# Is the Burning Wheel "how to play" advice useful for D&D?



## pemerton (Mar 5, 2013)

In the "World Worth Saving" thread, the topic of player and GM responsibilities came up - who should be responsible for what, if the game is going to be fun for all involved?

Anyway, I mentioned that the Burning Wheel rulebook tackles this head on, and   [MENTION=6688858]Libramarian[/MENTION] thought it might be interesting. So here goes (from Burning Wheel revised, pp 265-69):

Concept, Concept, Concept
When setting up a Burning Wheel game, the GM and the players come to an agreement about what this story/scenario is going to be all about. . .

Get this game concept out in the open right off. Sometimes, players will just have a concept for a character he wants to play. . . Pay attention to them. . .

Once the concept for the game is determined, pick and choose elements from the overall game that are appropriate . . .  Toss out any skills, weapons, spells, etc that are inappropriate to your concept. Save them for another game. . .

Once the concept is agreed upon, the GM's job is to set the lifepath limits and overall power level of the player characters . . . If the concept calls for twinked out munchkin power, then it is the GM's job to set the upper and _lower_ limits of player characters. . .

The GM should set the time of the Resources Cycle. . . Setting this cycle most definitely influences the time patterns of the story to be. . . Setting the cycle at a year means characters are going to need a lot of time to have their goals and desires met [because much game time will have to pass to earn money]. There'll be a lot of "season pass" narration. . .

If there are Faithful characters [clerics and paladins, in D&D terms] in the group, the GM and those players must decide upon the idiom of their faiths, whether it affects all creatures or just the believers, and any religious strictures placed on the characters. . .

Tying in Relationships
GM's: Don't let players buy useless relationships that won't have a bearing on the game. . .

With his view of the big picture, the Gm can and should advise players aboiut which relationships are useful and which aren't. . .

Tying in Beliefs, Instincts and Traits
If the game is about taking revenge on the wizards who tortured and scarred you, characters better damn well have Beliefs and Instincts that scream anger, hatred and vengeance (or even forgivenss, for extra drama). . .

Focus those Beliefs. Charge them. Prime them. Set them to blow. Make your character's life hard. Make it complex, entangled and difficult. Sure you could sit outside the story, be safe and watch, but what the hell fun is that? This is your game. Own it, live it, bleed it.

Instinct should be set to get you in all kinds of trouble. . . If a GM is creating situations whre the Instinct alarm bells aren't going off, he's not doing his job.

Lastly, there's traits. With traits, a player is paying points to say, "my character is _this_." The other players and the GM better damn wel include scenes and situations where those traits are prominent. . . .

Role of the GM

. . .

* To make sure the mechanics of the game run smoothly, make sense and gel with the story/actual play at hand.

* To get across _my_ point/vision/idea (also known as the theme of the game).

* To challenge and engage the players.

* And to make sure that, whether the game is humorous or dramatic, everyone is involved and enjoys themselves.

In Burning Wheel, it is the GM's job to interpret all the various intents of the players' actions and mesh them into a cohesive whole that fits within the context of the game. He's got to make sure that all the player wackiness abides by the rules. When it doesn't, he must guide wayward players gently back into the fold. Often this requires negotiating an action or intent until both player and GM are satisfied that if fits both within the concept and mood of the game.

Also, the GM is in a unique position. He can see the big picture - what the players are doing, as well as what the opposition is up to and plans to do. . . More than any other player, the GM controls the flow and pacing of the game. He has the power to begin and end scenes, to present challenges and instigate conflicts. It's a heady responsibility but utterly worthwhile.

Most important, the GM is responsible for introducing complications to the story and consequences for the players' choices. . .

Role of the Players
Finally, there is the sacred and most holy role of the players. In Burning Wheel games, players have a number of duties:

* Prime among them is the responsibility to offer hooks to their GM and the other players in the form of Beliefs, Instincts and Traits.

* Use the lifepaths to build skeletons of your characters' background, but don't fill in all the details. Let the character develop as play advances - certainly don't write a history in which all the adventure has already happened.

* Players in Burning Wheel must use their characters to drive the story forward - to resolve conflicts and create new ones. Players are _supposed_ to push and risk their characters, so the grow and change in unforeseen ways.

* Use the mechanics! Players are _expected _to call for a Duel of Wits . . . or to demand the Rnage and Cover rules in a shooting match with a Dark Elf assassin. Don't wait for the GM to invoke a rule - invoke the damn thing yourself and get the story moving!

* Participate. . . It doesn't matter if you "win", so long as the story spins in a new and interesting direction. If the story doesn't interest you, _it's your job to create interesting situations and involve yourself_. If a player's desires and priorities are disruptive for the group as a whole, then it's that player's job to excuse himself from the game and find another group.

Above all, have fun. . . Listen to the other players, riff off them; take their leads and run with them. . .

Don't forget to call your GM. Start ranting like a mad imp! Or if you are the GM (like me) hopefully you're frothing at the mouth right now (like I am [with a mad imp icon in the margin], bellowing "Hell yeah!"​
Opinions/responses?

I think that's a pretty clear description of what participants' jobs are. It's also an allocation of responsibilities that I like.

Because I'm GMing 4e rather than BW, the systems for sending signals and hooks are a bit different - rather than Beliefs, Instincts and Traits, for instance, it's class, role, race, paragon path etc, plus more informal flags the players run up. And I think overall my game is probably less intense than the sort of game Luke Crane is pushing for in his rulebook. But the emphasis on collective responsibility to push the game forward, on using the mechanics to drive the story, on theme, situation and character rather than setting - all that works pretty well for me.


----------



## Celebrim (Mar 5, 2013)

The big problem with any discussion that takes at its root Forge theory, is that Forge theorist always assume that either something is true, or else something else is true.  Things fit into nice discrete categories.  And, if something isn't lying in its nice discrete category with firm theoretical backing according to their theory, there is an assuption that its incoherent or somehow defective.  In short, Forge theory has at a basic assumption that you can play from a Simulationist or you can play from a Narrativist perspective or you can play from a Gamist perspective and the system you play with can support only a single such mode of play at a time.   So what you are supposed to do if you are thinking in Forge-speak is look at a set of rules or guidelines and drop things into the correctly labeled bucket.

I find that works only when you are either arguing things on a bulletin board or else consciously playing according to some Forge approved paradigm.

In other places, you've asserted two things quite strongly.  First, that my general 'proposition-fortune-outcome' loop is very different than 'say yes or roll the dice', and secondly that my game is very different in practice from Burning Wheel.  I will insist that neither distinction is particularly real, and that in practice there is a fuzzy continuim that means often in BW you are doing 'proposition-fortune-outcome' and often as I play D&D I'm 'saying yes or rolling the dice'.   From a minute by minute description of play, you can't make those clear but wholly artificial distinctions.

Take your quotes.  Everything in the 'Concept, Concept, Concept' section could be said to apply to my game and I can give concrete examples.  Every player spends about two weeks communicating back and forth with me about their character, the backstory they want, and the story goals they have that follow from that backstory.  Everyone massages that conception subject to my advice and guidance but not authority, because this is their character, to fit into the games existing themes, concept, power level, and prevailing intraparty social structure.  Everything about Faithful character said applies also to my games.  One of the fundamental distinctions might be said that I as storyteller have a larger role in setting up what the story concept is, and also am keeping secret several of the things that the story is actually about to reveal during the course of play, but I'd bet many BW GM's also keep secret key concepts or story themes in order to make grand reveals.  And if they don't, then they are saying that BW must forgo many of the narrative techniques that in other mediums enrich and make stories interesting.


While my game doesn't necessarily define mechanical resources in quite the same way, the advice it gives about the mechanical resources equally applies to how mechanical resources are used in my game.  The players are spending resources to acquire distinctions and influence over the narrative we produce.  I am making sure that they are relevant and will be relevant and if I can't see a way to do that, I'll guide them toward other resources or at least warn them of potential problems.  I will take that background and pile on complications and twist the knife on the character.  I actually however ask players to give me a score from 1 to 10 stating how much they are willing to let me me mess with them, and depending on the responce I'll either foreground them and twist thier perception of who the character is or I'll background them and let them develop without as much complication and pain.

The section on the 'Role of the GM' I agree with 100% and I'd argue that it corresponds more closely to my description of what I think is the role of the GM, than what you have advocated.  It is the GM and not the player that is most responsible for introducing complications to the story and consequences for the players' choices.  The section one the role of the player fundamentally agrees with with some subset of what I'd call skillful play in a player.   Providing that section as advice to my players save where there are difference in the mechanical system would be perfectly reasonable.   Provide meaty 'mess withe me' hooks, build a character with a story that will unfold rather than a character whose story has already happened, stay in character, interact with the game world, be proactive, take risks, move the story in the directions you want, be creative in your proposition framing but also leverage the rules to underpin the thing you are offering up and use them to your advantage, participate, above all have fun, and if you can't be interested then gracefully bow out.   All that is good advice.

Fundamentally this is a description of a gaming system which shades into indistinguishability with how I run my table.  I can think of maybe two sessions out of 50 that might have played out very differently using BW's mechanical assumptions - a murder investigation that fizzled out temporarily because they missed all three clues and a very tragic session returning from a Holiday break where party cohesion broke down and there were unfortunate player deaths in a scene that really wasn't as grand as it should be, should have never happened, and I think was generally regretted by everyone.   But for the most part, you wouldn't be able to reverse back from a narrative of the game events to be able to tell whether we were playing 3rd edition or BW.  There isn't anything in the BW guidelines and framing you quote that would have been completely revolutionary at my table 20 years ago. 

In other words, system doesn't matter.  System is probably no more than 4th on the list of what matters when it comes to determining how a table plays, somewhere distantly after things how the DM prepare to play a game, what the social contract that is effectively in force is, and how the players call their actions.   Those things are generally well outside of what the system can actually control.


----------



## Nagol (Mar 5, 2013)

The sections look at best tengentially valuable to the way I run and prefer to play D&D.

It looks much more relevant to the way I run games with stronger up-front characterisation like Strands of Fate, CHAMPIONS, or even Pendragon.

When I'm investing in D&D either as a player of a DM, I'm looking for a different experience.  After all, if I weren't, I'd be playing a different game.  In D&D, I'm looking for characters to navigate an indifferent world to the best of their ability as they decide what to attempt to change, if anything.


----------



## howandwhy99 (Mar 5, 2013)

It sounds very story heavy vs. pretty much any other way to play. So it's only going to suit a particular brand of play styles, gamers and fun. I say brand because the advice is so particular rather than broad. It has a definite series of ideas about how each type of participant is supposed to play the game. That's great for a single game like Burning Wheel, but D&D has so broad a purview of game play that the above advice, while focusing it, will also limit it. I think the ideas are popular enough to definitely give them a try and done so openly in order they might gel after awhile. However, like   [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION] intimated above: almost everything coming out of Forge Theory has a particular uniformity due to its limited collection of ideas popular within that community of thinkers. What amounts to good for them may not be so for you, at least at any given point you want to play an RPG. In other words, don't try this stuff out expecting greatness, but allow it to surprise you if it does so. Also there tends to be a preponderance of attention paid to a unique variety of narrative in Forge-bred games, perhaps better titled Narrative to point out its specific definition, but narrative isn't necessary to make or play a game. Over thinking things like this can lead to a kind of reductionism like saying all games are political and then refusing to talk or design them outside a predefined political vocabulary. While it may be a ladder to truly awesome political games, it's ultimately limiting if used exclusively. Kill your Buddha and all that. 

I actually have grown to like some of the elements of Burning Wheel though I doubt I use them any way the designers intended. And I'd definitely give a try to the program of game play in the OP, if only to see if its to your taste. I'm sure it could be ported over to D&D with a little effort.


----------



## delericho (Mar 6, 2013)

It's not for me. I don't run my games like that, and I suspect I would hate to play in a game that took the advice in the OP as holy writ.

That said, if others find it useful, then more power to them.


----------



## Celebrim (Mar 6, 2013)

delericho said:


> It's not for me. I don't run my games like that, and I suspect I would hate to play in a game that took the advice in the OP as holy writ.




Could you elaborate?  My principle complaint about the advice - beyond the ugly, condescending, and vulgar tone of the writing - is that if you divorse it from what it is saying about its own mechanics it is so generic that you could play in just about any manner and still say you were following the advice.   For example, suppose your concept of fun is hack and slash adventure, well if you provide powerful monsters to fight and amazing treasures to be won then you could say you were doing exactly what the above advises.   If the DM makes sure that the characters abilities match the provided challenge, then well, you are again following the advice.  If the DM talks to the Paladin character before the game starts about what 'lawful good' means in the context of his game, so as to avoid disputes later on, you are following the advice.  In other words, outside its discussion of the somewhat unique mechanics of Burning Wheel, such as the fact it encourages the players to invent custom 'feats', the overall advice isn't really that revolutionary IMO.  

What about the advice, other than the tone of brutal one-way-ism it adopts in delivering it, bothers you?


----------



## the Jester (Mar 6, 2013)

Looks useful for some playstyles. For mine? Not even close.

IMC the roles of the players and the dm are much more distinct, and the players don't get to make or alter the rules unless they figure out how to do it in-game. Also, no pre-decided story. Also- well, I could go on, but why bother?

BW's advice looks pretty ideal for a group that prefers heavy story games, with a lot of things tied to specific pcs (who don't generally die).


----------



## Ratskinner (Mar 6, 2013)

Nagol said:


> The sections look at best tengentially valuable to the way I run and prefer to play D&D.
> 
> It looks much more relevant to the way I run games with stronger up-front characterisation like Strands of Fate, CHAMPIONS, or even Pendragon.
> 
> When I'm investing in D&D either as a player of a DM, I'm looking for a different experience.  After all, if I weren't, I'd be playing a different game.  In D&D, I'm looking for characters to navigate an indifferent world to the best of their ability as they decide what to attempt to change, if anything.






pemerton said:


> Opinions/responses?
> 
> I think that's a pretty clear description of what participants' jobs are. It's also an allocation of responsibilities that I like.
> 
> Because I'm GMing 4e rather than BW, the systems for sending signals and hooks are a bit different - rather than Beliefs, Instincts and Traits, for instance, it's class, role, race, paragon path etc, plus more informal flags the players run up. And I think overall my game is probably less intense than the sort of game Luke Crane is pushing for in his rulebook. But the emphasis on collective responsibility to push the game forward, on using the mechanics to drive the story, on theme, situation and character rather than setting - all that works pretty well for me.




At this point, I mostly agree with Nagol. I'm starting to look at D&D's first best function as a light, casual game, and if I want a "serious" dramatic game I'd turn to MHRP or FATE. Which isn't to say that D&D should never be able to handle "dramatic" scenes, or that such games shouldn't inform anything about D&D, but I don't think its D&D's wheelhouse. 

When approaching a game like Burning Wheel or FATE or MHRP, you definitely need that "pre-nup" type of agreement and more importantly that _commitment_. The mechanics just don't support the game without it (MHRP perhaps less so.) However, IME the majority of D&D players do not approach D&D that way. I haven't found as you have, that choosing class, etc. are good indicators of the type of drama that players want, if any. Certainly D&D play works just fine without it, even in 4e.    

What I'm a little less clear on, is what happens after a campaign gets going. Even in groups that start play fairly divorced from dramatic thinking and focus almost entirely on exploration, I regularly see that they develop attachments to locations, NPCs, etc. that _become_ fine foci for dramatic play. Much like  @_*pemerton*_  mentioned about combat in another thread, there is something very visceral to that kind of "organically" developed attachment. 

Should the rules address or acknowledge that in some way? I dunno.


----------



## Celebrim (Mar 6, 2013)

Ratskinner said:


> At this point, I mostly agree with Nagol. I'm starting to look at D&D's first best function as a light, casual game, and if I want a "serious" dramatic game I'd turn to MHRP or FATE.




I'd like to quibble with that.  D&D doesn't impose a play style by default.  It's rather silent on the issue of play style, which is one of the reasons that in practice there are so many kinds of D&D tables - even amongst ones using the same rules.  One of the advantages I've found in not imposing a play style is that the light casual gamer can often play at the same table as the very drama thespian gamer and be engaging the same game in different ways.  Or the same gamer can move between two different tables with the same or similar rules and play two very different game.

For me it is a very open question whether hard mechanics intended to support drama actually encourage or detract from dramatic play.  I think the answer might well depend on the group, just as different groups argue over whether putting a morality flag like 'alignment' detracts from or enhance examination of morality or whether having rules for arbritrating social encounters add or detract from thespian style dramatic play.



> However, IME the majority of D&D players do not approach D&D that way.




I'm not sure how I feel about that blanket statement, particularly because you yourself seem to ammend it to something more nuanced later when you note that as campaigns tend to 'mature' (in the sense of the campaign itself getting 'older') dramatic tension has a tendency to accumulate as players invest emotionally in aspects of the story or setting.   Maybe the lack of explicit rules for pre-linking your character to the setting or conflicts of the setting tend to mean that dramatic play is not from the outset assumed, but I don't know of an RPG that doesn't develop dramatic play in the hands of any reasonably mature gamer as the story advances.


----------



## Ratskinner (Mar 6, 2013)

Celebrim said:


> I'd like to quibble with that.  D&D doesn't impose a play style by default.  It's rather silent on the issue of play style, which is one of the reasons that in practice there are so many kinds of D&D tables - even amongst ones using the same rules.  One of the advantages I've found in not imposing a play style is that the light casual gamer can often play at the same table as the very drama thespian gamer and be engaging the same game in different ways.  Or the same gamer can move between two different tables with the same or similar rules and play two very different game.
> 
> For me it is a very open question whether hard mechanics intended to support drama actually encourage or detract from dramatic play.  I think the answer might well depend on the group, just as different groups argue over whether putting a morality flag like 'alignment' detracts from or enhance examination of morality or whether having rules for arbritrating social encounters add or detract from thespian style dramatic play.




I don't think we're as far apart as it may sound. All I was saying was that D&D is most effective at delivering that exploration-heavy dungeon/adventure experience. Certainly, you _can_ play D&D (especially old-school) in a variety of playstyles. Heavy narrative play, in particular, doesn't require very much in the way of rules. However, that doesn't mean that D&D is very good at _driving_ that kind of play. If I'm looking to play a drama/story-centered game, especially right from the get-go...I think I'm better off using a game designed for that, rather than trying to bash D&D into that shape.

