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

[pemerton]

I understand the rules I think, they just make no sense to me from my point of reference. Explaining why always seems to be taken as an insult.

If you understand the rules, then why are you asking why a roll was required? Are you just trolling, or is there some other reason?

Sorry. I'm not talking about Burning Wheel anymore.

Then I trust you'll stop asking me about it. Especially as you already understand it.,

 

[pemerton]

In May of 2014, two teenage girls attempted to murder another one in order to appease Slender Man.

Slender Man stabbing - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

OK?

What does this have to do with point that imaginary things don't actually cause real events? According to the Wikipedia entry you linked to, the cause of their actions was mental illness ("Weier and Geyser were both found not guilty by mental disease or defect and committed to mental health institutions"). I assume that you're not meaning to say that the fictional "Slender Man" caused those girls to do what they did?

And I also assume that you're not suggesting that RPGers have the sort of delusional relationship to imaginings that these girls did.

 

[Campbell]

Part of consent is agreeing to the premise of the game. Agreeing to play Apocalypse Keys includes consenting to play a game where will be a harbinger of the apocalypse is at stake. Agreeing to play Vampire means agreeing to play a game where you struggle against a biblical Beast that hungers for you to sate yourself upon mortals and eventually other immortals. Burning Wheel is conceptually game for passion plays. Its premise involves testing what we think of the characters as people. Not accepting these premises means you should not play these games.

Now within these bounds I think things like safety tools, an open-door policy and checking in with each other are all important to make sure we are in a good place. Part of striving for these more emotional and personal stakes is that we need to have an openness to discussing things on a meta level.

 

[Old Fezziwig]

Do you think that Luke Crane goes around forcing people to play Burning Wheel with its Steel rules?

Only in the continental United States regularly. He tries to get the rest of the world on a rotating basis. Last year was Europe, this year is South America.

 

[pemerton]

Only in the continental United States regularly. He tries to get the rest of the world on a rotating basis. Last year was Europe, this year is South America.

Australians are safe then.

 

[hawkeyefan]

And yet rigorous, jargon-filled academic discussion is not an agreed upon requirement here. Perhaps we should all keep this in mind.

Didn't you just a few pages back exclaim how much you love the term meta-agency?

The second example is why I don't agree with you about the first example.

I don't think it's accurate to describe having one's attempted move fail as a loss of agency in playing a game. I've lost a lot of games in my life (and have won some too), but the fact that I lost doesn't mean I didn't have agency. It just means that I played badly, or got unlucky, etc.

Yes, this was my point! I see the two things as being very similar in that sense. I don't think anyone playing Burning Wheel or any game that handles things similarly to look at that moment of play and say "I lost my agency as a player".

It tends to be a complaint, as @Bedrockgames has pointed out... and no one playing BW would complain about that scene.

Looking at it as a loss of agency is insisting on what I think is an artificially narrow view of agency.

The fact that there is so much focus on the player getting to have sole authority over what their PC feels, to me, seems to be a sign of the narrowness of the locus of agency in a lot of RPGing. That the only way the player gets to express their agency is via authoring the colour of what their PC feels.

(And I call it colour deliberately - because in a typical, conventionally-structured RPG it's not as if being able to author your PC's feelings has any effect on the actual outcomes of the actions you declare for your PC.)

Exactly!

 

[Old Fezziwig]

Australians are safe then.

Until 2028.

 

[pemerton]

Part of consent is agreeing to the premise of the game.

Yeah, it seems odd that this needs to be said.

But @AnotherGuy had a similar thing happen upthread, the suggestion of GMing a game despite the wishes of the players for something different. That was weird too.

It's like some people saw "dungeons" in the title and interpreted it a bit too literally!

 

[zakael19]

Why is this called "blorb" play? It seems excessively silly, to the point of being dismissive.

The author lays out why she chose “nonsense” words like Blorb/gloracle and it’s because she wanted to avoid the pre-existing context and subjective understandings around most TTRPG terminology. It was intentional to ensure precision in discussion and writing.

You’ve seen going on 7k posts showing what happens when you reuse existing terms in this thread.
Edit: ninja’d by @Campbell !

 

[pemerton]

Didn't you just a few pages back exclaim how much you love the term meta-agency?

Maybe it's not rigorous?