Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 6099964" data-attributes="member: 54877">The mechanics are inseparable from how the story is told.  That same insight that tells you how to play it isn't just tacked on.  It's telling you what will cause the mechanics to work.  Because one of the reasons the insight is there and so clear is that there is very little in BW that isn't consciously thrown in there to produce exactly that kind of play.  Take for example how skills are mechanically handled.  We could talk for days about this (including some things I don't care for very much, BTW), but for example I'll key in on skill progression.  Generally, you can start with zero dice and eventually get to 10.  2 dice is enough to be fairly successful with routine things, while 4 is pretty darn competent.  Not by coincidence, if you spend character resources at start on a skill related to stats that you are moderately decent at, you'll nearly always get 4 dice.  In fact, there are some funky rounding rules and rough edges to make it come out that way.  Finally, getting from zero to 1 dice is a special case, fraught with risk (or a lot of practice time during down time, which ... has its own set of risks in the resource cycle).Now let's look at why that is, and how it affects the story.  For starters, getting 3 or 4 dice at something your character is supposed to know is pretty easy and straight-forward.  You are competent with a blade, you know that 4 dice is the place to land.  3 is if you want to start almost there and hit it fast in play.  5 is if you want to start closer to a true expert.  You aren't moving much off of 4 without radically changing your character.  Whereas if you start with 1 (or even zero), you are saying that you want your character to learn this totally in play--or maybe just pick it up when and if it comes up.  Or you might bend every resource at your disposal to go higher, but this is going to have all kinds of side effects--inherently as part of character generation.No matter which one you pick, however, you'll be chasing Artha (fate and other points for others reading at home) in order to improve.  With some cautious and clever "aid another" style play, you might get from zero to 2 without much risk, though it will take a lot longer.  But you aren't going much beyond 4 or maybe 5 without putting it all on the line--fight for what you believe in.  There's no clever, strategic, tactical, etc. way around this basic fact (played as written).  All of those will give you a better shot at not dying while you pursue it, and a few shots at some extra fate along the way, but they can't be used to circumvent the risk.  This fact is because of conscious design in the mechanics.Now, the flip side of this in the BW advice, and a big part of why you need the advice, is that it isn't merely telling you about play to help you grok the intent of the rules (though that helps a great deal, as BW is an odd duck).  It's also telling you some things that aren't going to work very well.  If, for example, you decide to put on that DM rules tinker hat and award advancement outside the printed options, go for more color-driven play as the goal, you may ride along merrily the same way an imaginative DM might turn Basic/Expert into a treatise on intrigue.  But you won't be playing BW anymore.  More likely, what you'll get is that play will be very flat.  Suddenly, the life path options look thin.  The somewhat ad hoc nature of the skills has no reason anymore.  (Why should an elf sing to do something akin to what a man does by training?)  And if advancement is bypassed without risk, you'll have to curtail it yourself some other way, or deal with the fact that the system start to break beyond the written caps.   And even worse, you could have gotten a more BW game merely by sticking to the rules but starting everyone in "gray" territory.That's longer than I set out to write to start.  If you want another example, look at Dwarven greed and Elven grief.  It's impossible for an elf or dwarf in BW to be played like a pointy-eared or short human.  You can try, but if you play by the rules, you'll end up sailing West or babbling over your treasure before the campaign ends. That someone who worked at it could play a D&D elf or dwarf like a BW elf or dwarf does not change the fact that in BW you are forced to play that way to succeed.</blockquote>

Verification