Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8347567" data-attributes="member: 42582">Maybe. I tend to think of it as an aspect of PC build.In BW, a player can change their PC's Beliefs at any time, but under two constraints: (i) there are some other abilities that my be lost if a certain sort of Belief isn't held (eg a Faithful character who no longer has a Belief that express the character's Faith ceases to be Faithful); (ii) the GM is entitled to delay the process of Belief change if s/he feels it's an attempt to squib out of a conflict in the moment or that is about to emerge. That second constraint is part of why I think of it as an aspect of build.PC Beliefs are certainly expected to be front-and-centre in play, though. The basic principle GMs are meant to abide by, in BW, is always frame scenes towards conflict that will engage one or more Beliefs. If a scene can put Beliefs at odds or under conflicting pressures, all the better!At least in BW, the intent you describe here is different from a PC's Belief - it is a component of action declaration. We can expect that it will typically be connected to a Belief in some fashion, though, for two reasons:(i) Players earn fate-type points for expressing their Beliefs in play, for achieving goals expressed in their Beliefs, and for dramatically confronting and perhaps change their Beliefs. (This is comparable, in general terms, to the Marvel Heroic RP milestones, which are often expressed disjunctively in terms of playing to type or dramatically abandoning type (eg Captain America disbanding his team).)(ii) The GM is expected simply to "say 'yes'" to any action declaration that is not addressing salient stakes, where the measure of salience is the character's Beliefs.So because of (i) and (ii), most intents that feed into any sort of interesting or contested resolution will be Belief-connected in some fashion or other (but not necessarily Belief-affirming or Belief-reflecting).The issue of authorship is interesting. What I think is important in BW resolution (and there are some resemblances to some instances of Asset-creation in MHRP) is that the player does not have fiat authorial power. If there is something that is stakes-laden, then the check has to be made. And only if it is successful (eg I have successfully found the incriminating letter) does the fiction take on the features the players was hoping for. If the check fails, then the GM narrates the consequences, with the major principle there being focus on the intent at least as much as on the task when determining what the failure consists in (eg in this case we could imagine that failure might be narrated as the discovery of an exonerating letter).My view on this has two components:(1) There's no accounting for taste. People like what they like, and they dislike what they dislike, and we're talking about a leisure activity, and so that pretty much resolves the question of who should play what.(2) When someone says that there is something in the logic of BW-type play, or inherent to this sort of RPGing, that must impede inhabitation of character, I strongly disagree. There are two reasons here, interrelated: (i) I know that I can play BW while inhabiting the character, because I do (I don't think it's the only way to play BW, but I know from experience it is a way); (ii) part of what makes that possible is the action declaration structure - in declaring I search for the incriminating letter I believe to be there, I don't have to think about anything outside of my PC's thought processes, and whether I (the player) succeed or fail on the ensuing check, what happens next is all about what my PC is experiencing (ie discovery of the incriminating letter, or a different letter or whatever else, depending on success vs failure and in the latter case how the GM chooses to narrate it).There is no mechanism in BW, once PC build is done, for players to establish fiction outside of this process of declaring a mental state for the PC - I look for . . ., I search for . . ., I hope to meet . . ., Don't I recall that . . . ?, etc. And having those sorts of mental states is utterly compatible with being a thief. In fact I imagine thieves have these sorts of states all the time - eg I look for the way in, I search for the strongbox, I hope to meet a fence, Don't I recall that the penalty for a first offence in these parts is no worse than a day in the stocks?To go further and explain my own tastes, I find it much more conducive to inhabitation to be able to posit these mental states and then to settle - via a check - their precise content and relationship to the (imaginary) world external to the character, then to rely on second-person narration (You see, you don't see, you recall, you know, etc) to feed me my character's mental life.</blockquote>

Verification