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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8315920" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>How a game is run is always a matter of consensus. When I play Uno with my daughter we have to negotiate what rules will apply, because she has various idiosyncratic house rules she picks up from her school friends that I find annoying.</p><p></p><p>But the actual play of the game doesn't depend on consensus - we follow the rules of play as agreed.</p><p></p><p>Because there are multiple editions of Burning Wheel, plus the possibility of house rules and tweaks, playing a game of BW depends on consensus. Eg on the weekend, when my friend and I were building PCs for a new campaign, we had to decide which version of the root stats for Martial Arts skill to use: the Revised version or the Gold version. (We went for Gold.)</p><p></p><p>But that is different from the actual gameplay depending on consensus. Sometimes it did: for instance, we agreed by consensus that the game would start in Hardby. But sometimes it didn't: for instance, when my friend had to roll tax checks following his PC's casting of spells, we applied the rules for tax, which at one point meant that my friend's PC fell unconscious. Which then meant that my PC was able to take all the money we were in the process of taking from an innkeeper.</p><p></p><p>As I've said upthread, I don't know what the measure of flexibility is supposed to be. But I would think of flexibility as ranging over such dimensions as the fiction - genre, theme, etc - and the play dynamics - eg how is fiction established, how are consequences and <em>what happens next</em> worked out - and participant roles. These various dimensions are not fully independent - eg some play dynamics might better suit some thematic content, such as I suggested above discussing BW.</p><p></p><p>The fact that a system uses consensus as its action resolution procedure doesn't seem to me to make it particularly flexible in any of the dimensions I've identified: it doesn't change the scope of genre or theme that can be addressed; it is one particular play dynamic; and it is pushes towards one particular approach to participant roles (ie everyone's role is in helping establish and support the consensus).</p><p></p><p>It seems to me that if what one is taking from D&D is the barest basics of PC build (6 stats, skills and proficiency bonus) and action resolution (roll d20, add the appropriate stat and proficiency bonus, equal or exceed a target number); but is using processes of play that are not set out in any D&D text but are set out in other RPG texts; then it seems just as plausible to locate the flexibility in those other systems - they are able to incorporate those basic D&D elements into their processes - rather than locating it in D&D.</p><p></p><p>I took [USER=6785785]@hawkeyefan[/USER] to be making a similar point with his remark upthread about CoC: it seems as much as D&D's PC build and resolution basics, the CoC build and resolution basic might be slotted into the sorts of processes of play you have described yourself adopting.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 8315920, member: 42582"] How a game is run is always a matter of consensus. When I play Uno with my daughter we have to negotiate what rules will apply, because she has various idiosyncratic house rules she picks up from her school friends that I find annoying. But the actual play of the game doesn't depend on consensus - we follow the rules of play as agreed. Because there are multiple editions of Burning Wheel, plus the possibility of house rules and tweaks, playing a game of BW depends on consensus. Eg on the weekend, when my friend and I were building PCs for a new campaign, we had to decide which version of the root stats for Martial Arts skill to use: the Revised version or the Gold version. (We went for Gold.) But that is different from the actual gameplay depending on consensus. Sometimes it did: for instance, we agreed by consensus that the game would start in Hardby. But sometimes it didn't: for instance, when my friend had to roll tax checks following his PC's casting of spells, we applied the rules for tax, which at one point meant that my friend's PC fell unconscious. Which then meant that my PC was able to take all the money we were in the process of taking from an innkeeper. As I've said upthread, I don't know what the measure of flexibility is supposed to be. But I would think of flexibility as ranging over such dimensions as the fiction - genre, theme, etc - and the play dynamics - eg how is fiction established, how are consequences and [i]what happens next[/i] worked out - and participant roles. These various dimensions are not fully independent - eg some play dynamics might better suit some thematic content, such as I suggested above discussing BW. The fact that a system uses consensus as its action resolution procedure doesn't seem to me to make it particularly flexible in any of the dimensions I've identified: it doesn't change the scope of genre or theme that can be addressed; it is one particular play dynamic; and it is pushes towards one particular approach to participant roles (ie everyone's role is in helping establish and support the consensus). It seems to me that if what one is taking from D&D is the barest basics of PC build (6 stats, skills and proficiency bonus) and action resolution (roll d20, add the appropriate stat and proficiency bonus, equal or exceed a target number); but is using processes of play that are not set out in any D&D text but are set out in other RPG texts; then it seems just as plausible to locate the flexibility in those other systems - they are able to incorporate those basic D&D elements into their processes - rather than locating it in D&D. I took [USER=6785785]@hawkeyefan[/USER] to be making a similar point with his remark upthread about CoC: it seems as much as D&D's PC build and resolution basics, the CoC build and resolution basic might be slotted into the sorts of processes of play you have described yourself adopting. [/QUOTE]
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