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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6112842" data-attributes="member: 4937">This is a misuse of the word nuance and playing semmantic games to evade my point.  "True love" is vaguely defined.   "True King" is not vaguely defined.   To be the true king, you must be by the laws of nature and man the one who is king.  Monarchies are built in their entirety around avoiding as much as possible any question over who succeeds rightfully to the kingship.  Every system of government is built to obtain a peaceful transition of power between rulers, but with monarchies thats almost their entire reason for being.  For even to be in dispute whether or not you are the true king, requires at least some sort of reasonable claim on the throne by birth and some implied violence in the history of the setting.   This is why the belief, "I am the true king", is inextricably linked to the player's background.  But even to the extent that you disagree, that we are even having this conversation suggests all these beliefs and such haven't helped us escape the problem of 'surprising the GM', because if the belief is a matter of interpretation then we are clearly going to have lots of disagreements over what actually pertains to the belief and what sort of scene is 'relevant' and 'interesting' to the belief and player. - emphasis addedThis is clearly a person having trouble with the concept of monarchy.  This is a player where I would really want to be having some long talks witht them about what they really wanted before starting play.   It seems to me that they'd be much better off with a belief like, "We need a new ruler." or "The true king must be one of the people." and/or "I was born to rule." since those seem to be the sort of things that they really want to test, at least based on what your interpretation of the belief is (which is notably quite different than what mine is, assuming I'm the player).My point is that there are certain aspects about that backstory that we must know before we can say anything about what that trajectory is to be.  The belief itself actually shapes nothing about the trajectory.   Moreover, it would I think require working out some interesting backstory before that trajectory would have much interest.  You example PC initiative is I think a good example of a game that is about to fall flat and go no where.  It really is over before it starts.  Before that thing is interesting, it has to be reasonable in the backstory that this guy might indeed be the true king.  It requires therefore, as one of many possible starting points, something like having a backstory like that of Aragorn son of Arathorn, David the son of Jesse, or of Arthur Pendragon or having a setting like 'Game of Thrones' where monarchy has gone badly wrong and the question of who is the rightful ruler really is up in the air.   And even then, the PC needs a backstory that puts them in the middle of that if the belief, "I am the true king" really is to be an open question to be determined by the course of play.To a certain extent I agree with you, particularly because you've shifted the meaning subtly and interestingly by using the verb 'entails'.  One aspect of a monarchy is that it always maintains the fiction that the true king is in some sense 'good'.  If he is the true king, then in some sense not only is he of the blood but because he is of the blood he has all the virtues that are desirable to have in a king.  Of course, not being monarchists ourselves (in all likelihood) we can easily look at history and call that a fiction, but in the minds of those who live under a monarchy that myth is often percieved as being literally true and certainly within the framework of fiction it is often literally true - consider the full sense in which Aragorn son of Arathorn is The True King or the sense in which Arthur Pendragon is always The True King or perhaps even more powerfully than that the sense (here I hope I'm not breaking a rule) in which the Messiah is The True King eternally.  So I think it very interesting if a game about being the king brings into play this tension between being true in the sense of being rightful and being true in the sense of having all the virtues that the rightful king is supposed to have.  But before that story is even minimally interesting, there must be some way in which the character could be the rightful king.  We can keep it open as to whether the character's beliefs about his heritage are true, but that's something in any other system I'd want to do only with player permission.   It may be that in the prior sense that you said BW is not 'safe', that the table contract a player has to accept when he sits down to play BW is that the 'mess with me' factor is high but if that is the case, then I think it renders any claim that this is player empowering rather suspect.  Again, this is part of the 'mess with me' factor being high that I can imagine players getting really upset about.  One thing about the table contract that has always been operative in any game I've ever played is, "Each player's character is their own and they have sovereign and unassailable rights over their character."I distinguish between assigning truth to a belief in its role of forestory, and assigning truth a belief in as much as it implies a backstory.  A belief like, "I will redeem my family honor", implies that the family has been dishonored in some sense and the belief is only meaningful and interesting if there is something about the backstory that could be seen as dishonoring the family.  Whether or not the coming story will result in the family name being restored to a place of honor is an entirely different story.  And again, the truth of an event in the backstory still leaves open the question of whether the PC should see the event as dishonorable, or questions like should you see your parents or grandparents actions as dishonoring you.   Consider something like Zuko's belief, "I will restore my honor" in Avatar the Last Airbender.  The truth that there is an event which has caused him to lose face (quite literally in this case) and station among his people is unquestionable.  What it means and where it will lead us is however open.Isn't that a simulationist process?I understand that.   I also assert that in the case of particular beliefs, the player is asserting - probably taking for granted - that something about his backstory is true.   This is certainly the case about a belief like 'I am the true king', unless we have a player who is interesting in exploring the play of a character with a belief that he knows as a player is not true.   These two stances about the belief lead to two very different desires for the game, one that better be understood ahead of time if you don't want to 'surprise the GM'.I entirely disagree.  Beyond the fact that I completely disagree that BW is a 'No Myth' game or as to what the word 'playable' entails, regardless of the rules set employed, before this game about whether or not this PC really is the true king of the land, there must be a preexisting mythic structure in every sense of the word that makes that question interesting.   Now there are lots of starting  states that make that interesting.  One starting state is that the concept of 'kingship' doesn't even exist in the world.   No one is a king, and no one - at least until this character showed up claiming to be one - has even thought of 'kings'.  Other settings where the question is interesting are implied by kingly figures like Aragorn, Arthur, David, Jesus of Nazereth, MacBeth, Richard  III, Henry V, or Robert Baratheon.  But without establishing a setting where the question can be played out in an interesting way for the character, the game is likely to be a dud.It's not a about forming a judgment in advance as much as it is having a framework where the question is interesting.  The question of whether Jesus of Nazereth was King of the Jews is obviously one of great dispute that has never been completely resolved and over which there is much moral debate, but the question of whether a carpenter's son was the true king is only interesting within a particular framework.  Besides which, it is utterly and completely unreasonable to suggest that anyone playing an RPG leave open in his mind whether something like murder has indeterminate moral value.  You cannot reasonably demand that anyone playing an RPG have no conception of what is meant by words like 'justice', 'hero', or 'villain' or that they toss out their moral compasses.  You can tell a story like MacBeth where the protagonist is the villain, and you can make the villain somewhat sympathetic, but you cannot demand that I not see him as the villain.  Nor for that matter do I have the remotest idea where you get the basis for this claim you are making about BW, which seems to be more 'pemerton prefers' than it does any hard rule about BW enforced by the text.I think we can both agree that the GM is generally required to maintain a stance of neutrality in so far as it concerns ruling mechanically on a players actions.  Just because to my mind the PC is clearly engaged in villainous acts doesn't mean that I begin ruling against them.I agree to a certain extent, but perhaps not for the same reasons.  In a setting that is about PCs as demigods, such direct confrontation might be  appropriate.  My big problem with that scene is the disparity in power between the god and the motal.  It might however be appropriate to have a priest of the Raven Queen condemn the PC as a murderer, depending on the character of the priest and of the Raven Queen.  If the Raven Queen condemns someone, it doesn't mean that they are worthy of condemnation.  It just means that the Raven Queen believes they are.  The Raven Queen may be fallable.  It is entirely up to the player to determine whether he believes the judgement of the gods is just, and not to put too fine of a point on it, but that is to a very large extent what my current campaign is about.</blockquote>

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