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

[Bedrockgames]

But how do you choose for the npc's?

I have a mental model of them in my head and so if it's conversation then I'm just kind of inhabiting them and just saying what I think they'd say. The mental model is heavily concerned with their current priorities in a way that's maybe a bit different than the way I model other humans in the real world but it's very similar.

If I have to make a decision for them I just do what 'feels right.' with attention paid to how that converts to action.

My approach to NPCs is to create them with clear goals, attachments, etc. But I think there is also a thing that happens where they click into place when you start running them. It is sort of like a PC in that way. Maybe you have stuff set down, but once you actually play the character you just see everything that much more clearly. So for me, I just always know exactly what the NPC is thinking and wants. It is just very clear to me right away who they are the moment I start playing them.

 

[robertsconley]

But how do you choose for the npc's?

I have a mental model of them in my head and so if it's conversation then I'm just kind of inhabiting them and just saying what I think they'd say. The mental model is heavily concerned with their current priorities in a way that's maybe a bit different than the way I model other humans in the real world but it's very similar.

If I have to make a decision for them I just do what 'feels right.' with attention paid to how that converts to action.

Method acting honed through 15 years of roleplaying in larps event as part of staff like NERO, Although I don’t need to live as the character outside of the acting moments like some do. I do run drills in my head imagining conversations with other characters.

Your technique is closely related.

So question do you roleplay first person using the character voice?

 

[thefutilist]

My approach to NPCs is to create them with clear goals, attachments, etc. But I think there is also a thing that happens where they click into place when you start running them. It is sort of like a PC in that way. Maybe you have stuff set down, but once you actually play the character you just see everything that much more clearly. So for me, I just always know exactly what the NPC is thinking and wants. It is just very clear to me right away who they are the moment I start playing them.

Yeah I think the same is true for me, any character really, PC or NPC. In some ways it hasn't changed since I first started roleplaying. In others it has. So I'm more liable to communicate who the character is to the other participants. I use the meta-channel or character reading of body language to communicate what they may be thinking. They're more value driven and intense compared to my earlier characters. Stuff like that. It's kind of weird in some ways because the way I play has changed through introspection but it really feels the same.

 

[Bedrockgames]

No, I’m considering player actions.

Look at the example @thefutilist offered not far back. The arcane assassins fail to kill the cruel king… but kill his daughter. How does the king react?

Let’s say the assassins are the PCs.

How does the king respond to the PCs’ actions?

This can be determined in any number of ways. But assuming the GM is going to decide based on what’s been established… most of the information is going to be things the GM has already decided.

Yes, the players acted and it is significant, and the GM is considering that. But so many other factors being considered don’t come from the players… they come from the GM.

This is an example designed to demonstrate what you are trying to prove though. Most NPCs aren't going to be this pre-loaded for a particular scenario (i.e. send the PCs on an assassination mission, and have the victim be related to a very vengeful king). Now I don't have a problem with this sort of thing being in the setting, but I think that most interactions with NPCs are much more involved than you killing their daughter and them being vengeful. Also if the PCs decide not to do the Assassination or learn more about the victim, this stuff probably doesn't even happen. So even if these pieces are all set to explode in a particular direction, in a sandbox the PCs can still always say, naughty word this guy who wants us to kill the kings' daughter, let's go see if there are any emerald mines in the west.

 

[pemerton]

I lose a DoW and agree to do whatever you tell me to do.

That effect lasts until one of us dies? Or until we're separated for x-distance or x-amount of time? Or ... ?

You can get the answer from the free rulebook that you can download here: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/98542/burning-wheel-gold-hub-and-spokes

It's on p 32:

One of the most important aspects of ability tests in game play in Burning Wheel is the Let It Ride rule: A player shall test once against an obstacle and shall not roll again until conditions legitimately and drastically change. Neither GM nor player can call for a retest unless those conditions change. Successes from the initial roll count for all applicable situations in play. . . .
The successes of those rolls ride across the entire situation, scene or session.​

I posted an example upthread, in reply to you, of conditions changing: the PCs faffed around for too long in the catacombs (determined because they failed a test while working carefully).

The Codex also gives some examples, on p 150:

You discover new information; you're deceived or betrayed; you lose your horse/ship/flying carpet; the weather takes a sudden turn for the worse; you're lost; you're found; your finery is covered in <excrement>/blood/mud; you learn a new spell or school of magic; your precious possessions are stolen; you discover a powerful artifact; you earn a new trait; a miracle happens.​

Obviously this is not a checklist - it's pointing to the sorts of things that players might stake and that, if staked and forfeited (or won), then the old outcome is up for grabs. This is as I explained in the Halika case: by having their PCs take their time (by working carefully), the players are implicitly staking that the sleeping potion they had administered to Halika might wear off.

The Codex also says this, by way of clarification (p 181):

Conditions that don't generally count as significant or drastic: you're superficially or lightly wounded; you change a Belief; you change an Instinct; you ask, "How about now?"; or you fail another test.