As far as mechanics supporting drama...I agree. I think there are maybe qualitative differences in the types of drama that make that question harder to address. 



Celebrim said:


> I'm not sure how I feel about that blanket statement, particularly because you yourself seem to ammend it to ...




Perhaps a should have said "...D&D players don't approach a _campaign _that way." I only mean that I rarely (as in "can't remember ever seeing it") see a player choose a class or race in order to signal something to the DM about the game they want to see. Some groups certainly discuss campaign parameters ahead of time, but that's not the same as what Burning Wheel does. 

Pondering it a little more while writing this response. Maybe that's because we usually already know what a D&D campaign will be about. I mean, the only times groups engage heavily in that discussion (IME) is when they are planning on deviating significantly from D&D's "script." "Let's do an evil campaign" "Let's do an all-thieves campaign" or something similar. Otherwise, you're generally free to roll up your Dwarf Fighter start play...many times even without a name.


----------



## innerdude (Mar 6, 2013)

To address the OP -- I think this advice is most relevant for being _explicit _to the reader (i.e., it's actually written in the book), and is backed up by pointing to key elements of the characters themselves. 

It's one of those things that may not be _mechanically _supported in other RPGs like it is in Burning Wheel, but I think the overall tone and sensibility of the advice would be relevant and useful in nearly any RPG. The key is simply "getting it out there"--if it's written down, even if there are not as many actual mechanical artifacts to support it, it presents a thought process, or way of thinking about how characters interact, that could be useful if the GM wants to promote a certain style of play. 

I think these are things that could successfully be added to many other RPGs--D&D included--as an added layer of potential player interaction, without necessarily adding the actual mechanical underpinnings. 

The point is that it's _out there_--it's being actively looked at and considered. It's similar to one of the things I said in another post about D&D 3e Craft, Profession, and Perform skills. Sure, mechanically they may not appear to have much in-game utility, but the simple fact that they _exist _carry potential ramifications for approaching worldbuilding and character interactions. Simply including this kind of advice in other systems, even without the mechanical support, would be useful for helping GMs and players consider aspects of play.


----------



## innerdude (Mar 6, 2013)

Ratskinner said:


> Perhaps a should have said "...D&D players don't approach a _campaign _that way." I only mean that I rarely (as in "can't remember ever seeing it") see a player choose a class or race in order to signal something to the DM about the game they want to see. Some groups certainly discuss campaign parameters ahead of time, but that's not the same as what Burning Wheel does.




I regularly approach character creation from a standpoint of, "If I want to be involved with thematic material X, I should choose a character 'trope' that lets me engage with X." 

For example, I specifically took the "Wealth" talent tree in a Star Wars Saga game, because I felt that being from a wealthy background would give my character an excuse to be involved in galactic politics. 

Unfortunately, I think that Star Wars GM was the only one that actually took the hint, and added some cool thematic material to the campaign to support my choice. I don't think any of my other GMs have ever really cared to ask me how my character choices might play in to what I wanted to experience thematically.


----------



## Celebrim (Mar 6, 2013)

Ratskinner said:


> However, that doesn't mean that D&D is very good at _driving_ that kind of play. If I'm looking to play a drama/story-centered game, especially right from the get-go...I think I'm better off using a game designed for that, rather than trying to bash D&D into that shape.




Then let me rephrase my quibble.  I'm not sure that the games which are designed to drive drama/story-centered play are necessarily well designed to achieve that.  The open question is, "What sort of rules really do drive good drama/story-centered games?"  I'm not entirely certain that it is even a rules issue, and to the extent that some one has experienced drama/story-centered games in rule sets intended for that purpose, I'm not sure that that isn't correlation rather than causation.  It could simply be that the sort of groups that are interested in and capable of story drive play are also the ones that seek out game system supposedly designed to support that.   As you say, narative driven play doesn't require a lot of rules.  I know I've played sessions of D&D were for 4-6 hours we didn't pick up the dice or reference a single game rule.  Even recently, in my current campaign with a group of players that are about as far from Thespians as I've ever dealt with, we managed an entertaining 4 hour session with lots of laughs and maybe just the first glimmers of some much deeper narrative engagement that had just a handful of skill checks, one saving throw and one attack roll the whole four hours.



> Perhaps a should have said "...D&D players don't approach a _campaign _that way." I only mean that I rarely (as in "can't remember ever seeing it") see a player choose a class or race in order to signal something to the DM about the game they want to see. Some groups certainly discuss campaign parameters ahead of time, but that's not the same as what Burning Wheel does.
> 
> Pondering it a little more while writing this response. Maybe that's because we usually already know what a D&D campaign will be about. I mean, the only times groups engage heavily in that discussion (IME) is when they are planning on deviating significantly from D&D's "script." "Let's do an evil campaign" "Let's do an all-thieves campaign" or something similar. Otherwise, you're generally free to roll up your Dwarf Fighter start play...many times even without a name.




Some very good points, and I may have to send some XP your way for that.  I have ran an 'all elf' and an all 'goblinkind' campaigns before specificly because I wanted the campaign to address certain ideas about those races I found interesting.  I think the main difference here may be that for the most part, the expectation is that the DM in D&D will pick whatever the main theme of the campaign will be, which may or may not have a dramatic element beyond simply 'kicking butt and getting loot', and the players are expected to find play within that.  Although, even within that, if you have players with a Thespian inclination, you can end up having subplots that revolve around the particular things that the player signals he is interested in, either through backstory or table play.  A player with a 'Raistlin' type character is signaling he wants to explore the price of power, for example.  Whereas, a player with a 'Dritz' type character may be signaling he wants to explore the ideas of alienation and toleration or perhaps the issue of racism.   I don't find it unusual in D&D play for their to be at least one player at the table who has his own agenda like that, and I personally try to encourage it in my players.  That's slightly different than a game that is actually about The Character - which a game like BW seems to be trying to achieve - but I find that games about The Character really only work 1 on 1 or in similarly small numbers because when you have an ensemble cast you can't spot light too much attention on one person's story.


----------



## Nagol (Mar 7, 2013)

innerdude said:


> I regularly approach character creation from a standpoint of, "If I want to be involved with thematic material X, I should choose a character 'trope' that lets me engage with X."
> 
> For example, I specifically took the "Wealth" talent tree in a Star Wars Saga game, because I felt that being from a wealthy background would give my character an excuse to be involved in galactic politics.
> 
> Unfortunately, I think that Star Wars GM was the only one that actually took the hint, and added some cool thematic material to the campaign to support my choice. I don't think any of my other GMs have ever really cared to ask me how my character choices might play in to what I wanted to experience thematically.




It can be tricky.  If a player builds a character with a a really high lockpick score, is it because he wants to engage thievery as a theme or because he _doesn't_ want to deal with locks as a challenge?

If a player buys a high wealth score, he may want to engage in higher-wealth themes, he may want to circumvent types of challenges, it may be a simple background image the player has.  It wouldn't cross my mind a player would buy wealth to delve into politics, especially in a feudal style society -- class and wealth may get entangled, but they are separate.

If a player wants to engage in particular themes, he needs to be explicit with the table especially the GM; that's what makes the upfront characterisation rule sets so valuable for this purpose.  I find the character design in other games too subtle to accuurately guess what the player wants to engage with.


----------



## Crazy Jerome (Mar 7, 2013)

Just so you guys know, BW is certainly heavily influenced by Forge theory, but not on the the single GNS axis, and not even on the later creative agenda categories.  It's got a heavy dose of all three, though the simulation part is usually more macro than micro.  I'm hard pressed to think of a game that, out of the box, nails the feeling of LotR elves and dwarves better.  But because that materials is embedded in the races, if you drop both and do a game with men and roden (sort of "ratmen"), you'll get something a lot closer to Lanhkmarr (though not as close a fit as the elves and dwarves are to LotR).  So one of the things that makes BW advice useful to a hard-driving story approach with D&D is that BW is a hard-driving game that is not hung up on Forge dogma.

Now, if you aren't doing a hard-driving story, then there are bits and pieces that are still useful--if nothing else just to shake up your thinking--but the advice as a whole is not nearly as applicable.  There's not real support or even desire to support, for example, leisurely exploration of a location. You could "just roleplay" such a scene in BW if you wanted, but you wouldn't be using much, if any, of the rules while you did so.  It would be somewhat like using 3E for a game that was focused on nothing but shopkeepers--slightly more possible than in early or later versions of D&D, but for a very small value of "slightly". 

I think BW has a lot more to offer a 4E game because the hard-driving approach is the particular kind of roleplaying where 4E is going to shine the most.  And like BW, it shares the characteristic that if back away from that aspect, the roleplaying could get pretty bland, quick.


----------



## Libramarian (Mar 7, 2013)

[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] Thanks for sharing this -- you're right, this stuff speaks  directly to my concerns  about player responsibilities in a  non-railroaded story-heavy campaign.

The pre-game concept brainstorming I would need more structure and   guidance on -- either that, or a game that comes with it built-in   (or adventures/scenarios? I've been wondering lately what an adventure   optimized for non-railroaded story-heavy play would look like. You and   [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION] seem to use adventures/APs a lot but with heavy alterations. What   would an adventure type product look like if it were optimized for  this  style of play?)

"Make your character's life hard." 

"Players in Burning Wheel must use their characters to drive the story    forward - to resolve conflicts and create new ones. Players are _supposed_ to push and risk their characters, so the grow and change in unforeseen ways."

This is great -- I think if 4e had explicit player responsibilities like this, I   don't know if it would have been more successful (depends how many   people actually like and want to use D&D for this style of play,   clearly explained), but discussion about it between supporters and   detractors would have been much less confused and out of synch. 4e is   less hard on characters than earlier editions. Detractors look at this   and say "player entitlement" and "tyranny of fun", supporters say   "death/disability is not the only way to stimulate the player by   challenging their character, challenge them in more story-oriented ways"

To me that's not really a persuasive response--fair enough, there are other   ways to challenge characters and ways to fail forward, but if it's   entirely up to me as the GM to devise these then I can do that in any   game, why would I give up my save-or-sucks and save-or-dies? But if the   game says it's the players' job to contribute by priming their   characters for story pressure and then when it comes to engage it and   push the story forward, then it makes sense to me why the game would   exclude or de-emphasize character consequences that take away the   player's narrative agency. It's not about mollycoddling the players,   it's about not taking away their ability to get their characters into   trouble. That's the missing piece of that argument for me.

When I'm running a classic D&D gamist sandbox/adventuring location  with gp=xp sort of thing, I want the full suite of consequences that  punish the player as well as the character, because they give the game  its enjoyable challenge and tension. There it is the player's job to  "win" (in a sense) and I don't expect the players to purposefully get  their characters into trouble -- so playing without these consequences  feels like playing Jenga where the players take pieces off the top  instead of the middle of the tower.

This type of story-heavy play that BW seems to be going for where it's  really personal and  character-centric is more appealing to me than the  high fantasy/epic  quest style. I find most quests (ie plotted story  that doesn't really  require much player input or tie into their  characters, other than the  fact that they're really powerful and  heroic) to be cheesy and cliched,  and I'm not very good at coming up  with anything better. They seem to be  a lot of work for only a mild at  best dramatic payoff. The most irksome 4e Design &  Development  article for me is this one by James Wyatt:  https://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/drdd/20071121 where he's very presumptive about this being the standard D&D adventure.

I  know it sounds deflationary to people who are very story-focused but  the whole dungeon-crawling for blood, gold and gems thing makes more  sense and is more appealing to me when the characters don't have much of  an exterior motivation but are just roguish explorers/treasure hunters  who do this because it's the only thing they know how to do. My primary  influences for D&D are picaresque S&S (Conan, Fafhrd & GM,  Cugel) mixed with a little bit of Oregon Trail for the  dungeon/wilderness adventures, and my model for town/city adventures is  basically spaghetti Western movies mixed with the Grand Theft Auto series of videogames, where the  characters raise their social status by undertaking missions for  different factions, but as things get more complex the missions start  becoming contradictory and the PCs either have to make some enemies or leave town.

Character-centric fantasy supers D&D is kind of odd in my view  but not totally unappealing...I would give it a try. pemerton you've  mentioned before that a major influence for your 4e game is Claremont's  X-Men run -- I'm not big into comics so I didn't know what that meant  but I brought it up with my friend who is and he said that's the source  of most of the storylines used in the early 90's X-Men cartoon, which we  both like a lot. We both agreed that those storylines were awesome but  we also had a laugh because it's so different from our D&D games,  where we don't go into how the PC's know and care about each other much at  all, heh.


----------



## Libramarian (Mar 7, 2013)

Explicit player responsibilities would allow us to say for example whether the game supports [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] in telling his DM to skip some part of the adventure or not.

I think looking at this list from BW he would be, because he's not just saying "I don't like this, come up with something else DM" he has a dramatic conflict in mind and wants to get to that.

However, I'm looking at the 4e PHB and I think he would be out of line in this game:
"D&D is a cooperative game in which you and your friends work together to *complete* each adventure and have fun." p. 6

"The DM creates adventures (or selects premade adventures) for you and the other players to *play through*." p.8

(Emphasis mine).

What I get from this is that it's the players' job to try to complete the DM's adventure and they don't really have any business trying to shortcut parts of it.

To contrast BW's player responsibilities here's 4e's:

"You have almost limitless control over what your character can do and say in the game." p.8

"Through your character, you can interact with the game world in any way you want. The only limit is your imagination—and, sometimes, how high you roll on the dice." p.9

"Your character is your representative in the game, your avatar in the D&D world... Throughout this book, we use the word “you” interchangeably with “your character.” As far as the rules of the game are concerned, your character is you." p.12

4e basically says that the player gets to make whatever character they feel like with no responsibility to do any pre-game dramatic coordination with the DM or other players, and roleplay them however they like, as long as they try to complete the adventure created by the DM (but it's OK if they fail, "even when your character is defeated, you don't "lose""p.6). Very light on responsibility, very low stakes. But even still, I think editing the DM's adventure is against the spirit of the game.


----------



## Celebrim (Mar 7, 2013)

Libramarian said:


> Explicit player responsibilities would allow us to say for example whether the game supports [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] in telling his DM to skip some part of the adventure or not.




Really, isn't one thread enough for continuing that discussion?   And really, that horse is beat to death even in the other thread.  I'm thinking of starting a different thread so that I can discuss what I'm interested in the topic of 'surprises' in without picking on Hussar as an example continually. 

But, as far as it goes, I read the above and I hit this about DM responcibility:

"Also, the GM is in a unique position. He can see the big picture - what the players are doing, as well as what the opposition is up to and plans to do. . . More than any other player, the GM controls the flow and pacing of the game. He has the power to begin and end scenes, to present challenges and instigate conflicts."

So, even in BW, I'm seeing a player attempting to hijack the flow and pacing of the game, attempting to begin or end scenes, or attempting to establish what the challenge is or what conflict will be dealt with next as being usurpation.  He's out of role.   If his DM sucks, I can sympathize with why a player might want to do that, but I don't think you can justify that as part of the normal mode of play.  Clearly there was conflict between him and the DM.  Clearly Hussar was not happy.  I'm pretty sure the DM could have handled things better.  I'd be willing to bet the DM was not happy either.  But I think any time a player offers an outcome in a game that does explicitly put fortune at the end and explicitly give the player narrative resources to spend on scene framing or resolution, then the player is out of line.   The DM may also be out of line, and these things tend to escalate.

But, enough of that, back on topic.

The BW advice is largely applicable to D&D because there is so much overlap between how the two concieve the roles of the player and GM.

Look at the GM stuff.  It's a combination 'referee' and 'director'.   

Look at the player stuff.   It's 'backstory authority' combined with 'character advocate'.  Even note that the 'backstory authority' is limited to putting the character in a position to start his adventures.  The main story is assumed to occur through play.

All of that is just like D&D.


----------



## Nemesis Destiny (Mar 7, 2013)

Good thread idea, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]!

I will say that I think the advice is _potentially_ very applicable, depending on the desired play style of the group. For me and my group, it certainly is; the advice here underscores all the things that have 'gone right' in some of the  more enjoyable campaigns I've run, as well as in the parts of other campaigns and adventures that have really resonated with me.

As a player, I also find that the game is more enjoyable when the DM offers adventure based on a given character's hooks. Looking back, I can see how this has been the case for me, even if I didn't realize it at the time.

As others have pointed out though, this advice can be very group- and style-dependent; not every group cares so much about story and characters, or their motivations beyond looting dungeons and overcoming challenges. Likewise, people who prefer a more passive exploratory stance to character may also not find much in there that resonates.

That said, one bit of the advice that I think should be more explicit in every RPG book, is the part about discussing everyone's expectations beforehand. I find it really helps when everyone playing is on the same page with respect to the game, tropes, themes, power level, etc.

One thing I'd like you to expand upon, if it's not too much trouble, is the part about Beliefs, Instincts, and Traits; what are they in the context of the game, and how do the players go about leveraging these things?


----------



## Manbearcat (Mar 7, 2013)

Nemesis Destiny said:


> One thing I'd like you to expand upon, if it's not too much trouble, is the part about Beliefs, Instincts, and Traits; what are they in the context of the game, and how do the players go about leveraging these things?




I can help with this right quick.  

Beliefs are expressions of your character's ethos.  They are cues to the GM that express what thematic content that you wish scenes to be framed around to challenge your character; "We are men of action, lies do not become us."

Instincts are insurance against the GM claiming minor agency from you and framing scenes that would violate important aspects of your characters.  They're typically if, then; kind of like readied actions.  "If the meek are bullied or exploited then I will intervene."

Traits are purchasable PC build resources kind of like Feats/Theme/Background Material/APs in 4e (kind of).  They come in 3 variations; Die Traits, Call On Traits, and Character Traits. Die Traits are traits  which affect die rolls. Call On Traits are narrative controls that are called upon by the player  during times of need and mandate a roll when there otherwise would have  been none. Character Traits are descriptive in nature and mostly color.


----------



## Nemesis Destiny (Mar 7, 2013)

Manbearcat said:


> I can help with this right quick.
> 
> Beliefs are expressions of your character's ethos.  They are cues to the GM that express what thematic content that you wish scenes to be framed around to challenge your character; "We are men of action, lies do not become us."
> 
> ...



Ok, that helps, thanks.

Can you give me examples of how the game might leverage Beliefs or Instincts?


