anyone else’s intentions. That doesn’t mean their concerns don’t matter, but how they bring them up does. A group functions best when issues are raised in good faith and handled constructively using the principles of leadership and sportsmanship. Furthermore, these principles, when practiced, don't silence but encourage open discussion.

 

[Bedrockgames]

The social pressure you mention often reflects expectations around leadership and good sportsmanship—principles that are broadly understood and widely applicable, both in and out of games.

I really want to emphasize this. To some people good sportsmanship is very, very important in both games and sports. Many of the quibbles being raised, have the ring to me of poor sportsmanship.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I really want to emphasize this. To some people good sportsmanship is very, very important in both games and sports. Many of the quibbles being raised, have the ring to me of poor sportsmanship.

And to me, many of them look like 100% legitimate complaints from someone trying to work with others but concerned about a problem. Thus, slapping them away with "just TRUST me, GOD, why can't you just TRUST me?!?!" is not only unhelpful, it is the unsportsmanlike thing to do!

 

[hawkeyefan]

So the quote was apparently from Maxperson in reply to @hawkeyefan and went as follows:


And I'm about 95% sure that they were talking solely about D&D, not all games. Also, it appears they were talking about trust between player and DM, not about rules for combat versus rules for social engagement like @Hussar claimed. The rules are needed (or not needed) because of how much trust is between the player and DM, not because combat is inherently more complex than social engagement.

To clarify a bit… my point was indeed more about combat rules versus social rules. I really don’t want to get sidetracked in the discussion about trust.

We use rules in combat because the outcome is uncertain. The complexity of said rules are a matter of preference. But the purpose of the rules is to determine the outcome. So in D&D, the side that depletes the other side’s hit points to either force a surrender or retreat, or to outright eliminate all the opponents wins the conflict (generally speaking; combat can of course have other win conditions).

We don’t want to just leave this up to either party to simply decide. Doing so would feel as if that party was controlling the direction of the game.

What I’d like to see is more folks applying this logic to non-combat encounters. So that we use rules to determine the outcome, rather than relying on either the players or GM to simply declare the outcome.

Because letting one party simply declare the outcome of the encounter is letting one party control the direction of play.

 

[Kromanjon]

Never minding that there are a number of systems out there where combat and out of combat resolution use the same mechanics with equal levels of complexity. So, the whole argument that "we need complex combat rules" is fundamentally flawed from the word go. There is absolutely no need for combat rules to be more complex than non-combat rules. We simply accept this because... conservatism in the fandom.

Late to the party but total agreement with this.

I recently read through an early draft of a new ttrpg based on an old IP. The IP is known to be violent so the writer had added combat rules though he admitted he actually didn’t want combat rules at all. I told him to look at Heart: the city beneath for a system that has conflict resolution that can be used both I and out of combat. That way the consumers can make up their own minds if they want combat or not.

 

[Bedrockgames]

And to me, many of them look like 100% legitimate complaints from someone trying to work with others but concerned about a problem. Thus, slapping them away with "just TRUST me, GOD, why can't you just TRUST me?!?!" is not only unhelpful, it is the unsportsmanlike thing to do!

It is about group compatibility. If you are dragging down a game over concerns no one else has, that is a big mismatch. And I do think it veers into unsportsmanlike when one person can't let something go that everyone has moved on from and that inability to move on is ruining the game for them. Now, doesn't mean issues can't be raised. We have people raise issues plenty in my group. But we tend to resolve them efficiently and move on. Also I said this is a door that swings both ways. It can also arise because one person in the group just wants to move on, but no one else does because they feel something has gone wrong in session.

Fore example, I think it is pretty obvious you and I wouln't be compatible in a game. That doesn't mean either of us are bad people. But if I played with your group, and just insisted you guys accept my judgments and move on, when your group was having lots of issues with how I adjudicate, I'd be a problem player if I didn't 1) adjust to your groups expectations or 2) acknowledge it is a bad fit for me and find another group. But if you were in my group, I can tell from your posts, you would raise issues too frequently and probably want to go over them in more detail than most of my players would want. So if you didn't adjust to my groups expectations or acknowledge the mismatch, then you would be a problem player as well. I think this is a very reasonable way for people to conduct themselves in gaming. There is no point in a whole group being miserable because one player wants something entirely different.

