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Judgement calls vs "railroading"
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7106868" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>"Say 'yes' or roll the dice" is something that I would regard as a basic principle for my approach to GMing.</p><p></p><p>Here is Vincent Baker's articulation of it, quoted in the BW Gold rulebook, p 72 (the fundamental rules for BW can be <a href="http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/98542/Burning-Wheel-Gold-Hub-and-Spokes" target="_blank">downloaded free</a>):</p><p></p><p style="margin-left: 20px">Every moment of play, roll dice or say "yes."</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">If nothing is at stake, say "yes" [to the player’s request], whatever they’re doing. Just go along with them. If they ask for information, give it to them. If they have their characters go somewhere, they’re there. If they want it, it’s theirs.</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">Sooner or later - sooner, because [your game’s] pregnant with crisis - they'll have their characters do something that someone else won't like. Bang! Something's at stake. Start the conflict and roll the dice.</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">Roll dice, or say "yes."</p><p></p><p>Luke Crane then goes on:</p><p></p><p style="margin-left: 20px">Vincent's advice is perfect for Burning Wheel. Unless there is something at stake in the story you have created, don’t bother with the dice. Keep moving, keep describing, keep roleplaying. But as soon as a character wants something that he doesn’t have, needs to know something he doesn't know, covets something that someone else has, roll the dice.</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">Flip that around and it reveals a fundamental rule in Burning Wheel game play: When there is conflict, roll the dice. There is no social agreement for the resolution of conflict in this game. Roll the dice and let the obstacle system guide the outcome. Success or failure doesn't really matter. So long as the intent of the task is clearly stated, the story is going somewhere.</p><p></p><p>Passive checks are not consistent with this at all: they aren't a device for "saying 'yes'" when nothing is at stake, and they circumvent rolling the dice when something is at stake. They're a form of automatic success against certain obstacles.</p><p></p><p>BW has divination magic - eg the shaman character mentioned in the OP can summon spirits to provide him with information about their environment; my PC can, in theory at least, attempt to receive Guidance (when lost, ask to know the right path, either literally or metaphorically) or Inspiration (receiving a revelation or knowledge - though the rulebook notes that this can be dangerous, as the divinity may reveal that which the priest did not intend to learn). But these are not automatic successes. They require checks (Sprit Binding or Faith checks) and hence can fail, resulting in a failure of intent (eg the spirits or the gods are angered by the incessant supplications of mortals).</p><p></p><p>Thus they are amenable to "say 'yes' or roll the dice", "fail forward", and other standard techniques of "story now" action resolution.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Well, as literally presented they are instructions for running DitV. They can be generalised (with appropriate adjustments, eg not all RPGs involve "towns") to other games intended to be run on the "standard narrativistic model". They obviously have no relevance to someone wanting to run a Moldvay Basic-style game, a Classic Traveller game or a WotC/Paizo AP.</p><p></p><p>On the issue of <em>conflict</em>. There's a fairly widespread view that a story results from some sort of dramatic need on the part of the protagonist meeting some sort of obstacle or complication, with the story itself consisting in the resolution of that conflict (which may involve overcoming it, or falling to it, or the dramatic need itself transforming in the process of confrontation). When I say this view is widespread, I'm not just talking about RPGing. Eg this is what my primary school-aged daughter is taught in her English classes.</p><p></p><p>The GM advice in games like DitV, BW and other "standard narrativistic model" games is intended to facilitate the creation, in play, of stories in this sense. And the advice itself is written in a certain context. This includes a widespread view in the community of RPGers (eg [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] expressed it upthread) that the only way to reliably achieve story in that sense is by way of railroading. It also includes a fairly widespread view, articulated by [MENTION=85870]innerdude[/MENTION] (I think) upthread, that the players should have to "work" to find the action or to find opportunities to realise their PCs' goals. (A very common instance of that view in D&D play: that being able to enchant an item first requires undertaking a quest to find the ingredients.)