D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[Campbell]

All let it ride does is elide place and time. So instead of a roll to sneak past these guards, then another roll to sneak past these other guards if you succeed you are outside the cell of the damsel you intend to rescue or in the bedchambers of your traitorous brother, ready to confront him. There is no fiction that can happen in the intervening because we go right to the intent being realized.

 

[Bedrockgames]

It's only when we either reject the idea that RPGs are games, or that they cannot be looked at as games for this purpose, that this becomes unclear... but I can't agree with any idea that requires us to not look at RPGs as games.

No, this is not true all. Plenty of people see RPGs as games and don't share your definition of agency. One does not necessarily flow from the other. Again, I am okay with you having this different usage. But this conversation isn't going to go forward if we acknowledge there is at least a dispute over the term here.

The question of whether RPGs are games, how much the G matters in an RPG, that is also a point of debate in this thread. How rigidly we should adhere to game as a model. But that is a whole other issue.

 

[AlViking]

It didn't tell you what your character felt. It told you what your character was capable of.

Poh-tae-toe poh-tah-toe. In D&D the player decides what their character is emotionally and mentally capable of.

In D&D, my character might feel like he can run through an orc. But he rolled a 5 on his attack roll. Whether that roll was a failure in physical execution, a failure in will or bravery, or simply luck and happenstance is entirely in your court as a player to decide.

Totally different, succeeding on stabbing has nothing to do with what the character thought.

 

[Maxperson]

It's my stance that there's only one form of player agency.

The artificial division is about an accepted limit to player agency which people don't want to admit is a limit, even though they're pointing out that what they want and expect from play relies on that limit.

Affecting the world through PC actions is not the same as the player authoring stuff without the PC being involved at all. 1 =/= 2.

Well, your post said that your google search turned up two types of agency, character and player agency. If character agency is that which is limited to a player being able to declare actions for his character... then player agency would seem to be what I'm talking about, no? How the player can influence the direction and outcome of play, aside from character agency.

I didn't think that's what you'd be advocating for, since every game I know that supports what you're calling player agency also supports character agency... and would therefore support more agency than a game that only allows character agency.

The more of one you have, the less of the other. There's only so much time during a game and you can't be doing both all the time. Further, the focus of your games is different, so character agency takes a huge hit. You guys don't focus on the "boring" stuff PCs do and instead do character testing stuff.

Since the amount of time is the same(ie 4 hours for your games is the same as 4 hours for mine), you can't have more agency than my games do. You either have yours and I have mine, or you break yours and mine up so that it totals 100% and mine is also 100%.

Oh I'm sorry, I figure that rather than staring at each other like idiots, the GM would put the living world to use to do one of the things it's great at... have the world go on even when the PCs don't do anything. So that threat they ignored? Now it shows up. The gnoll pack they did nothing about has now hired some giants, and they attack the town. What do the players do then?

If nothing is happening, it's not just the players who've failed.

It's comments like this that prove just how little you understand what we are saying. Or more likely, you don't bother to try and understand, because you just said that you figured that in less than 10 seconds of game time, living world stuff would happen gnolls running off to hire giants and then getting those giants to attack town. All in 10 seconds!!!

Maybe you run your game as absurdly as that. But I don't.

If nothing is happening in a sandbox game, it's because there are no proactive players. You also clearly don't read my posts before responding to them. For once in your life, try reading to understand instead of reading to reply. It will save you from typing ignorant stuff like that paragraph above this response, because I said that if they stare like that, I initiate something to get things moving along, but that it's no longer a sandbox if I have to do that.

 

[pemerton]

If you don't have anything of value to add, why bother responding? I asked a simple question, one I have asked many times with the same results. A non-answer or an answer that doesn't just simply answer the question.

In BW does what the player says make a difference to the chance of success. If so, how?

I've answered this question multiple times in this thread, in replies multiple posters. I haven't gone back to check if I've answered it in a reply to you, but I expect that I have.

@zakael19 has also answered, in replies to you.

