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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9228179" data-attributes="member: 42582">Here is DitV (p 138):Every moment of play, roll dice or say yes. If nothing’s at stake, say yes to the players, whatever they’re doing. Just plain go along with them. If they ask for information, give it to them. If they have their characters go somewhere, they’re there. If they want it, it’s theirs. Sooner or later - sooner, because your town’s pregnant with crisis - they’ll have their characters do something that someone else won’t like. Bang! Something’s at stake. Launch the conflict and roll the dice.Here is BW Gold (p 72):In his game, Dogs in the Vineyard, Vincent Baker articulates a convention of Burning Wheel so well that I’d rather use his words than my own. He says: *Every moment of play, roll dice or say “yes.” If nothing is at stake, say “yes” [to the player’s request], whatever they’re doing. Just go along with them. If they ask for information, give it to them. If they have their characters go somewhere, they’re there. If they want it, it’s theirs. Sooner or later - sooner, because [your game’s] pregnant with crisis - they’ ll have their characters do something that someone else won’t like. Bang! Something’s at stake. Start the conflict and roll the dice. Roll dice, or say “yes.”* Vincent’s advice is perfect for Burning Wheel. Unless there is something at stake in the story you have created, don’t bother with the dice. Keep moving, keep describing, keep roleplaying. But as soon as a character wants something that he doesn’t have, needs to know something he doesn’t know, covets something that someone else has, roll the dice. Flip that around and it reveals a fundamental rule in Burning Wheel game play: When there is conflict, roll the dice. There is no social agreement for the resolution of conflict in this game. Roll the dice and let the obstacle system guide the outcome. Success or failure doesn’t really matter. So long as the intent of the task is clearly stated, the story is going somewhere.This is what "say 'yes' or roll the dice" means.It's incoherent to talk about applying this to task resolution. Task resolution doesn't have a notion of "stakes" that would tell us whether and when to call for a check.Who decides what is uncertain? Based on what principles? Who decides if there is a meaningful consequence for failure, or if "the stakes" matter? Or, for that matter, what the stakes are?The general tenor of the passage that you have quoted seems to be the GM. The GM decides whether to deem the player's declared action successful, unsuccessful, or in need of a roll, by reference to considerations established by the GM and perhaps - but not necessarily - shared with the players.As to whether any particular episode of play is task or conflict resolution, you'd have to give me an example. The text you've quoted doesn't get that far - for instance, it would be consistent with the quoted text for the dice never to be rolled, and for all resolution to be "drama" resolution (to used Tweet's term).If I assume that the GM, when calling for a check, is free to establish stakes of, and consequences of, a check without regard to the player's goal - which certainly seem to be what is implied (eg the GM could call for a check to open the safe, yet there be nothing in there that the players want for their PCs) - then it is task resolution.The whole thing looks, to me, like <a href="https://mightyatom.blogspot.com/2006/01/for-comparison.html" target="_blank">Harper's diagram</a>.</blockquote>

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