</p><p></p><p>"Story now"/"standard narrativistic" RPGing was developed and (over the 10 years or so from the mid-to-late-90s through the mid-to-late 2000s) formalised as a deliberate response to, and rebuttal of, those two views. The emphasis place on "framing", for instance, and the attention paid to how this might work in a RPG, is about ensuring that the GM brings the stakes to the players, instead of making it a signifcant part of play to hunt for the stakes. And via techniques such as "say 'yes' or roll the dice", emphasis is instead placed on <em>the resolution of the complication itself</em> - the dramatic moment (whether that be trying to persuade a stranger to accompany you to your home, or trying to light a fire despite the fierce wind, or fightin an orc, or looking around for a vessel in which to catch the precious blood).</p><p></p><p>The "story now" designers also have their own views about why "mainstream" RPGing has certain recurrent problems. Chief among these reasons, as the "story now" designers see it, is that certain techniques that have their origins in refereed wargames (eg the hex crawl, resource management, aspects of the situation known only to the referee, which s/he will reveal at the appropriate moment in play), which were adapated into early RPGing of the Gygaxian/Moldvay Basic style, have been retained by many RPGs - in a sort of cargo-cult fashion - although they are not very useful for those RPGs given what those RPGs seem to be aiming at. Eg why does a game trying to replicate the tone of LotR need facing rules, or rules for getting lost while charting a wilderness? Rather, it needs rules that will produce dramatic moments ("Amid the din of battle, you suddenly see a troll approaching!"; "Lost in the rocky hills, you notice that Gollum is following you - are you prepared to take him on as a guide?")</p><p></p><p>Or consider the DW ammunition rules: there is no general amunition tracking, but certain resolution results require the player to choose whether or not they expend enough ammunition to take their best shot means consuming ammunition. So instead of wargame-type rules that simulate consumption of ammunitionm, recovery of ammunition, etc we get rules that force players to make choices - do I take my best shot but use ammunition, do I conserve ammunition by taking the first shot I can even though it's not very good (-1d6 damage), or do I take a better position to get a good shot despite the risks involved? (see the Volley move on DW rulebook p 60).</p><p></p><p>If you like wargame-style RPGing, hexcrawling, simulating ammunition loss and recovery, etc then presumably DW is not the game for you. But it - and other PtBA games, and "standard narrativistic model" games, etc - are counterexamples to the claims (i) that you can't reliably get stor out of RPGing other than by way of railroading, and (ii) that the only way to get a rich, verisimilitudinous shared world is via GM world-building.</p><p></p><p> [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] makes similar points in this post:</p><p></p><p style="margin-left: 20px"></p><p></p><p>That's because, in and of itself, <em>burning the garlic</em> isn't conflict. What's at stake?</p><p></p><p>But trying to cook a meal that will provide sustenance and succor to one's comrades - that's a conflict, and absolutely it's one sort of thing these games have in mind. In the Adventure Burner the example of cooking is used (from memory) at least twice, once to illustrate the signficance of "linked tests" (ie a form of augment - eg a cooking success for the evening meal boosts the next day's endurance checks), and once to illustrate award of artha for being the workhorse of the session.</p><p></p><p>And in (I think) the Revised Character Burner, one example of an Instinct is "Always have the ingredients for noodle soup on my person".</p><p></p><p>The reason I need to persuade her is because she is angry at me for the way we left the homestead. So she is not, per se, going to mend the armour.</p><p></p><p>I sent my GM an email about this yesterday evening - he is going to have to script for the wizard (because obviously I can't do two simultaneous blind declarations) but I will want to set out her motivations and what she wants.</p><p></p><p>The bigger issue here is that I've decided to bring two characters into play, using the rules for having a companion, and the two characters have different motivations and different outlooks: as I posted upthread, one is a Disciplined, Fanatically Devoted, Faithful Knight of a Holy Military Order whos Beliefs include that Aramina will need protection; the other is a wizard with a Fiery Temper whose Beliefs include that she doesn't need Thurgon's pity. But they also interconnect in various ways: Thurgon has an Instinct to always keep the campfire alight while camping, and Aramina has a spell (Sparkshower) that needs a lit fire as a component; Thurgon has armour that will need repair, and Aramina has mending skill; etc. Thurgon trying to persuade Aramina to mend her armour will allow some of the elements of the characters, their contrasts and connections, to emerge and develop.