----------



## Manbearcat (Mar 7, 2013)

Nemesis Destiny said:


> Ok, that helps, thanks.
> 
> Can you give me examples of how the game might leverage Beliefs or Instincts?




Sure, I'll be pretty generic as the game is intensely mechanical (its no surprise that pemerton loves it given he has an affinity for Rolemaster!).  

Beliefs:  The "We are men of action, lies do not become us" guy, above?  A likely scene to challenge that guy would be one where deception, bluffing, subterfuge appears to be the easier, more assured route to go for success in a conflict.

Instincts:  The "If the meek are bullied or exploited then I will intervene" guy?  The GM CANNOT introduce a scene whereby this guy is already assumed to have just been standing idly by while a beggar, an orphan, an elderly shopkeeper, etc is being extorted or bullied.  He can start the scene right as that happens (and should), but never open with the assumption that it just took place.


----------



## Celebrim (Mar 7, 2013)

Nemesis Destiny said:


> Can you give me examples of how the game might leverage Beliefs or Instincts?




So, BW basically lets the player script custom 'Feats'.  Beliefs are like the characters alignment, and in BW they are meant to be tested.  The GM is expected to craft situations that force the player to think about his Beliefs and maybe even change them in responce to this reflection.  If your belief is, "We are men of action, lies do not become us.", then putting the player in situations where lying is more pragmatic than action tests his belief.  Can the player follow through with that belief?  Is he really willing to accept the consequences?

Instincts are like a Feat that gives you what amounts to an extra action in a specified situation.  This can work both for you and against you.  The benefit is that you basically get to take that extra action to interrupt the scene.  The downside is the action is basically scripted.  Your instincts can work against you, and get you into trouble.  How does "If the meek are bullied or exploited then I will intervene" work out if the meek is a street thief, and the bully is an officer of the law?  How does it work when you see someone being beaten, and it turns out that the one being beaten perpetrated a terrible injustice on the beater and what you are really seeing is an inversion of their normal power dynamics?  Maybe the one getting beaten is actually the pimp of the beater, who is a male prostitute kidnapped and forced into sex slavery and for the first time in his life he's had the courage to turn on his persecuter.  Leap before you look is dangerous, and a sly GM will even turn, "I always look before I leap" against you, since he who hesitates is lost, right?


----------



## Nemesis Destiny (Mar 7, 2013)

Manbearcat said:


> Sure, I'll be pretty generic as the game is intensely mechanical (its no surprise that pemerton loves it given he has an affinity for Rolemaster!).
> 
> Beliefs:  The "We are men of action, lies do not become us" guy, above?  A likely scene to challenge that guy would be one where deception, bluffing, subterfuge appears to be the easier, more assured route to go for success in a conflict.
> 
> Instincts:  The "If the meek are bullied or exploited then I will intervene" guy?  The GM CANNOT introduce a scene whereby this guy is already assumed to have just been standing idly by while a beggar, an orphan, an elderly shopkeeper, etc is being extorted or bullied.  He can start the scene right as that happens (and should), but never open with the assumption that it just took place.




Thanks again. I think it's clear now. Likely the only thing to make it any clearer would be to read the book and play the game. Sounds interesting.

If it was something a group was interested in and wanted to do, it sounds like those two elements could easily be ported wholesale into D&D, unless they require those mechanics you mentioned in some way that isn't obvious from reading your examples. The qualifiers of group interest from my previous post would still apply, naturally.


----------



## Manbearcat (Mar 7, 2013)

Nemesis Destiny said:


> Thanks again. I think it's clear now. Likely the only thing to make it any clearer would be to read the book and play the game. Sounds interesting.
> 
> If it was something a group was interested in and wanted to do, it sounds like those two elements could easily be ported wholesale into D&D, unless they require those mechanics you mentioned in some way that isn't obvious from reading your examples. The qualifiers of group interest from my previous post would still apply, naturally.




My group has used them for 4e since we started.  4e has tons of cues built into to PC build resources but the specificity of Beliefs is very helpful.  Even more than that, Instincts are exceedingly helpful when your table agenda assumes that your GM is going to wrest minor agency from players in establishing scene Bangs and when players are allowed authorial control to occasionally interpret and narrate their own intra-Skill Challenge resolutions (and those resolutions pressure other players).

My group is pretty heavy on the thematic, genre and ethos coherency/coordination, however, and I demand a lot from my players (and they gladly and effectively give it).  Definitely on the far end of the spectrum.  I suspect the percentage of ENWorlders who would like my games is relatively small.


----------



## Celebrim (Mar 7, 2013)

Nemesis Destiny said:


> If it was something a group was interested in and wanted to do, it sounds like those two elements could easily be ported wholesale into D&D, unless they require those mechanics you mentioned in some way that isn't obvious from reading your examples. The qualifiers of group interest from my previous post would still apply, naturally.




It would be pretty easy to port into D&D.  A Belief would give you like a +1 bonus on all rolls when you were in a scene that tested your beliefs and acting in direct accordance to your beliefs.  I'd give you a penalty like say -4 when violating your belief, but then after 24 hours I'd let you take a new Belief if you wanted.

An Instinct would be like a 'Held Action' that let you take an immediate action whenever the condition was triggered.   Only you had to take the action.

Now on with the Greek Tragedy.

The danger in D&D with freeform mechanics like that is that given D&D's wargaming roots and tactical crunchiness, you'd have people taking beliefs and instincts solely to power game.  It would probably only work with some groups.


----------



## Celebrim (Mar 7, 2013)

Manbearcat said:


> Even more than that, Instincts are exceedingly helpful when your table agenda assumes that your GM is going to wrest minor agency from players in establishing scene Bangs... I suspect the percentage of ENWorlders who would like my games is relatively small.




Yeah, I noticed the way you framed the idea of an instinct it was protection from something that in any of my games NEVER occurs in the first place.  I never ever narrate a scene based on an assumption about what a player does.  I never as a DM have player character agency and so instincts in that sense are meaningless.  Instead, I see them more literally as the ability to react faster.   If I was going to run BW, and I have big issues with the system unrelated to this topic, but I were to, a player that has the instinct, "If the meek are bullied or exploited then I will intervene", not only never would be assumed to have been standing around but would be assumed to always arrive in time to intervene.  He's never forced to witness something he can't intervene in.  He comes around the corner and there is blind folded woman about to be executed by a man with a big sword, he can always interrupt, and indeed always must interrupt.  The guy may turn out to be Athos and the lady Milady de Winter, but that's life.


----------



## Manbearcat (Mar 7, 2013)

@*Celebrim* Sure.  Its not for everyone and you have to have a clear, coherent table agenda and a firm, overt social contract to do such things.  

My conflicts are primarily about the stakes involved so there, I have minor advantage in that, assuming we're all on the same page regarding thematic content (and do's and don'ts) I can wrest very minor agency from players and, in doing so, confirm that certain challenging content will materialize (if those are the stakes that myself or my players want tested).  Otherwise, scene openers are always left up to fortune resolution and player decision, thus crowding out certain possibilities or minimizing the prospectsof them manifesting.

If I want an Indiana Jones chase scene (or I know my players want/expect a chase scene), then rather than skulking through the temple to secure the idol from the snake men, I open the scene with the Master Thief emerging from the temple with the idol, a pack of hyenas yapping and engaging his staked horse and alerting the attention of the snake men!   He's a Master Thief so I'm working off of the assumption that he was successful (PC build cue).  So long as I'm not violating their expectations, and the chase scene is what is important and turns out awesome, then we're good to go!

Again, not for everyone though.  And takes a lot of clarity regarding thematic and genre expectations.


----------



## chaochou (Mar 7, 2013)

Nemesis Destiny said:


> Ok, that helps, thanks.
> 
> Can you give me examples of how the game might leverage Beliefs or Instincts?




I think it's important to understand that in BW, Beliefs, Instincts and Traits are the cornerstones of character progression. Someone else may want to explain it. But then they may not do a very good job, so I think you'd be better off spending the 25 bucks or so and buying Burning Wheel Gold to see for yourself. It's an extremely good game.

Alternatively, Google Lady Blackbird, download it (it's free), print it out and run that as a one or two session shot. See how that goes down. You'll see how the game is driven almost exclusively by the player's Keys. Without Keys there is no game - nothing for the GM to do, no scripts to follow, no situations or scenes to set up, no plot to keep the players on. The onus is on the players to make things happen, crazy things, funny things, dramatic things, tense and angry things. It's all derived from the Keys, as expressed by the players. Keys in LB operate very much the same way as beliefs in BW.

In answer to  @_*pemerton*_ 's OP - I think the advice in BW is very good for running BW. I think it's good for running games driven by player protaganism. But I'm constantly surprised that you run D&D the way you do - perhaps even more surprised that you ran Rolemaster in a similar style. Rolemaster! Full of dense tables, and those remarkably obtuse percentile-ish stat values, and everyone bleeding to death anti-climactically like some wierd Peter Greenaway film. There's a game I never figured out. We found the crit tables funny but the rest of it was, like 'huh?'.

Would you suggest the BW advice for Rolemaster? I think that's an interesting question. I think you may have used it, or evolved into something similar of your own devising, for RM - but would you advise other people to bolt that advice onto RAW Rolemaster? Me, I'm not seeing it. You've said you see thematic weight in Paragon paths and race and class choices and the cosmology of 4e, perhaps as distinct from RM. I respect that, but that doesn't mean I feel the same. I like theme to start up close and personal - greed, grief, sibling rivalry, thwarted ambition, jealousy, unrequited love - all that stuff.

Anyway, I digress. I think the people who will derive any significant value from the advice in BW probably already own it, or will be interested enough to get a copy.


----------



## pemerton (Mar 7, 2013)

Ratskinner said:


> Maybe that's because we usually already know what a D&D campaign will be about. I mean, the only times groups engage heavily in that discussion (IME) is when they are planning on deviating significantly from D&D's "script." "Let's do an evil campaign" "Let's do an all-thieves campaign" or something similar. Otherwise, you're generally free to roll up your Dwarf Fighter start play...many times even without a name.



Interesting points.



Ratskinner said:


> I rarely (as in "can't remember ever seeing it") see a player choose a class or race in order to signal something to the DM about the game they want to see.



For me I can remember a fair bit of this. A player plays a dwarf because "dwarf" = "stern, no-nonsense but dependable do-gooder". A player plays a drow chaos sorcerer who worhsips Corellon because "chaos" = "go crazy wild" while "Corellon-worshipping drow rebel" tempers that with "but still somewhat sympathetic and ultimately well-meaning". A player plays a paladin because they want to see tests of faith.

Or, in Oriental Adventures, a player choose bushi rather than samurai because he wants to be a free-wheeling rather than a duty-bound warrior. And then there's the classic all-thief campaign: I think the thief is one of the more hook-heavy classes in classic D&D, and I think one of the reasons for its notoriety is that the standard dungeon adventure doesn't really pick up on those hooks.



Ratskinner said:


> What I'm a little less clear on, is what happens after a campaign gets going. Even in groups that start play fairly divorced from dramatic thinking and focus almost entirely on exploration, I regularly see that they develop attachments to locations, NPCs, etc. that _become_ fine foci for dramatic play.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Should the rules address or acknowledge that in some way?



I could imagine a version of a PrC/Paragon Path rule that tried to acknowledge or address this. For instance, when a certain trigger is activiated (an ingame event? reaching level 6? the GM deciding "it's time"?), then you get your "attachment" PC feature.

A really primitive version of the feature might be something like - when the thing you're attached to suffers, you take d10 psychic damage unless you step in to protect it, in which case you get advantage on your relevant d20 roll. (The reason I'm going for damage rather than an action penalty is that, in D&D at least, a penalty to action tends to be so significant that it's tantamount for coercion, which is not what you would be looking for here.)



Nagol said:


> It can be tricky.  If a player builds a character with a a really high lockpick score, is it because he wants to engage thievery as a theme or because he _doesn't_ want to deal with locks as a challenge?



I think this is an excellent point.

In BW, this is something where Beliefs and Instincts can do a bit of work. Suppose a roguish PC has a high lockpicking skill, and also a Belief that "All secrets should be laid bare, and all beauty out in the open for the world to see", that is practically instructing the GM to put locks in front of the character, which have things behind them that mere mortals were not meant to know!

Whereas if the PC has an Instict "Never shut a door without confirming I have a way out" then this might suggest that the player doesn't want escape scenes to be a big part of play, and a high lockpicking skill on this PC might send a similar signal: what this PC is about isn't picking locks, but rather not being trapped.

In the end, though, there is probably no substitute for asking - my own preference is not to talk about this meta stuff in the middle of play, where it can interfere with the immediacy of the ingame experience, but before or after the session proper. Or, if the player is not sure about his/her own preferences, test the water one way or another, see how things pan out in play, and follow the relevant cues.




Nemesis Destiny said:


> One thing I'd like you to expand upon, if it's not too much trouble, is the part about Beliefs, Instincts, and Traits; what are they in the context of the game, and how do the players go about leveraging these things?



Others have said a bit about this. I've also given an example above of how a Belief and and Instinct might look, and the different signals they might send.

Beliefs are about stake-setting, by reference either to other character (other PCs, or NPCs with whom the player has purchased a relationship for his/her PC) or more abstract values. A player chooses Beliefs for his/her PC (three of them is the default number), and various PC features can mandate or leverage Beliefs in various ways: eg all Dwarves must have a relationship, and then must have an oath sworn to that relationship, and a Belief centred upon that oath. Faithful PCs must have a Belief that is a statement of their faith (and if they lose that Belief they lose their access to their Faith attribute).

A player can change Beliefs at any time, subject to GM delay on a change if the timing is viewed as too exploitative. Manifesting a Belief in play earns Fate Points (eg if my Faithful PC worships Pelor, and my Belief is "The light and the flame are my guide", then when I light a torch to make my way through a dungeon I earn a Fate Point; dramatically playing out your inner turmoil when a situation calls for you to act contrary to a Belief can earn you a Persona Point (a type of super-Fate Point); accomplishing a goal set out in a Belief earns you a Persona point. So the GM is expected to set up situations which will create room for all this (being led by the players, given that they choose their Belief; but the players in choosing their Beliefs should of course be having regard to the game concept); and the players then earn Fate and Persona Points by following those leads.

Bcause Beliefs do a range of things in the game, when I look for analogues in my 4e game I'm looking at a variety of different things. Goal-based Belief, for instance, in 4e correspond at least roughly to player-designed Quests.

Or if I think about a Belief based around a relationship, I think of the drow PC in my game who is a member of "The Order of the Bat", a secret society of Corellon worshippers who seek to undo the sundering of the Elves. This was all introduced into the game by the player of that PC, much as in BW you might build your PC with relationships to a secret society with that goal (in BW that's called purchasing an Affiliation) and then build a Belief around it ("Together with my fellow members of the Order of the Bat, I will see the Elves brought together once more!"). I use this hook in designing encounters - with elves, with drow, etc - and the player plays up to it also (eg constantly addressing the Wood Elf PC in the party as "My Elven brother", having secret little conversations in Elvish, etc). Unlike BW, however, there is no mechanical reward to the player for doing this - which also means the player of the Wood Elf has no mechanical incentive to pay it back (whereas in BW, even if he wouldn't earn Fate Points for his PC, he has a mechanical incentive to create situations that feed Fate Points to fellow players). This is part of what I have in mind when I talk about 4e narrativism being "vanilla" narrativism.

But when I think about the Raven Queen devotees in my party - the aforementioned Wood Elf, plus a paladin - who hate Orcus and hunt down undead, they get their radiant damage benefits against undead. So in that sense there is a mechanical pay off to manifesting their Belief in play. But there is nothing in 4e mechanically analogous to earning points for dramatically playing against your Belief - the closest I get to this is setting up conflicts (especially skill challenges, but also social negotiations more generally and some combats too) in which making progess requires choosing fairly clearly one way or the other. The players aren't forced to choose against their Beliefs, but they are at least forced to be made conscious of the need to choose for or against their Beliefs. The simplest examples of these are invitations to negotiate from NPCs opposed to the PCs' Beliefs, in circumstances in which thoe choice to fight rather than negotiation isn't an easy one, for whatever reason (eg balance of forces, social context) applies in the particular situation.

With Instincts and Traits, in addition to what's been said you get Fate Points when you trigger an Instinct so as to cause trouble (it is always the player's choice whether or not an Instinct trigger), or when you embellish your roleplay with a character Trait so as to make life more difficult. An example would be triggering your "Always draw steel when I see my nemesis" Instinct when you meet you nemesis at the court of the king; or suppose you have the Clumsy trait, and suppose also that you have got the key to the concealed rear entrance from the traitor, and you have just crept past the guards and are about to sneak in, then an example would be declaring that your PC is so clumsy that s/he drops the key down the sewer grate as s/he crosses the courtyard.

As the OP indicates, the GM (as well as other players) is meant to have regard to Instincts and Traits in framing scenes. An example in the rulebook is of a dwarf with the instinct "In a cave-in, push the young ones to safety" - if a player builds a PC with that Instinct then the GM _is obliged to have a cave in_.

(Some Traits are not like Clumsy, and are closer to D&D-style feats or class abilities - the core rules aren't clear on how these other sorts of Traits relate to Fate Points, but later commentary from the designers suggests that when using a Trait can be its own mechanical reward (eg using a call-on Trait for a re-roll) then no Fate Points can be earned from that Trait.)


----------



## pemerton (Mar 7, 2013)

chaochou said:


> I think the advice in BW is very good for running BW. I think it's good for running games driven by player protaganism. But I'm constantly surprised that you run D&D the way you do - perhaps even more surprised that you ran Rolemaster in a similar style. Rolemaster! Full of dense tables, and those remarkably obtuse percentile-ish stat values, and everyone bleeding to death anti-climactically like some wierd Peter Greenaway film. There's a game I never figured out. We found the crit tables funny but the rest of it was, like 'huh?'.
> 
> Would you suggest the BW advice for Rolemaster? I think that's an interesting question. I think you may have used it, or evolved into something similar of your own devising, for RM - but would you advise other people to bolt that advice onto RAW Rolemaster? Me, I'm not seeing it. You've said you see thematic weight in Paragon paths and race and class choices and the cosmology of 4e, perhaps as distinct from RM. I respect that, but that doesn't mean I feel the same.



I'm certainly not going to try and offer a rationale for my taste in RPGs - I can barely grasp the reasons myself, and don't think I could explain them satisfactorily to anyone else!

