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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7105678" data-attributes="member: 42582">What would it look like? I mean, I've described in reasonable detail how two sessions unfolded. Where would illusionism take place? What would it mean, in this context?There is no fudging of rolls - they're being rolled in the open.The framing is all there, in the open.What form are you envisaging the illusionism taking?As I've posted multiple times upthread, from a simple recount of some fiction nothing can be inferred about RPGing processes. However, there are some things in the BW session that D&D wouldn't handle smoothly: opposed checks to get to the horse before being surrounded by orcs; opposed checks to unknot the horse before the orcs close in; an Instinct to interpose myself to protect Aramina; determining the presence or absence of treasure left behind by homesteaders on the basis of an Investigation check. Maybe others I'm not thinking of.There are things, too, in the Cortex Fantasy that D&D wouldn't handle all that smoothly - the players establishing, via asset creation, that the murals have information about the dungeon; the player then leveraging this to bluff the dark elven C/F/MU to take him to the treasure; expending a GM resource to have the Crypt Thing teleport all the PCs to another level of the dungeon. Again, maybe others I'm not thinking of.I don't understand what the contrast is you are drawing between "driven by the rules" and "supported by the rules".I (as my character) wanted the elf captain come with me back to my ancestral estate. That required persuading him. So, as a player, I called for a Duel of Wits.Page 552 of the BW Gold rulebook says that the players "have a number of duties", including to "use the mechanics". That's what I did.As per the post above this one, action declaration is Intent and Task. I explained that I (ie as my PC) wanted to look around the homestead to see what I could learn about the circumstances of its abandonment. But I also told the GM - as a player - that I wanted to resolve that as a Homestead-wise check. This is me angling for a test, which I got. Ultimately the GM is responsible for ensuring that - given the task - the right ability is being tested, but the player is allowed to express a view - which I did.As p 24 of the book says (and as I quoted just upthread), "Dice rolls called for by the GM and players are the heart of play. These are tests."Well the flip side would be - the repeated insertion of irrelevant stuff is what bothers me with the process-sim/exploration-of-situation-style approach.The GM, in establishing the consequence of failure, is not suggesting that failing to find something caused the orcs to infiltrate. Anymore then, in the game where I'm GM, the PCs failure to find the mace retrospectively caused the brother to be an evil enchanter of cursed arrows.The failure isn't being narrated on a causal logic. It's being narrated on a "fail forward", narratively-and-thematically-driven logic. From BW Gold, pp 31-32:When the dice are rolled and don’t produce enough successes to meet the obstacle, the character fails. What does this mean? It means the stated intent does not come to pass. . . . When a test is failed, the GM introduces a complication. . . . Try not to present flat negative results - "You don’t pick the lock." Strive to introduce complications through failure as much as possible.My intent was to find the homesteaders' hidden treasures. That didn't come to pass. Instead, in the time I was doing this some orcs on the edge of the larger raiding party notice us and enter the homestead. And Aramina is separated from me because I had expressly declared that she didn't help me search.A good GM won't narrate a complication that doesn't make sense in the fiction. If my PC was (say) a scout with excellent Observation, then I imagine the GM would have narrated something different. If I didn't have a Belief that Aramina will need my protection, then I doubt the GM would have bothered with Aramina being surrounded by the orcs such that I had to choose whether or not to interpose myself.Again, this is why the focus of this sort of play is not illusionism - which has no application - but GM judgement in framing and narrating consequences, where the GM who makes bad calls will make things fall flat.The GM called for Steel tests. Thurgon passed, Aramina failed, but then Thurgon's command lifted her hesitation. I don't know if the GM was thinking of Thurgon's Command skill when he made this call, but in any event it was a good call, as it provided a context for meaningful choice (again, protecting Aramina) and I - as a player - also made a point of making my horse (part of my gear) an element in the situation. That's an instance of what [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] is getting at when he talks about "playing the fiction".Aramina is a companion to my PC. Something like a henchman in classic D&D. Even if she was a player, I think in the circumstances she would have to obey my command, as that was my intent in making the check, which succeeded. It wouldn't last any longer than her hesitation which was (in D&D terms) roughly 1 round.Nor does BW. It uses simultaneous blind declaration and then simultaneous resolution. There is a TotM positioning mechanic - because the orcs had spears and I have a mace, they had a positioning advantage, but I was able to charge through their wall of spears (being much stronger than them) and knock one down, which was the beginning of the end for the orcs.This is another instance of the GM framing things so as to drive towards conflict. Here is the rule on ties (BW Gold p 26):If one character is an aggressor by intent and one is a defender, ties go to the defender. If both characters are aggressors, a tie means that neither side has gained an edge and they are deadlocked. Either the tie must be accepted as the result, a trait must be called on to break it or the contest must be continued in another arena. Do not reroll the test.The GM decided that the tie in this case meant deadlock, and so the contest had to be continued in another arena - how quickly can I unloose the horse as the orc's close? Personally, I think I would have adjudicated it differently rather than retest the orcs' speed - perhaps an orc is taking aim to throw a spear at me, and so it is Knots vs Perception with a win to me getting me on my horse and a win to the orc getting him a throw of the spear at me. But I'm not the GM in this game!There is no such thing as "passive checks" in BW. As a general rule, passive checks are not consistent with "say 'yes' or roll the dice".</blockquote>

Verification