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

[pemerton]

There are four options that can occur when you hesitate, although off-hand the only ones I remember are "stand and drool" and "run away screaming." I don't think it says who gets to decide what happens.

And yet it does!

In Burning Wheel, certain actions - as set out in the rules for Steel - permit the GM to call for a Steel test, if the general conditions for rolling the dice are met. On a failed test, the player chooses a hesitation reaction, one of which is "stand and drool" - ie the PC falters or hesitates.

A failed Steel test causes hesitation. From Revised p 121-2:

Steel is an attribute that represents the character's nerves. It is tested when the character is startled or shocked. The results of the test then tell us whether the character flinches, or whether he steels his nerves and carries on.

When a Steel test is failed, the player loses control of the character momentarily - just as the character loses control of his faculties. The player chooses how the character loses it, but after that the character is out of action for a few in-game seconds as he freaks out. . . .

When a player fails to get a number of successes equal to his hesitation, he's failed the Steel test. When this happens, the character stops what he is doing and loses it for a moment - for as many heartbeats as the margin of failure.​

The player has four default options for hesitation; various traits can add additional options.

The intent of the Steel rule is that it acts like a fear/awe/sanity check in any other game. It's rolled when you are "confronted with surprise, fear, pain, or wonderment." That's all it talks about until you look at the table of modifiers where murder is suddenly listed. And it's not even clear that it's talking about committing murder

And yet, on pp 124 of Revised:

Conditions for Steel Disadvantages

Being shot at +1 Ob
Being directly affected by magic +1 Ob
Witnessing a person killed +1 Ob
Small explosions +2 Ob
Committing murder +2 Ob

. . .

The increased obstacle is essentially increasing the character's hesitation. The more scary and frightening, the longer a character is likely to hesitate.​

 

[robertsconley]

Some further thoughts on my Living World Sandbox campaign as a result of working on my actual play writeup.

1) People, Not Plot, Drive a Living World
The primary mechanism that makes a Living World campaign feel alive is first-person roleplaying. After reviewing footage from one of my actual play sessions, I realized how much of what I do is drawn from improv theater, portraying characters in the moment, reacting believably based on what they know and want.

This focus on people over physics, whether mundane or supernatural, grounds the experience. It's not about “Civil War!” or “Market Collapse!” as grand external events. It's about how the bailiff responds to your letter, how the steward takes offense at your gift, or how a merchant’s daughter reacts to your proposal. These are the things that make players want to keep going. Even after the map has been explored or the kingdom won, people keep the campaign alive, in all their unpredictable, reactive, and compelling variety.

2) Mechanics Serve Adjudication, Not Narrative
In a Living World campaign, the role of the rules is clear: adjudicate what happens when characters act. Whether it’s talking to star-crossed lovers, sneaking near a campfire, charging bandits, or questioning pilgrims, what matters is whether the character succeeds in what they attempt, and what that means in the world.

The system doesn’t exist to shape scenes, create pacing, or heighten drama. Its purpose is to answer the question: “Did this work?” That answer flows into the world’s ongoing logic, not into a story beat.

3) Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations
What brings the setting to life is not just the worldbuilding, but the lives of the people shaped by it. As soap operas long ago discovered, stories of people never run dry. A Living World sandbox uses worldbuilding to inform culture, ancestry, religion, habits, and flaws. Every NPC becomes a person, not a plot device. And the result is that, as players explore, they encounter infinite diversity in infinite combinations.

The world never runs out of adventure, because people never stop living, striving, scheming, and growing. When that world is in motion, driven by its own logic, the campaign becomes a reactive engine of play.

4) A Different Kind of Challenge
Every RPG structure offers a different kind of challenge. A Living World sandbox demands a lot of its referee, it’s not easy. It asks for consistency, curiosity, and the ability to extrapolate how events ripple outward. It’s best with proactive players who want to set their own goals.

But what it offers in return is a unique challenge:
The world doesn’t work against you or for you. It just is. It moves forward, and it’s up to you whether your hopes and ambitions survive contact with it. Some may view an indifferent world as a detriment, but what it offers is consistency and fairness. Characters rise or fall on their own merits, based on the actions the players choose as their characters.