Rolemaster is a strange game. I'm not 100% sure what RAW Rolemaster would look like - it seems set up around fairly standard D&D-ish violent fantasy tropes, but with this intricate character creation constantly in danger of being thwarted by the crit tables. I don't spend as much time at the ICE forums as I used to, but when you go there there are two main forms of RPGing apparent: 2nd ed AD&Dish "I must set up situations that will teach the players not to get into fights" story-railroading; and heavy heavy process sim where it's hard to get a sense of exactly what the play consists in.

The actual GMing techniques I still use today - flexible scene-framing based around backstory that is light-ish but not fully No Myth (so it can be fleshed out as needed in play); following player leads in PC building and play to run my game, and building up the campaign around that in a synergistic fashion (the GM taking the lead on backstory detail, but the players having a key role in shaping the broad parameters and concerns) - I first started using GMing AD&D Oriental Adventures in 1986-87. Before that I had been running a standard AD&D game that suffered in part because of alignment issues, and in part from poor dungeon construction on my part (I can't do Gygaxian Gming at all). Once I read an article in Dragon 101 about ditching alignment, and started my OA game without it, things changed dramatically. OA had PCs with built-in hooks (family, history, honour etc) and monsters who related to that (the Celestial Bureauracy, etc), but without alignment as a pre-determiner outcomes were unpredictable, and so the way things unfolded was unpredicatable too.

I took this same approach into RM - what I've tried to get better at over the years is cutting out cruft that traditional RPGs tend to throw up, and cutting to the interesting stuff.

What I loved about RM was the detail of the PC generation, and the mechanical heft of its combat rules (both for melee and spell casting - archery gets fairly short shrift in RM). It offers a mechanics-grounded immersion that is one hallmark of purist-for-system play; but unlike Runequest its melee and casting mechanics are metagameable, at least within limits, which gives it a capacity for player expressiveness that is absent in some other purist-for-sim systems. What I came to find frustrating was the lack of non-combat conflict resolution mechanics. (There are bucketloads of non-combat skills, with their DCs and tables etc, but the resolution is pretty unsatisfactory.)

If I was 20 years younger, or had time to do more RPGing, I imagine I'd be doing BW or Dungeon World or something else modern rather than 4e, but when you have an established group with developed tastes and legacy expectations you sometimes just end up where you end up. But being a bit conservative by default isn't a reason to be reactionary! - Which is why I'm happy to take advice and techniques from other games (and from the Forge, etc) where that looks like it can add something to my game and my GMing.


----------



## pemerton (Mar 7, 2013)

Libramarian said:


> Thanks for sharing this -- you're right, this stuff speaks  directly to my concerns about player responsibilities in a non-railroaded story-heavy campaign.



No worries - I'm glad it was interesting.



Libramarian said:


> I've been wondering lately what an adventure optimized for non-railroaded story-heavy play would look like. You and S'mon seem to use adventures/APs a lot but with heavy alterations. What would an adventure type product look like if it were optimized for this style of play?



Now that's an excellent question!

When I look at an adventure module, I'm normally looking for three things: maps/geography (I don't particularly enjoy doing my own, but I can if I have to); history that I can use to flesh out my backstory; NPC antagonists that look useable in my game (preferably with some interesting situations around them, though I'm not too bad at doing situation myself). So for me the easier a module makes it to use its maps/geography, to clearly indentify its history/backstory, and to work out the NPCs/situations in it, the better.

So dot points under clear headings are good. Whereas short-story style slabs of text are bad. When I'm reading a module I don't want to feel I'm reading a story; rather, I want to be able to picture setting the scene up at my table, and imagine how my players might do stuff with it. In that respect a traditional dungeon format is better than a more 2nd-ed-ish, pages of backstory format; but the traditional dungeon tends not to have what I'm looking for in terms of backstory/situation (of course I can make up my own, but then all the dungeon is giving me is maps).

4e adventures suffer badly from the pages-of-backstory problem (at least the three I have: H2, P2, E1). They tend to have nice maps. And they have some interesting NPCs/situations. I've used most of the episodes in H2, but in a different sequence and at different levels from what it suggests (the easy scaling of 4e helps here), and with the overall backstory heavily tweaked and dropping the "home base" aspect (Seven-Pillared Hall). It worked for my game because it had goblins, demons, devil-worshippers and a Vecna-cultist as antagonists, all of which fitted well with my players and their PCs. (Though the duergar slave-traders ended up as friends rather than enemies of the PCs.)

A d20 module I've got some nice use out of is "Wonders out of Time" by Eden Odyssey. It has little "vignettes" of ruins left over from an ancient empire. I used a couple of these as maps plus backstory for scenarios dealing with the "Fallen Nerath" aspect of my game, which is particularly important to one of the PCs. The backstory was easy enough to tweak to fit the default 4e history and cosmology, and I added in my own situation and antagonists.

Anyway, those are some potted thoughts.



Libramarian said:


> This type of story-heavy play that BW seems to be going for where it's  really personal and character-centric is more appealing to me than the  high fantasy/epic quest style. I find most quests (ie plotted story that doesn't really require much player input or tie into their characters, other than the fact that they're really powerful and heroic) to be cheesy and cliched, and I'm not very good at coming up with anything better.



My impression of at least one way of playing D&D - that dates back at least to the latter period of 1st ed AD&D - is that the adventure is seeded by some sort of quest that speaks to the players in very generic terms (eg they're playing LG and NG PCs, and the cleric of Pelor asks for help), and then it rolls along in a fashion more-or-less indifferent to both the players and the quest goal until you get to the end, at which point you find the princess, or the prisoners, or the ancient relic, or whatever else it was that the mentor/patron NPC wanted.

I hate that sort of adventure. I don't want to run it as a GM. I don't want to play it as a player. If there is a quest (eg in my 4e game one of the PCs is reassembling the Sceptre of Law (= Rod of 7 Part)s so that he can kill Mishka the Wolf Spider once and for all) then I want it to inform the adventure along the way, so the experience 9say) of fidning and reassembling the Rod will be different from the experience of tracking down the Orcus cultists (eg in my game, the first brought the PCs into conflict with a hydra spawn of the primodial Bryakhus in which a fragment of the Rod was embedded, and also into a challengeing relatinship with the duergar, who were hording a fragment of the Rod themselves; whereas the second meant trekking down a miles-long stairway into the Underdark and finding an ancient temple to Orcus permeated by the Shadowfell, and sealed off from the rest of the Underdark by Death Giants geased by Torog and the Raven Queen - which not only made the "Orcus" experience different from the "Rod" experience, but also raised issues for the Raven Queen devotees in the party, those members of the party who are opposed to Torog, and the dwarf with a dwarven thrower artefact that is on a crusade to slay all giants).



Libramarian said:


> Character-centric fantasy supers D&D is kind of odd in my view  but not totally unappealing...I would give it a try. pemerton you've  mentioned before that a major influence for your 4e game is Claremont's  X-Men run -- I'm not big into comics so I didn't know what that meant but I brought it up with my friend who is and he said that's the source of most of the storylines used in the early 90's X-Men cartoon, which we both like a lot. We both agreed that those storylines were awesome but we also had a laugh because it's so different from our D&D games, where we don't go into how the PC's know and care about each other much at all



For me, X-Men is a model of a storyline where the personalities of a disparate group of high-powered heroes interact, on a regular basis, with one another and with the fate of the world. So it seems a reasonable model for "fantasy-supers" D&D!



Libramarian said:


> I know it sounds deflationary to people who are very story-focused but the whole dungeon-crawling for blood, gold and gems thing makes more  sense and is more appealing to me when the characters don't have much of an exterior motivation but are just roguish explorers/treasure hunters who do this because it's the only thing they know how to do.



Ron Edwards had this description of the classic D&D PC (put forward in a discussion of fantasy heartbreakers), as well as some views about play problems that can come up - I know that some people find it pejorative, but I'm curious about what you think:

I think it's central to D&D fantasy that a character must start with a very high risk of dying and very little ability to change the world around him or her, and then increase in effectiveness, scope, and ability to sustain damage, all on a positive exponential fashion. 

The concept seems to be that the player must serve his or her time as a schlub, greatly risking the character's existence, in order to enjoy the increased array and benefits of the powers, ability, and effectiveness that can only be accumulated through the reward-system. An enormous amount of the draw to play a particular game [he's commenting on a range of "fantasy heartbreakers"] seems to be based on explicitly laying out what the character might be able to do, later, if he or she lives. I want to distinguish this paradigm very sharply from the baseline "character improves through time" found in most role-playing games. This is something much, much more specific. . .

The key assumption throughout all these games is that . . . the most players can be relied upon to provide is kind of the "Id" of play - strategizing, killing, and conniving throughout the session. They are the raw energy, the driving "go," and the GM's role is to say, "You just scrap, strive, and kill, and I'll show ya, with this book, how it's all a brilliant evocative fantasy." 

It's not Illusionism - there's no illusion at all, just movement across the landscape and the willingness to fight as the baseline player things to do. At worst, the players are apparently slathering kill-counters using simple alignment systems to set the bar for a given group . . . The Explorative, imaginative pleasure experienced by a player - and most importantly, communicated among players - simply doesn't factor into play at all, even in the more Simulationist Fantasy Heartbreakers, which are universally centered on Setting. 

I think this is a serious problem for fantasy role-playing design. It's very, very hard to break out of D&D Fantasy assumptions for many people, and the first step, I think, is to generate the idea that protagonism (for any GNS mode) can mean more than energy and ego. These are fine things, of course, but it strikes me that playing with them as the sole elements provided by the players is a recipe for Social Contract breakdown.​
I don't want to put words into your mouth, but I'm guessing from that you may not agree with the diagnosis of "a recipe for Social Contract breakdown". And I also think this might be linked to your board game idea, which presumably is all about downplaying the players imaginiative experience of the character in favour of the imaginative experience of the setting as narrated by the GM.



Libramarian said:


> Explicit player responsibilities would allow us to say for example whether the game supports [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] in telling his DM to skip some part of the adventure or not.
> 
> I think looking at this list from BW he would be, because he's not just saying "I don't like this, come up with something else DM" he has a dramatic conflict in mind and wants to get to that.



I think that is right.



Libramarian said:


> I'm looking at the 4e PHB and I think he would be out of line in this game:
> "D&D is a cooperative game in which you and your friends work together to *complete* each adventure and have fun." p. 6
> 
> "The DM creates adventures (or selects premade adventures) for you and the other players to *play through*." p.8
> ...



I think on this stuff 4e is a bit incoherent (who'dda thunk it?), because as well as the stuff you point to there is other stuff as well:

On p 8, under the bit you quoted about the "DM as Adventure Builder", there is:

*Narrator*: The DM sets the pace of the story and presents the various challenges and encounters the players must overcome.

*Monster Controller*: The Dungeon Master controls the monsters and villains the player characters battle against, choosing their actions and rolling dice for their attacks.

*Referee*: When it’s not clear what ought to happen next, the DM decides how to apply the rules and adjudicate the story.​
Now none of that would be out of line in BW, I think - so the key difference is "adventure builder". (In Esentials the 4th dot point was revised to read "The DM decides how to apply the game rules and guides the story. If the rules don't cover a situation, the DM determines what to do. At time, the DM might alter or even ignore the result of a die roll if doing so benefits the story." That would be completely out of place in BW, and in my view - except for the middle sentence - is not good advice for 4e either, which is designed to play well _without_ fudging.)

But on adventure building, in addition to page 8 we have p 258:

You can also, with your DM’s approval, create a quest for your character. Such a quest can tie into your character’s background. . .  Quests can also relate to individual goals, such as a ranger searching for a magic bow to wield. Individual quests give you a stake in a campaign’s unfolding story and give your DM ingredients to help develop that story.​
And the DMG tackles the same topic, on p 103:

You should allow and even encourage players to come up with their own quests that are tied to their individual goals or specific circumstances in the adventure. Evaluate the proposed quest and assign it a level. Remember to say yes as often as possible!​
That's not quite as forthright as Luke Crane, obviously, but I think it's meant to push in the same general direction. Which is away from GM as adventure-builder.

On pregame coordination of PCs, on the other hand, I agree with you. I think part of the point of the default history and cosmology is to try to achieve some approximation to that sort of coordination via the setting, but on its own that probably won't be very tight. And without that default, all bets are off.

I'm not the biggest fan of the sort of the sort of low-stakes high concept sim play that you're calling out as the default for 4e. And because I'm not the biggest fan maybe I'm not well placed to talk about good or bad systems for it - but I'll have a go anyway, and suggest that 4e is pretty heavy mechancially for that sort of game, and puts a lot of _mechanical_ responsibility on the player - just like BW says the player is responsible for invoking the mechanics, so 4e relies on the player to put powers to work, invoke p 42 etc. What is the point of that mechanical responsibility without the stakes to match it? Drifting in a slightly higher-stakes direction seems to fit better with the mechanical dimensions of 4e play (and the absence of such drift, and the expection of a low-responsibility GM-driven game, might help explain the "plays like a boardgame" experience).


----------



## pemerton (Mar 7, 2013)

Nemesis Destiny said:


> As a player, I also find that the game is more enjoyable when the DM offers adventure based on a given character's hooks.



Agreed.


----------



## D'karr (Mar 7, 2013)

pemerton said:


> That's not quite as forthright as Luke Crane, obviously, but I think it's meant to push in the same general direction. Which is away from GM as adventure-builder.




I would note that the two are not mutually exclusive.  If you incorporated into the adventure-builder paragraph a note as to the player initiated quests, the responsibilities still remain.  

I've mentioned before that for the game to flow the DM needs to do one of two things.  Lead when the players are not, and follow when the players are leading.


----------



## Ratskinner (Mar 8, 2013)

pemerton said:


> For me I can remember a fair bit of this. A player plays a dwarf because "dwarf" = "stern, no-nonsense but dependable do-gooder". A player plays a drow chaos sorcerer who worhsips Corellon because "chaos" = "go crazy wild" while "Corellon-worshipping drow rebel" tempers that with "but still somewhat sympathetic and ultimately well-meaning". A player plays a paladin because they want to see tests of faith.




Sorry, what sort of dramatic premise is implied by "stern, no-nonsense but dependable do-gooder"? Should I confront  him with frivolous clowns? Does that trump "I want to fight in dark tunnels" or "I like beard jokes" as signals I should pick up on? I'm _really _unsure what to glean from someone choosing to play a human fighter....the game should have... fights?  Even if a chaos sorcerer wants to go wild, does that mean he wants to be challenged on it? "I want to cast magic spells" doesn't really do much to narrow down the campaign for the wizard's DM. Even the 4e PHB recommends you choose races for such profound dramatic reasons as "you want to play a guy who looks like a dragon." 

"Paladin" is the one choice that I suspect may actually do some useful signalling...but I think "I want to pick a fight with the thief's player" is fairly common motivation as well. More practically, they may be choosing paladin to be the moral leader and take the moral high ground rather than face tests of faith.

Now, that doesn't mean that you _can't_ or _shouldn't_ have such conversations and exchange that information. Its a good idea for everybody's entertainment if they happen, especially if the group is going off the standard D&D reservation. I just don't think the party roster is generally an effective place to discover all that. 



pemerton said:


> I think the thief is one of the more hook-heavy classes in classic D&D, and I think one of the reasons for its notoriety is that the standard dungeon adventure doesn't really pick up on those hooks.




I have always found the thief to be an odd standout, because it seems like so much of the implied fluff for such a character is opposed to so much of what an adventuring life is about. Yet, they are vital to many old-school adventures. I think its interesting that by the time 4e rolled around, the "thief" concept had changed so much. I'm still not sure the game has figured out how they should fit in as a class.



pemerton said:


> I could imagine a version of a PrC/Paragon Path rule that tried to acknowledge or address this. For instance, when a certain trigger is activiated (an ingame event? reaching level 6? the GM deciding "it's time"?), then you get your "attachment" PC feature.
> 
> A really primitive version of the feature might be something like - when the thing you're attached to suffers, you take d10 psychic damage unless you step in to protect it, in which case you get advantage on your relevant d20 roll. (The reason I'm going for damage rather than an action penalty is that, in D&D at least, a penalty to action tends to be so significant that it's tantamount for coercion, which is not what you would be looking for here.)




I'd prefer it, and think it would work better if it was a matter of player agency, so the motivations could be broader. That is, something that a player could invoke for almost any purpose. I would also think it needs a little more bite in the consequences. Maybe something like this:

A player may stake a claim for his character at any time. The claim must be framed as a clear "success/fail" task or condition: "The Duke will die by my hand." "They shall not leave the Castle alive." or "I will find the princess." A given character can only have one claim at a time. 
A player may draw (some kind of plot points or tokens) from this claim (limit 5?). 
The tokens may be spent to:
get advantage(?) on a d20 roll (save, attack, or check) 
heal 2d6 hp 
deal an additional 2d6 damage on an attack 
 
Success or Failure
If the character succeeds at the task or condition, then the claim is fulfilled, and the player is free to make another claim as they feel inclined. 
If the character fails at the task or condition, the character loses <some number> of HP from their maximum for each PP they spent on the claim. The player is free to make another claim as they feel inclined.


----------



## pemerton (Mar 8, 2013)

Ratskinner said:


> Sorry, what sort of dramatic premise is implied by "stern, no-nonsense but dependable do-gooder"? Should I confront  him with frivolous clowns? Does that trump "I want to fight in dark tunnels" or "I like beard jokes" as signals I should pick up on? I'm _really _unsure what to glean from someone choosing to play a human fighter....the game should have... fights



I agree that human fighter is generally signal free. So (I think) is halfling ranger, and possibly halfing rogue (depending perhaps on skill set).

The dwarf on its own might look like clown-bait, I'll concede, but I'm assuming here a background, namely the one provided by the 4e rulebooks, in which dwarves have a history and a culture that gives them a particular place in the cosmological struggle between law and chaos. And a drow chaos sorcerer likewise.

One of the first bits of background that I established in my 4e game during play - in the first encounter in the first session - was that dwarves had in fact spent time, after freeing themselves from the giants, under the tutelage of minotaurs. I wasn't 100% sure _what_ my dwarf player would do with this fact, but given the generic sense of dwarves as stubborn, prideful and self-sufficient; plus the already-given background fact of their escape from slavery under the giants - I thought that he would do _something_ with it - and he did. In the context of that particular encounter, he put all his effort into killing the NPC who had drawn his attention to this historical fact (thus expunging one aspect of the relevant record). And it's recurred since as a point to prod and poke with, to get that dwarven pride active (and the pride pushes both ways, because the dwarves are proud of the techniques that they learned from the minotaurs).

