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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8604651" data-attributes="member: 42582">Right. This came up in my play.The idea seems to be that each adventure will come with a list of suggested goals - we see this in Cartographer's Companion, for instance - but they are opt-in. When I started with the Tower of Stars, one of my players chose as his goal to learn whether or not his brother - who is his starting enemy - had visited the Tower. So this is similar to your cousin or magic sword example.What is interesting and challenging to me as a GM is that, whereas in Burning Wheel I would no exactly how to run with that, in Torchbearer I have to integrate it with my prep. In this particular case I was easily able to make a decision about where that information could be found; but haven't yet thought about how I would pick it up and run with it in more dramatic/thematic terms.EDIT to add:A related example from play - in my second session, the player of the Dreamwalker PCFea-bella tried to Circles up her Elven Ranger friend. And failed. The player had included the Dream Haunted trait in the dice pool (because everyone knows that Dreamwalker's learn where their friends are via their dreams!). So I opted for a twist - in her dreams, Fea-bella saw that her (starting) enemy Megloss had captured the ranger Glothfindel while he was travelling to the Tower of Stars hoping to meet Fea-bella there.This opens up the possibility of a new Goal for Fea-bella: I will rescue Glothfindel from Megloss.Again, what I'm still trying to get a feel for is how this interplay of player-driven and GM-curated elements works. I know how to do it in Burning Wheel; but Torchbearer has the extra aspects of The Grind, Conditions etc which create the "skilled play" pressure, and seem to invite more GM curation in setting up the adventure site etc.So for me it's nothing to do with "how cool it is" and more about still learning what the game's dynamics and possibilities are.</blockquote>

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