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

[eyeheartawk]

I decided to check in on this thread since it was on page 693 and I was like "Let's see where this is at" and I see we are arguing about Burning Wheel rules.

 

[Micah Sweet]

That's new in 5.24. It wasn't a thing in any previous edition (possible exception being 4e, since I don't own that book to look it up, but I doubt it).

That explains why I don't remember it. Another reason not to move to 5.5.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I don't know. I'm not his biographer, nor one of his players. Why would that matter?

If you are "framing scenes" explicitly in regards to specific PC goals, that's what I would call meta agency. The player is (indirectly) shaping the setting through means outside of their PC's in fiction ability to do so.

 

[AlViking]

Heh. Now I'm imagining a ranger whose favored enemy is "the monster under the bed" due to childhood fears.

Great. Now I feel compelled to write up stats for the monster under the bed. My players will not be happy.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think I may be less sceptical than you about the capacity of plausibility, as a heuristic, to exclude certain possibilities (blatantly absurd ones). I agree with you that it tends not to be very useful, on its own, for winnowing down a set of possibilities to a unique answer.

The funny thing is, after I read a couple of other posts I was kind of thinking the same thing. Plausibility really is a heuristic that can do a bunch of work. The most basic ones aside, I think it is mostly suggestive though. Beyond that, if I author a setting and embue it with a lot of details, I've essentially loaded the dice in favor of the house here. Of course whatever my priorities are, they magically appear plausible.

So, yes, it does some work, but I find that is mostly at a pretty local level. Sure, it's implausible that the captain of the guard will easily betray the king for a simple bribe. However, that says very little about his history, family, connections, finances, health, or a bazillion other things that could plausibly factor into his behavior.

 

[Faolyn]

Right.

I didn't describe any vessels as being present. Was that a good frame? Well, the player had no trouble at all declaring an action, "I look around for a vessel!" (I think he found the idea of collecting "sacred" blood in a chamber pot amusing or at least ironic.) As I already posted upthread, I've recently seen a TV show - Merlin - where a very similar scene happens (an antidote is spilled as it needs to be administered, and so the character looks around for a way to sponge the liquid off the floor and administer by squeezing it into the mouth of the person who needs it).

So if you had described vessels, no roll would be needed to see one, right? You'd pick some other roll for them to make--you've said as much before.

Which means that, in BW, players are limited by what the GM remembers to or chooses to describe.

 

[zakael19]

In your case the issue

Excellent

Midkemia? I love the first four books and every time I reread them I am reminded how bits and pieces of them drifted into my Majestic Wilderlands. But did I reference Midkemia somewhere in my post or pictures? Just curious because I don't recall doing so.

It’s one of the folders in your screenshot!

 

[Faolyn]

Do you think that Luke Crane goes around forcing people to play Burning Wheel with its Steel rules?

If I decide to run a game of BW, but limit Steel rolls to moments of Surprise, Fear, and Pain (as per the rules) and never, ever use them to see if a PC can perform an intended task, am I running BW right?

If I decide to remove the Steel rolls entirely, am I running BW right?

 

[zakael19]

Ah thanks. That folder has my inspiration Pad PRO Tables for the Midkemia Press City book. One of the better city random encounter tables out there. If you code it up. A couple of month after I made this for myself Midkemia press released an app doing the same thing.

View attachment 405612

Oh gotcha, interesting!

 

[Old Fezziwig]

If I decide to run a game of BW, but limit Steel rolls to moments of Surprise, Fear, and Pain (as per the rules) and never, ever use them to see if a PC can perform an intended task, am I running BW right?

If I decide to remove the Steel rolls entirely, am I running BW right?

You can play BW with only the Hub and Spokes, ignoring the systems in the Rim of the Wheel, which is where DoW, Fight!, and Steel are (among other things). The book recommends starting there and introducing the Rim gradually, but there's no need to add anything necessarily. It's fully playable. (If I ran BW as a PbP, I'd be inclined to skip both Fight! and DoW due to how fussy it would be to do scripting in the format.)