Here is the relevant rule, from p 103 of the Revised rulebook:

When scripting these maneuvers, players must speak their parts. Spitting out moves in a robotic fashion is not a viable use of these mechanics. The arguments must be made. Of course, no one expects us all to be eloquent, so just the main thrust or a simple retort usually suffices (but a little embellishment is nice).

Keep it simple and to the point. Say what you need to in order to roll the dice. A multipoint statement should be broken down into multiple actions across the exchange.​

What is said correlates to what sort of action is rolled. And also - as I've posted upthread - determines the content of any compromise.

I don't understand why this is being treated as some sort of mystery!

 

[robertsconley]

This is not actually a correct account of the play of Burning Wheel.

Steel
Steel is an attribute that represents the character’s nerves. It is tested when the character is startled or shocked. The results of the test then tell us whether the character flinches, or whether he steels his nerves and carries on.

When a Steel test is failed, the player loses control of the character momentarily—just as the character loses control of his faculties. The player chooses how the character loses it, but after that the character is out of action for a few in-game seconds as he freaks out. A GM can call for a Steel test under four conditions: When the character is confronted with surprise, fear, pain or wonderment.

I believe the readers of the thread now have the information to arrive at their own conclusions on the accuracy of @AlViking statement. Rather than just taking your word for it.

 

[pemerton]

I may have used a bit of a short-cut to my explanation, but how is it that you drive home your point? Is there a judgement call that you have done an adequate job? If you've done a poor job is the chance of success lowered, if you've done a good job is it increased? Can previous interactions make a difference?

I'm not trying to be antagonistic but this question has been asked time and time again and what I see as a clear question keeps getting sidestepped.

I already posted that I'm not interested in setting out all the rules for Duel of Wits. In circumstances where it's possible to download and read a good chunk of the BW rules for free, but posters aren't doing that, I am not interested in setting out more rules details so that those can also be ignored.

 

[TwoSix]

Poh-tae-toe poh-tah-toe. In D&D the player decides what their character is emotionally and mentally capable of.

I know, it's definitely not a great feature for a game that wants to exhibit verisimilitude.

Having 100% control of a character's emotions and mental state is completely unrealistic (we certainly don't have that kind of agency in real life) and really is more like treating your character like a pawn.

 

[pemerton]

I believe the readers of the thread now have the information to arrive at their own conclusions on the accuracy of @AlViking statement. Rather than just taking your word for it.

Yes. It doesn't say that you have to make a roll to make a decision. If you fail the roll, you fail at your action. It is making the decision to attempt murder that required Aedhros to make the Steel test.

I don't understand why you think you can school me in the play of Burning Wheel. As far as I know you've never even played it, or read the rules!

It's like @Faolyn, who has never read the rules, thinking that there's some ambiguity in the fact that attempting cold-blooded murder can trigger a Steel test.

 

[zakael19]

I may have used a bit of a short-cut to my explanation, but how is it that you drive home your point? Is there a judgement call that you have done an adequate job? If you've done a poor job is the chance of success lowered, if you've done a good job is it increased? Can previous interactions make a difference?

I'm not trying to be antagonistic but this question has been asked time and time again and what I see as a clear question keeps getting sidestepped. How well a DM in D&D takes into consideration the argument the player makes varies. I can only relate what I do and what I prefer, which is to take into consideration what they say and what has come before to adjust the target DC.

You drive home the point by using the resolution mechanic of the game, countered by your opponent's rejoinder they "scripted." Each "Weapon of Wit" is tied to one or more possible tests/skills, representing the sorts of rhetorical tools at hand - and informing the dice pool (and various other mechanics I'm not super familiar with around character skill advancement and stuff). There's no "judgement call," there's a set Obstacle or Vs (directly versus your opponent's pool). You can also like, both come away from an argument damaged even if one person "won" the pass, which I think is super cool.

I think the reason you may be feeling like the "question gets sidestepped" is because this is a very complex multi-stage resolution mechanic that is making every phrase you say have a mechanical meaning. It's not like "say a line and roll Persuasion." Here's a page walking through the structure of a Duel of Wits from some iteration of BW if you want to look it over yourself.