D&D General Fighting Law and Order

[pemerton]

And this brings up my questions about horror, mysteries, and twists.

What if the purpose (or one possible purpose) of the spellbooks (or some other item) is to provide a twist in the game?

In Burning Wheel, that would be the result of a failure - like the actual twist I've posted about a few times now, namely, Thurgon finding letters that seem to indicate he is the grandson of the evil wizard Evard.

Here's this MacGuffin that other people are going to want to use, possibly for harm. Do the players keep a hold on it? Try to destroy it? Use it for themselves? They may never have thought to even look for the MacGuffin, but here it is.

In my Torchbearer game, one of the PCs found a gem, and failed in a spiritual conflict with the dream-spirit that inhabits it. Hence she is cursed by the gem (somewhat like Gollum and the Ring). Mechanically, the way this works is that it requires the player to write a particular Belief for their PC, namely, about hoarding the ring, protecting it from being stolen, etc. Thematically, the cursed gem was not a MacGuffin that (in thematic terms) comes from nowhere: being an Elfstone housing the dream spirit of an outcast Dwarf, it clearly resonated with the two PCs, and Elven Dreamwalker and a Dwarven Outcast.

In a Burning Wheel game that I GMed, one of the PCs was dominated by a Dark Naga. (In BW the spell is called Force of Will.) The descriptive wording of that spell is that "The caster’s words become thoughts, embedded and resonating against the victim’s personality for the rest of his/her days, as if the victim had formulated them him-/ herself". Mechanically, the way I resolved this was to require the payer of that PC to rewrite one of his Beliefs as being oriented towards service of the Dark Naga. (We worked out the details in a conversation that took probably five or so minutes.) I was quite pleased to see that my approach later became official, in that a reprinting of the rules a few years later adopted the same mechanical implementation of the spell (which, earlier, had been silent on how it worked mechanically). This reinforced my confidence that I have a good technical grasp of the game as intended by its designers.

A similar mechanical technique could be used to emulate, for instance, Raistlin's possession by the spirit of Fistandantilus. This is a strong element of this family of games, permitting classic tropes like curses and possession to be part of the game, without the upshot being that the GM tells the player how to play their PC.

There was an example of Thurgon's grandpa being a demon. Does this mean anything in the greater world now? Or is it just a personal torment that has no bearing on anything unless the PCs bring it up again. Can the GM have this new fact affect Thurgon in any way?

Thurgon drove of a demon outside Evard's tower, by force of arms. As a result, he earned an infamous reputation in the Hells, as an intransigent demon foe. Reputations are one element of PC build that can be used to represent the meaning to others of some fact about a PC, or some event in their life. Is that the sort of thing you mean?

 

[pemerton]

The MacGuffin needs to address one of the character's beliefs.

Just to add to this: the "needs" here does not describe a veto power enjoyed by any participant; it refers to a normative expectation that applies to the GM. If the GM doesn't conform to that expectation, then the game will play more-or-less as a Rolemaster or RuneQuest variant with a few extra descriptors included in the PC building process.

it depends on the players to decide what Grandpa Demon means and how it effects play. (Since we're talking hypotheticals, we'll pull pemerton out of it and sub in a generic player.) Thurgon's player could rewrite a belief framed around newly discovered his demonic heritage and how Thurgon will handle it. For instance, I'm nothing like Evard, and I'll prove it by making recompense for his foul deeds could drive play in interesting directions. Or Aramina's player could rewrite her belief of I don't need Thurgon's pity to something more pointed, like Thurgon's protection is tainted; don't trust him! Alternately, Thurgon's beliefs could tackle this from a different angle, like I'll stop at nothing to make my mother confess to our demonic heritage. That said, if it's established in the fiction, yes, of course the GM could come back to this. If Evard's still around, then he could, for instance, be the power behind the throne in a seemingly unrelated plot. As long that plot was challenging a character's beliefs, even if the belief isn't specifically about Evard, then it's fair play to bring him back.

