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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8311471" data-attributes="member: 42582">I had a further thought about this. I don't know whether or not it conforms to [USER=16586]@Campbell[/USER]'s line of thought.Our group had a session scheduled yesterday but only two of us could make it. So we started a new Burning Wheel game with two PCs and sharing GM responsibilities (roughly, each frames the scenes and adjudicates the outcomes for the other). I've posted a fuller write-up <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/burning-wheel-actual-play.680804/" target="_blank">here</a>.Even as I write the previous paragraph, it occurs to me that the capacity of a system to handle that sort of co-GMing approach is one dimension of flexibility, and not all systems exhibit it because they depend on one of the participants doing prep and/or having significant authority over unrevealed backstory.But the main point that I wanted to bring out, for this thread, is that we got a satisfying sequence of play out of the struggle of our two PCs - both destitute disembarkees of the same vessel at the start of the session - to find money and accommodation: the refusal of payment for services rendered; the picking of a pocket; an innkeeper who wouldn't give us a room at a reasonable price but had one of us working in the kitchen so she could sleep in a corner under the hanging meats; our robbing of said innkeeper at my PC's instigation; and then the final disagreement between us over whether or not I would kill him - her magic persuaded me otherwise, but in the process she taxed herself into unconsciousness and I had to carry her out of the inn (and took all the money for myself in the process).I've run "gritty" urban scenarios in AD&D, Rolemaster, D&D 4e (Dark Sun), and now Burning Wheel. I don't think it's trivial for a system to do these well. I think at least two things are needed: (i) a resolution framework that gives as much "heft" to trying to pick a shipmaster's pocket, or trying to sneak into the kitchen of an inn, as it does to fighting; and (ii) a broader thematic/"narrative" framework that sets parameters for the participants around what counts as a fair "move" in play, on both the player and the GM side. That second point is a bit hard to articulate, and I think often gets ignored in discussions about flexibility, but I think is incredibly important: without it, how do we know what exactly we should be having our PCs do - who should they rob, where should they go, etc? - and how do we know how exactly what is at stake with success or failure? A game in which the players are reliant on the GM at every moment to tell them who is available as a target of their scheming will end up being GM rather than player-driven, which is the opposite of what this sort of scenario seems to promise; and without frameworks for establishing what is at stake the game can swing anywhere from an "anything goes" inanity, in which no one feels the weight of the action at all, to "all trouble all the time" as the GM responds to failure, or even success, with town guards and vengeful friends and family and all the other "realistic" consequences that one would expect in these sorts of circumstances.In my experience AD&D struggles with both (i) and (ii) - thief skills are only a weak answer to (i) and it has no real answer to (ii) at all. RM and 4e both have answers to (i) - the skill system in RM, the skill challenge framework in 4e - but still struggle with (ii) in my experience, and in 4e the siren call of combat prowess is ever-present!I wouldn't want to assert that BW is unique in handling both (i) and (ii) without problems, but I think it certainly stands out.</blockquote>

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