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

Lanefan said:

Thing is, oftentimes some or even all of those 'x' events are what lead up to the following 'H' event; which means eliding or handwaving the 'x' events risks having those 'H' events happen in isolation and without coherent in-fiction explanation - kinda like a movie where the editor was ordered to shoehorn a four-hour story into a 90-minute runtime leading to a disjointed, jumpy show on the screen.

Click to expand...

Lanefan said:

Which then sounds like it's the GM determining the path of my character's revenge story via the scenes she frames me into, rather than me-as-player trying to determine that path via the actions I have the character take in the fiction....which is fair enough, but let's call it what it is.

Click to expand...

pemerton said:

Thoth successfully performed Taxidermy - against Ob 5 - to preserve the corpse, with a roll good enough to carry over +1D advantage to the Death Art test but did not what to attempt the Ob 7 Death Art (with his Death Art 5) until he could be boosted by Blood Magic. And so he sent Aedhros out to find a victim

Aedhros had helped collect the corpse, and also helped with the Taxidermy (using his skill with Heart-seeker), but was unable to help with the Death Art. He was reasonably happy to now leave the workshop; and was no stranger to stealthy kidnappings in the dark. I told my friend (now GMing) that I wanted to use Stealthy, Inconspicuous and Knives to spring upon someone and force them, at knife point, to come with me to the workshop. He called for a linked test first, on Inconspicuous with Stealth FoRKed in. This succeeded, and Aedhros found a suitable place outside a house of ill-repute, ready to kidnap a lady of the night. When a victim appeared, Aedhros tried to force a Steel test (I think - my memory is a bit hazy) but whatever it was, it failed, and the intended victim went screaming into the night. Now there is word on the street of a knife-wielding assailant.

Aedhros's Beliefs are I will avenge the death of my spouse!, Thurandril will admit that I am right! and I will free Alicia and myself from the curse of Thoth!; and his Instincts are Never use Song of Soothing unless compelled to, Always repay hurt with hurt, and When my mind is elsewhere, quietly sing the elven lays. Having failed at the most basic task, and not knowing how to return to Thoth empty-handed, Aedhros wandered away from the docks, up into the wealthier parts of the city, to the home of the Elven Ambassador. As he sang the Elven lays to himself, I asked the GM for a test on Sing, to serve as a linked test to help in my next test to resist Thoth's bullying and depravity. The GM set my Spite of 5 as the obstacle, and I failed - a spend of a fate point only got me to 4 successes on 4 dice.

My singing attracted the attention of a guard, who had heard the word on the street, and didn't like the look of this rag-clothed Dark Elf. Aedhros has Circles 3 and a +1 reputation with the Etharchs, and so I rolled my 4 dice to see if an Etharch (whether Thurandril or one of his underlings or associates) would turn up here and now to tell the guards that I am right and they should not arrest me. But the test failed, and the only person to turn up was another guard to join the first in bundling me off. So I had to resort to the more mundane method of offering them 1D of loot to leave me alone. The GM accepted this, no test required.

Then, repaying hurt with hurt, Aedhros followed one of the guards - George, as we later learned he was called - who also happened to be the one with the loot. Aedhros ambushed him from the darkness, and took him at knife point back to the workshop, where Thoth subject him to the necessary "treatment" (successful Torture test to inflict a PTGS 7 (Midi) wound), granting +2D to Death Art (and also sending George into a swoon, perhaps a blessing as it meant he did not need to witness the horrors of the Death Art performance). The dice were now rolled for the (careful) Death Art test, with 7 successes needed to raise the body from the ship as a Walking Dead. Only 6 successes (on 9 open-ended dice, with a Fate Point spent) were rolled, and so it failed. Looking at the GM advice for failed Death Art, I rolled an unwelcome summoning result, and something weird and creepy scurried out into the darkness.

And then, at that very moment - acting carefully, and failing, licenses a time-sensitive complication - there was a knock on the door. (How this door relates to the secret door onto the docks is not quite clear, but can be resolved in due course.) Serap, the maid servant of Lady Mina, had been told that Thoth was a surgeon whom she might be able to afford, to treat her mistress. She had 1D of coin to offer; Thoth insisted on 3D, and opposed Haggling checks were made (her rank 3 vs Thoth's Beginner's Luck) and they were tied, which I had agreed prior to rolling would be a 2D compromise. She paid the 1D now, and the rest would be paid after treatment.

Serap led Thoth, and Aedhros, through the streets. She had an initial shock when Thoth's sustained Wyrd Lights were revealed to be magical motes of life, rather than candles cleverly suspended from the ceiling, but only hesitated rather than swooning. The group arrived at Lady Mina's house, a grand one but past its prime. The staff were only an old watchman, and Serap. Most of the windows were in darkness. But a candle was lighting an upstairs window, and there in her sick-bed was Lady Mina. And sitting beside her, to provide religious comfort, was Father Simon. It was Father Simon who had suggested Thoth to Serap, and he now greeted him as a surgeon.

Father Simon is a NPC from earlier Burning Wheel play: the evil priest in Keep on the Borderlands, a death cultist who goes about disguised as an educated and erudite priest of the mainstream faith, who hears the confessions of noble men and women. Thoth is a Death Artist, a lifepath from the Death Cult, and he recognised Father Simon (as narrated by me as GM) and tested his Death Cult-wise (as declared by my friend, playing Thoth), to see what he recalled about this priest. But failed.

I thought about this. Although Thoth has some connection to the Death Cult, he has no affiliation with the cult, and so - as I discussed with my friend, the player of Thoth - this certainly raised the prospect that Thoth and the Cult might have some sort of unfinished business. This hung over the rest of this situation, which was the rest of the session.

