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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8594998" data-attributes="member: 42582">Recently I've been playing (well, GMing) a bit of Torchbearer. In basic structural/mechanical terms, it's a spin-off of Burning Wheel and Mouse Guard, made by the same people (Luke Crane and friends). But in spirit and rationale-of-play it's a dungeon crawler. Like all that gang's books it has a list of inspirational/influential works, and in Torchbearer's case that includes the following:*The Caverns of Thracia, by Jennell Jaquays *Dungeon Module B2: The Keep on the Borderlands, by Gary Gygax *Dungeons & Dragons Rules for Fantasy Medieval Wargames Playable with Paper and Pencil and Miniature Figures, by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, Tactical Studies Rules, 1974 *Dungeons & Dragons Fantasy Adventure Game, by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson (edited by Tom Moldvay), TSR, 1981. *A Quick Primer for Old School Gaming, by Matthew FinchAs influences, or ideals to shoot for, those are pretty unambiguous!But our PCs have relationships. It's built into PC build, and every PC also has a Circles rating, which is the ability used to meet useful or friendly people in town (a bit like 3E's Gather Information rolled into 4e's Streetwise). Here's a taste of the relevant section of the Dungeoneeer's Handbook (p 36):Answer the following questions to generate relationships and a Circles rating. You cannot take a friend, parents, mentor and an enemy. You can choose to have three of the four at best. Circles starts at 1; your answers to the questions below add to that rating: Do you have friends who enjoy your occasional visits or are you a loner, tough and cool?* If you have a friend, add +1 Circles. Some friends will help on the road or in the wild; others will help in towns. See the Starting Friend rules. * If you are a loner, tough and cool, your Circles starts at 1, and you have an enemy. Write down the name of your nemesis or mortal enemy on your character sheet and see the Starting Enemy rules.* Skip the rest of the Circles and Relationships questions and take the Loner trait at level 1 or increase it by one if you already have it. Also, go get snacks for the rest of the group while they finish answering the Circles questions. So choosing to be a loner is a thing, that brings with it a mechanical feature (the Loner trait). Choosing to have a friend is a thing, too - it boost your Circles (to at least 2) and means that when you visit your friend, you have somewhere to stay that you won't have to pay for (and having to pay for things is a big deal in Torchbearer).But having friends and enemies also shapes gameplay. Here are a couple of snips from my write-up of our last session:This is hardly great literature, but some fairly straightforward mechanics - Town Events roll, Circles check to meet a friend, Resource check to buy adventuring gear, and a player requesting a scene in which his PC confronts a NPC in a duel of words - when combined with the narration of consequences (both failures and successes), help bring the PCs' social relationships front-and-centre in play.When we play again, and the PCs head back to the Tower of Stars, in addition to the opportunities for loot that they didn't pick up on their first foray, there is the prospect of confrontation with Megloss over the fate of Glothfindel. And and any failure that Golin's player rolls is a chance to introduce some hostile undertaking by the humiliated, plotting and still erudite Ebenezer.Now as it happens I think that Torchbearer is a much more tightly designed game than 5e D&D, which for primarily commercial reasons imposes a lot less structure on play at the system level. But I think that a 5e group who wanted to foreground the PCs' social connections could to that easily enough - class and background provide a rationale for establishing them, there must be a gazillion WotC and/or 3P products that have rules for town encounters, and 5e gives the GM a lot of leeway in narrating consequence and framing subsequent scenes in order to make those social connections matter.Heck, when I GMed bits-and-pieces of the 4e module H2 Thunderspire Labyrinth, which has an early room with a prisoner in it, I substituted for the NPC Mearls had written in a different NPC who already mattered to the PCs (and the players) as a result of previous events in play. They rescued that NPC and went on to make a deal with some duergar to redeem other NPCs they cared about who had been taken prisoner.It doesn't seem that hard, if a GM is willing to let go their own hold on the reins and allow the players to inject their own priorities and concerns into the fiction.</blockquote>

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