</p><p></p><p>I think it's likely that Thurgon will be able to persuade her: he has a higher Will and is trained in Command, whereas she has no social skills. But it is also likely that he will have to compromise as part of the outcome, and so there is the potential for interesting developments in that respect also.</p><p></p><p>This is an example of how Burning Wheel handles what you call the "in-between stuff".</p><p></p><p>Re the first two sentences of this quote: why is it not going to be part of the game? I mean, in my case, I built a PC with cooking skill, so I intend to make it part of the game. What would stop that happening? That is, if someone in your game built a PC who is a good cook, what would stop them making that part of the game?</p><p></p><p>As to the rest of the quote: that is all about <em>colour</em>, but it has no teeth. I mean, the players have their PCs talk about the cooking, and so on, but it doesn't actually matter to the resolution of anything. Whereas (i) I don't really want to roleplay shopping for ingredients (I get enough of that in real life), and (ii) I want my PC's cooking to be more than just colour. I want it to matter to outcomes. Which is what I am planning to make it do!</p><p></p><p>A DitV player gets to choose whether or not to de-escalate the conflict. There is no rule against capitulation!</p><p></p><p>Of course, capitulation might be seen to have its own costs (eg it might be shameful). This is related to what [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] was talking about upthread with reference to "conceptual violence", "walled off gardens" and related notions. A key premise of "story now"-type games it that <em>the players' conception of his/her PC is not sacrosanct</em>. For instance, if the player thinks his/her PC is virtuous, the GM is not breaking any rule by framing the PC into a situation which makes it hard for that character to retain his/her virtue. In fact, if the GM <em>didn't</em> do such a thing then the GM would not be doing his/her job properly!</p><p></p><p>There is an approach to RPGing which - at least judging from these boards - seems to be fairly common. On this approach, the main function of the PC sheet is to establish character concept (so it doesn't matter, eg, if the Grappler feat is mechanically rather weak - the point of having that feat on my PC sheet is to show that my PC likes to wrestle, and is good at it). And the main job of the GM is to provide regular opportunities for each player to show off his/her character concept. On this approach to RPGing the relevance of the "story now" technique of the GM pushing the players hard into conflict is ZERO. This sort of RPGing isn't about conflict, or "story" in the dramatic sense, at all. It's about character concepts and spotlight balance. It's what Edwards calls "exploration of character" with a dash of "exploration of situation" and perhaps some "exploration of setting". (Such an approach to RPGing is not only quite different from "story now", it's also quite different from the approach to RPGing presented in Moldvay Basic or in Gygax's AD&D books.)</p><p></p><p>Someone who thinks of RPGing mostly in these terms may not enjoy DitV, or PtbA, or BW, or other games that take a different approach to the effect that play might have on a character.</p><p></p><p>I don't agree that it's "generally frowned upon". For instance, nothing in any version of D&D except perhaps 4e prevents one PC using a Charm or Fear spell to force a specific action or reaction from another PC.</p><p></p><p>And I've already posted an example, some way upthread, of this being part of the game mentioned in the OP: after the discovery of the arrows, the wizard-assassin persuaded the mage PC to abandon his goal of saving his brother from possession. [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] has also discussed this, expressing his dislike of resolution systems that insulate PCs from this sort of thing. Apart from anything else, it's a burden on verisimilitude that everyone has an emotional and an instinctual nature except the PCs.</p><p></p><p>Yes. That's the point of any set of rules or guideline - in so far as they set out to tell someone what to do, and how to do it, they impose limits. Thus, the advice in Moldvay Basic limits the GM - eg it rules out the GM declaring, when the PCs enter the first room, "You all die from a sudden gout of fire!" or "You see a pile of 10,000 gp lying on the floor - now you're all rich!"</p><p></p><p>Now perhaps you think it's obvious that "only a bad GM" would declare that everyone dies from a gout of fire, and so that's not a "real" limit. But it's equally obvious, in "narrativistic" RPGing, that "only a bad GM" would want to frame scenes or narrate consequences that don't speak to the dramatic/thematic focus of play (as established by PC build and actual play), and so that's not a "real" limit either.