Thoth performed Aura Reading on Lady Mina, and determined that she still lived, giving him +1D advantage on his surgery. Aedhros also helped with the Song of Soothing. But the test failed. And it had been performed carefully, which licensed a time-sensitive complication: I told Thoth's player that, even as he was trying to save the life of the Lady Mina, the guard George had regained consciousness and fled the workshop.

Aedhros, once again having someone die in front of him, and wishing still to be free of Thoth's curse, decided to try and heal Lady Mina himself. But with the double Ob penalty for no tools, it was an Ob 6 Song of Soothing test. Partially to have a chance of success, and also because I really wanted a Routine test for advancement, I mustered as many dice as I could: +2 for working with the care of the eternal, +1D advantage for having Thoth bring his Wyrd Lights down as close as possible, but also having to accept 2 dice of help from Thoth's Bloodletting 6. (The inner struggle and outer monologue of all this did earn me my Mouldbreaker persona.)

That test was also a failure - not a single success on 9 dice - and Lady Mina passed away.

Click to expand...

Lanefan said:

Thing is, oftentimes some or even all of those 'x' events are what lead up to the following 'H' event; which means eliding or handwaving the 'x' events risks having those 'H' events happen in isolation and without coherent in-fiction explanation - kinda like a movie where the editor was ordered to shoehorn a four-hour story into a 90-minute runtime leading to a disjointed, jumpy show on the screen.

I agree that an all-'H' game can be just as verisimilitudinous* due to the detail of the setting beneath it, but don't believe it can provide as grounded a game in the long run due to the 'jumpiness' I note above.

* - and I'm going to find a different word for this; if I have to type that one again some of my hair is getting pulled out.

Click to expand...

AlViking said:

I don't see it really being all that different in some ways than most other games, including traditional ones. If we're playing D&D, they know we're doing D&D fantasy and as a group we discuss general themes, things we're okay with or not, and then talk more specifics about the tone of play. But I see the GM as being just as much control of the game in your example as I have in my D&D game, perhaps more because the nature of the game is to have events like the Blue Coats showing up as a base assumption. Meanwhile if my D&D group is shopping unless I've hidden a Bolt of Smothering in the back (the carpets have to some from somewhere) there's likely not going to be any interruption.

In BitD it seems that the authors of the rules put in triggers to influence pacing, in D&D it's left up to the DM. Neither is a better approach, just different.

Click to expand...

AlViking said:

Fair enough. Although I will clarify that the players get to decide how or even if they're going to play with a toy. For that matter, if there's a toy they don't have they can always ask for it and if they like one type of toy over another I'll provide more of their favored toy.

Click to expand...

Faolyn said:

That's really not the case. Take the typical locked door. It's pretty rare that failing to pick the lock would, in and of itself, cause something interesting to happen. The interesting things that happen are if the lockpicks break, if the picker takes so long that someone finds them (or their quarry on the other side is alerted), or if failure causes a Grimtoothian door trap to be sprung. But if the only thing that happens is the party fails to get to the other side, then not only is that not interesting, but it cuts the players off from part of the adventure. You may shrug and say "hey, they can go back later," but that (a) doesn't make it more interesting now and (b) isn't the way lots of groups play.

If the fail state is instead, the party gets through the door but something bad happens (broken pick, delay, foes alerted, trap, something else), then there's no disjointed wackiness to be had unless you actively put it there for some reason.

Admittedly, some PbtA games will have a list of options that don't necessarily make sense at that particular moment in time, but like with any game, you can alter them.

Click to expand...

Lanefan said:

My take on that is if it's going to implode, let it. Just make sure the brawling stays in character.

The party I'm running right now has three Thieves in it - two pure and one multi-classed with Illusionist - out of seven characters total. All of them have some ve-ery shady things in their past (one of them outright murdered two members of an old party she was in), and two of the three have no reason to be loyal to the current party other than the well-learned lesson that having allies nearby when in the field is much more conducive to survival and prosperity than not having allies nearby.

The third does have good reason to be loyal to the party, at least for now, as the party rescued him from long-term captivity at the hands of Mind Flayers and he was and remains very grateful for that.

Click to expand...

AbdulAlhazred said:

Yes, some things are not all that different, BUT. There's always that 'but'... The context is pretty different. There's a much tighter loop in BitD. I only just now made up the Blue Coats showing up (or rolled some as an entanglement perhaps, something like that). Your prep is AT BEST happening all before the session starts, and a lot of it could have been stuff that was done weeks, maybe months or even years ago. So, it was in fact the players who chose to set some action in the midst of their fashion shopping spree, because that WILL happen, it is BitD, there's no such thing as a routine day at the mall! I'm MUCH less in charge here as GM than you are.

As for pacing itself. I just find it odd that anyone would really want to RP a stakeless shopping expedition. I mean, OK, for 5 minutes, maybe? I am not denigrating anyone's fun, just saying we're here to do fantasy RPG, lets get to it! I literally start to nod off when people start into this kind of wool gathering sort of play. It just isn't compelling.

Click to expand...

AlViking said:

Failing to pick a lock will never lead to a dead end in my game. The person they were chasing might get away, they may have to find an alternate route, they may have to break the door down which may or may not trigger consequences. Interesting things aren't artificially triggered in the games I want to play, interesting things happen because there's a logical reason for the interesting thing to happen.

Click to expand...

Faolyn said:

That too. No matter the system, you can add consequences instead of simple failures.

Sure, sometimes straight-out failure should be an option, but in my mind that would be, like, a low-level rogue trying to pick an incredibly complicated, super-high quality lock created by a master locksmith, or something like that--but those should be used sparingly, and it certainly shouldn't be the only way through.

Click to expand...