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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7073377" data-attributes="member: 42582">To me, this is a key question. And it's not a rhetorical question.To those who assert that GM force can play the same role in (say) DungeonWorld or MHRP or Burning Wheel as it can in (say) 2nd ed AD&D, my response is, show me.Either relate an actual play anecdote that illustrates the point, or at least sketch a conjectural example that engages with the system.I'll focus just on BW:If a PC's Belief is at stake (as in the OP), and the GM "says 'yes'" rather than framing a check and calling for a roll of the dice, the player can tell. Which is to say, the player can tell that the GM is departing from the principles that are stated, in the game's rulebooks, to govern the game. If a GM calls for a check when nothing relevant to a PC's Belief is at stake, then again the player can tell. If a GM calls for a re-check when "Let it Ride" should be in force, then again the player can tell. If a GM frames a player into a situation that manifestly fails to speak to a PC's Beliefs, the the player can tell. For starters, the player will know that s/he doesn't feel any tension related to his/her conception of his/her PC (as expressed via those Beliefs).In other words, there's no way - in Burning Wheel - for the GM to nudge or manipulate the fiction in his/her preferred direction, away from the concerns the players have expressed via their Beliefs, without this being flagrantly obvious to the players.Could you do this in 5e? Sure, in the sense that you could (i) graft on a Belief mechanic, and (ii) have the GM frame scenes in accordance with BW principles. But some issues will come to light fairly quickly: the asymmetry of player resource suites with respect to rest periods, for instance; a degree of lack of a robust non-combat resolution system to interface with "Let it Ride"; some maths issues, which tend to allow guaranteed success at low DCs (which means that "say 'yes' or roll the dice" won't work on those occasions) and can make it hard to muster the resources to allow the player's choices to swamp the d20 at high DCs; the fact that unless you change the XP system from the published ones (XP for combat, or "milestones"), you won't have any robust correlation between playing the game and PC advancement; and probably other stuff I'm not thinking of.Which is to say - if I wanted to use 5e to run a player-driven game I wouldn't necessarily be looking to BW as my model. Classic B/X or AD&D, with some sort of attempt to integrate the rest mechanics into the dungeon exploration time cycle, would (I think) be a more profitable route.(I don't have enough DungeonWorld experience to know how well you could try and emulate that with 5e, but besides [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION]'s points - or maybe taking the one about different resolution systems and making it more precise - there is the fact that DW has mechanics that are almost guaranteed to produce a cycle of success and failure, driving the dynamics of the game. And there are very definite rules about what happens on a success, and what happens on a failure. I think it would be non-trivial to introduce that into 5e - eg for a start some of the most dramatic actions in 5e, like casting spells, can succeed automatically.)</blockquote>

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