</p><p></p><p>Well, with respect, you are wrong. In the Adventure Burner (since re-packaged as the Codex) Luke Crane discusses at least two examples of starting a new campaign that picks up on the situation that had been left over from an earlier campaign.</p><p></p><p>It's a mechanical element of a BW PC. From the Gold rulebook, pp 56, 63:</p><p></p><p style="margin-left: 20px">What an Instinct does is set a condition and a reaction to that condition for the character. And this reaction/behavior of the character is sacrosanct: So long as the conditions are met, the action is done. The player doesn’t even have to announce it. It either happens behind the scenes or instantly, without hesitation. . . .</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">Fate points are earned for playing Instincts when such play gets the character in trouble or creates a difficult or awkward situation.</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">A character with the Instinct “Draw my sword at the first sign of trouble” is at court pleading his case. Suddenly, in walks his nemesis! The player doesn’t have to draw his sword. He can resist the Instinct because it’s going to cause trouble. But if he plays it out, he gets a fate point.</p><p></p><p>I'm saying that D&D doesn't handle the situation described - can my PC get to the horse and untie it before the orcs surround Aramina? - very smoothly. For instance, it uses fixed movement rates which therefore establish definite time requirements to move from A to B, but doesn't establish definite time requirements to untie a horse. And suppose you do it as opposed DEX checks (and is sprinting DEX or STR?), what is the adjustment to the DEX check if (say) the orcs have move 20 or move 40 rather than move 30?</p><p></p><p>I'm not saying it can't be done. I'm saying that it is not going to handle it very smoothly.</p><p></p><p>As I've posted multiple times upthread, the fact that a given fictional result is, or can be, achieved, tells us almost nothing about the roleplaying experience.</p><p></p><p>Another way the same fictional result might be achieved is if I sat down and the GM related a story to me about the adventures of Thurgon and Aramina - but that doesn't mean that there is any meaningful resemblance between the experience I had on the weekend and the epxerience of being told a story by the GM.</p><p></p><p>Yet you yourself have pointed out that the processes of resolution in D&D would be very different! No contested Speed checks for positioning; no Command check to get Aramina to run to the horse; the social mechanics are completely different; no Instinct mechanics; spells are automatic successes; there's no easy way to make cookery skill matter to play; etc, etc.</p><p></p><p>Those are all actual differences. (Whether or not they matter to you, or anyone else, is obviously a further question.)</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 7106868, member: 42582"] "Say 'yes' or roll the dice" is something that I would regard as a basic principle for my approach to GMing. Here is Vincent Baker's articulation of it, quoted in the BW Gold rulebook, p 72 (the fundamental rules for BW can be [url=http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/98542/Burning-Wheel-Gold-Hub-and-Spokes]downloaded free[/url]): [indent]Every moment of play, roll dice or say "yes." If nothing is at stake, say "yes" [to the player’s request], whatever they’re doing. Just go along with them. If they ask for information, give it to them. If they have their characters go somewhere, they’re there. If they want it, it’s theirs. Sooner or later - sooner, because [your game’s] pregnant with crisis - they'll have their characters do something that someone else won't like. Bang! Something's at stake. Start the conflict and roll the dice. Roll dice, or say "yes."[/indent] Luke Crane then goes on: [indent]Vincent's advice is perfect for Burning Wheel. Unless there is something at stake in the story you have created, don’t bother with the dice. Keep moving, keep describing, keep roleplaying. But as soon as a character wants something that he doesn’t have, needs to know something he doesn't know, covets something that someone else has, roll the dice. Flip that around and it reveals a fundamental rule in Burning Wheel game play: When there is conflict, roll the dice. There is no social agreement for the resolution of conflict in this game. Roll the dice and let the obstacle system guide the outcome. Success or failure doesn't really matter. So long as the intent of the task is clearly stated, the story is going somewhere.