Search results

There are all sorts of things that fly in one game that would not fly in another. Creating a normative standard around what would fly in general is not really helpful. Almost every game on my shelf has stuff that would not fly under other contexts: Self-Control rolls in Vampire to not eat...

No one can really speak to individual games but Burning Wheel games will tend to be more personal and more intimate because the game centers personal and intimate stakes, it makes them the focus. Individual tables might vary - we can only speak to tendencies. I have played in some personal...

NT

At the very least Tomb of Horrors was designed to see if it could kill Robilar! That's more GM desires for the character though!

Worlds Without Number asks the GM to create an adventure based on what players say the group wants to do the next session, with the following process: 1. Identify the Purpose of the Adventure 2. Pick A Primary Challenge for the adventure. 3. Use the challenge tools to flesh it out. 4. Add extra...

It's about the game-ability of players acting as their characters, about being able to achieve outcomes through smart play of both the fiction and mechanics. So, it's stuff like telegraphing traps and what NPCs care about adding to your agency to achieve your objectives so that success and...

If we are going to break up agency in terms of character agency and content authority / meta-agency I think we should also talk about agency as a player of a game as at least a separate concern. Especially in the realm of Sandbox play where Into the Odd and Worlds Without Number put a much...

Part of consent is agreeing to the premise of the game. Agreeing to play Apocalypse Keys includes consenting to play a game where will be a harbinger of the apocalypse is at stake. Agreeing to play Vampire means agreeing to play a game where you struggle against a biblical Beast that hungers for...

So, if we are going to talk about Burning Wheel in terms of its play norms, we would not discuss the fitness of its rules to the situation, but the fitness of the situation to its structure of play. Because if we assume based on established fiction and our sense of what is plausible that the...

That just brings us full circle wherein conventional play is assumed to be worthy of respect and less conventional forms of play must justify themselves in terms of conventional play norms which they do not conform to. That's utter horse hockey.

People have literally said things like: Your play priorities are self-centered It rips out the heart of roleplaying It offers no agency It is artificial It is mechanically focused While trying to analyze it from the perspective of play conventions that are not in effect. It seems to me that...

Throughout the context of this conversation the conception of agency based on conventions of play not in effect in other games has been used to claim that they offer less agency. Would you say that is a mistake?

Sandra calls it "blorb" because she wants to avoid having the definitional arguments that come from people using the dictionary meaning of what is a term of art in to stretch the meaning of the concept. By just calling it "blorb" she's able to define exactly what she means. We have seen why...

On Plausibility: What I would say looking at my own GMing and self-scouting I have done after the fact is that I find say running Stars Without Number to the instructions it provides (and referencing blorb principles) to the best of my ability that I am still making aesthetic decisions that fit...

I think your ability to decide what your characters says and does should absolutely be considered part of agency. I also think the impact of those decisions and ability to influence or compel what other people say and do, particularly the GM, is a key part of it because we are playing a game...

What are you getting at here Micah? The post were responding to was meant to respond to questions about where the personal part of the game comes in and answered that it comes from the overall approach, the way we do our game setup, the way we approach situation/scene framing. That the...

We end up discussing mechanics so often because discrete mechanics are sort of easy red meat, but the discrete mechanisms are really only important within the context of the holistic design of a game. What brings the emotional depth to a Narrativist game is the intentions we bring, the work we...

So, Burning Wheel beliefs are beliefs - something we question - not something we reinforce. That's a key part of the difference between Narrativist play and genre enforcement games (like L5R 5e). The premise is a question, not an answer. The game is about fundamentally playing through...

It is a convention of D&D (and many other roleplaying games) that players author their characters (for the most part) and GMs (for the most part) author the setting. It is also a convention that only magical social influence is allowed to have teeth. But these conventions of play are not some...

All let it ride does is elide place and time. So instead of a roll to sneak past these guards, then another roll to sneak past these other guards if you succeed you are outside the cell of the damsel you intend to rescue or in the bedchambers of your traitorous brother, ready to confront him...