And to add to this: what actually happened (so far), after Thurgon and Aramina left the tower, is that they returned to Auxol, Thurgon's ancestral estate where Xanthippe still resides:

At the start of the session, Thurgon had the following four Beliefs - The Lord of Battle will lead me to glory; I am a Knight of the Iron Tower, and by devotion and example I will lead the righteous to glorious victory; Harm and infamy will befall Auxol no more!; Aramina will need my protection - and three Instincts - When entering battle, always speak a prayer to the Lord of Battle; If an innocent is threatened, interpose myself; When camping, always ensure that the campfire is burning.

Aramina's had three Beliefs - I'm not going to finish my career with no spellbooks and an empty purse! - next, some coins!; I don't need Thurgon's pity; If in doubt, burn it! and three instincts - Never catch the glance or gaze of a stranger; Always wear my cloak; Always Assess before casting a spell.

<snip>

This was heading into the neighbourhood of Auxol, and so Thurgon kept his eye out for friends and family. The Circles check (base 3 dice +1 for an Affiliation with the nobility and another +1 for an Affiliation with his family) succeeded again, and the two characters came upon Thurgon's older brother Rufus driving a horse and cart. (Thurgon has a Relationship with his mother Xanthippe but no other family members; hence the Circles check to meet his brother.)

There was a reunion between Rufus and Thurgon. But (as described by the GM) it was clear to Thurgon that Rufus was not who he had been, but seemed cowed - as Rufus explained when Thurgon asked after Auxol, he (Rufus) was on his way to collect wine for the master. Rufus mentioned that Thurgon's younger son had married not long ago - a bit of lore (like Rufus hmself) taken from the background I'd prepared for Thurgon as part of PC gen - and had headed south in search of glory (that was something new the GM introduced). I mentioned that Aramina was not meeting Rufus's gaze, and the GM picked up on this - Rufus asked Thurgon who this woman was who wouldn't look at him from beneath the hood of her cloak - was she a witch? Thurgon answered that she travelled with him and mended his armour. Then I switched to Aramina, and she looked Rufus directly in the eye and told him what she thought of him - "Thurgon has trained and is now seeking glory on his errantry, and his younger brother has gone too to seek glory, but your, Rufus . . ." I told the GM that I wanted to check Ugly Truth for Aramina, to cause a Steel check on Rufus's part. The GM decided that Rufus has Will 3, and then we quickly calculated his Steel which also came out at 3. My Ugly Truth check was a success, and the Steel check failed. Rufus looked at Aramina, shamed but unable to respond. Switching back to Thurgon, I tried to break Rufus out of it with a Command check: he should pull himself together and join in restoring Auxol to its former glory. But the check failed, and Rufus, broken, explained that he had to go and get the wine. Switching back to Aramina, I had a last go - she tried for untrained Command, saying that if he wasn't going to join with Thurgon he might at least give us some coin so that we might spend the night at an inn rather than camping. This was Will 5, with an advantage die for having cowed him the first time, against a double obstacle penalty for untrained (ie 6) +1 penalty because Rufus was very set in his way. It failed. and so Rufus rode on and now has animosity towards Aramina. As the GM said, she better not have her back to him while he has a knife ready to hand.

The characters continued on, and soon arrived at Auxol,. The GM narrated the estate still being worked, but looking somewhat run-down compared to Thrugon's memories of it. An old, bowed woman greeted us - Xanthippe, looking much more than her 61 years. She welcomed Thurgon back, but chided him for having been away. And asked him not to leave again. The GM was getting ready to force a Duel of Wits on the point - ie that Thurgon should not leave again - when I tried a different approach. I'd already made a point of Thurgon having his arms on clear display as he rode through the countryside and the estate; now he raised his mace and shield to the heavens, and called on the Lord of Battle to bring strength back to his mother so that Auxol might be restored to its former greatness. This was a prayer for a Minor Miracle, obstacle 5. Thurgon has Faith 5 and I burned his last point of Persona to take it to 6 dice (the significance of this being that, without 1 Persona, you can't stop the effect of a mortal wound should one be suffered). With 6s being open-ended (ie auto-rolls), the expected success rate is 3/5, so that's 3.6 successes there. And I had a Fate point to reroll one failure, for an overall expected 4-ish successes. Against an obstacle of 5.