TL;DR - I think you're understimating dwarves + setting a little bit, at least. (Halflings, human, fighters, rangers I'll happily concede on. Avandra and Melora as gods, too, at least for me. Maybe others can do stuff with them.)


----------



## pemerton (Mar 8, 2013)

[MENTION=98255]Nemesis Destiny[/MENTION]

Another comment on Beliefs: they occupy the same sort of game space as alignment in D&D, or as personality flaws in games like HERO or GURPS, but work in more-or-less the opposite way.

Ron Edwards gets this pretty right, I think, here:

Consider the behavioral parameters of a samurai player-character in Sorcerer and in GURPS. On paper the sheets look pretty similar: bushido all over the place, honorable, blah blah. But what does this mean in terms of player decisions and events during play? I suggest that in Sorcerer (Narrativist), the expectation is that the character will encounter functional limits of his or her behavioral profile, and eventually, will necessarily break one or more of the formal tenets as an expression of who he or she "is," or suffer for failing to do so. No one knows how, or which one, or in relation to which other characters; that's what play is for. I suggest that in GURPS (Simulationist), the expectation is that the behavioral profile sets the parameters within which the character reliably acts, especially in the crunch - in other words, it formalizes the role the character will play in the upcoming events. Breaking that role in a Sorcerer-esque fashion would, in this case, constitute something very like a breach of contract. . .

a character in Narrativist play is by definition a thematic time-bomb​
In D&D or GURPS, departing from your alignment (or violating your flaws), particularly at crunch-time, is tantamount to cheating - gaining an unfair advantage.

Whereas BW takes for granted that the GM will be confronting the players with situations where they will feel the pressure to violate their Beliefs, and how the player repsonds to that - and whether the player decides to keep Beliefs despite violating them, or to change them in the fact of the new situation, is up to the player. And (as per my earlier post) Fate Points can be earned either way. BW doesn't care _what_ the answer is - it is aimed at forcing the player to _deliberately_ choose an answer!


----------



## D'karr (Mar 8, 2013)

pemerton said:


> Whereas BW takes for granted that the GM will be confronting the players with situations where they will feel the pressure to violate their Beliefs, and how the player repsonds to that - and whether the player decides to keep Beliefs despite violating them, or to change them in the fact of the new situation, is up to the player. And (as per my earlier post) Fate Points can be earned either way. BW doesn't care _what_ the answer is - it is aimed at forcing the player to _deliberately_ choose an answer!




Yep, until a belief is tested it's is simply a label on paper.  The old adage of a captain goes down with his ship is usually uttered by captains whose ships are still upright and floating.

What I always disliked about the alignment system is that it was usually used as all stick with no carrot.


----------



## Ratskinner (Mar 8, 2013)

pemerton said:


> I agree that human fighter is generally signal free. So (I think) is halfling ranger, and possibly halfing rogue (depending perhaps on skill set).
> 
> The dwarf on its own might look like clown-bait, I'll concede, but I'm assuming here a background, namely the one provided by the 4e rulebooks, in which dwarves have a history and a culture that gives them a particular place in the cosmological struggle between law and chaos. And a drow chaos sorcerer likewise.
> <snippage>




Ah. Currently, I have the problem that I am likely the only one at the table who will have read or considered anything beyond the applicable pages of the PHB. For them, other than the standard issue D&D tropes, there is nothing. No signalling can occur that way. More generally, I prefer to use my own settings. So if I use my own setting, WotC's signal-related fluff needs rewriting, and the classes/races still don't signal anything outside the context of a "Campaign FAQ" conversation anyway.

The stuff you're talking about (here and in the other thread) is, I think, a big part of why I have mixed feelings about 4e. I cannot state strongly enough how much I loved everything from the prep side of DMing. A few tweaks (which may have happened after I was out), and I couldn't ask for better. On the more creative end, though....I felt confined. Staying by the books...everything felt kinda b-grade action movie. (Which may have been what they were shooting for, to some extent.) Trying to move away from that was a bit like swimming against the current.

I'll concede that within the context of 4e's whole thing and the caveats of player awareness, choosing class & race may constitute decent signalling.


----------



## Celebrim (Mar 8, 2013)

pemerton said:


> [MENTION=98255]Ron Edwards gets this pretty right, I think, here:




As usual, I think Ron Edwards gets it mostly wrong, and mostly for the usual reasons - his tendency to be utterly condscending about anyone playing in ways other than his way and his continual mistaking system for play ('system matters').   He makes the classic designer mistake of assuming mechanics => aesthetics of play.

For example, I don't think we can say how GURPS plays because its so loose with its expectations of play.  Ron's big contribution to design has been I think that we should consciously think about establishing the expectations of play, but he tends to in his own design run roughshod over any flexibility in play or assumption of flexibility in play.  If you look at a system like GURPS, what he describes is only one way of playing.  But there is text in the GURPS game the blesses negotiating the replacement of a flaw with a new flaw of equal worth in reaction to events that are happening in game.  There in a nutshell, admittedly perhaps a bit concealed and much less blessed and highlighted, is the basic mechanic of rechoosing your 'Beliefs' as used in BW.   Likewise, in a game like D&D, alignment gives a mechanical benefit, but there is an expectation that alignment can move around and shift in responce to player initiated actions, eventually changing to a new description based on how you play.  Especially since 3e, the player has no reason not to engage in this exploration if he wants to (unless he is 'Faithful', in which case the burden is higher).   The type of play Ron wants to describe as unique to Sorcerer, isn't, and doesn't involve breaking the system much or at all.  It simply involves breaking certain expectations about the goals of play.

What Ron seems to consistantly fail to understand is that in older more popular games with more generic expectations of play, different player agendas aren't depricated simply because of less active support for those agendas.  However, in the games he makes and advocates - don't get me started on Sorcerer or I'll get really insulting - he's actually removing player agendas from the game and limiting play.  They are by definition niche games that are generally inflexible and inflexible by design.  There is nothing wrong with playing a niche game if it suits you, but as a general paradigm of game design its IMO terrible.  Imagine how Minecraft might play if it tightly focused on one player agenda instead of blessing the player to create his own agendas of play.  You want to self express - self express!  You want challenge - take up challenge!  You want casual fellowship - you can have that to!  You don't want fellowship, you just want abrogation - have it.  You want exploration - the world is limitless!   Minecraft is designed to engage players on multiple levels.  Most truly successful games are.


----------



## Nemesis Destiny (Mar 8, 2013)

pemerton said:


> @_*Nemesis Destiny*_
> 
> Another comment on Beliefs: they occupy the same sort of game space as alignment in D&D, or as personality flaws in games like HERO or GURPS, but work in more-or-less the opposite way.
> 
> ...



Insightful post; basically confirms my feelings on the issue. [MENTION=336]D'karr[/MENTION] does a decent summary of my feelings on the issue of Alignment in D&D, and especially in AD&D:



D'karr said:


> Yep, until a belief is tested it's is simply a label on paper.  The old adage of a captain goes down with his ship is usually uttered by captains whose ships are still upright and floating.
> 
> What I always disliked about the alignment system is that it was usually used as all stick with no carrot.




Especially the last sentence. Alignment is ALL stick and ZERO carrot, by RAW, especially AD&D. There was always the ad hoc xp awards for "good roleplaying" that very few DMs I gamed with ever seemed to use, but all this did was encourage a player to play their PC _within their alignment,_ not for pushing the limits of their character. I wouldn't learn why I hated this tired old routine that seemed embedded in the game until much later, but now it's obvious to me. If I use alignment at all, part of what I use it for is to help guide the arc of character development, which usually gets _interesting and fun_, when the character crosses the line into a different alignment. To me, that's a huge part of character development, to others, particularly AD&D traditionalists, that's you _failing to play your character properly_. That causes a huge mental disconnect for me; *people aren't allowed to change? The game punishes them for doing so?* Yep. Thanks, Gary & Dave.

Some of my favourite PC & NPC story arcs have been defined by alignment shifts caused by external circumstances, but I was only able to really pull that off after finding (and marrying) a DM that was sympathetic to allowing characters to do this sort of character-narrative exploration. Two early examples: I had a grey elf mage who started chaotic good with a hate-on for the orcs who burned his village to the ground and killed his family, who gained greater power and embarked on a genocidal quest (becoming evil in the process), who later realized the folly of his ways and settled into a more believable Neutral. I played a LG noble military brat, trained in tactics and leadership but basically green (a warlord if ever there was one in AD&D), who was put in charge of increasingly difficult missions that eventually required her to decide between following orders and her concern for the welfare of her troops; she went from naive to neutral good after a couple of these, and became a bard after earning her own followers (hitting 9th as a fighter).

By the book (and at every table I'd played at to that point), there would be several lost levels and experience point penalties. You should be getting *bonus experience* for this sort of thing, not a penalty. I understand why the game was written that way; Gygax was a afraid people would game their alignments, since there were several powerful magical items that had alignment-based functions. _"No, you can't turn evil just to read the Tome of Eternal Darkness so you can gain that bonus level, then switch back when it's all over!" _Given that those were the assumptions of the game, it's little wonder that nobody else I played with tried this sort of thing, even when I ran the game and tried to encourage it.

I was overjoyed, to say the least, when I learned 4e had officially simplified the restrictive alignment system, and absolutely thrilled that there were no longer alignment restrictions on class. That was one sacred cow long overdue for the slaughter.

Sorry, I got a little sidetracked - it wasn't my intent to turn this post into a rant about alignment in D&D - but it's something I feel pretty strongly about.


----------



## Celebrim (Mar 8, 2013)

> Sorry, I got a little sidetracked - it wasn't my intent to turn this post into a rant about alignment in D&D - but it's something I feel pretty strongly about.




I love sidetreks.  If the road goes off long enough, we can always fork.  

I'm one of those alignment 'traditionalists', and I believe that the two axis alignment system is the most brilliant short hand system any game has ever created, which is why you see it so frequently used as short hand by nerds describing narratives outside of D&D.  That isn't to say that alignment hasn't been grossly misused and misunderstood over the years, even by various designers, because it has but I find that most peoples problems with it are based off of one of two things.  Either that misunderstanding about what alignment is, or the players own philosophical stance about 'reality' which itself can often be described in short hand as an alignment stance.   For example, some players will insist that 'good' and 'evil' and 'chaos' and 'law' aren't real.  However, from the standpoint of the game world, this is the stance of a True Neutral who believes that what is really 'real' is balance or perhaps something else not describable within the easy two axis framework.   However, that's a little less interesting of a problem than people who reject alignment because they misunderstand it or can't figure out how to leverage it.

To begin with, the statement, "Forcing a player to stick to their alignment forces them to not play a character than changes or grows", is based off off the huge misnomer that most literary change or growth is best explained as an alignment shift.   You see players simultaneously claiming that alignment isn't real but that they also need alignment changes to explain the growth in their character.  In point of fact, literary characters rarely change their alignments.   Take the most obvious example.  In Tolkien's stories, the characters are radically transformed by their adventures.  Bilbo, Frodo, Merry, Pippin, Sam, Gimli, and Thorin are not the same people at the end of the story than they were at the beginning.  They have changed radically.  They have grown.  Bilbo is less fearful, more thoughtful, more compassionate, and far less shallow and self-centered than he was at the beginning of the story, but there is no indication at all that his alignment has changed.  His fundamental moral outlook has remained the same, he just has a deeper, wider, wiser expression of those beliefs and has lost some of the rudeness, cowardice, and apathy that had hidden his true nature from not only the Dwarfs but even himself.   Gandalf however knew all along.

By viewing alignment as something that must change to reflect changes in the character, you a making the fundamental mistake of thinking that alignment is the sole descriptor of a character, that alignment is the same as personality, and that alignment is the same as feelings.  It's a shallow mistaken understanding of what is being described.  

Alignment in a literary story rarely changes except as a dramatic moment.  It's the moment when Jean Val Jean falls down at his knees and weeps for having stolen the sous.  It's the moment when Darth Vader turns to the light side.  If you feel the need to change your alignment on a more moment to moment basis without dramatic shifts in focus, its probably because the character you imagine doesn't have an alignment.  He hasn't accepted that piety or philosophy should be a guiding framework for how he lives his life.  He thinks all that is BS, and he's living life according to some other standard.   Characters in literature don't change alignment easily.  Javert reaches a moment where he has to change his alignment, and its so traumatic for him that he kills himself rather than face it.  That's story about alignment.  Not random and easy drift.

When I hear about character journeys that people describe as needing the flexibility of no alignment, usually I feel that the journey may be interesting but how they've leveraged alignment during that journey isn't interesting.  One example that has lots of strong backing from literature is the character which has an alignment, but which believes that they are of a completely different alignment.  This is the character of Han Solo.  We have lots of indication that when Han comes back, it isn't because his alignment has changed, but because he's discovering he's really being true to himself.  He never really was the apathetic hardened self-interested person he was trying to be.  Characters that lack self-awareness are staples of literature.   When you look at alignment journeys, consider whether you need any alignment initially other than neutral or whether it might be more interesting to consider being a character who thinks that they are good or lawful or whatever, but really is something else.   Or maybe someone who is trying but failing to be something else.  Is your good character going to convert to evil, or is your good character already evil but believes he isn't?



> You should be getting bonus experience for this sort of thing, not a penalty. I understand why the game was written that way; Gygax was a afraid people would game their alignments




First of all, I don't think there needs to an expectation of experience reward for changing your alignment.  It's not fundamentally good RP to change your alignment any more than it is fundamentally bad RP to do so.  

Secondly, gaming your alignment IMO is far more common than being thoughtful about it.  And given Gygax's assumed agendas of play (challenge, for example), there was more need to enforce not gaming alignment, than there was a need to support narrative empowerment.  

I can agree with you about there being no restrictions on alignment for a class.   However, I don't believe that because I think alignment is bad or because I like 4e's bland take on alignment, but because I think restrictions on alignment for class is a fundamentally a primative view about what a class is.


----------



## Nemesis Destiny (Mar 8, 2013)

At no point did I advocate changing alignment as a frivolous thing. At no point did I state that alignment MUST change to reflect character growth. However, I do feel that sometimes, it is appropriate to do so. In my character's arcs that I described, they were definitely at what you would call "pivotal" moments, and happened either gradually, or sparingly, or both.

I don't hate alignment as a concept, or even the 2-axis system per se, but I *do* hate most of the *mechanics* that tie into it. I despise alignment spells especially. And I'm not advocating that 4e's alignment system is universally better, necessarily, since I think of alignments themselves as handy labels, and the addition of Unaligned to the mix is, IMO, quite desirable. I think of them, as AD&D put it, "a tool, not a striaghtjacket" but strongly feel that the context of that advice was dubious at best considering that the rules of the game did, in fact, use them as a straightjacket.

I've seen other game systems whose alignment systems were just as decent; I rather liked Palladium's system, for example, even if it was a bit more limited to typical tropes.

I don't know to what extent you are projecting your views of alignment misconceptions onto me, my views of it, or my examples, so I'm not going to speak to those things, other than to say if what you mean is that I'm Doing It Wrong, then I'm going to politely disagree and that's that, because no good will come from arguing about it.

In terms of the literary examples, I suppose that is possibly true, though I don't really care about that in the context of alignment, since I'm not necessarily focused on imitating literary tropes with my characters. Nearly all of them have grown in the capacity you describe, and they often do stick to their alignment, but some don't. When they don't, I generally have a pretty good reason for it in the context of the fiction. Sometimes I've made changes because my initial declaration of alignment wasn't actually what I had in mind, wasn't as fun as a different approach to the character, etc, so I make a change. Mostly it's a quick erase and scribble on the character sheet and it's done.

As to the experience award, I don't necessarily think there should be an expectation of an award *just* for changing alignment, but I *do* think there should be one for roleplaying a good character, and if that means a shift in alignment, especially a dramatically appropriate one, then so be it.


----------



## Balesir (Mar 8, 2013)

Celebrim said:


> If you look at a system like GURPS, what he describes is only one way of playing.  But there is text in the GURPS game the blesses negotiating the replacement of a flaw with a new flaw of equal worth in reaction to events that are happening in game.  There in a nutshell, admittedly perhaps a bit concealed and much less blessed and highlighted, is the basic mechanic of rechoosing your 'Beliefs' as used in BW.   Likewise, in a game like D&D, alignment gives a mechanical benefit, but there is an expectation that alignment can move around and shift in responce to player initiated actions, eventually changing to a new description based on how you play.



With GURPS I think you could go further and point up the mechanism by which you can lose a disadvantage subject to the need to "pay it off" with experience before you can buy any further character improvements.

D&D alignment I think just gets into trouble because, much as is sometimes complained of in 4e systems, it uses "natural language" terms like "good" and "evil". These are problematic mainly because there exists no really universal definition of them IRL.

I think both systems miss a central point of what the BITs advice is saying in BW, though. BW is suggesting that the *character* should suffer for their beliefs (or the changing of them), not the *player*. GURPS' loss of xp and D&D's loss of level(s) both punish the _player_ far more than they punish the _character_; but it's quite possible to punish the _character_ while the _player_ is having a blast!


----------



## pemerton (Mar 8, 2013)

Ratskinner said:


> I'll concede that within the context of 4e's whole thing and the caveats of player awareness, choosing class & race may constitute decent signalling.



Like my posts in the other thread indicated, I see the default cosmology/history as pretty central to the 4e play experience. In the structural sense, it's a bit like Glorantha.



Ratskinner said:


> Currently, I have the problem that I am likely the only one at the table who will have read or considered anything beyond the applicable pages of the PHB.



The race pages have quite a bit of this stuff. But you do have to read beyond the stats, and the profundity (that you noted) of "play this guy if you like beards/pointy ears/looking like  dragon".



Ratskinner said:


> Staying by the books...everything felt kinda b-grade action movie.



I'm not going to argue with that!, and I've always tried to be upfront that I don't see any necessary connection between (light) narrativist play and thematic profundity. I think it's a mistake in the Forge presentation to exaggerate that potential aspect of narrativist play, which leads to confusion between topics/tropes/themes (which can be very wide ranging) and RPG techniques (where in my view even a light or hackneyed game can learn a lot from Edwards, Czege, Luke Crane etc).


