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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7107764" data-attributes="member: 42582">I still don't understand what you think the illusion is here. The GM introduced orcs into the situation. That is framing. The orcs are already upon the homestead before the characters notice them. That's complication for the failed check. In the actual moment of narration, the complication and the framing were rolled together - that's an example of an application of the DW principle "never speak the name of your move", which is not part of the BW rules but is something that Luke Crane discusses (not under that label) in the Adventure Burner/Codex.But what are you conjecturing was hidden or covert?I don't understand.(1) The elf didn't try to persuade me to hunt orcs. The elf gave me some information about an orc wielding a shield. Had the elf tried to persuade me to go and recover the shield, that might have been quite interesting, and I probably would have lost. But that wasn't what happened. And, in the fiction, I don't think the elf cares whether or not I recover the shield. As the Duel of Wits established, the elves of Celene don't care about the fate of the arms of the Iron Tower.(2) I attempted to persuade the elf to return with me to my ancestral estate, in an attempt to shore up my family's standing and give my brother (the ruling count) some backbone. I failed. The elf didn't come with me. Indeed, my failure was so total that I didn't even get a compromise (which might have been eg the elf sending his second to accompany me, or the elf promising to send an envoy in due course).(3) I'm not returning home. The session ended with me travelling NW along the Ulek side of frontier. My home is to the south.I don't understand what you mean by this. What "collateral damage" are you talking about? And what "different path"?I wanted to persuade a noble elf to come with me to my home, in pursuit of my Belief that "Harm and infamy will befall Auxol no more!" As per the rulebook's instructions to players to use the mechanics, I called for a Duel of Wits. (If you want to read the Duel of Wits rules, they're downloadable for free <a href="https://www.burningwheel.com/pdf/dow_95_108.pdf" target="_blank">here</a>.) My body of argument was 7 (6 Will plus 1 success on a Will check for untrained Persuasion); the elf's was 11 (7 Will plus 4 successes on a Persuasion of 6). My scripting in the first exchange was Avoid the Topic/Rebut/Point, and in the second was Avoid the Topic/Feint/Rebut. The GM, for the NPC, scripted (from memory) Point/Point/Rebut and then Rebut/Dismiss/I don't think we made it to the third volley of the second exchange, so I don't know what the elf had scripted for it.In any event, I failed the Duel of Wits. In the first volley my avoid defended against the point, but in the second volley my rebuttal was less than total and I didn't get a success on my "attack" pool. In the third volley the elf rebutted my point (rolling 3 trained dice against my 6 untrained dice). In the first volley of the second exchang my Avoid did little against the "attack" pool of the elf's rebuttal (from memory, only 1 success on 6 Will dice) and then the elf's dismissal - by way of the Ugly Truth that the concerns and lives of mortals matter little, even naught, relative to the lives and concerns of elvenkind (my GM is a big fan of Ugly Truth, always using it as a player) - brought the matter to a close.Because of my failure, the elf is not coming with me. And the elf got his intent: he is returning to Celene with his dead comrade, paying no heed to my mortal concerns. My failure to put any dint in his body of argument means that no compromise was required from him.It would also be bad GMing.Upthread I posted this bit of the BW Gold rulebook (p 34). In fact, I think I've posted it twice now:Beliefs are meant to be challenged, betrayed and broken. Such emotional drama makes for a good game. If your character has a Belief, "I guard the prince's life with my own," and the prince is slain before your eyes in the climax of the scenario, that’s your chance to play out a tortured and dramatic scene and really go ballistic. Conversely, if the prince is killed right out of the gate, the character is drained of purpose. Note that the player stated he wanted to defend the prince in play, not avenge him. Killing the prince in the first session sucks the life out of the character. He really has no reason to participate any longer. But if the prince dies in the grand climax, c'est la vie. The protector must then roll with the punches and react to this new change. Even better, if the prince dies due to the actions or failures of his own guardian - now that’s good stuff. Another example: We once had a character with the Belief: "I will one day restore my wife’s life." His wife had died, and he kept her body around, trying to figure out a way to bring her back. Well, mid-way through the game, the GM magically restored his wife to the land of the living. I’ve never seen a more crushed player. He didn't know what do! He had stated that the quest and the struggle was the goal, not the end result. "One day!" he said. But the GM insisted, and the whole scenario and character were ruined for the player.Given that I have a Belief that harm and infamy will before my ancestral home (Auxol) no more, establishing in the first session that my home has been destroyed would be terrible GMing.How would the bad GMing that you describe be hidden from me as a player? The GM telling me that my home is destroyed, and hence - in effect - that half my PC's raison d'etre is over (as well as the Belief I have spent PC build resources on a relationship with my mother and an affiliation with my family) would not be hidden. It would be extremely overt.The GM framed the characters into this ruined homestead. I don't know what he had in mind, but I think he was anticipating a cooking check to make lunch. (As part of the set-up he described the rations we were carrying with us, which - in PC build terms - were a GM gift to the PCs, as I did not pay for them out of PC build resources.)I declared that I was looking around, and called for the Homestead-wise check. I don't remember my exact motivation, but I think at least in part it was what I thought my PC would do! I don't recall the exact words that were spoken, either. The stakes weren't stated overtly - they were implicit. As I said upthread, there was an unstated but quite evident assumed premise to the whole scene, that the homestead had been raided by orcs - given that we'd just spent half-an-hour or so discussing the set up in the Pomarj, looking at the map and discussing towns, fortifications, the location of my ancestral estate, etc, and what parts of the frontier had fallen to orc raids (including the town on the river that is the campaign's version of the ruins of Osgiliath).If the GM had been uncertain about the stakes, he could and should have called for clarification as to intent. He didn't, and so I take it that he thought it was clear enough.I don't really follow this. I mean, I've told you what happened. I've told you what stakes were implicit. I've told you how I would have narrated failure were I the GM. You have conjectured what you think the failure narration would have been - that is, that instead of the additional framing I'm looking for in declaring the check (and would get on a success), orcs attack.Given that I have given my view as what would count as a failure which frustrates my intent (learning unwelcome truths) and given that you have given your view as to what the failure might have been that frustrated my intent (before I can learn anything useful, orcs attack), I don't understand why you say that "it's hard to frustrate that intent effectively without an equally blank 'you can't tell.'"The answer to this is fairly easy - she's a character under my control! I'm allowed to play her as grumbling and angry but doing what she's told to when it comes to leaving the place where she was just attacked by orcs and where there might still be a few orcish stragglers hanging about. As [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] and I said in the context of DitV, capitulation is always an option.I could have played it up to try and get her a Persona point for embodiment, but I didn't - partly because it didn't seem a big enough deal, partly because the session was coming to an end and so we were wrapping things up.Once we get to some place to rest for the night, I am planning for a Duel of Wits. I think I know what Aramina wants in return for mending the armour. In the Adventure Burner/Codex, Luke Crane discusses the tactic of asking for more than what you really want with a DoW, so that when you compromise you can give up the bits that were the "more" while getting to keep all that you really wanted. This is legitimate, but he goes on to warn players to be careful, in case they end up getting more than they bargained for! In thinking about how Aramina is going to shape her request from Thurgon, I'm already feeling the force of that warning.</blockquote>

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