As it turned out, I finished up with 7 successes. So a beam of light shot down from the sky, and Xanthippe straightened up and greeted Thurgon again, but this time with vigour and readiness to restore Auxol. The GM accepted my proposition that this played out Thurgon's Belief that Harm and infamy will befall Auxol no more! (earning a Persona point). His new Belief is Xanthippe and I will liberate Auxol. He picked up a second Persona point for Embodiment ("Your roleplay (a performance or a decision) captures the mood of the table and drives the story onward").

Turning back to Aramina, I decided that this made an impact on her too: up until now she had been cynical and slightly bitter, but now she was genuinely inspired and determined: instead of never meeting the gaze of a stranger, her Instinct is to look strangers in the eyes and Assess. And rather than I don't need Thurgon's pity, her Belief is Thurgon and I will liberate Auxol. This earned a Persona point for Mouldbreaker ("If a situation brings your Beliefs, Instincts and Traits into conflict with a decision your PC must make, you play out your inner turmoil as you dramatically play against a Belief in a believable and engaging manner").

So the most obvious way for the GM to bring Evard, or the secret ancestry, back into play would be in the context of the attempt to liberate Auxol. I don't know who Rufus's "Master" is, but I'm not going to be shocked if it turns out to be Evard in some other guise, or a shapechanged demon, or maybe even both (in that Evard may be a shapechanged demon).

 

[Faolyn]

I think you are confusing "story time" with actual play. I'm telling you that, if you read one of my BW actual play posts, you will get a sense of how the game works.

I've read your posts here and it doesn't do anything to tell me how the game works. The mechanics may make a bit of sense, but the whys don't.

Why would the PCs describe the tower they're entering? I mean they might, if they were in radio-type communication with allies and undertaking some sort of scouting operation. But equally they might enter the tower and remain silent.

I had thought you meant to ask "Do the players describe it?", but you've just reiterated that that's not what you mean. So, as I said earlier, I don't know what you've got in mind here.

You (again) misunderstood what I wrote. Either that or you are prevaricating because you don't want to answer the question. Because I refuse to believe that someone who has played since 1e doesn't understand that players think for and describe the actions of their PCs.

The PCs enter the tower. How do you, the GM, describe it to them, the PCs?

Because you said, and I quote, "But suppose that it had already been established, say via a Wises check, that Evard's entrance hall is painted all in crimson red, then of course the GM would include that in their description." Which rather suggests that yes, it's up to the PCs, who made a Wises check, to determine that the hall is red. Unless GMs also have to make Wises checks? In no game I've ever seen does the GM have to pass a check in order to describe something.

Who are you instructing to describe things? Me, here and now? An imaginary game participant? Again, I am not really following.

Do... you seriously not understand what I said?

If you're asking me how my GM described Evard's tower when Thurgon entered it, it's some years ago now and my memory is a bit hazy. I know he mentioned it was stone, and he probably mentioned the wooden beams, which in a subsequent fire in the tower collapsed.

No, I'm asking how you, as a GM, would describe something in a BW game. The PCs enter the tower. You are the GM. Describe it as if I am one of the PCs, entering the tower and seeing it for the first time. Is it a blank canvas until I, the player, make a Wises check for my PC?

By "the game" I take it you mean "the imagined setting"? Then yes, we agree, the idea that the imagined setting includes things beyond what the PCs see is a commonplace of RPGing. Off the top of my head I can't think of a RPG that takes a different approach.

And why do you keep hiding behind "imaginary game participant" and similar phrases? Do you really not get that the rest of us are capable of realizing that the events in the game aren't actually occurring and yet are also capable of treating them as if they are? Are you being a troll and trying to look down on those of us who take the game seriously enough to not call it "imagined" every two sentences?