----------



## pemerton (Mar 8, 2013)

Celebrim said:


> The type of play Ron wants to describe as unique to Sorcerer, isn't



He's not saying it is. He's using it to illustrate narrativist play. Heck, the non-uniqueness is shown by the fact that (i) in his own essay he goes on to discuss another example based on The Riddle of Steel, and (ii) I was able to use his discussin of Sorcerer and GURPs to illustrate a contrast between BW and traditional D&D alignment.

 [MENTION=336]D'karr[/MENTION], [MENTION=98255]Nemesis Destiny[/MENTION], interesting posts on alignment. I've always found alignment rules, especially in the classic form with XP penalty for changing alignment, pretty horrible.

I particularly dislike 3x3 alignment, because it has pretensions to being a comprehensive system of moral classification, whereas it is (in my view) utterly hopeless for that task.

I prefer the original Law-Chaos version (or the 4e variant on that) because rather than pretense to comprehensiveness, this is clearly the presentation of a particular setting conceit. So in 4e, LG through CE correpsonds to gods/civilisation/humanity through primoridals and the Abysss.


----------



## I'm A Banana (Mar 9, 2013)

I will say that people should try out BW. Get it, give it a spin. At the very least, it can help you understand why a certain style does or does not work for you.

I like a lot of BW for my personal wheelhouse (I came to D&D from JRPGs, storytelling and gaming for me are pretty intimate), but I do lean far afield of it in some ways. It's emotional goals are quite distinct from the emotional goals of D&D's typical game design. It's got some good ideas, if you're into a character-driven game, narrative concepts like character development, conflict, and scenes, but it's not everyone's bag.

I've also gotta say that BW's tone and jargon jarr me a lot. That's not the system at play, though, just the writers (clarity, muthafraker, can you use it?!).


----------



## Ratskinner (Mar 9, 2013)

pemerton said:


> I'm not going to argue with that!, and I've always tried to be upfront that I don't see any necessary connection between (light) narrativist play and thematic profundity. I think it's a mistake in the Forge presentation to exaggerate that potential aspect of narrativist play, which leads to confusion between topics/tropes/themes (which can be very wide ranging) and RPG techniques (where in my view even a light or hackneyed game can learn a lot from Edwards, Czege, Luke Crane etc).




I agree. That Capes game which I bring up is the most deep-end narrative game I've played, and it tended to sail straight for melodrama. Its the only game I know of in which performing a soliloquy bemoaning your past failures or successes has a mechanical benefit! (If only Vampire had such a mechanism...) I _do_ think I would have liked a little more flexibility in that thematic profundity from 4e. If I get the chance, I intend to experiment some more with it.


----------



## Nytmare (Mar 9, 2013)

I would agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment that Burning Wheel's "How to Play" can be very useful to _some_ people's style of D&D.  I have personally used Beliefs, Instincts and Traits in all of my D&D games, completely devoid of mechanics, since I first came across them in Mouse Guard.


----------



## LostSoul (Mar 9, 2013)

Celebrim said:


> The downside is the action is basically scripted.




Except that you have full agency; you don't have to follow your instincts.

I had a PC in BW who had a pretty aggressive Instinct - something like "If I think someone is under the influence of an evil spirit, I will draw steel."  In the game I ended up drawing steel on the daughter of a powerful lord - which got my PC in a lot of trouble - but I had the choice to stay my hand.

I also got a Fate point because of that action.



Celebrim said:


> It would be pretty easy to port into D&D.  A Belief would give you like a +1 bonus on all rolls when you were in a scene that tested your beliefs and acting in direct accordance to your beliefs.  I'd give you a penalty like say -4 when violating your belief, but then after 24 hours I'd let you take a new Belief if you wanted.




Beliefs don't grant you any special bonus when you're trying to achieve them.  It'd be more appropriate to grant XP if a PC went after his Belief - or that Belief was important to the game - than any sort of modifier.  Now, after the game, you may get some Fate or Persona points based on how you act in response to your Belief; I'm not sure how you would translate those to D&D.

There would definitely not be any sort of penalty for violating one.  That's just insane - it defeats the whole purpose of playing the game - and makes me think that you don't understand how BW plays at all.



Celebrim said:


> An Instinct would be like a 'Held Action' that let you take an immediate action whenever the condition was triggered.   Only you had to take the action.




Once again, you don't have to follow your Instincts.


----------



## LostSoul (Mar 9, 2013)

Celebrim said:


> But there is text in the GURPS game the blesses negotiating the replacement of a flaw with a new flaw of equal worth in reaction to events that are happening in game.  There in a nutshell, admittedly perhaps a bit concealed and much less blessed and highlighted, is the basic mechanic of rechoosing your 'Beliefs' as used in BW.




When you change your Belief in BW, you are most likely going to gain a Persona point.  It's a big deal.  (If it's not, you're not going to get that Persona point.  It's called "Moldbreaker".)

I don't know how GURPS works, but I'd be surprised if the replacement of a flaw with a new flaw resulted in a mechanical bonus for the PC.



Celebrim said:


> However, in the games he makes and advocates - don't get me started on Sorcerer or I'll get really insulting - he's actually removing player agendas from the game and limiting play.




I'd like you to get insulting, it might be interesting!  I like Sorcerer, and I agree with you that he explicitly tries to remove player agendas from the game.  I think he's pretty up-front with the fact that the game isn't for everyone.  His language is pretty harsh, I think, but eh.  I don't see why anyone would take it personally.


----------



## pemerton (Mar 9, 2013)

[MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION], thanks for stepping in with a couple of good posts.


----------



## Iosue (Mar 9, 2013)

LostSoul said:


> I don't know how GURPS works, but I'd be surprised if the replacement of a flaw with a new flaw resulted in a mechanical bonus for the PC.



Every Advantage and Disadvantage in GURPS is worth character points (or minus points in the case of Disadvantages).  Your character is created with a set number of character points (typically 100, with less for more gritty games and more for more "four-color" games).  Advantages cost a varying number of character points, while Disadvantages add to the points you can spend.

Through playing the game, you get more character points to spend on things like more Advantages, skill upgrades, and attribute upgrades.  Just like in character generation, you can also gain points by taking on more Disadvantages in the course of the game.  So, you can use your earned character points to buy Advantages or "buy off" Disadvantages.  Implicit in this (or perhaps explicit, it's been a while since I've looked at the rules) is the idea of a credit system.  You could, in the course of the game, gain an Advantage that you have to pay off with future earned character points.  You could gain a Disadvantage that would give you more earned character points.  Celebrim mentions trading one flaw for another of equal worth.  You could also trade in Advantages.

Now where the assumptions perhaps differ, if I understand BW correctly, is that GURPS in theory attempts to keep all players on a relatively even power level base, so if you change a -5 point flaw for another -5 point flaw, there's no mechanical bonus involved -- the change is purely reflected in the character's story and the game world.  You have to take on a new flaw, or change from a -5 point flaw to a -10 point flaw to get an actual bonus (points to spend elsewhere).  Thus inasmuch as GURPS incentivizes change, it encourages change for the worse, or in a sense, more plot-hooky and interesting.  BW seems to incentivize change for change's own sake, perhaps because it places more explicit value in player-generated story hooks.


----------



## Janx (Mar 9, 2013)

Ratskinner said:


> Perhaps a should have said "...D&D players don't approach a _campaign _that way." I only mean that I rarely (as in "can't remember ever seeing it") see a player choose a class or race in order to signal something to the DM about the game they want to see. Some groups certainly discuss campaign parameters ahead of time, but that's not the same as what Burning Wheel does.




I got into this late, but I agree with Celebrim on pages 1-2.

As to quoting ratskinner, specifically, when I choose an Elven Fighter/Thief/Mage and say he is the son of a Council member and he's going out to earn his reputation so he can join the Council, that should be sending a subliminal message to the GM on the kind of material I'm looking to experience.

True, it's not as direct as some non-D&D games might have me convey.  But unless the GM is thick-headed, he should see that I've allowed for expecting to do "traditional D&D stuff" initially as the party does to earn XP, but I eventually want the plot to move toward me joining the Council and the politics involved with that.

Luckily, for me, back in 2E, that worked just fine and that's exactly how it turned out with my GM.

So yes, what race you choose and class, skills, etc are part of the signal to the GM on what kind of stuff you want to do.  A Ranger wants to be in the woods and stuff.  A Giant hating Ranger wants to be fighting Giants in the wilderness, not messing with political intrigue in the city.  A PC with a lot of ranks in social skills wants to be using them on people, not mucking around in dank dungeons looking for traps.


----------



## Ratskinner (Mar 9, 2013)

Janx said:


> As to quoting ratskinner, specifically, when I choose an Elven Fighter/Thief/Mage and say he is the son of a Council member and he's going out to earn his reputation so he can join the Council, that should be sending a subliminal message to the GM on the kind of material I'm looking to experience.



Underlining added.

That's not subliminal, that's direct, and that's fine. It wasn't even a part of what I was arguing. All I was saying was that for most editions of D&D the two statements:


I choose and Elven Fighter/Thief/Mage.
He is the son of a Council member and he's going out to earn his reputation so he can join the Council.
Have nothing to do with each other, and you can't derive or divine the second from the first.

While there are tables and groups that would object to framing your character's career from the outset, I generally don't have a problem with it. I just don't think "I'm a halfling bard." is an effective way to do it.


----------



## Nemesis Destiny (Mar 9, 2013)

Sometimes, depending on the context of what's going on in a given  campaign or setting, those associations might be more clear, or send a  more clear signal.

If, for example, that particular campaign were  about a power struggle with the Council of elven F/M/Ts and some other  group, if a player chooses that race/class combo, one could easily infer  it's because they wanted to be involved with that in some way. I can  think of dozens of examples from my own campaign world that would  illustrate a similar point, but without the background won't mean much.

So while it's certainly true that not every choice in D&D sends a signal like that, many of the choices a player makes _can_,  and often do, when you apply campaign-specific context to them. Book  choices on their own usually don't, because they lack this context most of the  time.


----------



## GrahamWills (Mar 10, 2013)

For me, the easiest way to know how well a game system works for story-based gaming is to consider classic "groups" like in LOTR, The Avengers, Batman & Robin, Doctor Who + Companions, Robin Hood and the Merry Men:

If there is a large disparity in people's ability to accomplish actions in the game, can you still have fun playing? Game systems I have played and run like DWAITAS, Mouse Guard, FATE, My Life With Master, Everway, Fiasco, Call of Cthulhu are Ok with that. If my CoC investigator is no good at anything, I can still have fun playing him. In other systems I have played and run like D&D (2,3,4), GURPS, Hero, Star Wars Saga, definitely not.

In between are systems like Supernatural, Savage Worlds, Deadlands where the answer is more mixed.

One you've played a few rally different systems, it's pretty clear that different systems have different things they are good for. D&D provides little support for story-based games directly, so if you want to run a story-based game with D&D, to me *it makes perfect sense* to look for advice on how to run a game from other systems, and see how much you can use. The stated use of Beliefs, Traits and Instincts by a previous poster is an excellent example. 

For me, I used Everyway's card-based resolution as a way to introduce story into high-epic 4e play; each person could choose pictures from anywhere they liked that they felt described their character. If they used the car in conjunction with a standard 4e power, the power was enhanced based on the degree to which the card's picture matched the story situation. Examples:

* One character used a card showing courtly love to enhance his power to move fast; his in-game wife also got the benefit, dispelled her immobility and they escaped. 

* One character had a card showing a door being closed by a wizard. The plot I had planned was to force them to use a powerful artifact to close a gate to the Far Realms. He used the card with a simple "I close the door" action and that changed the campaign.

* One character had a picture of Sigil. The characters had a near-finale battle is Sigil, and the Lady of Pain ended up dead. The character who owned that card was asked to take over running Sigil, and did so,

Adding story elements to a game that doesn't directly support them isn't hard -- all it takes is an open mind, a willingness to read other systems and get ideas, and a set of players who can handle a GM telling them: "I'm going to try this. If it doesn't work, we'll drop it, but let's give it a go ..."


----------



## Campbell (Mar 10, 2013)

One of the most interesting elements of RPG* play is that the rules of play are not really defined by the text of the game, but by a combination of interpretation, social mores, and player consensus (where the GM is also considered a player). This makes rules drift between games easier. Granted some elements can be lifted easier than others, and some games are more resistant to drift. 

Elements like "Say yes or roll the dice", "let it ride", failing forward, and declaration of intent along with task declaration while as much rules of play as character generation and task/conflict resolution rules are more suitable to drift. On the other hand drifting elements like Burning Wheel's progression system that encourages players to take on tasks they will likely fail in are less so without dramatically rewriting portions of the game text, although they will still dramatically effect play. 

I know some will disagree with me that the rules of the game extend beyond task resolution, but I say bunk. The role and responsibilities of GMs and players at table, the goals of play, player priorities, and other "metagame" priorities are as much a part of the game rules as Power Attack. When a game is silent on these issues it just means it expects player groups to establish that element itself. 

*Actually true for most games, but since most are competitive endeavors little drift tends to happen. I do have experience where unspoken rules for attack priority have made games like Risk play dramatically different from table to table though.


----------



## Campbell (Mar 10, 2013)

Double Post


----------



## pemerton (Mar 11, 2013)

[MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION], good post.


----------



## Lord Mhoram (Mar 11, 2013)

pemerton said:


> [MENTION=98255]Nemesis Destiny[/MENTION]
> Ron Edwards gets this pretty right, I think, here:
> 
> Consider the behavioral parameters of a samurai player-character in Sorcerer and in GURPS. On paper the sheets look pretty similar: bushido all over the place, honorable, blah blah. But what does this mean in terms of player decisions and events during play? I suggest that in Sorcerer (Narrativist), the expectation is that the character will encounter functional limits of his or her behavioral profile, and eventually, will necessarily break one or more of the formal tenets as an expression of who he or she "is," or suffer for failing to do so. No one knows how, or which one, or in relation to which other characters; that's what play is for. I suggest that in GURPS (Simulationist), the expectation is that the behavioral profile sets the parameters within which the character reliably acts, especially in the crunch - in other words, it formalizes the role the character will play in the upcoming events. Breaking that role in a Sorcerer-esque fashion would, in this case, constitute something very like a breach of contract. . .
> ...



6

I'd pretty much made this decision already, but thanks for reinforcing my decision to never play a narritivist game - assuming this is a pretty good description of it.   On a similar note - when Paladins have been mentioned in the tread the assumption is that someone wants to play one to test their faith. Not always - I play a paladin who had their faith tested and was done with that before play started - that is the reason for playing a Paladin. Someone who knows right from wrong so strongly that they get magical powers because of that devotion. The reason to choose the class is to avoid the shades of grey stuff that can come up.

As for the general discussion - I'm going to throw in another idea - Immersionism. When playing any time I change the world, story, direction of narrative but do so outside the actions of the character (such as using a fate point, drama point, or even hero points as they show up in some D&D games) completely pulls me out of character and into metagame mode. The purpose of roleplaying for me is to become my character in play as close as possible - and any mechanic that affects that gets between become said character and me. Mechanical concerns such as hit bonus or skill bonus don't because there is an in character knowledge of skill - the character knows if they are good at lockpicking or such. Rolling the die is me making an action that is a 1 to 1 equivalent to the character picking the lock.

I know my playstyle is not all that common - but when narrative or personality mechanics come into play they destroy, by their very nature, the purpose of any roleplaying game.

I mostly talk about my tastes rather than in generalities for example, but when discussion reasons and modes of play that aspect is almost never brought up; and can have an incredible impact on game style, and game choice. I prefer D&D and Hero (even with disads, but they are, as Ron mention, to define the character) because they don't have rules for the kind of thing being discussed.


----------



## Celebrim (Mar 11, 2013)

Campbell said:


> I know some will disagree with me that the rules of the game extend beyond task resolution, but I say bunk. The role and responsibilities of GMs and players at table, the goals of play, player priorities, and other "metagame" priorities are as much a part of the game rules as Power Attack. When a game is silent on these issues it just means it expects player groups to establish that element itself.




I whole-heartedly agree with you except that I think it is a mistake to speak of all this entourage that goes with a game as being its 'rules'.   Rather, the rules are just one aspect of this larger concept of things that an RPG brings with it that becomes play.   I'm not sure what the best word for this ecosystem that the game lives in, but it's something I've been acutely aware of for a while now.

Indeed, I would argue that many of the things in the larger environment of the game are more important than the formal rules of the game, or, "How you prepare to play a system and how you think about playing a system is more important than the system."


----------



## Manbearcat (Mar 11, 2013)

Blarg.  There is something wrong with the boards.  New posts are triggered but my thread doesn't get updated until I either get notified, mentioned or post something new. 

Ignore this gratuitous post that updates the thread for me.


----------



## Nemesis Destiny (Mar 11, 2013)

Manbearcat said:


> Blarg.  There is something wrong with the boards.  New posts are triggered but my thread doesn't get updated until I either get notified, mentioned or post something new.
> 
> Ignore this gratuitous post that updates the thread for me.



I am also experiencing these issues. Been going on for several days at least, on and off. _Annoying!_


----------



## innerdude (Mar 11, 2013)

Celebrim said:


> I whole-heartedly agree with you except that I think it is a mistake to speak of all this entourage that goes with a game as being its 'rules'.   Rather, the rules are just one aspect of this larger concept of things that an RPG brings with it that becomes play.   I'm not sure what the best word for this ecosystem that the game lives in, but it's something I've been acutely aware of for a while now.
> 
> Indeed, I would argue that many of the things in the larger environment of the game are more important than the formal rules of the game, or, "How you prepare to play a system and how you think about playing a system is more important than the system."




Can't XP you, Celebrim, but this is a great post, even though I might quibble a tiny bit with the last sentence. Only because I think most of us choose a system because we already know in our heads how we're going to prepare to play said system, and how we're thinking about how it will be played. 

For example, the GM in my GURPS group specifically chooses that system BECAUSE to him it's utterly, totally, ruthlessly realistic. He's not into "plot protection" for the characters at all. He's not into "metagame mechanics." He's pretty up front about the notion that "If you do something stupid, I will not hesitate to kill you." 