[/indent] Passive checks are not consistent with this at all: they aren't a device for "saying 'yes'" when nothing is at stake, and they circumvent rolling the dice when something is at stake. They're a form of automatic success against certain obstacles. BW has divination magic - eg the shaman character mentioned in the OP can summon spirits to provide him with information about their environment; my PC can, in theory at least, attempt to receive Guidance (when lost, ask to know the right path, either literally or metaphorically) or Inspiration (receiving a revelation or knowledge - though the rulebook notes that this can be dangerous, as the divinity may reveal that which the priest did not intend to learn). But these are not automatic successes. They require checks (Sprit Binding or Faith checks) and hence can fail, resulting in a failure of intent (eg the spirits or the gods are angered by the incessant supplications of mortals). Thus they are amenable to "say 'yes' or roll the dice", "fail forward", and other standard techniques of "story now" action resolution. Well, as literally presented they are instructions for running DitV. They can be generalised (with appropriate adjustments, eg not all RPGs involve "towns") to other games intended to be run on the "standard narrativistic model". They obviously have no relevance to someone wanting to run a Moldvay Basic-style game, a Classic Traveller game or a WotC/Paizo AP. On the issue of [i]conflict[/i]. There's a fairly widespread view that a story results from some sort of dramatic need on the part of the protagonist meeting some sort of obstacle or complication, with the story itself consisting in the resolution of that conflict (which may involve overcoming it, or falling to it, or the dramatic need itself transforming in the process of confrontation). When I say this view is widespread, I'm not just talking about RPGing. Eg this is what my primary school-aged daughter is taught in her English classes. The GM advice in games like DitV, BW and other "standard narrativistic model" games is intended to facilitate the creation, in play, of stories in this sense. And the advice itself is written in a certain context. This includes a widespread view in the community of RPGers (eg [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] expressed it upthread) that the only way to reliably achieve story in that sense is by way of railroading. It also includes a fairly widespread view, articulated by [MENTION=85870]innerdude[/MENTION] (I think) upthread, that the players should have to "work" to find the action or to find opportunities to realise their PCs' goals. (A very common instance of that view in D&D play: that being able to enchant an item first requires undertaking a quest to find the ingredients.) "Story now"/"standard narrativistic" RPGing was developed and (over the 10 years or so from the mid-to-late-90s through the mid-to-late 2000s) formalised as a deliberate response to, and rebuttal of, those two views. The emphasis place on "framing", for instance, and the attention paid to how this might work in a RPG, is about ensuring that the GM brings the stakes to the players, instead of making it a signifcant part of play to hunt for the stakes. And via techniques such as "say 'yes' or roll the dice", emphasis is instead placed on [i]the resolution of the complication itself[/i] - the dramatic moment (whether that be trying to persuade a stranger to accompany you to your home, or trying to light a fire despite the fierce wind, or fightin an orc, or looking around for a vessel in which to catch the precious blood). The "story now" designers also have their own views about why "mainstream" RPGing has certain recurrent problems. Chief among these reasons, as the "story now" designers see it, is that certain techniques that have their origins in refereed wargames (eg the hex crawl, resource management, aspects of the situation known only to the referee, which s/he will reveal at the appropriate moment in play), which were adapated into early RPGing of the Gygaxian/Moldvay Basic style, have been retained by many RPGs - in a sort of cargo-cult fashion - although they are not very useful for those RPGs given what those RPGs seem to be aiming at. Eg why does a game trying to replicate the tone of LotR need facing rules, or rules for getting lost while charting a wilderness? Rather, it needs rules that will produce dramatic moments ("Amid the din of battle, you suddenly see a troll approaching!"; "Lost in the rocky hills, you notice that Gollum is following you - are you prepared to take him on as a guide?") Or consider the DW ammunition rules: there is no general amunition tracking, but certain resolution results require the player to choose whether or not they expend enough ammunition to take their best shot means consuming ammunition. So instead of wargame-type rules that simulate consumption of ammunitionm, recovery of ammunition, etc we get rules that force players to make choices - do I take my best shot but use ammunition, do I conserve ammunition by taking the first shot I can even though it's not very good (-1d6 damage), or do I take a better position to get a good shot despite the risks involved? (see the Volley move