Games like Blades in the Dark and Burning Wheel offer equally sharp challenges, but of a different nature. In BitD, play is structured like a TV episode. The player characters are always the focal point. In Burning Wheel, the core challenge is in testing character motivations against adversity (and that’s crucial, BW’s structure is built around whether beliefs, instincts, and goals hold up under pressure). In both games, play revolves around the PCs.

In a Living World sandbox, the world isn’t centered on the PCs, but it does respond to them. Their challenge is to rise within a world that keeps moving with or without them.

None of these approaches are “better.” Each has distinct creative goals, with techniques and methods that flow logically from them. As a result, they produce different play experiences and serve their fans well.

 

[thefutilist]

This is a real gray area. I mean characters base their decision on what their goals and interests are, but then so do wuxia characters. But they live in world of wuxia, and they are created with wuxia as a foundational concept (I wouldn't generally introduce NPCs wildly out of genre for example). I would say genre emulation is going on here. I am not sure what you mean by genre recreation. One thing I would avoid is doing something like imposing a 4 act wuxia movie structure on the session (I might do this in a different kind of campaign, but not in my wuxia sandboxes). So isn't going to flow like a wuxia movie. But it is going to have many wuxia elements in it

This is one of those things that's a nightmare to describe and it's often the Narrativist final boss.


Let's say your warrior has been ordered by the Emperor to kill someone but fights occur and stuff and suddenly you're in a position where you can go and help your friend or follow the emperors orders. You choose to follow the Emperors orders.

If the group enjoyment is 'yeah this is just like Wuxia stuff.' Then it's genre enjoyment. A mutual appreciation of the genre.

If the group enjoyment is 'wow warrior really is picking orders over helping his friend', then it's thematic enjoyment.


Another way to describe it, maybe an easier way, or a way that worked for me.

If you're playing super heroes and there's a no kill rule because super heroes don't kill. Then I'd consider that genre enjoyment rather than Narrativist. In Narrativism we don't know if any given super hero will kill or not. Or put another way, if your fun is ruined because someone does non-genre stuff, like kill, then it's genre fun.

 

[Bedrockgames]

This is one of those things that's a nightmare to describe and it's often the Narrativist final boss.


Let's say your warrior has been ordered by the Emperor to kill someone but fights occur and stuff and suddenly you're in a position where you can go and help your friend or follow the emperors orders. You choose to follow the Emperors orders.

If the group enjoyment is 'yeah this is just like Wuxia stuff.' Then it's genre enjoyment. A mutual appreciation of the genre.

If the group enjoyment is 'wow warrior really is picking orders over helping his friend', then it's thematic enjoyment.


Another way to describe it, maybe an easier way, or a way that worked for me.

If you're playing super heroes and there's a no kill rule because super heroes don't kill. Then I'd consider that genre enjoyment rather than Narrativist. In Narrativism we don't know if any given super hero will kill or not. Or put another way, if your fun is ruined because someone does non-genre stuff, like kill, then it's genre fun.

I mean they are probably going to act like characters in a wuxia setting. We are there to experience a taste of wuxia and to bring Shaw Brothers sets to life. But their actions stem more from them being molded after wuxia characters in the first place. But if someone decides to do something that is extremely wuxia appropriate, that is cool. We like that. But we are also not weighing in as a group on what is okay to explore. Wuxia also has recurring themes though, so those themes do often play a role in a campaign. Generally though this kind of sandbox isn't heavily thematic like that. But you are going to have cycles of revenge for example.

 

[Old Fezziwig]

@pemerton, I appreciate the glosses. One thing I thought of that I think I've mentioned previously --

So resolving a disagreement that no one cares about but the two people involved - eg Thurgon and Aramina, over whether she should repair his armour - is not a misuse of the rules. It's a core intended use case.

This is exactly why I say that BW is really good at intimate stakes and content. It allows for the system to engage on really small scale stuff and give it teeth such that I don't feel like time spent there is wasted. My biggest mistake from my longest BW game was to start out with a large save-the-world situation. It was really hard to get our hands around the thing for scenes and stake setting.

 

[pemerton]

This is exactly why I say that BW is really good at intimate stakes and content. It allows for the system to engage on really small scale stuff and give it teeth such that I don't feel like time spent there is wasted.

Absolutely agreed. For me, the resolution system(s) bring(s) this stuff into sharp focus.

