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

[pemerton]

"The GM tests your Steel ability when you confront surprise, pain, fear, or wonderment."

Where's murder in there?

It's not expressly mentioned. As I've posted multiple times, in reply to you and others, it is found in the lists of obstacles, and in various die traits that modify a character's hesitation.

If you want to fit it into the general categories, it is a manifestation of the fear of violence.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

If the mundane non-fantastical elements in the fiction don't work at least vaguely like real life then how the bleep is anyone supposed to engage with that fiction with any granularity?

Unless the assumption is that mundane non-fantastical elements will be ignored until-unless they become important, at which point they'll be diced for (or, in the case of equipment slots in BitD, quasi-retconned in).

Personally, I'd like to be able to have my in-character pre-planning have a lot more to say about my ultimate success or failure than that; if I have the right gear (in the blood-gathering case, a vial and a cloth or sponge) because I thought ahead to bring the right gear then I should pretty much auto-succeed in both my task (gather the blood) and intent (deliver it to whoever it is that wants it), where if I blew my preparations and didn't bring the right gear then I'm (potentially*) screwed: the blood's been spilled and now I can't deliver it to anyone. And if the game rules don't allow for this kind of preparation detail that's a fatal bug, not a feature.

* - in the latter case, where I didn't have that equipment on me, IMO the GM is being generous by giving me a chance to overcome my in-character error via a roll to see if there happens to be anything there that I can scoop the blood into.

Right, because you are interested in a game about these kinds of operational concerns, equipment, supplies, traps, doors, whatever, and not ones related to the goals, aspirations, and beliefs of the characters. You don't want to, and presumably don't, play BW! Honestly, there's probably a lot of overlap in the two approaches though in terms of what happens. IME when a particular fiction doesn't oppose a character's nature, then play just moves on to some point where it does. This nitpicking on who has what container is silly. It is missing the whole point.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Right, because you are interested in a game about these kinds of operational concerns, equipment, supplies, traps, doors, whatever, and not ones related to the goals, aspirations, and beliefs of the characters. You don't want to, and presumably don't, play BW! Honestly, there's probably a lot of overlap in the two approaches though in terms of what happens. IME when a particular fiction doesn't oppose a character's nature, then play just moves on to some point where it does. This nitpicking on who has what container is silly. It is missing the whole point.

I think it is less missing the point and more not really being interested in the point.

 

[pemerton]

I have never felt heroic or grandiose for passing a regular check. What makes my character feel heroic or grandiose when it involves dice is if the events that caused my roll are heroic or grandiose. If a "spot the thing" check needs to feel heroic to me, then it needs to be something like this

OK.

Upthread you asked what leads to the game producing intimate moments; what I could also describe as a type of intense focus on particular details of the characters. Here's a thing that I once posted:

I'm finding that quite small things, of little consequence for the universe (actual or in-game) as a whole, can take on a high degree of importance for me as a player when they matter to my PC, and I know that my own choices are what is bringing them to the fore and shaping them (eg repairing the armour; laying the dead to rest; not fighting the mad skeleton knight of my order). I'm not going to say that it's Vermeer: the RPG, but the stakes don't have to be cosmologically high in order to be personally high - provided that they really are at stake.

To me, that's the answer to a number of your questions.

The fact that BW does not gloss over small things when they matter (which is a function of the priorities that the player has established for their PC) is part of what enables it to generate the sort of feel that I describe. The "not glossing over" further depends on particular details of design - eg that the game has a rule for resolving the action declaration "I look for a vessel to catch the cup".

I've played RPGs that don't have a rule for that, other than the GM just deciding whether or not a vessel is present, or perhaps rolling on a random table for room contents; but that takes the focus away from the character's situation and what they are experiencing - whereas the BW process keeps the focus on the character's action. As the dice are rolled and we wait to see how they come up, in our imaginations Tru-leigh is looking around the room, hoping to see a vessel that will let him catch the precious blood.

Over on r/rpghorror stories, I sometimes seeing stories of games where the player will say something like "I'm checking the room for traps" and then get caught in a trap anyway--not because they didn't roll well enough but because the GM said something like "you said you were checking the room; you didn't say you were checking the ceiling." That's the vibe I'm getting from this game.

This is why I say that I don't think you are really following the rules and principles that govern the game. The "horror story" you've just described is al about the GM keeping stakes secret, and springing consequences on the players that don't pertain to whether they succeed or fail at their declared actions.

That's the exact opposite of BW, as I've been explaining and illustrating over many posts now.

In many other games out there that I've seen, If the GM doesn't specifically describe something, but the thing would logically be present and not hidden (accidentally or purposefully), and if the PC asks if that something is there, the GM will usually say "yes."