on DW rulebook p 60). If you like wargame-style RPGing, hexcrawling, simulating ammunition loss and recovery, etc then presumably DW is not the game for you. But it - and other PtBA games, and "standard narrativistic model" games, etc - are counterexamples to the claims (i) that you can't reliably get stor out of RPGing other than by way of railroading, and (ii) that the only way to get a rich, verisimilitudinous shared world is via GM world-building. [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] makes similar points in this post: [indent][/indent] That's because, in and of itself, [i]burning the garlic[/i] isn't conflict. What's at stake? But trying to cook a meal that will provide sustenance and succor to one's comrades - that's a conflict, and absolutely it's one sort of thing these games have in mind. In the Adventure Burner the example of cooking is used (from memory) at least twice, once to illustrate the signficance of "linked tests" (ie a form of augment - eg a cooking success for the evening meal boosts the next day's endurance checks), and once to illustrate award of artha for being the workhorse of the session. And in (I think) the Revised Character Burner, one example of an Instinct is "Always have the ingredients for noodle soup on my person". The reason I need to persuade her is because she is angry at me for the way we left the homestead. So she is not, per se, going to mend the armour. I sent my GM an email about this yesterday evening - he is going to have to script for the wizard (because obviously I can't do two simultaneous blind declarations) but I will want to set out her motivations and what she wants. The bigger issue here is that I've decided to bring two characters into play, using the rules for having a companion, and the two characters have different motivations and different outlooks: as I posted upthread, one is a Disciplined, Fanatically Devoted, Faithful Knight of a Holy Military Order whos Beliefs include that Aramina will need protection; the other is a wizard with a Fiery Temper whose Beliefs include that she doesn't need Thurgon's pity. But they also interconnect in various ways: Thurgon has an Instinct to always keep the campfire alight while camping, and Aramina has a spell (Sparkshower) that needs a lit fire as a component; Thurgon has armour that will need repair, and Aramina has mending skill; etc. Thurgon trying to persuade Aramina to mend her armour will allow some of the elements of the characters, their contrasts and connections, to emerge and develop. I think it's likely that Thurgon will be able to persuade her: he has a higher Will and is trained in Command, whereas she has no social skills. But it is also likely that he will have to compromise as part of the outcome, and so there is the potential for interesting developments in that respect also. This is an example of how Burning Wheel handles what you call the "in-between stuff". Re the first two sentences of this quote: why is it not going to be part of the game? I mean, in my case, I built a PC with cooking skill, so I intend to make it part of the game. What would stop that happening? That is, if someone in your game built a PC who is a good cook, what would stop them making that part of the game? As to the rest of the quote: that is all about [i]colour[/i], but it has no teeth. I mean, the players have their PCs talk about the cooking, and so on, but it doesn't actually matter to the resolution of anything. Whereas (i) I don't really want to roleplay shopping for ingredients (I get enough of that in real life), and (ii) I want my PC's cooking to be more than just colour. I want it to matter to outcomes. Which is what I am planning to make it do! A DitV player gets to choose whether or not to de-escalate the conflict. There is no rule against capitulation! Of course, capitulation might be seen to have its own costs (eg it might be shameful). This is related to what [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] was talking about upthread with reference to "conceptual violence", "walled off gardens" and related notions. A key premise of "story now"-type games it that [i]the players' conception of his/her PC is not sacrosanct[/i]. For instance, if the player thinks his/her PC is virtuous, the GM is not breaking any rule by framing the PC into a situation which makes it hard for that character to retain his/her virtue. In fact, if the GM [i]didn't[/i] do such a thing then the GM would not be doing his/her job properly! There is an approach to RPGing which - at least judging from these boards - seems to be fairly common. On this approach, the main function of the PC sheet is to establish character concept (so it doesn't matter, eg, if the Grappler feat is mechanically rather weak - the point of having that feat on my PC sheet is to show that my PC likes to wrestle, and is good at it). And the main job of the GM is to provide regular opportunities for each player to show off his/her character concept. On this