As a result, he likewise expects his players to just as ruthlessly power game. Eke out every possible bonus, conditional modifier, battle tactic, and money spent on magic items as humanly possible. Because if you're not, you're not "doing your job" as a player, because he's certainly not going to "hold back" when running opposition.  

Those expectations are just "there," part and parcel with the type of group he likes to run. Are there other ways that GURPS could be run? I'm sure there are, but his approach just takes GURPS down its most direct, straight-line logical conclusion ("You want gritty? Here you go"). 

(As a side note, personally I think he's actually playing a zero-sum game . . . because as GM, he has total control over encounters. If you make the opponents as "realistic" as the "real world," then 99% of everyone is a pretty ordinary, and the PCs are extraordinary. In most cases, a GURPS encounter between "optimized" PCs and just about everyone except the most exceptional of foes should end in a PC victory with minimal resources expended or risked. But this is mostly neither here nor there.)

But this does bring up an interesting point---is it the developer's job to assume that the rules they create are, in fact, largely going to be played down their most direct, straight-line logical conclusion? 

For example, even supporters of 4e like Manbearcat have admitted in other posts that playing 4e by its at-launch, direct, straight-line, "logically conclusive" playstyle leads to a somewhat muddled play experience. For me, without hearing pemerton's experiences of "drifting" 4e to a more narrativist bent, and then using the mechanical underpinnings to "push" characters into "thematic roles," I don't know that I'd ever have figured that was even a valid approach. 

This is also particularly applicable for 5e at the moment, because I suspect part of the problem we're having, is that _no one knows how to prepare for or "play" the system, because we don't know what we're going to get. _The playtest packets have been so all over the map that everyone's just sort of scratching their heads going, "What am I supposed to be doing with this? What kind of _game_ is this going to end up as?"  

Deep down we WANT to know what the baseline assumptions are, because we want to be making determinations RIGHT NOW whether the whole exercise is going to be worth our time. I'm just not sure, given the obvious and required "reading between the lines" for 4e's optimal playstyle, that Mearls is particularly effective at articulating or making these kinds of "playstyle aims" transparent.


----------



## pemerton (Mar 11, 2013)

Lord Mhoram said:


> I'm going to throw in another idea - Immersionism. When playing any time I change the world, story, direction of narrative but do so outside the actions of the character (such as using a fate point, drama point, or even hero points as they show up in some D&D games) completely pulls me out of character and into metagame mode.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> when narrative or personality mechanics come into play they destroy, by their very nature, the purpose of any roleplaying game.



My own view is that you can run a game along the lines suggested by Luke Crane without narrative or pesrsonality mechanics - at The Forge they call this "vanilla narrativism". That's not to say that you, Lord Mhoram, would like such a game - just to point out that there is no particular mechanical requirement for running a narrativist game. (Though some mechanics might fit better or worse.)

Similarly, someone could play hardcore Gygaxian-style D&D even without using the "gp for XP" rules (@Lanefan who posts on these boards is an example of this, I believe).



innerdude said:


> As a side note, personally I think he's actually playing a zero-sum game . . . because as GM, he has total control over encounters. If you make the opponents as "realistic" as the "real world," then 99% of everyone is a pretty ordinary, and the PCs are extraordinary. In most cases, a GURPS encounter between "optimized" PCs and just about everyone except the most exceptional of foes should end in a PC victory with minimal resources expended or risked. But this is mostly neither here nor there.



Though it does raise some interesting questions about the role of GM force in this particular game. Classic D&D uses it systems of monster level, dungeon level, wandering monster checks etc to try to mediate GM force in encounter design so as to ensure that the players aren't just dancing to the GM's tune. I don't know what, if any, analogues GURPS has to these techniques.


----------



## innerdude (Mar 11, 2013)

pemerton said:


> Though it does raise some interesting questions about the role of GM force in this particular game. Classic D&D uses it systems of monster level, dungeon level, wandering monster checks etc to try to mediate GM force in encounter design so as to ensure that the players aren't just dancing to the GM's tune. I don't know what, if any, analogues GURPS has to these techniques.




Hmm, that's really interesting. I don't know if I'd ever thought of "classic" D&D as having those mediating forces in place. In this area, class "levels" are the same kind of thing; as a player you know you're "Level 4," and thus capable of rising up to meet certain challenges. In GURPS, there's no indication, on the surface, how the GM is going to present any given encounter. You simply don't have those obvious clues. (Wow, my mind is really spinning on this, pemerton. You may have highlighted something that may be a cause for my general dislike of GURPS.)

I'm no GURPS expert, but I'm slowly becoming familiar with it as our group plays. I think the only "mediating" force in GURPS is (as you'd expect from a hardcore simulationist game) is the GM's ability to effectively convey scene information. Meaning, the GM has to take a RIGOROUS approach to giving the party as much "good information" as absolutely possible, because that's the only way players can make intelligent decisions within a process / simulation environment. 

Savage Worlds is somewhat this way too, but not nearly to the extent as GURPS, since there's stuff like bennies for plot protection and player protagonism, "interlude" rules for setting up character backgrounds with bennies as rewards, etc. As a result, players aren't expected to expend nearly as much effort analyzing the "real world" costs of taking a particular course of action, because they know they have at least one or two tricks up their sleeve if they get in trouble. GURPS presents zero kind of buffer for this, at least in RAW.


----------



## Campbell (Mar 11, 2013)

Celebrim said:


> I whole-heartedly agree with you except that I think it is a mistake to speak of all this entourage that goes with a game as being its 'rules'.   Rather, the rules are just one aspect of this larger concept of things that an RPG brings with it that becomes play.   I'm not sure what the best word for this ecosystem that the game lives in, but it's something I've been acutely aware of for a while now.
> 
> Indeed, I would argue that many of the things in the larger environment of the game are more important than the formal rules of the game, or, "How you prepare to play a system and how you think about playing a system is more important than the system."




I just don't think it's entirely clear cut where system ends and social contract begins. For some games the social contract is in fact part of the written rules, especially when the application written and unwritten rules can vary so much from table to table. Different games definitely have certain play style dependencies. 

Burning Wheel for instance does not function well within the constraints of heavy prep, or process oriented application of skills. Of course it adamantly tells you so. If you don't 'Let it Ride' and only roll dice when conflict occurs the mechanical force of its advancement system loses it cache and along with it the tension between going it alone or receiving help. Without a no-myth approach wises and circles become less critical. The absence of no-myth also causes a GM to have more difficulty with failing forward which leads to failure having more mechanical force than intended.

While D&D 3e doesn't enshrine elements of the social contract as strongly it has dependencies that do not function well under a no-myth structure. Even with a monster manual or stat blocks handy using 3e's mechanical elements requires a strong understanding of disparate rules elements. Additionally using PC build selection as a flag suffers because when you break from the assumed roles or adventuring model there are direct setting consequences not necessarily seen in more narrative systems. I actually think this is why my 3e experience suffered in comparison to others. We tended to play with more supernaturally inclined PCs for thematic reasons and with 2 or more clerics sharing the healing load play broke down for us. It was still fun - just not what we were looking for.

From my experience in play so far L5R 4e seems more flexible. It has strong thematic lists to choose from, but the actual mechanical weight of clan, family, and school in play is relatively minor compared to class and race in any version of D&D. 

It also has strong diminishing returns in both skill and ability selection which discourages extreme specialization. As a bushi your choice is what else other than fighting will I be good at. This allows players to plant flags that have a strong weight that is also tied into strong simulation. Characters are not that mechanically detailed so improvisation seems like it would be pretty easy. Even its "meta game" resource void points have an in-setting justification. 

Of course these features which make it strong for both narrative and simulation oriented play also make it fairly weak for Step On Up play unless a GM takes extensive effort. Additionally some more simulation-oriented players may feel that Honor being a thing with mechanical weight feels awkward, even if it's directly tied to the system's cosmology. 

I've also experienced some tension in play because some of our more simulation-oriented players seem to want to play every day out when I'm more inclined to describe my character's actions in broad blush with intent spelled out. Our GM seems to do a good job of balancing out our play style differences though. I've experienced similar player dissonance in 4e as a player and GM, though on a different bent. I've not experienced it in Burning Wheel though, largely because the gamist component is directly tied to creating narrative in play.


----------



## pemerton (Mar 11, 2013)

innerdude said:


> ow, my mind is really spinning on this, pemerton. You may have highlighted something that may be a cause for my general dislike of GURPS.



Always happy to oblige!

This sort of issue was one of my reasons for growingly increasingly dissatisfied with Rolemaster over 19 years of GMing it: it can be very hard to set up situations and present them to the players in a way that gives them the space and capacity to make the meaningful decisions. (Though RM has a few more cues than GURPS, including a rough-and-ready level system.)


----------



## Libramarian (Mar 11, 2013)

pemerton said:


> My impression of at least one way of playing  D&D - that dates back at least to the latter period of 1st ed  AD&D - is that the adventure is seeded by some sort of quest that  speaks to the players in very generic terms (eg they're playing LG and  NG PCs, and the cleric of Pelor asks for help), and then it rolls along  in a fashion more-or-less indifferent to both the players and the quest  goal until you get to the end, at which point you find the princess, or  the prisoners, or the ancient relic, or whatever else it was that the  mentor/patron NPC wanted.
> 
> I hate that sort of adventure. I don't want to run it as a GM. I don't  want to play it as a player.



Yes! This is what I'm talking about.  That type of adventure is powerfully lame. Fairly or unfairly, this is  what I felt the 4e books were presenting as the game's default adventure  paradigm. The stuff about player-created quests points to something  more interesting but it felt like an inconsequential toss-in idea to me.  I personally would need more advice and structure to know what to do  with that.



> Ron Edwards had this description  of the classic D&D PC (put forward in a discussion of fantasy  heartbreakers), as well as some views about play problems that can come  up - I know that some people find it pejorative, but I'm curious about  what you think:



Haha, I don't think that's pejorative, I think that's right on  the money, for the most part. I can totally see why he would say it's a  serious problem for fantasy RPG design in the context of fantasy  heartbreakers at the time of his writing. My hope would be that today  there are enough alternative fantasy role-playing models and games that  people can take another look at classic D&D and appreciate it for  what it is, rather than backlash against it because they keep getting  frustrated trying to push it out of its natural zone.

I think the poster child of D&D heartbreakers would be early Runequest eh? Especially playing in Glorantha where you have this enormously complex mythologically resonant setting and the play experience is still basically dungeon-crawling for treasure. I'm thinking of picking up the reprint of Griffin Mountain to run with the Legend rules, because I've heard people describe it as the greatest sandbox setting of all time--I think I'd be going into it with the right attitude: this is basically going to be classic D&D with more limbs chopped off and a weirder/more interesting setting.



> I  don't want to put words into your mouth, but I'm guessing from that  you may not agree with the diagnosis of "a recipe for Social Contract  breakdown". And I also think this might be linked to your board game  idea, which presumably is all about downplaying the players imaginiative  experience of the character in favour of the imaginative experience of  the setting as narrated by the GM.



No, I don't see how it courts  social contract breakdown any moreso than any other game experience  that's pretty focused GNS-wise. I thought Edwards mentioned it as an example of coherent gamist play in the essay on that subject. But yeah, generally my advice to prevent  that from happening would be to downplay a player's attachment to their  particular character concept and play up the idea of exploring a weird  fantasy world. Character generation is less about "who do you want to  be?" and more about "what toolkit of abilities do you want to take with  you?". It's like the old  D&D cartoon  where the players are literally teleported into the game world. You're  almost just playing yourself. That seems to be sufficient to get  everyone on the same page without taking all of the tension out of the  game by overcompensating and being ironic and jokey with it. It's not  necessary to name your male elf Melf or their fourth character Wilson IV  or stuff like that. I read a description in this amusing thread of Basic D&D being like a boardgame that's allowed to run off the rails, and I thought that was really apt.



> I'm not the biggest fan of the sort of the sort of low-stakes  high concept sim play that you're calling out as the default for 4e. And  because I'm not the biggest fan maybe I'm not well placed to talk about  good or bad systems for it - but I'll have a go anyway, and suggest  that 4e is pretty heavy mechancially for that sort of game, and puts a  lot of _mechanical_ responsibility on the player - just like BW  says the player is responsible for invoking the mechanics, so 4e relies  on the player to put powers to work, invoke p 42 etc. What is the point  of that mechanical responsibility without the stakes to match it?  Drifting in a slightly higher-stakes direction seems to fit better with  the mechanical dimensions of 4e play (and the absence of such drift, and  the expection of a low-responsibility GM-driven game, might help  explain the "plays like a boardgame" experience).



I think it's  likely you are right about the last part there.


Campbell said:


> I know some will disagree with me that the rules  of the game extend beyond task resolution, but I say bunk. The role and  responsibilities of GMs and players at table, the goals of play, player  priorities, and other "metagame" priorities are as much a part of the  game rules as Power Attack. When a game is silent on these issues it  just means it expects player groups to establish that element  itself.




I agree. I think maybe some people are so used to irrelevant and  unfocused advice text in games that they just tune it out now, like  advertising.

pemerton has observed that the foreword in  Moldvay's Basic D&D is weirdly dissonant with how the game actually  plays. This is true, but I didn't even notice that -- I think my brain  almost immediately recognized it as pointless fluff and ignored it. I  notice when this sort of thing is remarkably relevant and appropriate,  e.g. the intro and Successful Adventures section in 1e PHB, but not when it's useless.


----------



## Libramarian (Mar 11, 2013)

innerdude said:


> Hmm, that's really interesting. I don't know if I'd ever thought of "classic" D&D as having those mediating forces in place. In this area, class "levels" are the same kind of thing; as a player you know you're "Level 4," and thus capable of rising up to meet certain challenges. In GURPS, there's no indication, on the surface, how the GM is going to present any given encounter. You simply don't have those obvious clues. (Wow, my mind is really spinning on this, pemerton. You may have highlighted something that may be a cause for my general dislike of GURPS.)




Classic D&D has rules to objectively determine what monsters are seen on what dungeon level and how much treasure is found on what dungeon level and with what monsters (although generating treasure by Treasure Type is so random that it might as well be up to DM whim IMO), but not rules or guidelines for matching encounter difficulty directly with character level -- that's an important distinction for me. (If the players take an elevator down to level X at level 1, it's their own fault).


----------



## pemerton (Mar 11, 2013)

Libramarian said:


> If the players take an elevator down to level X at level 1, it's their own fault.



Libramarian, I enjoyed your two posts which both made sense to me, and just wanted to ask a bit more about this: at what point do you think it gets unfair in classic D&D (eg the elevator is supersilent, the basement room is visually indistinguishable from top floor room, the whole thing is warded against scrying, etc)? I don't feel that the classic D&D advice always made clear how far the GM is expected/permitted to push this sort of stuff.


----------



## pemerton (Mar 11, 2013)

Libramarian said:


> pemerton has observed that the foreword in  Moldvay's Basic D&D is weirdly dissonant with how the game actually  plays. This is true, but I didn't even notice that



For me, it is what I wanted from the game, what attracted me to it! (Both on player and GM side.) It wasn't until I started GMing Oriental Adventures a few years later that I started to work out how I could do something a bit more like it - and it still took a lot of trial and error after that to achieve it at all reliably.


----------



## Nytmare (Mar 11, 2013)

pemerton said:
			
		

> Ron Edwards had this description   of the classic D&D PC (put forward in a discussion of fantasy   heartbreakers), as well as some views about play problems that can come   up - I know that some people find it pejorative, but I'm curious about   what you think:




Am I the only gamer who reads a Forge-speak article and can't understand a single word of it?  Is there a Forge Rosetta Stone out there somewhere?


----------



## Celebrim (Mar 11, 2013)

Nytmare said:


> Am I the only gamer who reads a Forge-speak article and can't understand a single word of it?  Is there a Forge Rosetta Stone out there somewhere?




Well, yes, and no.   There are some pretty good articles explaining things from say the stand point of Ron Edwards that will give you a base for understanding how he uses the terms.   There is something of a dictionary out there somewhere.   

The problem is, not everyone agrees or uses the terms in exactly the same way.


----------



## Celebrim (Mar 11, 2013)

Libramarian said:


> pemerton has observed that the foreword in  Moldvay's Basic D&D is weirdly dissonant with how the game actually  plays. This is true...




Well, it certainly can be true.  I started D&D at age 8, and was DMing for friends by age 12.  All my early games certainly didn't produce the play described in the forward to Basic D&D.  They played pretty much how you expect, and indeed it was rather some time before they even played as thoughtfully and interestingly as the description of play in the 1e AD&D DMG (which is fairly accurate in its description, and interestingly more accurate at times than the 'rules' in that same text).   However, right around age 12 or so, I encounterred an older DM who was willing to run a game for us 'kids' and I was blown away by the fact that he, using the same rules set I was using, achieved games that DID play like the foreward description just by changing up how he narrated the game and what it accepted as a valid proposition from the players.  It was a revelation.   I was like, "Wait... now its got BACON.  Even better!  I've got to figure out how he does this.  This is the way I want to play."


----------



## TwoSix (Mar 11, 2013)

Nytmare said:


> Am I the only gamer who reads a Forge-speak article and can't understand a single word of it?  Is there a Forge Rosetta Stone out there somewhere?



It takes some time.  I read a lot of Forge stuff 7 or 8 years back, but I didn't really grok it until I read a lot of the pre-4e release threads, where I saw enough examples to really make sense of it.


----------



## Celebrim (Mar 11, 2013)

Lord Mhoram said:


> I'd pretty much made this decision already, but thanks for reinforcing my decision to never play a narritivist game - assuming this is a pretty good description of it. ...As for the general discussion - I'm going to throw in another idea - Immersionism.




You just nailed it.  The problem (well one of the problems) I have with Ron Edwards is precisely the problem he is fond of using as a blanket term for what he sees as 'badwrongfun' - incoherence.   I don't find there to be any incoherence (necessarily) in many of the things he does, but for someone who is all about "We should be making games that are richer more mature experiences" his designs tend to just utterly blow away the very things that have in my experience made for the very things he says he's trying to achieve.  You want to RP as a rich, engaging, thoughtful, mature, and satisfying story, then why the heck are you asking me to engage in the game precisely in the moment I want to be most immersed at such a metagame level?  It's never been obvious to me at all that the best way to create a focus on say 'social conflict' or character growth was to create detailed tactical systems for arbitrating those things in great detail.  At some point, you want the rules to just recede into the background, not continually push themselves forward.  In my experience, 'social conflict' and 'martial combat' are served well by almost the exact opposite things.  Porting the mechanics of a wargame into your thespian agenda is a recipe for disaster in the same way that porting the mechanics of a theater game into your tactical wargame is a recipe for disaster.   The same group can play wargames and theater games using radically different approaches as they feel the scene demands without 'incoherence'.   But there is something fundementally incoherent about trying to make them mechanically the same, not because you can't or because you can't make a game out of it - but because often the players have totally different goals they are trying to achieve.