 

[Faolyn]

The vessel
Huh? As I posted, play had shifted to detailed melee combat resolution: the assassin Halika was still in the room, and the PC Jobe was trying to tackle him.

Here's what you had written:

a PC shaman was dominated by a dark naga, with instructions to bring the mage Joachim to the naga so that his blood could be spilled as a sacrifice to the spirits. Joachim had been badly hurt and was recuperating in a room in another mage's tower; the PC was rushing to that place to try and get there before an assassin who was determined to kill Joachim. The assassin got there first, and as the PC rushed in he saw Joachim being decapitated. At about this point in play, we switched adjudication from a somewhat abstracted time scale (which had finished with the PC failing the opposed Speed check to beat the assassin to Joachim's room) to the melee combat resolution framework. The player of the PC's first action declaration was "I look around the room for something to catch the blood in, lilke a chamber pot." The player spent the appropriate resources within the action economy, succeeded on the check (which was set at a fairly low difficulty given the likelihood of there being some sort of vessel in a bedroom in the tower of a well-to-do mage) and was able to grab the chamber pot and start catching blood.

I look around the room for a vessel to catch the blood was enough to establish adjudicable fiction.

Shaman needs to get blood from wounded guy.

Somehow, Shaman knows that there's an assassin who's going to kill wounded guy. (I will assume that there is an in-game reason for this knowledge.)

Shaman gets there too late. The assassin has decapitated(!) wounded guy. Sounds like overkill to me, but I dunno what your world's assassins are like. Maybe they all carry bone saws as part of their trade.

Shift to melee.

Shaman's first action declaration was to look for a vessel to catch the blood in. Not to tackle the assassin, but to look for a cup. And they had to roll for that.

Maybe you just forgot to add the tackle to your write-up. I dunno. That's actually not important, because that's not what this is about.

What it's about is you said "Content authority in Burning Wheel is distributed" and gave an example of the GM making the player roll to see if they found a vessel--in a room where an injured person was recovering, which indicates cups, bowls, and even, as you say, a chamber pot. There's nothing to suggest that the PC needs a specific vessel; they just need something that can hold liquid.

In any other game, the GM could call for a roll for the PC to find a vessel (IMO the most boring option), or they could call for a roll for the PC to get to the vessel before the assassin knocks it over and breaks it (somewhat more interesting, but requires some foreknowledge on the PC's part or for the GM to use cinematic tricks, and either of those may feel out of place in the game in question), or could simply say that the PC sees a cup right there on the bedside table because the actual interesting part isn't finding the vessel but getting the blood back to the naga within a rapidly diminishing time frame. Getting to the cup in time can be interesting. Seeing the cup in the first place is not, because this was established to be a room for him to recover in, not a room filled with junk piled everywhere.

So again, we're left with some possibilities:

The Burning Wheel GM can set the scene however they want--in which case if a player wants to go off on a tangent that has nothing to do with their traits (Beliefs, Instincts, whatever), the GM can certainly set it up, meaning that BW isn't as player-driven a game as you've been claiming, because we still have the GM setting things up.

The Burning Wheel GM must use the dice to tell them what's going on--in which case, if a player wants to go off on a tangent that has nothing to do with their traits, the dice can certainly allow for that--and BW isn't a player-driven game; it's an RNG-driven game.

And what makes it interesting is that the other PC, Tru-leigh the shaman, needs the blood for his Dark Naga master - so if it can't be caught, then he will have failed in his mission. This is an illustration of what is at stake being a function of player-determined priorities for their PC.

And again, this is the same as in any other game. The PC has a goal and they set their priorities based on that. Burning Wheel is no different than D&D in that regards. The only differences is how much of of the player's success depends on random die rolls, and that depends on if the BW GM is allowed to say "yeah, there's a cup over there."

Burning Wheel PCs are more like people going about their ordinary lives, than "adventurers" decked out with adventuring gear.

I wasn't aware that only adventurers carried containers for water in a time period when ordinary people have to do work that causes sweating and thirstiness.

(If waterskins are adventuring gear, then what's Aedros' armor?)