One of the elements of Burning Wheel that would make it reasonably well suited for horror in my view - on top of the point about intimacy that Citizen Mane made - is the Steel mechanic. It helps drive home a sense of loss of control in the face of awful things.

Yeah, as a fear check, sure. Lots of games have them.

But you wrote about Steel as if it literally inhibits the player's actions in normal activities, which is far less cool.

Like, in my MotW game today, there was a battle, the squishy PCs got injured, and the werewolf had to roll to Act Under Pressure to not let their bloodlust take over. But that was a specific circumstance related to a specific curse the player choose--just like how a failed fear check could prevent a PC from attacking or cause them to flee. But you talked about a person having to make a Steel check to see if they'd be willing to kill a guy under normal circumstances, simply because the GM thought it was too ruthless an attack. Unless this check is because that PC has a Pacifism disad or something similar that prevents them from attacking willy-nilly, the Steel trait looks horribly misused by any other game's standards.

In Burning Wheel, that would be the result of a failure - like the actual twist I've posted about a few times now, namely, Thurgon finding letters that seem to indicate he is the grandson of the evil wizard Evard.

Sounds fairly dull--the only way for the game to be different is if you fail.

 

[Autumnal]

you, as a player, control thurgon, everything thurgon does is because you declare it, functionally You. Are. Thurgon. every time you quibble over 'well actually me and my character are separate entities' is sidestepping answering the question you were actually asked.

This turns out to lead into tricky questions of neurology, psychology, and philosophy, with no flippancy at all. Literally every author of fiction who’s written about their writing experience that I’ve read and literally every author of fiction I’ve ever known and talked about it with (back to and past the days of being in George R.R. Martin acknowledgements, hosting George Alec Effinger’s preview of the fourth Marîd Audran novel, etc.), and I myself when writing novels have a particular experience: the sense of chronicling events happening outside our own experience, but told or shown or otherwise conveyed from the larger world.

This is tricky, because it turns out identity and our understanding of ourselves is tricky. Plenty of good, verified and repeated experiments show that we do many actions significantly before we become consciously aware of them and tell ourselves stories later. We routinely start braking half a second or more before consciously identifying an obstacle that warrants it, for instance, and then we tell ourselves, “I saw this or heard that and then started braking.” We begin flinching before registering an incoming thrown ball we’ll want to dodge. On and on. The brain constructs images to interpolate over the eyes’ blind spots.

The upshot of all this is that “I”, the entity I think of as comprising my self the thing distinct from all is, is in significant part a sham. We don’t sense the world reliably. We don’t remember our experiences reliably. Our rationales for everything at the edges of awareness, in time and space, become ever more bogus we approach the fringes, and what actually happened and why may never become part of our consciousness at all.

(Anyone who wants to look at recent studies of this kind of thing could do worse than look at Consciousness: A Short Introduction by Susan Blackmore or The Ego Tunnel by Thomas Metzinger. And all of the above is with mature healthy minds. We break in amazingly bizarre ways, like thinking we’re dead or that we can’t see even though we react without conscious awareness to visual stimuli. See Blindsight by Peter Watts for the sf horror version.)

Art, including inventing characters and situations, is all tangled up in this. I don’t think that creativity actually happens outside our minds, channeled from cosmic consciousness or anything. But a lot of routine life’s mental activity happens in a realm where my self-consciousness never goes. And I do think that a lot of creativity does happen there and then get shoveled up into conscious territory to be used (and mis-rationalized and all).

All of which is to say that there’s a wide space between “this entered the world via my mind” and “I controlled the making of this”, to such a degree that a lot of creative can be closer to rolling the dice than making something up on purpose. This is a significant part of why I like sharing creative authority around. I’m already basically collaborating with other entities, why not invite the friends I’m playing with to join in?

To conclude this much-too-long post: no, I’m not being metaphorical about entities. Marvin Minsky argue for this back when in The Society Of Mind. More recently, Bernardo Kastrup has suggested in The Idea Of The World that the experience of more or less fully developed distinct interior personalities in dissociated personality disorder is just a more intense form of stuff we all live with all the time.

