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

[Micah Sweet]

Yes. If you're describing RPG play in a more technical space like this thread, that's exactly how you should describe things. Because we're talking about real-world processes, you should explain things in real world terms.



You should! The fictional space and play at the table are very different things. Trying to make them overlap causes confusion.

If you want to talk about the narrative events of your game, then use "in-fiction" talk. If you're talking "how to play", don't use player and character interchangeably.


Maybe in a technical discussion, you should rely on the mouthful instead of the shorthand. Did you think the shorthand was working for you?

It doesn't seem to be confusing on our side.

 

[pemerton]

I don't understand some aspects of BW, in part because I'm not going to spend money to buy rules I'm never going to play. Then because my understanding is unclear, you accuse me of lying.

I don't think you're lying. But I do find it frustrating that you seem to be ignoring what I'm posting about how the game works, and making some strange conjectures instead.

And you can download the core rules for free: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/98542/burning-wheel-gold-hub-and-spokes

People have told you multiple times that we have very basic questions that we believe have simple answers. For whatever reason you keep giving the same responses and using game terms without explanation. Then you turn around and blame the people who still don't understand because you aren't clarifying anything.

I don't know what you don't understand.

Like any conventional RPG, the GM frames scenes, describing the situation to the players that their PCs find themselves in. The players say what their PCs do. And then the rules are used to work out what happens.

When the GM frames scenes, they do so having regard to the priorities that the players have authored for their PCs. For instance, Tru-leigh has the Belief I will bring Joachim's blood to my master, and so I as GM am presenting situations which prompt the player to declare actions in pursuit of that Belief; those actions are resolved in the ways I've described:

*Tru-leigh and Jobe (the other PC) encounter Halika, the assassin, who is trying to get to Joachim first, and so they drug her (task: concoct a sleeping potion and feed it to Halika; intent: to delay Halika so that Jobe and Tru-leigh get to Joachim first; result: success on the herbalism test);

*Then, Tru-Leigh and Jobe, knowing that Joachim is recovering in Jabal's tower, try to sneak into the tower via the catacombs, but get lost and end up beneath a grate, looking up into a city street, only to see Halika, awakened from her drugged stupor, looking down at them and taunting them, on her way to the tower (task: travel via the catacombs to the tower; intent: to arrive at the tower unobserved; result: failure on the Catacombs-wise test, so the intent is not achieved - they don't arrive at the tower, but rather are spotted by Halika - it's been years since this episode occurred, but my recollection here is that the players took a bonus die for working carefully as they went through the catacombs, which, if it fails, licenses a time-sensitive complication, which in this case was Halika having woken up);

*Tru-leigh and Jobe now race through the catacombs to try and get their first, but Halika beats them (task: race through the catacombs to the tower; intent: get to the tower before Halika; result: failed Speed test vs Halika, so when they get to the tower Halika is already there, and is able to behead Joachim).​

In this summary, I'm skipping over the details of the roleplaying, which in any event I don't remember in much detail years later. I'm just focusing on the core events, and showing how they follow the rules and principles set out in the BW rulebook. And as far as those rules and principles are concerned, I hope you can see how I'm following them.

To elaborate on that a bit.

See how, each time the situation is reframed, the focus is still on Tru-leigh's Belief (there was also stuff at stake for Jobe, but I'm skipping over that in this description).

The first obstacle to overcome is Halika, who has her own agenda for Joachim. Tru-leigh succeeds at the attempt to drug Halika, which means that the player's intent is realised: Halika is out of the way. As the GM, I'm not just free to have Halika wake up at a point that I think "makes sense", or is "realistic": Halika is out of Tru-leigh's way, and Let it Ride applies (p 32): "A player shall test once against an obstacle and shall not roll again until conditions legitimately and drastically change. Neither GM nor player can call for a retest unless those conditions change."

This leaves Tru-leigh free to tackle the next obstacle: Joachim is in Jabal's tower, and so Tru-leigh has to get in there. The PCs are free to try and sneak into the tower without Halika getting in their way, and choose to go via the catacombs. I remember commenting on this at the time: Jobe's player made the test, on a low skill rank, but wanting to advance his Catacombs-wise. The test fails, and because of the failed roll after having taken the +1D bonus for working carefully, it fails in a way that makes the time spent on the effort backfire (as per p 29 of the rulebook): "If the player fails a test in which he is working carefully, the result indicates he has run out of time - the bomb goes off, the guards burst in, the old man dies, etc. By working carefully, the player is allowing the GM to introduce a serious complication upon failure."