The armour
I am a bit puzzled by your confident pronouncements about others' play that you weren't part of. I don't see why you think an argument about mending armour can't be interesting - I already explained how it spoke to Beliefs of both characters. I also don't know why you think it is pointless. And I don't know on what basis you are conjuring up imaginary smiths, on the frontier between Ulek and the Pomarj.

You constantly go off on unrelated tangents that indicate you don't actually understand what people actual mean. For instance, you skipped by the idea that in a sick room where it is very likely that there would be cups to focus on ordinary people who have ordinary jobs wouldn't have a waterskin because that's "adventuring gear." The point isn't what's in the game's equipment table. The point is that this game calls for a die roll that would be completely unnecessary in most other games.

So yeah, I think I can safely say that if Aedros thinks Alicia needs protection, and Alicia doesn't want Aedros to pity her (which Aedros' belief does), then an argument that goes "don't go to the unsafe place until you fix my gear" is not, in fact, an argument about fixing the gear but about Alicia feeling patronized.

There was no such argument. If we're going to do <this thing>, can we first do <this other preparatory thing> isn't preventing anyone from doing something unless they satisfy conditions.

Then it also isn't a scene with any heft to it, which is something you have claimed it was.

So what actually happened? Did Aedros give an impassioned speech which you have somehow neglected to mention even once since you posted that example last Sunday? That could give the scene some weight--if the player actually roleplayed it out. But then I'd have to point out that the bard's player in the D&D game I'm in has written actual poetry and recited it in-game, so this has nothing to do with the system and everything to do with the player.

If the player simply said "Aedros tells Alicia that mending the armor is important before they go on this excursion" and rolls a die to see if it's successful (or vice versa), then the scene has no real heft to it and thus isn't better or more intimate than any other game. And I'd have to point out that, once again, this game lets dice dictate how a player acts and thinks, which I think is a bad rule.

So tell me what actually made this scene have so much heft to it that makes BW more intimate than D&D?

The attempted murder
No. In my Burning Wheel, game, the GM called for a Steel test because killing in cold blood is the sort of thing that the rules of the game identify as requiring a Steel test, if the other conditions for rolling the dice are met.

Alicia didn't insist on any rolls. She is an imaginary person in a fantasy world; and BW is not a 4th-wall breaking game.

Maybe this is where I should mention, that at my table, we generally call each other by our character names when in-game and even go so far as to change our handle on our discord channel--so as to help immersion and stay in character, like this:

If you don't do that, that's fine. Each to their own. But to me saying "it wasn't the character, it was the player" because I didn't write "Alicia's player" every single time is childish pedantry.

Here is what actually happened:

​

It was my friend in his capacity as GM, not as the player of Alicia, who insisted on the Steel test. Correctly.

So Alicia is an NPC or a GMPC? If so, then this is something you should have said a week ago because that would have prevented about half the arguments I've had against the system.

If this is basically a GMless game, where everyone takes a turn running things, that's also something you should have said. However, since Alicia used Aedro's failure to further her interests (by mind-controlling him), then as a GM, Alicia's player wasn't impartial and, IMO, misused the "GM hat."

This is not making any sense to me.

Somehow I'm not surprised. So let me ask you this:

Did Aedros' player choose to make the Steel test?

No, no he did not. It was Alicia's player, acting as a GM, who insisted on it.

In a PbtA game, a player chooses to act in a way that triggers a move. They agree to the move--you'll find numerous examples in the various games of the GM saying "it sounds like you're trying to Insert Move Name Here" and the player then saying "yeah, that's what I'm doing" or "no, I'm not trying to do that, I want to do this other thing."

Here's an example from the game I'm reading now, Legacy: Life Among The Ruins:

Here's another example from Monster of the Week:

In both of these cases, the player had a choice of what they did. Any negatives that come out of a failed roll were because of the choice they made. And they don't suffer those negatives on a successful roll. In other words, the player consented to the risk.

Aedros did not choose to roll Steel to see if he could kill someone. Nobody has said that you have to roll Steel every time you try to kill someone. And I've searched! I googled "burning wheel do you have to roll steel each time you try to kill someone." I've even asked here. Nada. I have seen that the Ob goes up if murder is involved, but

In fact, you specified that Steel tests are called for "A GM may call for a Steel test under four conditions: When the character is confronted with surprise, fear, pain or wonderment." I didn't see any of that in the example you gave. I saw an angry dude who wanted to kill the innkeeper because of... reasons.

