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

[Micah Sweet]

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.

I would explain some more why I feel the rules BW follows sometimes lead to what I consider nonsensical results from my perspective, but I am apparently not capable of doing that without being taken as insulting by its enthusiasts.

Agree to disagree.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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

Sure, but lets imagine I start endlessly picking on how, why, when, and under what circumstances XP awards are given in, say 5e. What would your reaction be? Sure, you'd explain the rules, to some degree, in answer to my questions, but at some point you will conclude that my endless nitpicking about why is it that a goblin is worth more XP than a kobold is just not reasonable, right? @pemerton explained the whole blood -> cup -> belief -> etc. thing in his BW example pretty thoroughly, did he not? I've never read or played BW and I think I have a pretty good handle on what was being discussed at this point. No doubt there are additional subtleties that haven't been investigated, but I do not understand what mystifies anyone. Surely we're all intelligent people who have mastered some fairly complex games...

 

[Lanefan]

See, I don't even mind the idea that a lion could cause fear with its roar. Lion roars are scary and can be heard up to five miles away! But then I'd want there to be a rule that rangers and druids are immune or have advantage since they understand big cats better and know how to mollify them. They'd be like those park rangers that have lions coming over to nuzzle and snuggle them. And that would lead to the exception either being put in the class write-up, leading to people being upset at this extra bonus, or the exception being put into the creature stats, which would lead to "why are rangers and druids immune to a lion's roar but not <insert other beast that causes fear>, and then someone invents savannah elves or PC wemics and wants them to be immune, but we're back to inserted ability being OP, and the whole thing would be a mess.

It'd also lead to people complaining about exception-based design.

Personally, as lions are mundane creatures I wouldn't want to give them what mechanically appears to be a supernatural ability; but it'd be a trivial exercise to write up a "dire lion" or something else adjacent-but-fantistical that had such an ability.

 

[Lanefan]

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

Where's murder in there?

In fairness I think there's a few other situations where a Steel check is mandated, and committing murder is covered there.

My objection isn't to the mechanic being invoked in that specific situation, it's to the mechanic's existence in the first place as a hammer against player agency.

 

[Lanefan]

That's just a convoluted way of saying that my children have a false belief about what actually happened.

And this is to me very bizarre. I've never heard of a RPG game where the GM is actually setting out to keep it secret that the fiction is fictional.

There's a difference between

a) keeping it secret that the fiction is fictional, and
b) knowing it's fictional but treating it and imagining it as if it was real anyway.

My approach is b) above; I know my setting is fictional but when thinking about what happens in it I think about it as if it's real. I (try to) approach play in other settings from the same angle: I imagine it as if it's real, and proceed from there.

Yes? I think everyone knows this. My point is that this is the GM doing things, making decisions. So describing it as "the imaginary world responding to what the players have their PCs do" is metaphorical at best.

So what? If the metaphor holds up as it should, the decisions the GM makes will be grounded in the setting and its fiction to the point where it might as well be real.

Which is my point, and @hawkeyefan's point, and @AbdulAlhazred's point. The GM can't eschew responsibility for their contributions to the game by trying to offload that responsibility to "the world" - a thing that they are authoring and making decisions about. And every time something happens in "the world" that is the GM making a decision and impressing their vision upon the shared fiction.

Again, so what? It's the GM's job to present that world. We all have different ways of doing that, some arguably better than others, but in the end we still have to present a setting and stage on which the players' characters can perform.

 

[pemerton]

There's a difference between

a) keeping it secret that the fiction is fictional, and
b) knowing it's fictional but treating it and imagining it as if it was real anyway.

My approach is b) above; I know my setting is fictional but when thinking about what happens in it I think about it as if it's real.

A GM who is pretending to themself that it the fiction is real - and hence who sets out to disclaim to themself any responsibility for what "the world" is and how it unfolds - is in my view (i) odd and (ii) being a bit careless in their attitude towards their role in the game.

My (ii) is also my understanding of what @hawkeyefan is getting at in saying that a good GM should be thinking of the work the fiction will be doing in the play of the game.

 

[pemerton]

If the metaphor holds up as it should, the decisions the GM makes will be grounded in the setting and its fiction to the point where it might as well be real.

Notice how, if we don't ever step outside the metaphor, we can't tell if it's holding up as it should!

 

[Lanefan]

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 list operational concerns etc. as if they are somehow unrelated to and-or disconnected from the goals etc. of the characters.

This is not true.

Operational concerns, equipment, supplies and the like are elements that help determine the relative ease or difficulty of achieving those goals; doors and traps are simply obstacles. I just don't see the point of skipping over all those details.

 

[Lanefan]

A GM who is pretending to themself that it the fiction is real - and hence who sets out to disclaim to themself any responsibility for what "the world" is and how it unfolds - is in my view (i) odd and (ii) being a bit careless in their attitude towards their role in the game.

My (ii) is also my understanding of what @hawkeyefan is getting at in saying that a good GM should be thinking of the work the fiction will be doing in the play of the game.

I'll cop to "odd"; I've been called much worse.

But I don't see how this makes me careless in my attitude toward my role in the game.

 

[pemerton]

I don't see how this makes me careless in my attitude toward my role in the game.

If you are pretending to yourself that the stuff you are marking up is not made up, then that seems like an obstacle to taking care in what it is that you make up, and how it will support the RPGing that it is being made up for.