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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9196403" data-attributes="member: 42582">Well, I don't know what you mean by "simulationist", but Torchbearer is relatively close to Burning Wheel in its core resolution engine, and both systems use "objective" difficulties that reflect how hard something is to achieve. (This contrast with, say, Apocalypse World.)It does measure how good the character is at cooking. No one has said otherwise.Because that is how the game is designed? When you (player, playing your PC) try to tackle a harder task, you (player, playing your PC) are less likely to get what you want.This design feature interacts with rules around PC advancement (while BW and Torchbearer have different rules for advancement, both in practice require the player to make rolls against a variety of difficulties), and with rules around the use/expenditure of player-side resources (fate and persona points, traits, etc).You seem to keep projecting your own narrative discontinuities onto other's play.This seems to be a truism about any game. I mean, if I'm not on board with the railroading that is common in much RPGing, I will find that frustrating!There is no "disconnection" between setting out to prepare food while camping, and having that process interrupted. They are connected by time, space, the various signs and cues that are created by the process of cooking, and so on.These too.Torchbearer generally relies on stakes being implicit.The core rule is presented, fairly crisply, on p 36 of the Scholar's Guide:The game master decides if there’s a twist or a condition when a player fails a roll. The game master describes the resulting scene. How does the character foul up and get tied in knots? How do they barely succeed? What unforeseen obstacle crops up and disrupts their efforts.Page 96 adds additional commentary on "Camp Twists":During camp, the players drive the action. The game master does not present new problems unless the players fail a roll for an activity better undertaken in the adventure phase. If that happens, the game master may introduce a twist as the result of a failed roll. Said twist could be severe enough to cause camp to break prematurely.And p 223 comments on "Adventures in Camp":The camp phase is driven by the players. Don’t make an adventure out of it. Let the players spend their checks. Give conditions for most failure results; use any twists generated to build into the adventure phase.In the episode of play I referred to, the PCs were already pretty heavy with conditions, and the Cook test was the final check spent in the camp. I had to make a decision about the consequence of failure: as p 213 note, "The most primary mechanism of judgement is when to apply a twist or condition to the result of a failed test. That is a serious decision in the context of the game."I decided that an "unforeseen obstacle crops up and disrupts their efforts" that would "build into the adventure phase", namely, that bandits associated with the moathouse the PCs had spotted, who had formerly been allied with the Dire Wolf the PCs had captured and tamed, turned up at their camp.The players were disappointed, in the usual way, to have failed the Cook test. But they were not shocked or outraged at the narration of bandits. In fact, as I posted in the actual play thread, the player of the PC cook commented that:</blockquote>

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