Also, this was a plot idea in Over The Edge because Jonathan Tweet was way ahead of me in some relevant reading.

Edited to add: @CreamCloud0 , I’m sorry. I don’t think you did anything to deserve this.

 

[pemerton]

See I would approach that differently - it's not that there are orcs in the hill but there are reports of ... and then go on whatever notes or ideas I had.

<snip>

If I had nothing in my notes and I was uncertain, I'd roll to resolve that uncertainty or perhaps I'll throw in some orcs because I hadn't thought about it, it doesn't contradict existing lore and I can think of a way to use them. At the point I answer the question, the player has no idea how I came to the answer. They just know they have a decent idea of the hills.

<snip>

in general I'll already have a basic idea of what's going on, there's no reason to add quantum orcs that may or may not exist based on a player's roll.

I hope you can see that someone might see a surface-level tension between the two bits that I've bolded - you flag a roll as possible, but then dismiss it as "quantum orcs". You also note that "the players have no idea".

Generally, in Burning Wheel, the players have a very good idea of where the answer came from: they know that either they just proposed it and it became part of the shared fiction (because a check succeeded, or the GM said "yes"); or they know that the GM just narrated it either as a denial of an intent (because a check failed) or as an element of framing (in which case it will speak in some fashion to a characters Belief, Instinct, Relationship or similar build element).

The fact that the player rather then the GM is the one rolling the dice to determine whether or not there are Orcs in the hills becomes an accepted part of the fiction is, in itself, somewhat minor. The fact that it means the process of content generation is transparent to the player is probably a bigger thing. The fact that all that content is related in some fashion to the players' authored concerns for their PCs (ie Beliefs and other dramatic needs) is, in my view, the biggest thing.

 

[pemerton]

Because what happens in play isn't the totality of the game.

Can you see how that might strike someone as a contradiction?

The biggest city on the map of my setting is called Waterdown. It's mentioned once or twice in the setting history. Both the maps and the setting history have been player-side viewable since the campaign started 15+ years ago.

But during the first 13-ish years that city was never even mentioned in play, let alone visited, as the run of play simply never took anyone near it. (more recently it's been mentioned and talked of on various occasions but still has yet to be visited by any played character)

So, more than a gray featureless blob even without ever entering play; because it's an element of the background setting.

This seems no different from my use of Greyhawk maps in Burning Wheel play, or my use of maps of mediaeval Europe in Prince Valiant play: there's some rather high-level geography that everyone has agreed to, and uses to help organise and index basic geographical elements of the fiction.

 

[pemerton]

This is where you lose some people, I think: your insistence that the PCs aren't doing things, when in fact it is the PCs doing those things in the fiction while the players at the table are not.

The players aren't* walking into a tower. They're declaring that their PCs walk in, and then in the fiction the PCs do the actual walking. Thus, saying "The PCs enter the tower" is perfectly valid phrasing to describe what's happening at that moment.

* - unless, that is, you've got one hell of a live-action gaming setup with real towers etc. for players to interact with.

What you say here is obvious.

My point is that @Faolyn and @CreamCloud0 are insisting (i) that it is the PCs who are describing the fiction, as if they were the narrators of their own lives, and (ii) that a story about Thurgon is a story about me simply because my roll in the game include a high degree of control over Thurgon's thoughts and actions.

 

[pemerton]

They are elements of play in that - to follow on your example - they provide the underlying explanation for things like why those beggars are there; and should the players/PCs ask about them the GM has that underlying explanation already in mind and can be consistent with it.

When you say "they provide the underlying explanation", you're just pointing to more fiction that the GM is imagining. The explanation, in the real world, for why the GM is telling the players some stuff about beggars is that the GM decided to tell the players some stuff about beggars.

knowing these underpinnings exist helps get everyone away from the notion that the setting is like a movie studio, where if you turn away from the actors you just see a bunch of cameras and chairs and wires and people out of costume rather than a seamless continuation of the set.

