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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6096933" data-attributes="member: 4937">The big problem with any discussion that takes at its root Forge theory, is that Forge theorist always assume that either something is true, or else something else is true.  Things fit into nice discrete categories.  And, if something isn't lying in its nice discrete category with firm theoretical backing according to their theory, there is an assuption that its incoherent or somehow defective.  In short, Forge theory has at a basic assumption that you can play from a Simulationist or you can play from a Narrativist perspective or you can play from a Gamist perspective and the system you play with can support only a single such mode of play at a time.   So what you are supposed to do if you are thinking in Forge-speak is look at a set of rules or guidelines and drop things into the correctly labeled bucket.I find that works only when you are either arguing things on a bulletin board or else consciously playing according to some Forge approved paradigm.In other places, you've asserted two things quite strongly.  First, that my general 'proposition-fortune-outcome' loop is very different than 'say yes or roll the dice', and secondly that my game is very different in practice from Burning Wheel.  I will insist that neither distinction is particularly real, and that in practice there is a fuzzy continuim that means often in BW you are doing 'proposition-fortune-outcome' and often as I play D&D I'm 'saying yes or rolling the dice'.   From a minute by minute description of play, you can't make those clear but wholly artificial distinctions.Take your quotes.  Everything in the 'Concept, Concept, Concept' section could be said to apply to my game and I can give concrete examples.  Every player spends about two weeks communicating back and forth with me about their character, the backstory they want, and the story goals they have that follow from that backstory.  Everyone massages that conception subject to my advice and guidance but not authority, because this is their character, to fit into the games existing themes, concept, power level, and prevailing intraparty social structure.  Everything about Faithful character said applies also to my games.  One of the fundamental distinctions might be said that I as storyteller have a larger role in setting up what the story concept is, and also am keeping secret several of the things that the story is actually about to reveal during the course of play, but I'd bet many BW GM's also keep secret key concepts or story themes in order to make grand reveals.  And if they don't, then they are saying that BW must forgo many of the narrative techniques that in other mediums enrich and make stories interesting.While my game doesn't necessarily define mechanical resources in quite the same way, the advice it gives about the mechanical resources equally applies to how mechanical resources are used in my game.  The players are spending resources to acquire distinctions and influence over the narrative we produce.  I am making sure that they are relevant and will be relevant and if I can't see a way to do that, I'll guide them toward other resources or at least warn them of potential problems.  I will take that background and pile on complications and twist the knife on the character.  I actually however ask players to give me a score from 1 to 10 stating how much they are willing to let me me mess with them, and depending on the responce I'll either foreground them and twist thier perception of who the character is or I'll background them and let them develop without as much complication and pain.The section on the 'Role of the GM' I agree with 100% and I'd argue that it corresponds more closely to my description of what I think is the role of the GM, than what you have advocated.  It is the GM and not the player that is most responsible for introducing complications to the story and consequences for the players' choices.  The section one the role of the player fundamentally agrees with with some subset of what I'd call skillful play in a player.   Providing that section as advice to my players save where there are difference in the mechanical system would be perfectly reasonable.   Provide meaty 'mess withe me' hooks, build a character with a story that will unfold rather than a character whose story has already happened, stay in character, interact with the game world, be proactive, take risks, move the story in the directions you want, be creative in your proposition framing but also leverage the rules to underpin the thing you are offering up and use them to your advantage, participate, above all have fun, and if you can't be interested then gracefully bow out.   All that is good advice.Fundamentally this is a description of a gaming system which shades into indistinguishability with how I run my table.  I can think of maybe two sessions out of 50 that might have played out very differently using BW's mechanical assumptions - a murder investigation that fizzled out temporarily because they missed all three clues and a very tragic session returning from a Holiday break where party cohesion broke down and there were unfortunate player deaths in a scene that really wasn't as grand as it should be, should have never happened, and I think was generally regretted by everyone.   But for the most part, you wouldn't be able to reverse back from a narrative of the game events to be able to tell whether we were playing 3rd edition or BW.  There isn't anything in the BW guidelines and framing you quote that would have been completely revolutionary at my table 20 years ago. In other words, system doesn't matter.  System is probably no more than 4th on the list of what matters when it comes to determining how a table plays, somewhere distantly after things how the DM prepare to play a game, what the social contract that is effectively in force is, and how the players call their actions.   Those things are generally well outside of what the system can actually control.</blockquote>

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