Search results

That's presuming the PCs are strangers to the game's setting. After playing in some distinctly unsatisfactory games built around that presumption I strongly prefer to presume the PCs know at least the part of the setting where play begins.

I don't think the ideal would be for the GM to start knowing nothing about the characters. Especially not if the campaign is intended to eventually reflect the characters' interests and goals.

Can the GM discover who the PCs are?

And these different preferences are only a problem in two situations that I've seen. One is when there are people at the table with different preferences on this and it leads to play not matching expectations. The solution here of course is to talk about it like reasonable people and figure...

I don't disagree and I apologize for drifting this from where you wanted it.

I guess I don't entirely see the huge discrepancy between martials and casters as some people do. That might be because in the most recent D&D campaigns I've run it hasn't been the casters who've been the most powerful characters or even the ones mostly driving the game. I'm open to the idea...

Inviting the players to add details during play also works. I have a setting I've written up parts of that I tend to fall back on for D&D and related games. My other fallback is "The Real World + Weird." Asking the players for details in Session Zero works for either.

There may be something to this though the Bear Totem might not be the best example of it. I know that some people found it to be less overpowered than others but my own experience was that it was powerful enough that it skewed things. It has looked to me from reading the playtest documents as...

It is probable that the sorts of people who are drawn to worldbuilding are drawn to GMing games that allow or encourage or require the GM to build the world ahead of play. It is certainly a pleasure that is not typically part of the experience of play for anyone else at the table. Whether that...

I am fortunate that many of my friends who are gamers are married to others of my friends who are gamers. That cuts down some on dividing couples or one partner misunderstanding this whole gaming thing and why the other partner cares about it. We have found that every other week tends to make...

You are correct. My thinking was that the tables would reflect the difference but frequency of rolls could also serve.

If the information the PCs get is only that one path is likely to be less dangerous than the other I don't see how rolling on the appropriate table can be an impingement on player agency. The GM rolling on the same table no matter what path the PCs take would probably be.

I wouldn't expect them to be. I think my discussion with @pemerton et alia was not particularly about gaming the GM though it might have spun off that discussion.

My consideration was more that the beliefs not on the character sheet would be either mostly redundant or secondary. I agree that having a character's most important beliefs not on the character sheet would at least tend toward bad faith.

No worries. Feel free to consider that sentence a rhetorical answer.

I wouldn't say that boring muddled play is an advantage. My point was that you can put the things you think will be interesting to play toward or things you are willing to see as stakes on your sheet. The things you are willing to see as stakes. There may well be things about your character you...

It's my understanding that the closest you can come to a "hidden agenda" in Burning Wheel or anything PbtA or FitD is by having character traits or beliefs you don't put on the character sheet so they never come up as stakes. Whether this is "degenerate bad faith play" is a thing I'll leave for...

Yup.

How was I quick to dismiss anything that didn't deserve to be dismissed quickly? The attack and damage rolls attacking the orc are engaging with the mechanics and following the rules of D&D. The player doesn't just get to declare max damage or anything like that. The player making a Circles...

And the poster I was responding has apparently edited the post in an attempt to make the connections less obvious. The original phrasing was "makes a request." Which makes all of this "difference" really not applicable. The point was that just as D&D has rules for killing orcs Burning Wheel has...