To me as GM, the obvious time-sensitive aspect of the situation is Halika's drugged state; and a failure while working carefully is just the sort of change in conditions that cancels "Let it Ride". Therefore, I decide to bring Halika back onto the scene, having wakened from her drugged state. But see how I bring Halika back into the action: I use her to negate the players' intent (which is mandatory for a failed task) - the PCs are not in the tower unobserved, but rather are observed by Halika, through the grate. This also correlates the consequence of the failure with the PCs' own knowledge - they can see that Halika is awake, as they look at one another through the grate.

This also sets up a new obstacle that Tru-leigh has to overcome, in pursuit of his Belief - it's a race to see who can get to the tower first. Halika wins, and so is able to kill Joachim. And then I use that to frame the next scene, that's already been discussed at length: Tru-leigh is there, in the room with Joachim, but Joachim's blood is spilling onto the floor.

The whole way through play, all the players have to do is say what their PCs do. The fiction is consistent, the setting as realistic as any fantasy setting. In deciding how to narrate failure, and how to frame the scenes as they unfold, I'm treating plausibility as a consideration: the thing that goes wrong when sneaking through catacombs is that you get lost; when you spend a lot of time lost in the catacombs, this can mean that your drugged victim wakes up (I just saw this happening in a movie I watched, Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning); when you then have to race through the catacombs hoping to beat an assassin to the tower, she might get there first and kill the person you're trying to get to.

But plausibility is not the only consideration. The PCs see the awakened Halika, and so can race her. The PCs lose the race, but get there just in time to see the aftermath of the decapitation. And so on.

 

[AlViking]

Another improvement 2024 core implemented...Sometimes it really is the little things that makes the game better as a whole.

Yeah, the 2014 rules were a holdover from TSR days. Orcs are occasionally the enemy in my games but it's not simply because they're orcs.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I believe they were referring to this post D&D General - [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

Ah, okay. I mean that looks pretty good. I wouldn't off on all of it (I would need to read it a few more times to make sure I fully get what the writer is saying). But the whole paper rock scissor thing is pretty much what I say when I talk about pinning it down. I might not be as systematic or as orderly about things as this person but there are good ideas in there

 

[AlViking]

I don't think you're lying. But I do find it frustrating that you seem to be ignoring what I'm posting about how the game works, and making some strange conjectures instead.

And you can download the core rules for free: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/98542/burning-wheel-gold-hub-and-spokes

I don't know what you don't understand.

Like any conventional RPG, the GM frames scenes, describing the situation to the players that their PCs find themselves in. The players say what their PCs do. And then the rules are used to work out what happens.

When the GM frames scenes, they do so having regard to the priorities that the players have authored for their PCs. For instance, Tru-leigh has the Belief I will bring Joachim's blood to my master, and so I as GM am presenting situations which prompt the player to declare actions in pursuit of that Belief; those actions are resolved in the ways I've described:

*Tru-leigh and Jobe (the other PC) encounter Halika, the assassin, who is trying to get to Joachim first, and so they drug her (task: concoct a sleeping potion and feed it to Halika; intent: to delay Halika so that Jobe and Tru-leigh get to Joachim first; result: success on the herbalism test);​

​

*Then, Tru-Leigh and Jobe, knowing that Joachim is recovering in Jabal's tower, try to sneak into the tower via the catacombs, but get lost and end up beneath a grate, looking up into a city street, only to see Halika, awakened from her drugged stupor, looking down at them and taunting them, on her way to the tower (task: travel via the catacombs to the tower; intent: to arrive at the tower unobserved; result: failure on the Catacombs-wise test, so the intent is not achieved - they don't arrive at the tower, but rather are spotted by Halika - it's been years since this episode occurred, but my recollection here is that the players took a bonus die for working carefully as they went through the catacombs, which, if it fails, licenses a time-sensitive complication, which in this case was Halika having woken up);​

​

*Tru-leigh and Jobe now race through the catacombs to try and get their first, but Halika beats them (task: race through the catacombs to the tower; intent: get to the tower before Halika; result: failed Speed test vs Halika, so when they get to the tower Halika is already there, and is able to behead Joachim).​

In this summary, I'm skipping over the details of the roleplaying, which in any event I don't remember in much detail years later. I'm just focusing on the core events, and showing how they follow the rules and principles set out in the BW rulebook. And as far as those rules and principles are concerned, I hope you can see how I'm following them.

To elaborate on that a bit.

See how, each time the situation is reframed, the focus is still on Tru-leigh's Belief (there was also stuff at stake for Jobe, but I'm skipping over that in this description).

The first obstacle to overcome is Halika, who has her own agenda for Joachim. Tru-leigh succeeds at the attempt to drug Halika, which means that the player's intent is realised: Halika is out of the way. As the GM, I'm not just free to have Halika wake up at a point that I think "makes sense", or is "realistic": Halika is out of Tru-leigh's way, and Let it Ride applies (p 32): "A player shall test once against an obstacle and shall not roll again until conditions legitimately and drastically change. Neither GM nor player can call for a retest unless those conditions change."

