Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
I think at this point we can pretty clearly see that the DoW rules do indeed restrict the actions of the losing character, PC or NPC. That's fine if that's what you want.It's not against the spirit of the rules to carry a waterskin. But I was asked why the character didn't have one, and answered.
As for the other things, they are answered, And I've posted the answers in this thread, multiple times. Including most recently in post 7506.
In English, "agree to" and "agree with" are not synonyms. The latter means something like to share, or to come to share, the belief/opinion of another. The former means something like to undertake to perform a task at the behest of another. A Duel of Wits can generate the latter outcome. But does not generate the former - that's up to the participant controlling the character.
For instance, when Aramina was persuaded to repair Thurgon's armour, that doesn't change how she feels about him. But it does mean that she has agreed to do the task that he has requested of her.
This is why there is heading that says "not Mind Control".
Where are you positing that he says this?
If you are putting a lot of weight on "winner takes all" then there is a degree of truth to what you say, because of the compromise rules - although it is possible to lose a Duel of Wits without inflicting any loss on the opponent's body of argument (that has happened to me playing Thurgon), in which case the winner does take all.
But the rules absolutely are for arguments between PCs. That's obvious, and has been obvious to me since I first read them. Upthread I posted the text from The Codex where Luke Crane talks about the effect the rules have had on play at his table. And here is a bit form p 104 of Revised:
Two players are arguing because one player wants to have his character take some rash, adventure-ending action. The player arguing against taking the rash action loses the duel. However, he punched significant holes in his friend's argument. The rash-acting character still won the duel, so he can proceed as planned, but he must compromise a bit: He agrees to enact his plan later.
If the game participant controlling the losing character (player vis-a-vis PC; GM vis-a-vis NPC) could just ignore the outcome, then there would be no point having the system and using it to generate an outcome!
But if a character is arguing in a Duel of Wits and decides to abandon their argument, then there is no conflict. They can just agree with what the other person is saying. If you want to frame this in mechanical terms, they hesitate, permitting the other person's Points to go through unopposed. (And mechanically, they would be bound, as a loser of the DoW.) This is analogous to a character, in combat, choosing to take no action, permitting their opponent to run them through.
I actually think we do know. We have the rules, which are pretty clear, supplemented by the commentary.
And as I posted already in reply to you, we also have the example of how Torchbearer breaks the DoW down into three different conflict types (which matters, in TB2e, because it changes the relevant skills and also how the conflict interacts with TB2e's Precedence mechanic): convince crowd, negotiate and convince. In BW terms, convince crowd is a Duel of Wits using Oratory to win over a crowd, such as the attempt to convince the prince; negotiate is a DoW using Haggling to get a good deal; and convince is a DoW using Persuasion or Interrogation to get someone to agree to do something or tell you something. (The two other "Duelling Skills" mentioned are Rhetoric and Stentorious debate. The latter is a Dwarven skill the can be used as Oratory, Haggling or Persuasion. The former is a specialised skill that is not easy to get, and that can be used in any DoW but only in a DoW.)
A general principle of interpretation, which works as well for rules as anything else, is that if one candidate interpretation makes the rule a nonsense and another doesn't, the other is to be preferred.
But in this case I don't think we even need to deploy that principle. The rules are clear, and they have been elaborated via the commentary in The Adventure Burner that was reprinted in The Codex. The commentary both in the rulebooks and in the later works is pretty opinionated an unambiguous.
And so I am pretty confident that I grasp Luke Crane's design and its logic. And there are three further bits of evidence that make me confident of this:
*When I play Burning Wheel, it works out exactly as his rulebook tells me it will;*I had to make a decision about how to mechanically operationalise the Force of Will spell, and I decided that it changed one Belief of the target - in a later version of the rules (Gold Revised) the spell was updated in exactly this way;*Luke Crane called out one of my Torchbearer actual play reports on his own discussion forum, in pretty favourable terms.
If you don't care for the game, then don't play it. That's pretty straightforward! But it's not a game that is confusing or confused about how it is to be played, how it works, and what sort of experience it will deliver.
I think, for those who are not familiar with BW, that a gloss on this can help: what makes something a "big deal" is not any objective property of it (eg war and peace; life and death; wealth or poverty; etc) but how it relates to a player's priorities for their PC.
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.
I think a gloss on this can help too. As the rules say (Revised p 98),
[Walking away] is a valid method of preserving the sanctity of one's pride and one's argument, but it may allow your opponent to reign unchecked and control the outcome of the situation. Noe, though, if a player chooses to walk away, he must shut up. No more talking about it with him!
That passage is written in Luke Crane's characteristic style, moving between the "in fiction" perspective and the "at the table" perspective. Nevertheless it is pretty clear, to me at least. Walking away means surrendering whatever was at stake. As a participant in the game, your character is not party to it, but you've given up control over it. It's a BW analogue to what in AW and similar games would be described as ignoring a soft move and thus handing the GM a golden opportunity on a plate.
I would add: and they're bound by the outcome. If they lose the Haggling duel, and so agree to pay (say) 3 cash dice for the <whatever it is they're haggling over>, then they have to hand over the cash. They're not precluded from trying to steal their cash back, though.
This requires players to be honest rather than cheaters, just like any other game. When the PCs in my TB2e game were persuaded by Lareth to help persuade the pirates to tithe to him, in the course of persuading him to acknowledge Fea-bella as his half-sister, they couldn't just ignore their promise. They had to follow up on it. (And, given that it is now a player priority, naturally I framed scenes that spoke to it - in reasonably short order the PCs found themselves embroiled in the machinations of the river pirates in Nulb.)
That's really all there is as far as I can tell.