Is there a rule that says "every time you want to kill someone, you have to roll for Steel?" Or did Alicia's player decide that this particular incident warranted a test--and then, independently of that, also decided to exploit his failure to mind-control him?

Based on what you say below ("No. The GM calls for a Steel test when the general rules of the game call for a roll, and when the task the character is attempting is the sort of task that triggers a Steel test."), the answer is no. Choosing to commit murder doesn't mean you are accepting that you have to make a second roll--a Steel test--and that you can only commit murder if you pass.

Now, if I was making a game that I wanted to be primarily or purely player-driven, and this game allowed for players to "put on the GM hat", I would also put in a rule that said the PC-turned-GM could not then use that opportunity to engage in PvP or exploit another PC.

General principles
You can see how Beliefs work too, if you like, in the free download of Hub and Spokes. I've given multiple examples in this thread too.

I've read through it. They don't seem to be that different than, say, the Aspects of Fate.

They're not useless. Just as one (among many) examples of their utility, they allow avoiding both the issues you've mentioned in this thread (the Changeling game and the Ravenloft game). as well as @Hussar's issue with KotB. Because they coordinate between players and GM as to what play is actually going to be about.

Assuming that people follow them. You seem to have misunderstood both my posts. The Changeling GM said the game was going to be about one thing and it wasn't. The Player agreed to play a horror game and then acted obnoxiously.

Aedros had a Belief and Instinct that should indicate he had no problem killing in cold blood, but apparently they don't. In Fate, if someone, somehow was trying to make me not be able to murder someone via a roll, I could invoke my Aspect to help me out.

The point of BW play is not to focus on things that the GM hopes will be interesting. It's for the GM to frame scenes that speak to the priorities that the players have established for their PCs. The game isn't confused about this - it comes out and states it in the opening pages of the rulebook.

And while that's good and all, it's also very self-centered.

For instance, when I wrote the idea of the illegal kobold fighting ring (IKFR), I had an image of something like cockfights or dogfights--both cases of animal abuse. In this case, it would be sentient creatures who were being enslaved and forced into fighting each other for the amusement of others. (Of course, in your game, you can decide that the kobolds were willing participants and the fights were illegal for other reasons; that's not important.)

In this hypothetical game of mine, I know what characters my players built and I know what their beliefs and instincts are (or aspects, or ideals, or whatever other term hypothetical system uses). Thus, I know that this IKFR would be of great interest to them--they just haven't learned about its existence yet.

Likewise, in my actual Level Up game, I included an illegal fighting ring, although this one was illegal because it didn't follow laws re: betting, paying taxes, etc., not because it used slavery. Why did I include it? Because one PC is a gambler and another PC is described by the player as being a himbo who spent all his pre-game free time in the gym lifting weights and honing his muscles. So yeah, they loved it. Would either of them have come up with this idea on their own? No idea.

For some reason, it never seemed to occur to you that the IKFR could be of interest to the players, simply because it was made up by the GM instead of the players. Why is that?

If you want to play a GM-driven game, where the GM introduces things with the hope that the players will find them interesting, and the player are expected to engage with that stuff with the thope that, down the track, it will connect to some aspiration they have for their PC, then BW is not the game for you!

Why not? Everything you've said about BW shows that it's just as GM-driven as any other game.

 

[Campbell]

The orientation we are looking for when playing games like Burning Wheel and Apocalypse Keys is everyone is invested in all the player characters. We all want to see where their journeys take them as our primary concerns. The point is not to force a GM who is interested some world building going to instead care about the characters - it's to choose to play with one who does not feel the need because they are as invested in exploring the premise embedded in these characters and the game's premise as the individual players are.

I've actually had the experience multiple times of moving on from players (for these particular games) because they wanted me to do outside world building that does not support the game's premise and wanted to do the sorts of random adventures I'm not interested in running. I am no one's world building monkey.

It's only self-centered if we believe caring about a given character is only something the person who plays it can do or want to do. My experience of sometimes caring more about a player's PC (sometimes as a player and other times as a GM) than they do tells me it's not self-centered.

Besides there are plenty of ways to frame situations with regard to player character premise where we get inject a fair amount of our own say and interests.