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

[pemerton]

You can adjust the target number but you still need to roll. I should have said that better.

Yes. Way upthread in reply to you, I posted this, from pp 11 and 72 of Hub and Spokes:

The GM presents the players with problems based on the players’ priorities. The players use their characters’ abilities to overcome these obstacles. To do this, dice are rolled and the results are interpreted using the rules presented in this book. . . . There is no social agreement for the resolution of conflict in this game. Roll the dice and let the obstacle system guide the outcome.

The game is not intended to have the GM or the players just decide what happens. It's not a collaborative storytelling game.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Wasn't like token play wasn't a fairly common, even popular style early on (the game got its start with wargamers after all), and its hardly extinct. Whether that's a good thing is in the eye of the beholder.

We're 50 years in...

I have to point out there were games in the build-point realm that had personality traits and flaws as part of the core mechanics fairly early on (Hero and GURPS) and ones that still do in the trad realm (Savage Worlds). One difference is that they made them, effectively voluntary (though because they yield indirect mechanical benefits, attractive). I suspect there's a lot of people in the trad sphere who are much more willing to engage with social and psychological mechanics with teeth when they've actively signed off on them.

That's fair. I'm sure there were other games but unfortunately I wasn't exposed to them. D&D, Rolemaster, VtM, Fate and a handful of others. I only got a copy of Pendragon in the last few years.

 

[pemerton]

the claim that “there is no world that exercises causal potency.” That’s not a small clarification. That’s a complete rejection of the idea that a fictional world can have internal logic or continuity separate from the referee’s decision-making.

Correct. Authored works do not have any continuity separate from the decision-making of their authors.

the question about whether a Living World referee can override a successful roll. The answer is no. A successful roll is honored, but what the roll resolves is different. In Living World play, the roll resolves an attempted action in a consistent context. In Burning Wheel, the roll resolves a declared outcome. Those are two different models.

I don't see the difference, sorry. In Burning Wheel the dice roll also resolves an attempted action in a consistent context. The "consistent context" establishes the obstacle (eg that's why it is a low Ob to see a vessel in a sick-room) and the roll resolves the attempted action (if the roll succeeds, the PC succeeds at the task they were attempting to perform).

your question about whether Gygax putting a fun room in a dungeon means the players are exercising meta-agency. No, that is about referee authorship. Meta-agency, as I’m using it, refers to player influence on the structure of the fiction through rules that enforce specific narrative outcomes. It happens when the player, through system tools, causes the fiction to shift in a way the character could not control directly.

So it's "meta agency" if there's a formal rules system, but not if it happens informally. Right.

 

[AlViking]

It depends on the context. If the loss of control of character is a known possibility of play, and the player is aware of this and makes decisions accordingly, then it’s a negative consequence of play.

Has the player lost full control of the character? Yes. Does this mean the player has no agency? I don’t think so.



Perhaps in your opinion it’s boring. Others may find it interesting. Either way, we do learn something. In the example @pemerton gave, we learned that his character wasn’t as ruthless as he’d believed.

That form of revelation may not be to your liking… that’s fine. I don’t disagree with your preference, just your description of it as not learning something.

I stated that I would not learn anything. Whether you do or not isn't my call.

I disagreed with your description. However, since you don’t play those games, it’s not an actual issue, is it?

 

[hawkeyefan]

Then you are using a very flawed definition of agency

Not at all. It’s about the player and their choices in the game. In BW, the idea is for these things to be tested. That the dice may constrain what we can do. It’s a decision made knowingly, and it uses a set procedure that is known by the player.

There are consequences in play beyond hit point loss.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I stated that I would not learn anything. Whether you do or not isn't my call.

But prior to that moment, you wouldn’t have known the outcome….

Seems like learning to me, but whatever. We’re going in circles. You don’t like it, and that’s fine.

 

[pemerton]

"Hurt for a hurt" indicates a willingness to become violent. "Never admit I'm wrong" indicates that he won't hesitate, because hesitation occurs when a person is unsure about their intent.

Together, both of those traits strongly indicate that Aedros isn't going to hesitate before murdering someone.

It seems to me that your interpretation of the instinct and belief are not the only possible ones. I mean, they could describe a petulant teenager as much as a spiteful Dark Elf.

Which is relevant to the play of Burning Wheel. Aedrhos obviously thinks that he is capable of murder. But is he really? Or is he just putting it on?

 

[pemerton]

You still haven't* directly answered my question from upthread about whether in-character prep ahead of time (i.e. always carrying a belt pouch containing an empty vial, sponge, and scalpel) would or could have solved this for the PC without a roll.

* - or if you have, I missed it.

I have posted in this thread, approximately a million times, the following (from pp 11 and 72 of Hub and Spokes):

The GM presents the players with problems based on the players’ priorities. The players use their characters’ abilities to overcome these obstacles. To do this, dice are rolled and the results are interpreted using the rules presented in this book. . . . There is no social agreement for the resolution of conflict in this game. Roll the dice and let the obstacle system guide the outcome.​

Burning Wheel is not a collaborative storytelling game.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Me, too. Who did that?

The only claim of "more" that I saw was from you guys claiming that since you have both types, you have more agency. The game that has both doesn't allow more, because you can't engage both types at once. So if in a 4 hour period you engaged player agency 66% of the time, you only have 34% for character agency. In my game it's 100% for character agency. Same amount of agency in both games.

You forgot to count the time you and your players are staring at each other waiting for something to happen! No agency is happening during that time!

So your game has the leastest agency evar!!!!

 

[pemerton]

The fact that "every scene is to be framed having reference to player-determined priorities for their PCs" hands meta-agency to the players on a plate: they get to determine what scenes, or what sort of scenes, the GM has to frame by what they state as their PCs' priorities, before they've even declared a single action for their characters.

The rules give players that meta-agency, which in my view makes them bad rules.

]This is why I say that your preferred approach is, in comparison, GM-driven. Because the GM being required to have regard to anything other than their own vision for the game is "bad rule".