Another example I mentioned upthread - but at post 7526 (or thereabouts) I'll indulge myself and mention again - is Tru-leigh looking around for a vessel. At the table, the player is rolling dice and we're all looking to see what happens, and that pause as we wait to find out correlates with me imagining Tru-leigh desperately looking around. It focuses my thought on what is at stake here and will Tru-leigh get what he wants?

Whereas deciding via fiat - yes, of course there's a cup - would shift the focus on whether or not he can carry out his plan, as opposed to the tension of that moment of desperation as the blood flows away.

Anyway, as I said I think we're agreed!

My biggest mistake from my longest BW game was to start out with a large save-the-world situation. It was really hard to get our hands around the thing for scenes and stake setting.

I've never tried anything like that in BW. Some of Luke Crane's commentary points towards it. But even when we've done 4 and 5 LP characters, the stakes have always been pretty personal.

 

[Old Fezziwig]

I've never tried anything like that in BW. Some of Luke Crane's commentary points towards it. But even when we've done 4 and 5 LP characters, the stakes have always been pretty personal.

It didn't quite work until we got personal. If I recall correctly, the general advice on the BW forums at the time I was playing was that you're generally better starting small and building your way out to something big. We started big, and it was suboptimal.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I mean I'm jumping the gun because I don't really know how sable or bedrock actually play.


In principle all the stuff you mention is fine. If secret backstory means they all end up dragooned into doing some adventure stuff on the other side of the world, so be it.


As long as the following four things apply:

Drama and group interest in it

Emergence (Even if it's done through secret backstory and GM fiat)

Character decisions aren't based on genre recreation.

Important stuff isn't decided by player skill


Then I'd classify it as Narrativist. Everything else is just various dials. I do have a caveat though, which honestly might apply. If there isn't drama in a session and the group is fine with that, then maybe not after all.

It's kind of arbitrary but you can spend a session doing small talk while shopping, if you do two sessions doing small talk while shopping then yeah it's a push to say that's Narrativist because there's no drama. (if the groups happy just doing endless mundane stuff that is)

Also I really do mean group fun. If your players are turtled up and going along with stuff except for some thespo moments. Then I'm going to raise an eyebrow no matter what you're doing. Also if you have to stick with the party then I'm going to disqualify it (maybe that's arbitrary but these are my rules). Although it's the latter clause that probably disqualifies a whole lot of play.

My feeling is that all, or most, of this is negotiable. Much like @robertsconley and @Bedrockgames both say there are 'many flavors' of living world (and I have no reason to disagree) there are equally many flavors of Narrativist play, maybe more. Some of them I probably don't like! In the end I'm not one to die on the hill of this or that game deserves a specific label. I have opinions about what is what, but sticking to narrow definitions is generally counterproductive when taken too far.

 

[pemerton]

It didn't quite work until we got personal. If I recall correctly, the general advice on the BW forums at the time I was playing was that you're generally better starting small and building your way out to something big. We started big, and it was suboptimal.

Makes sense.

I really want to echo @AbdulAlhazred's description of DW - if the GM frames a scene, and then a player declares an action, the system just sort-of goes. And that's because of how it calls for checks when things are at stake, even if they're easy, and how outcomes are resolved.

Sometimes there can be challenges, as a GM, in thinking of stuff to say - we all have our moments of writer's block - but there's never a systemic or structural stalling. And I've found TB2e to be the same (admittedly I'm probably drifting the latter as close to BW as is possible while sticking to its rules for the grind, conditions, phases, events, etc).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Makes sense.

I really want to echo @AbdulAlhazred's description of DW - if the GM frames a scene, and then a player declares an action, the system just sort-of goes. And that's because of how it calls for checks when things are at stake, even if they're easy, and how outcomes are resolved.

Sometimes there can be challenges, as a GM, in thinking of stuff to say - we all have our moments of writer's block - but there's never a systemic or structural stalling. And I've found TB2e to be the same (admittedly I'm probably drifting the latter as close to BW as is possible while sticking to its rules for the grind, conditions, phases, events, etc).

What I like with DW is when I am kind of at a loss about what to say, I just go back to square one. Something fantastic, thrilling, threatening, and relevant to the characters happens. So, an ancient huge red dragon appears and demands all their treasure and magic items, or else!