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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7104457" data-attributes="member: 42582">I played my BW character yesterday, and I then GMed a session of MHRP-style Cortex Fantasy.Here is some stuff that is relevant to the discussion around approaches to RPGing and how the shared fiction is established.Burning WheelIn the BW session, we first spent a bit of time with the GM explaining to me where things were going to be located on the map of Greyhawk. Generally, BW favours a loose approach to world creation and world geography but we've been using GH in the campaign where I'm GM, so this made sense. I don't know what he had or hadn't read online about the Principality of Ulek and the Pomarj, and how much he just made up himself, but in any event this was all good stuff to establish some basic framing for the campaign.Then, after some introductory framing explaining that Aramina (my travelling companion) and I (ie my PC) are wandering through the frontier, witnessing abandoned homesteads with signs of flight, I declared a couple of initial checks: a Homestead-wise check (untrained) to learn more about the circumstances of abandonment of this particular ruined homestead, which succeeded, and hence (in this case) extracted some more narration of backstory from the GM; and then a Scavenging check, looking for the gold that the homesteaders would have left behind in their panic and which the orcs would have been too lazy to find.Unfortunately this second check failed, which meant that orcs from a raiding party had virtually infiltrated the homestead before I noticed them. Aramina panicked (failed Steel check) but I commanded her to make for the horse (successful Command check to overcome her hesitation), but then - following through on the failed Scavenging check - the GM called for opposed Speed checks. Aramina lost, so the orcs surrounded her. I tied with the orcs, so made it to the horse but (given the tie) the GM then called for another check - my Knots check vs the orcs' Speed to see if I could unloose the knot tying the horse to the post before the orcs closed. I couldn't, and so we were in combat.The orcs were threatening Aramina but (triggering my instinct) I was able to interpose myself to protect her. I beat up the orcs - go plate-and-mail against orcish spears (needing one roll of 4+ on six dice to deflect their blows) and a "versus armour" rating of 3 with my mace, meaning they need to roll 4 such successes with their 3 dice for their leather armour to deflect my blows! At one point I did roll a 1 on my armour check, though, and so my breast plate lost a die of protection.The orcs were part of a larger raiding party, with mumakil. I think the GM was hoping I might chase the mumakil, but I have no animal handling, animal lore etc and so the mumakil remained nothing but mere colour.The larger raiding party was chased off by a force of elves. I'm not surprised that elves should show up - my GM loves elves!, just like I'm notorious for using undead and demons - but the interaction with the elves probably took an unexpected turn. I (again, in character) told Aramina to try to staunch the wounds of one of the fallen orcs, so we might interrogate them, while mounting the horse to go and meet up with the elves and look for their leader. I tried an untrained Heraldry check to recognise the elves' arms, and failed - so the elven leader was not too taken by me! In this there was cross-narration by me and the GM, but it ran in the same direction: as I was saying (in character) that I don't recognise the elven leader's arms and wondered who he was, he (spoken by the GM) was telling me that he didn't like my somewhat discourteous look. The GM is entitled to narrate such a thing - I failed my check, after all.I don't know what, if anything, the GM had in mind for the elves, but one of my Beliefs is that fame and infamy shall no longer befall my ancestral estate. So I invited the elf to travel with his soldiers south to my ancestral estate, where we might host them. The GM had the elf try and blow me off, but I was serious about this and so called for a Duel of Wits. Unfortunately my dice pool was very weak compared to the elf's (6 Will dice being used for untrained Persuasion, so slightly weaker than 3 Persuasion dice vs 7 Will dice and 6 Persuasion dice) and so despite my attempt as a player to do some clever scripting I was rebuffed by the elf without getting even a compromise.As I said, I don't know what the GM had in mind for the elves but I'm pretty sure the GM hadn't anticipated this. So I don't know what he anticipated for the elves' departure, but in the game it followed my failure to persuade the elf to join me. In the course of discussion the elf did mention that one orc - who may or may not have fallen in battle, he wasn't sure - was wearing a shield bearing the crest of the Iron Tower. I think the GM was expecting me to pursue this orc, but I didn't, for two reasons: (i) having been rebuffed by the elven leader, I wanted to head off in a different direction, and (ii) I'm a bit worried that Aramina is too squishy for hunting orcs!, and I'm pretty vulnerable too to being swarmed. If we return back this way once the orcs have had a few days to move out, we might then search the woods for the shield.So the session ended with Aramina and I riding out following the river to the NW, but along the southern (ie Ulek) bank, and then setting up camp at the end of the day. Aramina was angry that I made us ride out, once the elves had left and in order to avoid any trouble from orc survivors, without having any lunch: from the mechanical point of view I was angling for a Fate point for being Disciplined, and for a Fate point for Araamina's fiery temper. I expect to start the next session trying to persuade Aramina to beat out the dint in my breastplate (she has Mending skill; I don't) and then some Cooking and maybe some campfire action.Upthread, I quoted a bit from the BW rules where Luke Crane says that if, as a player, you're not grabbed by the story, it's your job to make things interesting! As I've said, I don't know what the GM had in mind for the elves but I did my bit to make it interesting. I think the GM's favourite part of the session was the fight with the