approach to RPGing the relevance of the "story now" technique of the GM pushing the players hard into conflict is ZERO. This sort of RPGing isn't about conflict, or "story" in the dramatic sense, at all. It's about character concepts and spotlight balance. It's what Edwards calls "exploration of character" with a dash of "exploration of situation" and perhaps some "exploration of setting". (Such an approach to RPGing is not only quite different from "story now", it's also quite different from the approach to RPGing presented in Moldvay Basic or in Gygax's AD&D books.) Someone who thinks of RPGing mostly in these terms may not enjoy DitV, or PtbA, or BW, or other games that take a different approach to the effect that play might have on a character. I don't agree that it's "generally frowned upon". For instance, nothing in any version of D&D except perhaps 4e prevents one PC using a Charm or Fear spell to force a specific action or reaction from another PC. And I've already posted an example, some way upthread, of this being part of the game mentioned in the OP: after the discovery of the arrows, the wizard-assassin persuaded the mage PC to abandon his goal of saving his brother from possession. [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] has also discussed this, expressing his dislike of resolution systems that insulate PCs from this sort of thing. Apart from anything else, it's a burden on verisimilitude that everyone has an emotional and an instinctual nature except the PCs. Yes. That's the point of any set of rules or guideline - in so far as they set out to tell someone what to do, and how to do it, they impose limits. Thus, the advice in Moldvay Basic limits the GM - eg it rules out the GM declaring, when the PCs enter the first room, "You all die from a sudden gout of fire!" or "You see a pile of 10,000 gp lying on the floor - now you're all rich!" Now perhaps you think it's obvious that "only a bad GM" would declare that everyone dies from a gout of fire, and so that's not a "real" limit. But it's equally obvious, in "narrativistic" RPGing, that "only a bad GM" would want to frame scenes or narrate consequences that don't speak to the dramatic/thematic focus of play (as established by PC build and actual play), and so that's not a "real" limit either. Well, with respect, you are wrong. In the Adventure Burner (since re-packaged as the Codex) Luke Crane discusses at least two examples of starting a new campaign that picks up on the situation that had been left over from an earlier campaign. It's a mechanical element of a BW PC. From the Gold rulebook, pp 56, 63: [indent]What an Instinct does is set a condition and a reaction to that condition for the character. And this reaction/behavior of the character is sacrosanct: So long as the conditions are met, the action is done. The player doesn’t even have to announce it. It either happens behind the scenes or instantly, without hesitation. . . . Fate points are earned for playing Instincts when such play gets the character in trouble or creates a difficult or awkward situation. A character with the Instinct “Draw my sword at the first sign of trouble” is at court pleading his case. Suddenly, in walks his nemesis! The player doesn’t have to draw his sword. He can resist the Instinct because it’s going to cause trouble. But if he plays it out, he gets a fate point.[/indent] I'm saying that D&D doesn't handle the situation described - can my PC get to the horse and untie it before the orcs surround Aramina? - very smoothly. For instance, it uses fixed movement rates which therefore establish definite time requirements to move from A to B, but doesn't establish definite time requirements to untie a horse. And suppose you do it as opposed DEX checks (and is sprinting DEX or STR?), what is the adjustment to the DEX check if (say) the orcs have move 20 or move 40 rather than move 30? I'm not saying it can't be done. I'm saying that it is not going to handle it very smoothly. As I've posted multiple times upthread, the fact that a given fictional result is, or can be, achieved, tells us almost nothing about the roleplaying experience. Another way the same fictional result might be achieved is if I sat down and the GM related a story to me about the adventures of Thurgon and Aramina - but that doesn't mean that there is any meaningful resemblance between the experience I had on the weekend and the epxerience of being told a story by the GM. Yet you yourself have pointed out that the processes of resolution in D&D would be very different! No contested Speed checks for positioning; no Command check to get Aramina to run to the horse; the social mechanics are completely different; no Instinct mechanics; spells are automatic successes; there's no easy way to make cookery skill matter to play; etc, etc. Those are all actual differences. (Whether or not they matter to you, or anyone else, is obviously a further question.) [/QUOTE]
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