If you're wounded so badly that the skill or ability with which you overcame an obstacle is reduced to zero, then Let It Ride doesn't apply. Otherwise, wounds should count as a change of conditions for Let It Ride.​

Ultimately, as @Old Fezziwig has also posted, what counts as an appropriate change in the conditions that underpin the outcome is contextual. In my experience, if the players think that the conditions have, or haven't, changed, they will let me know! And then we can talk about it.

 

[thefutilist]

Method acting honed through 15 years of roleplaying in larps event as part of staff like NERO, Although I don’t need to live as the character outside of the acting moments like some do. I do run drills in my head imagining conversations with other characters.

Your technique is closely related.

So question do you roleplay first person using the character voice?

I have conversations in the first person but not exclusively. I describe what the characters doing, their facial expressions and so on. I don't do voices per say but I do modulate my own voice a bit. I sometimes describe their inner thoughts (which is a big no for a lot of the more immersion orientated people), almost like early comic books where you can read the characters self talk in the panels (although I do that in third person).

 

[pemerton]

If all Faolyn has to go by is the basic rules while you have more in-depth info, it's a bit much to get annoyed at her for making statements based on the in-theory-complete rules she has.

She keeps telling me I'm wrong about how the game works. Which is annoying.

 

[pemerton]

It's the same bloody thing!

Not it's not.

What makes shared imagination possible is that you can imagine something, and I can imagine the same thing. What we imagine is shared. And has no causal effects in the real world. Our mental states are different - yours is in your head; mine is in my head - and those have actual causal effects.

We're imagining the fiction. Because we're imagining that fiction and not some other fiction, we think and say and do things we would not if we were imagining some other fiction.

Yes. This is true.

It's nothing more than meaningless semantics to say it's imagination making us do things rather than the specifics of what we're imagining, and tying it to the fiction makes it far easier to grok.

To the contrary - trying to explain how to reason well about fiction by beginning from the premise that the fiction has real causal power is a source of needless confusion.

And yet that's by far the shortest and clearest way of saying what happened.

No. Telling me that a ghost killed the person is a clear way to say something false and to spread superstition.

 

[robertsconley]

I have conversations in the first person but not exclusively. I describe what the characters doing, their facial expressions and so on. I don't do voices per say but I do modulate my own voice a bit. I sometimes describe their inner thoughts (which is a big no for a lot of the more immersion orientated people), almost like early comic books where you can read the characters self talk in the panels (although I do that in third person).

Sounds good. I am pretty much the same except I never do inner thoughts. I do describe body language when it would be obvious along with skill checks when it is not certain the PCs will pick up on the body language. I will attempt to do the voices. Do a few of them very well the rest are adequate for the purpose.

The Hill Giantess appalachian accent is one of the ones I do well hence why Josh mentioned it his account.

 

[Faolyn]

It's not expressly mentioned in the passage you referred to. It's expressly mentioned in various die traits, and in the list of obstacles. Which I've already posted, in reply to you and others, probably four or five times now.

To me, that seems like quite a mis-reading.

Was Hobbiton a city?

Yes, I know he was some sort of landed gentry or whatnot. The point still stands.

I chose.

Did you? Did you choose on your own, or because or what the dice said?

I mean, one bizarre aspect of this conversation (one of many) is that you seem to treat hesitates when attempting X as is unable to attempt X.

Read the actual play report, and you'll see.

I have. Several times. There's not a thing in there that seems cold-blooded.

Huh? Alicia and Aedhros were robbing the innkeeper at night, out of anger at how he had treated them. Aedhros decided to escalate to murder; Alicia objected.

Yes, you're proving my point here. The innkeeper was rightfully angry about being robbed by someone who had lied to his face about wanting a job, and it's entirely possible that he also realized that she used mind-control on him. He did see her muttering strange words, after all.

I'm given to understand that BW is not a game where PCs gain scores of hit points and combat abilities out the wazoo while innkeepers are 0th-level commoners. As it is, it appears that if there hadn't been penalties due to poor lighting, he would have been almost as good a fighter as Alicia was (he had 3 dice, she had 4). And while I haven't bothered to read if that's a lot of dice in this system, I did see that you said that her player really likes giving his characters martial arts, so I imagine she's at least a competent pugilist and maybe even a very good one. This suggests that the innkeeper wasn't half-bad himself.

So the innkeeper was a foe. One who could possibly hurt them quite a bit, and who was angry at being lied to and robbed. And here comes Aedros with a sword called Heart Seeker that he had already drawn.

But gosh, no. Of course he'd hesitate.

I don't understand why you are wanting to project your own idea about what might happen in a RPG onto an actual session that actually happened, that you can read an account of if you like.

Because nothing you say makes any sort of sense. None of the PCs you've talked about react in a logical way, and a lot of that is because this system uses rules to force PC behavior!