orcs, but mine was the Duel of Wits with the elf. Even though I lost, I (i) got some good advancement checks, and (ii) enjoyed speaking my arguments as the rules require - especially my "avoiding of the topic" (which, mechanically, allows me to use my Will in defence rather than my untrained Persuasion), and (iii) established more about my character and his relationship to the ingame situation.This was the first time this GM has ever GMed a session. It was a fun session. My choices clearly mattered, in the ways I've described above. The GM had a sheet of paper in front of him with about half-a-page of print out, and I think that had some notes that he was using to help manage his orcs and his elves (as well as some stablocks from the rulebook). But the actual events of play clearly weren't pre-scripted: they couldn't have been, because they were driven by my action declarations, which is as it should be in BW.Cortex FantasyThis is a much more light-hearted RPG than BW. The characters are more two-dimensional, and the whole experience is much less gritty.The PCs started the session separated in a dungeon. After a bit of hijinks finishing off an un-resolved conflict from our last session, I spent a Doom Pool die to rejoin the two groups. In the fiction, this was a combination of a successful creation of a "Secret Exit" asset by one of the PCs (who had been on his own in a necromantically cursed room with many burial niches in its walls, out of which zombies had come, and who - in wolf form, with his wolf companions - was crawling through an empty zombie niche looking for a way out) and a failed attempt by one of the two PCs in the other chamber (where they'd just fought giant spiders) to find a secret exit from the chamber: I narrated that, as he turned away from the wall in frustration, his sword-hilt struck a roundel and pressed it into the stone, opening a secret door.This secret door led into a hidden chamber with a pack of ghouls - the same chamber into which the wolves were crawling following the winding ghoul-tunnels that lay beyond the zombie niches.(Bringing the two groups together powered down the wolf PC, who is strongest solo, and also one of the other two PCs, who - at that point, before spending XP to swap things around - was strongest in a pair rather than solo or in a team. It also made my life as GM a bit easier.)After dispatching the ghouls (the wolf PC getting the benefit of his "Secret Exit" asset - the ghouls didn't expect an attack via their tunnels!), the PCs followed strange piping music down a hitherto-hidden tunnel leading out of the ghouls' secret room to the lair of a Crypt Thing. The berserker attacked but missed. I think the wolf skin-changer tried something - I can't remember what - but with little success. But then the Doom Pool build up to 2d12 and so I was able to spend it to end the scene - in the fiction, the Crypt Thing teleported them all into an empty room on a lower dungeon level. Mechanically, this landed them all with a d12 Lost in the Dungeon complication.After taking a rest (ie a Transition scene), they headed out and I described the next scene - a pillared hall with murals, flickering braziers, and a living statue guarding great doors. While the two warriors dispatched the statute, the skinchanger read the mural to try and work out where in the dungeon he was - mechanically, he successfully eliminated his Lost in the Dungeon complication. The swordthane did the same after dispatching the statue, and then helped the berserker also to read the mural/map before the latter then broke down the door. The skinchanger had continue to study the mural/map and had worked out the Path to the Treasure (a d10 or d12 - I can't remember precisely - asset).On the other side of the door was the land of the svartalfar: a land of faerie fire, of deadly traps, and with the glint of gold. The PCs were confronted by four dark elves - a young fighter, an experience fighter, a C/F/MU and a F/MU (mechanically, I was using 4 statblocks from facing pages of the Civil War sourcebook: one I can't remember, but the other three were Lady Deathstrike and Moonstone - both good dark elven names - and Radioactive Man, who made a good drow wizard once I respecced his Radiation Control as Earth and Stone Control). The skinchanger used his Cunning expertise and his established knowledge of the path to the treasure to bluff Moonstone, the C/F/MU, into taking him to the dark elven treasure vaults - also picking up Milestone-based XP in the process for leaving his allies in a risky situation - and ended up finishing the scene with a huge (d12+) treasure asset. The other PCs finished off the three remaining dark elves, but not before the F/MU brought the stone crashing down, blocking off the tunnels the skinchanger and Moonstone had travelled through.Next session will be a new act, I think, with the skinchanger needing a new Milestone now that he's finished off one by taking the treasure and leaving the dungeon; and probably beginning with the other two PCs having left the land of the dark elves after long wanderings through subterranean tunnels.Although much of the detail of the setting is introduced by me as GM in the course of framing, key elements are introduced by the players, mostly in the form of assets - the tunnels into the ghoul room; the fact that the murals in the pillared hall have a map of the dungeon; and the drow treasure (and my Scene Distinction Glint of Gold was itself a riff on the fact that the skinchanger PC had established a Path to Treasure asset). The framing itself was all spontaneous as needed, although the stat blocks were mostly prepared in advance (I'd written up Ghouls and a Crypt Thing, used the MHRP book for dark elves, and only the Living Statute was written up by me ex tempore).But this account should also make it fairly clear why the notion of "illusionism" just has no purchase in this game. Everything's on the surface: the Scene Distinctions, the Doom Pool growing or shrinking (it started the session at 2d6, 1d8, 2d10 and ended at 1d6, 1d8), the assets and complications, the NPCs in a scene, etc. There's nothing even remotely analogous to a fork in the road with the same encounter destined to occur down either path.</blockquote>

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