I've never played a RPG set in a movie studio, so this has never come up for me.

Anyway, for me as a player what makes the setting vibrant and compelling is the way that it resonates in my imagination, not the fact that I believe the GM is imagining some stuff they haven't told me yet.

 

[pemerton]

But, just to illustrate that narrative play is not all players inventing stuff, at all, this could be a part of a GM authored front in Dungeon World for example. If the players ignore it, maybe the evil warlord's men show up at the town and start seizing property, etc. At least in DW/AW the world is not JUST the PCs, though it exists so that they can have adventures.

I don't recall if I've ever read the DW discussion of fronts. In AW, Vincent Baker is very clear that preparing fronts is preparing for play, not play in itself, and that it's purpose is to give the GM something interesting to say. From the AW rulebook (p 136):

A front has some apparently mechanical components, but it’s fundamentally conceptual, not mechanical. The purpose of your prep is to give you interesting things to say.​

Baker goes on:

As MC you’re going to be playing your fronts, playing your threats, but that doesn’t mean anything mechanical. It means saying what they do. It means offering opportunities to the players to have their characters do interesting things, and it means responding in interesting ways to what the players have their characters do.​

He also says the following (pp 109, 136):

ALWAYS SAY
• What the principles demand (as follow).
• What the rules demand.
• What your prep demands.
• What honesty demands. . . .

Creating a front means making decisions about backstory and about NPC motivations. Real decisions, binding ones, that call for creativity, attention and care. You do it outside of play, between sessions, so that you have the time and space to think.​

In AW, preparation of fronts doesn't change how any move is resolved (though it may introduce a custom move, which typically will be in lieu of what would otherwise be a GM soft move, or perhaps the more generic Acting Under Fire). It certainly doesn't dictate how any move is resolved. It does bind the GM, by reference to prep, as to what interesting things ("badness", "spots" and "opportunities", in the AW parlance) the GM introduces into the fiction.

Now BW doesn't discuss this issue with the same degree of clarity and precision, but as I replied to @Faolyn upthread nothing stops a BW GM making notes about ideas for consequences (similar to how Torchbearer does expressly encourage the GM to prepare notes on possible twists).

I wouldn't be surprised if my GM had already made a note of some sort that prompted the decision, when I failed my roll for Scavenging, to describe Thurgon discovering the letters from Xanthippe to Evard.

 

[pemerton]

I assume we can add that this "prep" is in a narrative game not "set in stone"? That is, if the DM hasn't shared the idea that these beggars are from the farmland a player might for instance go "Hey, those beggars is the crew of the circus in the city I grew up! I wonder what bad things happened to put them in this place?"

That depends on the system.

In AW, as per what I posted just upthread of this, one of the principles is for the GM to say what their prep demands, and to treat it as binding. The point of this principle, as I understand it, is to help ensure that "the unwelcome and unwanted" (terms used by Baker, as per the OP of the current "rules " thread that you've participated in) become part of play. The GM is not permitted to wimp out and change things.

BW has no similar principle.

If this is the case, how do you handle the situation that you have previously dropped hints (trough narrating things with this prep in mind) that the beggars are farmers, that hasn't been understood, but is hard to explain if they are not farmers? If it is not the case, how is the GM supposed to overrule the player?

I don't know if I understand the question.

If there's established fiction - eg the beggars have been warning that there will be no one to bring in the harvest, and so there is a threat of a famine - then whatever new fiction is established should be consistent with that.

That said, "dropping hints" isn't a big part of BW play in my experience. "Dropping hints" is a GMing technique that I associate with play that is heavily focused on the players, through their play, learning more-and-more details of the setting the GM has prepped, perhaps in the context of completing a quest or adventure that has been set for the players by the GM (and typically mediated to the PCs by a NPC quest-giver).

his is exactly the kind of thing that makes me struggle to see how these games work to maintain internal coherence in the presence of several authors.

A failure of internal coherence is not a problem I've ever had. Apart from anything else, the real world contains some strange things and there's no reason why this can't be true of imaginary worlds also.