This leaves Tru-leigh free to tackle the next obstacle: Joachim is in Jabal's tower, and so Tru-leigh has to get in there. The PCs are free to try and sneak into the tower without Halika getting in their way, and choose to go via the catacombs. I remember commenting on this at the time: Jobe's player made the test, on a low skill rank, but wanting to advance his Catacombs-wise. The test fails, and because of the failed roll after having taken the +1D bonus for working carefully, it fails in a way that makes the time spent on the effort backfire (as per p 29 of the rulebook): "If the player fails a test in which he is working carefully, the result indicates he has run out of time - the bomb goes off, the guards burst in, the old man dies, etc. By working carefully, the player is allowing the GM to introduce a serious complication upon failure."

To me as GM, the obvious time-sensitive aspect of the situation is Halika's drugged state; and a failure while working carefully is just the sort of change in conditions that cancels "Let it Ride". Therefore, I decide to bring Halika back onto the scene, having wakened from her drugged state. But see how I bring Halika back into the action: I use her to negate the players' intent (which is mandatory for a failed task) - the PCs are not in the tower unobserved, but rather are observed by Halika, through the grate. This also correlates the consequence of the failure with the PCs' own knowledge - they can see that Halika is awake, as they look at one another through the grate.

This also sets up a new obstacle that Tru-leigh has to overcome, in pursuit of his Belief - it's a race to see who can get to the tower first. Halika wins, and so is able to kill Joachim. And then I use that to frame the next scene, that's already been discussed at length: Tru-leigh is there, in the room with Joachim, but Joachim's blood is spilling onto the floor.

The whole way through play, all the players have to do is say what their PCs do. The fiction is consistent, the setting as realistic as any fantasy setting. In deciding how to narrate failure, and how to frame the scenes as they unfold, I'm treating plausibility as a consideration: the thing that goes wrong when sneaking through catacombs is that you get lost; when you spend a lot of time lost in the catacombs, this can mean that your drugged victim wakes up (I just saw this happening in a movie I watched, Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning); when you then have to race through the catacombs hoping to beat an assassin to the tower, she might get there first and kill the person you're trying to get to.

But plausibility is not the only consideration. The PCs see the awakened Halika, and so can race her. The PCs lose the race, but get there just in time to see the aftermath of the decapitation. And so on.

Thanks for the link, I hadn't found anything. I have life to get back to and really have to do something useful with my day so I don't have time to respond right now.

 

[TwoSix]

It doesn't seem to be confusing on our side.

Possibly because you all view things in similar contexts and have similar play backgrounds?

 

[FrozenNorth]

The D&D examples both involve supernatural fear effects, for one thing.

Not necessarily. The battlemaster’s Menacing Attack is a non-supernatural effect that imposes the frightened condition.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Nobody is following you around and making these analyses. You're choosing to engage.

And it absolutely is a good faith discussion. Someone posted links to a blog advocating for "blorb" play, which is basically a lot of what you're advocating for; highly prepped worlds that react to player input and the world operates under defined heuristics so that the DM is as impartial as possible.

And I said "that's a wonderful series of posts that makes this approach much more understandable" because it both:
a) laid out core principles of play and
b) referenced, understood, and complimented other modes of play, and made logical discussion as to how those other approaches might or might not work with the principles being described.

Why is this called "blorb" play? It seems excessively silly, to the point of being dismissive.

 

[Micah Sweet]

And if your core priority is "simulating real life" rather than "rolling when stakes are raised", it would make sense to do so.

"Simulating real life" isn't the priority in this game.

In this case that playstyle leads to events that make no logical sense to me. I'm not going to be ok with that personally.

 

[Bedrockgames]

It doesn't seem to be confusing on our side.

That is the thing. I would use a music comparison again. And to be clear I am not saying that their model is to my mind any way as potent as music theory, but they have a theory that gives them a method of communicating about RPGs that can put them all on the same page. But we may be more like blues players who have developed our own language (if you listen to BB King in interviews he drops some music theory terminology but also has his own way of talking about music; yet he clearly has a strong common of things). I think if we are all able to understand each other, no matter how poetic our words, it is fine. And I also think the other side needs to come to terms with the fact that while having a system of language for RPGs is useful, that system of language does guide and limit how you can think about it. Again I point to the example of how western music theory for ages was ill-equipped to replicate some middle eastern music because it is based on a 12 tone system, which will seem reductive if you are using a more expansive system of music with the kinds of microtones they have. This is evident if you ever played a 'middle eastern scale'. It sounds middle eastern to an ear trained on western music theory, but it is reductive because it fits the notes into the twelve tone system (it is literally missing notes but you don't notice because you have to internalize the possibility of notes between the half steps to, and be able to discern them, to grasp).