OK? Those sound more like games that focus on logistics, or planning, or problem/puzzle-solving. That's really not what BW aspires to - logistics, or the solving of puzzles/problems, are incidental matters, means to the end of focusing in detail on these characters and whether or not they are succeeding in their struggles. You can't do that if the GM just decides that they succeed.

In some games, the PC can just say "I grab a cup off the side table" and ta-da, now a cup and a side table exist and always have, possibly even if the GM has a logical reason why there wouldn't be.

Likewise, you can't do what I just said BW aims to do if the player can just decide that they succeed.

 

[pemerton]

I think it is less missing the point and more not really being interested in the point.

Not being interested, yet rather obsessively interrogating me about it over dozens of posts?

Or if you're referring to @Lanefan rather than @Faolyn, he also asked me questions. Why would you ask questions if you weren't interested in the answer? (I assume you're not meaning to imply that Lanefan was just looking for rhetorical point scoring.)

 

[Micah Sweet]

Not being interested, yet obsessively interrogating me about it over dozens of posts?

Or if you're referring to @Lanefan rather than @Faolyn, he also asked me questions. Why would you ask questions if you weren't interested in the answer? (I assume you're not meaning to imply that Lanefan was just looking for rhetorical point scoring.)

You are being interrogated about it because the game philosophy of Burning Wheel is seemingly very, very different from more traditional games, and leads to results that can seem nonsensical to those who prefer traditional games. No amount of quoting rules and game designers you favor is going to change that in all likelihood.

 

[TwoSix]

Of course.

Also, so what? I write I Messages in basically every single post I make and the one time I forget, I'm a terrible person imposing my beliefs on everyone, but because pemerton really, really likes a game and talks about it all the time, it's OK for him to do the same thing?

I never said you were a terrible person. I thought you were a decent poster until you kept trying to catch @pemerton up in some kind of hypocrisy/misunderstanding about how his game works, which did a solid amount of work to lower my opinion.

But I’m also just a rando on the internet, so I wouldn’t sweat my opinion.

 

[pemerton]

You are being interrogated about it because the game philosophy of Burning Wheel is seemingly very, very different from more traditional games, and leads to results that can seem nonsensical to those who prefer traditional games. No amount of quoting rules and game designers you favor is going to change that in all likelihood.

This notion of radical difference is one that I don't accept.

I mean, I was stumbling towards the sort of play that BW offers in 1986. My ability to do it was imperfect, in part because the tools I was using (AD&D including the original OA) were imperfect for the job. But I'm not such a genius that I came up with it from nowhere. The idea that RPGing can involve a close focus on the endeavours of a particular character, and what matters to them, has been fairly widespread for a long time. When I started a campaign at my university club which used Rolemaster for a similar sort of play, again I had technique problems - RM is perhaps best suited for, and its rulebooks advocate, "living world" methods, and as I've already posted in this thread those methods brought me unstuck on a couple of key occasions.

But I never had any trouble recruiting players for my game, and the idea that play would, in an important fashion, be about these characters wasn't confusing to anyone.

And much more recently - just a few years ago - I ran a session of In A Wicked Age for some kids and their dad. The kids' prior experience was 5e D&D. But they had very little trouble grasping how the game works, and that it was focused on the conflicts between some key characters, including their PCs.

(What was interesting to me - and a shoutout to @zakael19 here, who I think may not be surprised in the way that I was - was that in all the conflicts, they opted to resolve via negotiation, rather than allowing matters to flow through to the default PC-debuff rules that apply if negotiation is unsuccessful. So I think they would find Burning Wheel a bit more jarring because it does not have a negotiation "out clause"; bit I don't think they would find BW at all confusing, once I explained it to them and play got going.)

This idea that anything that departs from either "living world" AD&D-esque RPGing, or more contemporary "let's all just be our characters and talk to one another" RPGing (what @TwoSix calls thespianism), is too weird to understand - "nonsensical" is the word that you've used - is one that I can't really credit.

Most people don't find things nonsensical just because they're not to their taste, and or not something they're immediately familiar with.

 

[pemerton]

But I’m also just a rando on the internet

Does this mean that you're secretly Vincent Baker?

 

[CreamCloud0]

Couldn't you just fluff it as an ability from your past and limit your usage to one creature if using 2024... What downsides are you seeing to the change?

personally: having hunter's mark-a spell i know deep in my soul i will never like or willingly use-built directly into the backbone of the ranger-a class concept and design that i otherwise deeply enjoy.

and as AnotherGuy alludes to, it's a much less flavourful ability compared to the 2014 abilities it replaces (they might not be particularly good abilities but that's a different issue.)