Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6791128" data-attributes="member: 42582">[MENTION=6778044]Ilbranteloth[/MENTION] - the BW rules for "intent and task" can be downloaded for free from DriveThruRPG <a href="http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/98542/Burning-Wheel-Gold-Hub-and-Spokes" target="_blank">here</a>. It is elaborated in the Adventure Burner, which is the closest thing BW has to a GM's guide - at the moment I don't have that ready-to-hand to quote, but it elaborates on the relationship between intent and task in failure narration. The key passage on p 31 of BW Gold is this:When the dice are rolled and don’t produce enough successes to meet the obstacle, the character fails. What does this mean? It means the stated intent does not come to pass.Page 32 continues:When a test is failed, the GM introduces a complication. “You can try to pick the lock, but you don’t have much time. It is highly likely that the guards will return before you finish.” Try not to present flat negative results - "You don’t pick the lock.” Strive to introduce complications through failure as much as possible.This has nothing to do with things that "the DM finds unacceptable". It certainly has nothing to do with "lazy DMs". As per the passage I've quoted upthread from <a href="https://isabout.wordpress.com/2010/02/16/the-pitfalls-of-narrative-technique-in-rpg-play/" target="_blank">Eero Tuivonen</a>, narrating complications that are appropriate to the player's specified intent and task, and that deploy and build on existing backstory, and that challenge the player (and thereby the PC) in an engaging way, is a GM skill that is not trivial to master.The reason is does not relate to things that are "unacceptable", or to "blocking", is because in these games there is no "scenario." The GM does not prepare that sort of backstory in advance. The backstory is narrated in response to the failures, in the forms of the complications and consequences that result from the PCs trying things but not realising their intents.Whether or not, in the course of this, the PCs do or don't succeed at the tasks in question is secondary.</blockquote>

Verification