NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8287075" data-attributes="member: 42582">Upthread I referred to a story with a recognisable structure - rising action, crisis/climax, resolution/denouement. This does not require a 3 act, or 5 act, or any other structure of that sort (and Robin Laws has a brief but nice discussion of this point in the HeroQuest revised rulebook). It does require something meaningful to be at stake - so that there can be pressure during the rising action, and then a crisis in respect of it, and some sort of outcome in relation to that.Playing ToH as it is written won't deliver that. All the time spent discussing how to navigate around the pits; what sort of object to poke into the various doorways and portals; who should be the one to pick up the <whatever is salient in the current room>; etc, etc, etc; will make that sort of thing impossible. Most of the action declaration will carry no thematic weight; nothing will be at stake besides the "technical" success of a manoeuvre, and in some cases whether or not a character dies because a wrong guess was made or a wrong conclusion drawn about the correct technical solution.WPM is more gonzo, and so will produce some more moments of amusement, but otherwise will play basically the same.To say that that sort of play does not produce story in the sense described above is not to criticise it. I enjoy running, and cycling, not competitively but just as a thing to do, and neither of them produces story in the sense described above either! Nor does solving crosswords, something else I sometimes do. Nor does playing most board or cardgames Nor does posting on ENworld, but I spend my leisure time on that as well!Conversely, there are RPGs which can - via various system features including allocations of authorial responsibility and resolution techniques adopted - reliably deliver story of the sort described above. The suggestion that players in these games are just along for the ride strikes me as a claim that can only be based in ignorance. is that your claim? To me it would seem particularly odd given that in any thread when someone posts about the techniques that are used to achieve this (and we've seen it in this thread) those who are mostly familiar with D&D and D&D-adjacent RPGs respond with Then why would you even need a GM if the players get to do all that stuff?But anyway, a simple example of acquiring equipment can draw the contrast.* In B/X, AD&D, 3E or 5e, the default way to acquire equipment is to look up its cost on a chart, compare that to the money tally on one's PC sheet, deduct the former (cost) from the latter (tally) and write the equipment on the list on one's sheet. Occasionally the GM might say that something isn't available. There is no rule that tells us if and when a check might be called for, on what basis, etc. * In Burning Wheel, the default way to acquire equipment is to declare an action, on Resources. Either the GM says 'yes', in which case the player just writes down the new equipment; or if the desire to acquire the gear implicates a (player-authored) Belief in some way then the GM sets an obstacle (the gear list in BW has obstacles, not prices) and the player makes a check to find out whether his/her PC can get the gear, or not; and whether anything adverse (eg dropping in Resource rating) flows from the attempt.On the first approach, acquiring gear is primarily an exercise in accounting. There is typically no tension or release. There are no established parameters on when a check might be required, let alone how that might or should relate to what matters to the player in the situation.On the second approach, there is no accounting unless it is a consequence of the check (either dropping in Resources, or improving if the check meets the requirements for ability improvement); and either the GM just says 'yes' and a quick change is made to the sheet, or there is a moment of tension leading to climax and resolution. BW relies on a couple of devices to modulate between success and failure - one is a variety of difficulties over the course of play, another is the players' choices about when to invest additional "fate point"-type resources into their checks. This is different from the PbtA reliance on a probability spread, or the HeroQuest revised use of difficulties modulated up or down based on the number of prior successes/failures; but it does the job.Of course there are probably few RPGing moments where the purchase of gear is the pinnacle of excitement. But I think the contrast between the above two approaches is still illustrative. D&D's approach encourages the virtues of accountancy: careful planning, calculation and optimisation. BW's approach makes planning and optimisation hard, and encourages a focus on what is at stake (in dramatic/thematic terms) and on how hard the character, as played by the player, wants to commit to owning a piece of gear.Denying these system differences, and many others like them, just seems silly to me.</blockquote>

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