Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9751974" data-attributes="member: 42582">In Burning Wheel, the rule for failure is this (I'm quoting from Gold Revised p 31; the text on p 34 of Revised is pretty similar):When the dice are rolled and don't produce enough successes to meet the obstacle, the character fails. What does this mean? It means the stated intent does not come to pass.This is followed by an example:"I pick the lock quickly, before the guards come!" This is an easy intent to judge a failure for: The character doesn't get the lock open. Simple, right? But what if that's changed a bit. Failure doesn't have to mean the lock doesn't open. Look at the intent: "before the guards come." What if the character opens the lock just as the guards arrive? Suddenly, you have trouble - drama and action!The GM should be making these judgements based on what is at stake, and what will be at stake as a consequence of failure - which, in turn, relates back to the priorities that the players have established for their PCs, as part of the build and play of those PCs.Look at <a href="http://lumpley.com/hardcore.html" target="_blank">Baker's example of fencing</a>:"I slash at his face, like ha!" "Why?" "To force him off-balance!" Conflict Resolution: do you force him off-balance? Roll: Loss! "He ducks side to side, like fwip fwip! He keeps his feet and grins."Here, the task succeeds (there is no failure to slash at the opponent's face) but the intent fails (because the opponent is skilled enough to duck side to side, fwip fwip).In terms of maintaining the correlation, here is how Baker explains it:In conventional rpgs, success=winning and failure=losing only provided the GM constantly maintains that relationship - by (eg) making the safe contain the relevant piece of information after you've cracked it. It's possible and common for a GM to break the relationship instead, turning a string of successes into a loss, or a failure at a key moment into a win anyway.But he is talking about task resolution. As the fencing example shows, in conflict resolution we can have the PC lose (as the roll dictates) yet the task succeed.Here's an alternative version of the fencing example:"I slash at his face, like ha!" "Why?" "To force him off-balance!" Conflict Resolution: do you force him off-balance? Roll: Loss! "As you lift your blade to slash at his face, he brings his blade down hard on yours - crack! Your blade breaks into two. He keeps his feet and grins."In this version, the task as well as the intent fails.Which narration a given RPG permits, and which one the GM should choose, will vary with the details of the game. (Eg, in PbtA language, the broken blade is clearly a harder GM move than the ducking to the side.)Here's the example given in the Codex (pp 206-8; the Adventure Burner has very similar text at 300-2):I played in a game in which the Big Picture established that long ago the black dragon descended upon a great Dwarven Hall . . . [Our] long term goal was to slay the dragon . . . Thor was playing a wizard . . . Trying to come up with a place to start, he asked the GM, "Do I know any stories about the origins of dragons?" Before answering the question, the first thing Anthony, the GM, had to consider [was] whether he knew the answer or not. When he was preparing this campaign, did he determine where dragons came from. For argument's sake, let's say he did. At this point, Anthony would have to decide whether to simply Say Yes and give Thor the information or call for a Dragonwise test. . . . But what if Anthony hadn't considered the origins of dragons in the game? In that case, he would need a little more information about what Thor was looking for and why. For instance, Thor might tell him he wanted information about where dragons came from so we could go there and hopefully pick up the trail of this particular dragon. Thor might even have suggested they came from a particular remote island known for its monstrous inhabitants . . . At that point, Anthony would have had to consider more questions . . . If the answer . . . was "No", Anthony could have said yes and gone with Thor's suggestion. . . . In our game, what actually happened is that Anthony had not considered the origin of dragons at first, but he'd been rolling it around in his head as we played and the campaign developed. When [Thor] asked the question, he had an idea in mind: "Remember when you were searching for the Lost City of Panax and you fought your way to the Chronicle of Ages in the Hall of the Allfathers to do some research? You recall there was a section that was dedicated to dragons that you didn't have time to investigate." And so Thor had to wait for another opportunity to test Dragon-wise. And it would be a bit more time before he learned the awful truth: Dragons are born when a Dwarf advances his Greed to exponent 10.So it's communication, but also decisions about how to resolve declared actions.More "local" fictional positioning is handled fairly loosely, though the GM has final say (Gold Revised p 28; Revised is almost identical on p 30):Whenever a player can claim his character has a clear advantage over his target - definitively favorable conditions like higher ground, pushing your opponent onto an ice patch or a weight advantage in wrestling - he gains +1D to the ability being tested. A player may only lobby for one +1D advantage per test. In order to gain this advantage, he must state how and why he deserves such a boon in one clear sentence - no situation lawyering. . .  In the case of social skill tests, good roleplay, keen description or just good timing can earn the advantage die. The GM has final say over what is and isn't  an advantage. . . . The GM can also add additional advantage dice if he thinks the character is in a strong position. If he disagrees with the player regarding the nature or benefit of an advantage, then no bonus is granted. Only one to two advantage dice should be granted to each roll (at maximum).A relevant factor here is that the advancement rules mean that a player does not always want to be rolling a big pool of dice; and so doesn't always want to lobby for advantage.Genre is also ultimately with the GM, but in a kind of "gedouttahere!" way. From p 560 of Gold Revised (Revised has the same text at 262):A player cannot make a stand for beam weaponry in the Duke's toilet and hope to get a DoF roll. Gear mongering for superior quality arms in a village is also an executable offence.The example (beam weaponry in a mediaeval fantasy RPG) and tone ("executable offence") show that it is generally assumed that everyone is on the same page and pulling in the same direction as far as genre and large-scale fictional positioning are concerned.</blockquote>

Verification