Again, there is a fundmental mistake well known in game design of mistaking mechanics for the aesthetics of play.


----------



## Celebrim (Mar 11, 2013)

innerdude said:


> Can't XP you, Celebrim, but this is a great post, even though I might quibble a tiny bit with the last sentence. Only because I think most of us choose a system because we already know in our heads how we're going to prepare to play said system, and how we're thinking about how it will be played.




Yes, that's absolutely true.  But it's not actually a quibble.  It's essential to understanding what I mean by what I said and unpacking its full depth.  

You propose GURPS as an example.  But, suppose your main interaction with GURPS was through GURPS Supers, and the GM of that game primarily played GURPS from the stand point of a high melodrama game digging into lots of X-Men style soap opera relationships with relatively little dangerous conflict (relying on player optimization Super advantages with their low point cost relative to power to render you virtually immune to most things built without), and then used GURPS potential for deep tactical crunch to really showcase the violent resolution of conflict in an emotional, dramatic, climatic manner.   Additionally, suppose the GM dealt with GURPS brutal realism by having an unstated but enforced 'obscure death' rule possibly built through careful construction of setting (either before, or during play), and NPCs in the game sufficiently powerful to intervene in death and resurrect fallen heroes (common tropes in comics, and arguably versimiltude to setting).  Instead of building scenarios in detail, this GM tends to create very detailed NPCs and improvs play following player lead - that is, if the players go down to the police station, even if he hadn't prepared for it, there is a clue there of some sort that advances the story.  Everything he is doing is 'by the rules'.  This is GURPS as a rules light game, digging into the game deeply only when you really need it, rarely rolling the dice, and with a long term commitment to character and story.

Now another player comes from GURPS having primarily played it as a Horror/Survival game.   Maybe it was a game centered around surviving a zombie apocalypse, with lots of straight out of a third person shooter tactical crunch, really heavy resource tracking, and leveraging GURPS potential as rules as physics.  Character death tends to be high, and the story might actually revolve around an every changing community - a military unit, a village, with no ability to track a single PC long term.   The DM also prepares for this game with large highly detailed maps of the surrounding area, and doesn't improvise.  This is totally different game using the same rules set.   And arguably, GURPS is so silent on how to play GURPS and so sparce on examples of play precisely because it assumes that people will just find ways to play and have fun as long as you provide them mechanics (I don't fully agree, but that's what I think is going on).

Two players from these different backgrounds might be shocked to see the other table in play and there different approaches to creating the game.

I recently was sent by pemerton to read the Burning THACO pdf, and although it didn't achieve what I wanted to see achieved (a module for No Myth play), it was rather interesting in that it largely proved an assertion I had once made, namely, that if you prepared to play by creating a dungeon map, stocking it with monsters and treasures, and then your players came to the table with the expectation that the game was about killing things and taking their stuff, that pretty much every system would or at least could be played like 'conventional D&D'.   In fact, very little rules adaptation would be needed I think to BW to really feel like a D&D clone if you set the rest of the ecosystem to model all the non-rules portions of D&D's usual ecosystem.   And vica versa.   Just off the top of my head, just changing the simultaneous secret declaration to one action at a time (rather than 3 at a time) and doing some things to model Basic D&D's order of play would get you really darn close.   The rest, like bookkeeping time and the sort of propositions/outcome cycles expected of D&D, is just something BW doesn't expect to happen and maybe advises against, but which doesn't really forbid and which a pdf like Burning THACO could be seen as inadvertantly blessing because of its ultimate silence on so many important topics.


----------



## innerdude (Mar 11, 2013)

Hmm that's interesting Celebrim. You bring up two excellent contrasts in campaign assumptions that would radically change player expectations. Yet I've also heard it joked in several forums, "GURPS is great at running any genre you want, as long as you want it to play like GURPS."   

Going back to pemerton's original post, the question seems to be, just how much mechanical support must be present for an RPG to most readily optimize its core "play style assumptions"? Is it enough to simply add advice like Burning Wheel's to a game like D&D and expect a change in player approach, or does the system need to back it up with real mechanical impetus?


----------



## Celebrim (Mar 11, 2013)

innerdude said:


> Going back to pemerton's original post, the question seems to be, just how much mechanical support must be present for an RPG to most readily optimize its core "play style assumptions"?




Depends on what those core play assumptions are.  If the core play assumption is, "Players have a challenge agenda, and the gameplay supports tactical combat where player decision making heavy outcome on success.", then the answer is "lots".   But if the core play assumption is left unsaid, the answer can be "none".  Certain gaming styles - namely those more derived from theater games than table top wargames - depend very little on rules as RPG players typically understand them and as such can be played with pretty much any level of mechanical crunch.  Those styles actually depend more on preparation methods, and/or player expectations.

Note also there are certain types of wargames, usually ones played on a strategic level, that also have very little mechanical crunch, but run on scripts and judge arbitration.   If you play a game derived from that, say simulating an intrigue heavy political thriller, you may or may not need mechanical crunch depending on table expectations.

And, as I've played 8 hour D&D sessions with ZERO dice rolls before, full on Thespian theater games doing setting and character exploration.



> Is it enough to simply add advice like Burning Wheel's to a game like D&D and expect a change in player approach, or does the system need to back it up with real mechanical impetus?




The examples of play, modules you publish, and expectations of play that you set will probably do more to determine how your game plays (and indeed, even if it is played) than all the mechanics you produce.   That said, certain experiences will be best captured if there is some concrete connection between play and mechanics.   However, just because the mechanic informs a certain activity, doesn't mean it will actually create a particular experience of play.  If you are wanting to create a game where you want players spending a lot of time acting in character and engaging in witty banter and gets in touch with thier characters feelings, it doesn't necessarily follow that intricate rules for resolving social conflicts and spending a lot time book keeping changes in the players internal mental map will create that experience of play.  Instead you might find the metagame of selecting choices from the rules is at some tables used to fullly or nearly fully substitute for the now no longer strictly necessary in character role play. 

Likewise, if the agenda of play you want to support is Fantasy, where the player experiences being a particular character, it doesn't necessarily follow that providing a huge number of customizable options that tie to ever conceivable sort of character or background imaginable will end up supporting that experience at every table.  Some tables will instead take the same rules and use them to support Conflict agendas where they create highly optimized characters with no attachment to who the character is only what the character can do, and then happily play an antagonistic game where they try to beat thier GM with their power gaming.  

The real issue IMO opinion is creating a game were you are aware of the multiple agendas and can support one without breaking the other.  And if you know you can't support an agenda, then you better be real upfront about it (and you better not expect to sell a lot of copies of your game either).


----------



## pemerton (Mar 11, 2013)

Nytmare said:


> Am I the only gamer who reads a Forge-speak article and can't understand a single word of it?



Probably not.

Ron Edwards' main goal is (i) to try to describe what is particular to a certain sort of RPGing - what he calls "simulationism" - so as to show that it is not the only viable approach to RPGing, and (ii) to try and describe some other approaches - what he calls "narrativism" and "gamism".

In the particular passage that you queried, he is trying to articulate some distinctive features of classic-D&D influenced gaming: especially the idea that the GM is responible for all description and narration (this is what Edwards is talking about when he refers to "exploration), and all the players are responsible for is making basic play choices for their PCs (eg Do we kill it or run away from it).

Edwards' interest in this particular issue is connected to his broader and longer-term interest in designing games in which players excercise genuine authority over the content of the shared fiction - ie description, narration, "the plot" are not the sole purview of the GM. It turns out that designing that sort of game is a bit trickier than might at first have been thought, but there are various designs that succeed at this. Burning Wheel is one of them.


----------



## pemerton (Mar 11, 2013)

innerdude said:


> Is it enough to simply add advice like Burning Wheel's to a game like D&D and expect a change in player approach, or does the system need to back it up with real mechanical impetus?



At a minimum the mechanics need to make room for the play you want.

That is one problem with 2nd ed A&D - its play advice is all about this heroic fantasy story stuff, but its mechanics really don't support that very well, resulting in GM force as the catch all solution, both via explict GM advice text, plus adventure design (esp some of the Ravenloft and Planescape modules) that will only work if the GM exercises maximum force.


----------



## Abraxas (Mar 12, 2013)

pemerton said:


> At a minimum the mechanics need to make room for the play you want.
> 
> That is one problem with 2nd ed A&D - its play advice is all about this heroic fantasy story stuff, but its mechanics really don't support that very well, resulting in GM force as the catch all solution, both via explict GM advice text, plus adventure design (esp some of the Ravenloft and Planescape modules) that will only work if the GM exercises maximum force.



Just wanted to comment here - I disagree with your assessment of 2E AD&D. To this day, the most memorable games for the group of people I have been gaming with for the last 30+ years were during the 2E era. It supported heroic fantasy very well IME. I think Celebrim has been on the right track and there are a host of other factors that have a much greater impact on how your game ends up playing at the table than simply mechanics.


----------



## Crazy Jerome (Mar 12, 2013)

There is a huge difference between "D&D-ish" and "Plays like D&D".  You can make BW, via Burning Thac0, the former but not the latter.  This is because there is no appreciable advancement in BW without exercising the BW reward cycle--use your beliefs, instincts, and traits to get into trouble, get fate and other points, then use the points to get out of trouble, thereby giving you a shot at advancing the skills.  

Whereas the classic D&D dungeon crawl is about avoiding trouble as much as possible--strategically and then via finesse or fast talk if that breaks down--so that  you get the treasure, and thereby gain levels (power).  Obviously, that changed some when killing monsters became a stronger source of XP than treasure, but there's still no incentive to get into trouble on purpose.  

That's not to favor one over the other.  I rather like both at times.  But they are nothing alike in play.


----------



## Celebrim (Mar 12, 2013)

Crazy Jerome said:


> There is a huge difference between "D&D-ish" and "Plays like D&D".  You can make BW, via Burning Thac0, the former but not the latter.  This is because there is no appreciable advancement in BW without exercising the BW reward cycle--use your beliefs, instincts, and traits to get into trouble, get fate and other points, then use the points to get out of trouble, thereby giving you a shot at advancing the skills....[In D&D] there's still no incentive to get into trouble on purpose.




In D&D, why not just stay back at the Keep?  Why ever search for the Caves of Chaos?   Why are we on the borderlands at all?  Isn't it because if you don't assume risks, you don't recieve a reward?

In one game system, you take on risk, get yourself out of trouble, and then recieve a reward.   And in the other game system, you take on risk, get yourself out of trouble, and then recieve a reward.  There is some mechanical change, that direct flow of narrative empowerment for taking on risk doesn't occur, but both system incentivize risk taking (up to a point).  The way you call out metagame markers to the DM changes.  But I'm not convinced it is that different.  You think BW is unique because you think there is no mechanical equivalent.  But mechanical equivalents aren't always the aesthetics of play in an imaginative game.  There is nothing that stops a group of D&D players from playing a character centric narrative about characters struggling with their beliefs and instincts.  As early as the late 1980's, I was backgrounding my PC's with proto beliefs and instincts - things like, 'I'll never avoid an oppurtunity to kill orcs' - that had me acting in ways that weren't tactical because I was interested in the story, and in adding to myself an extra challenge.  There was no rule involved.  There was just no rule that said I couldn't restrict myself.  Equally early I was giving nightly XP awards to the best RPer - partly to encourage it, partly because I was the DM and I could give out any XP I wanted, but partly because I'd dropped the requirement to train between levels where, DING, Gygax had originally snuck in a story award for good RP (shortened training time, therefore faster leveling) and I wanted to replace it.   But even before I started giving out that reward, players RPed.   I think it's a little pretentious to think that no one was role playing until someone invented mechanics that encouraged them to do so, or that mechanically enforced RP is necessarily better than free form subject only to the sometimes hard constraint of what the player believes his character would do.  I've seen a D&D campaign that had intraparty Romance and a player retiring a character because the character had gotten pregnent and the player believed that that is what the character would do.  How's that for beliefs in action or 'failing forward'?

If I told the story of the two games in a way that was free of meta-descriptors - no mechanics, no out of game frame of reference - could you tell them apart?

Now, don't get me wrong.  I believe BW and D&D can and usually do play very differently.  And I can think of a few things that the mechanics tend to prevent from happening in the two systems because of the different fortune mechanics in them.  But don't mistake, "How I play the game.", for "How the game can be played."


----------



## Crazy Jerome (Mar 12, 2013)

No, I think D&D and BW are different because I've played all versions of D&D, some of them quite a lot, and I've also played BW and seen firsthand exactly why it is different.  This has nothing to do with role playing pretension, and that you even suspected I was being a role playing snob by my comments further reinforces my belief that you haven't played BW.  No one that had played BW would ever say that it played anything like D&D.

I roleplay in D&D.  I roleplay in BW.  There is sufficient overlap in what happens that we can talk about them both as roleplay (e.g. speaking in character) and sufficient differences that the experience is very different.  Saying that they are alike because they share roleplay is like saying that hard-core folk music and avant-garde classical are alike because they are both music.

Told the story without mechanics is a *meaningless *measurement to me.  That's a big part of the point.  If I wanted to tell the story without mechanics, I'd simply tell the story.  It's the experience of how they story gets told, and what that produces at the table.  It's as different as, if you'll pardon yet another analogy, walking around the hill to mountain climbing to flying to driving the long way around.  

Not a question of *better*, but *different*.  I supposed that you might torture BW into playing something more exactly like D&D in experience, but I have to say that it would be a fairly dismal prospect.  You'd have a lot of overhead in mechanics that now would be providing no payout at all, and meanwhile you'd be missing different overhead in other mechanics and having to make up for it.  

I ran a couple of long D&D-ish campaigns using Fantasy Hero over the course of several years.  Fantasy Hero is a lot closer to D&D than BW will ever be, mechanically.  And we deliberately ran those games to be fairly close to D&D.  But even in that one, we were conscious that we were using FH instead of D&D because we wanted something D&D-like that had no Vancian spell slots or forgettable magic, had custom "class packages" that were very flexible, was generally skill-based, etc. So we knew which way to flow when there was a question.  Magic missile is not auto hit because there are no auto hits in FH.  But we'll have some low-powered but scalable spell that only a wizard can get that shoots out magic darts because D&D has magic missile.  Same tropes, different way to explore them.


----------



## Manbearcat (Mar 12, 2013)

Celebrim said:


> In D&D, why not just stay back at the Keep?  Why ever search for the Caves of Chaos?   Why are we on the borderlands at all?  Isn't it because if you don't assume risks, you don't recieve a reward?
> 
> In one game system, you take on risk, get yourself out of trouble, and then recieve a reward.   And in the other game system, you take on risk, get yourself out of trouble, and then recieve a reward.  There is some mechanical change, that direct flow of narrative empowerment for taking on risk doesn't occur, but both system incentivize risk taking (up to a point).  The way you call out metagame markers to the DM changes.  But I'm not convinced it is that different.




This is not accurate.  The paradigm of risk assessment and assumption of said risk that you have composed here is not congruent.  

D&D presupposes that you have already assumed risk by playing.  You make the decision by saying "yes, I'll play".  By the default (gamist) conceit, your character has chosen a career as an adventure in a world which aggressively pursues his/her death.  This is a _passive _assumption embedded in the game before any dice is rolled and any character sheets are scribed.  The _active _decisions you personally make (and your character makes through the conduit of your decisions) attempt to (i) subvert that inherent risk or mitigate the damage of that explicitly mandated, default career choice; an adventurer in a world which aggressively pursues his/her death.  The system's mechanics do not reward play whereby (ii) you _actively _pursue an agenda which exacerbates risk or afflicts you with consequences/damage.  It punishes you for it.  You advance your career by observing (i).  You imperil it (progressively until you are surely dead) by assuming (ii) as your M.O.  

A Burning Wheel game generally does not have that same default (gamist) conceit by which the world is relentelessly, aggressively pursuing your death (it might, but its not default as in D&D) and accordingly, if you are not risk averse and do not relentlessly deploy mitigation strategies your career is imperiled (as in D&D).  Conversely, its assumed (and emboldened mechanically) that an upward career trajectory is part and parcel of _active_ challenge of ethos/M.O./mitigation strategies and the inevitable failure (sometimes basically self-inflicted) that comes with a player's willful assumption and exacerbation of risk and its attendant consequences.


----------



## Celebrim (Mar 12, 2013)

Manbearcat said:


> presupposes...default...conceit...assumption...default...generally...default...conceit...default...assumed




I hear you.


----------



## Celebrim (Mar 12, 2013)

Crazy Jerome said:


> Told the story without mechanics is a *meaningless *measurement to me.




The resulting story is the only real measurement for me.  How the mechanics work their magic in deciding what stories get made is a very important topic, but the mechanics themselves are meaningless.  The only difference between something like BW, D&D, and flipping a coin to determine whether or not you succeed or fail at every proposition (see the world's simpliest complete RPG rules set) is the sort of stories that are produced by the different systems.



> That's a big part of the point.  If I wanted to tell the story without mechanics, I'd simply tell the story.




Yes, but that's not what I want to do.  I do tell stories without mechanics.  It's a perfectly adequate way to tell a story if you have one author.  The interesting thing about RPGs is that they forge a story together from several authors, or at the very least allow subcreators to experience being in the story living it out with an immediatecy that novels find hard to match.



> It's the experience of how they story gets told, and what that produces at the table.




Ok, now that I'll listen to.  Tell me more.  I'm happy to enlarge or refine my theory.  Tell me about the experience of 'how'.



> I supposed that you might torture BW into playing something more exactly like D&D in experience...




No, no, no.  It's not a question of torture.  It's a question of expectations.  It's a question what a GM makes of a system when he approaches it and how he imagines preparing for and playing it, and also the preconceptions that a player brings to the table about everything from a system to how to relate to the GM.  I'm saying that these experiences of play aren't necessarily being done consciously.   Now, I will say that in BW's case the author has gone out of his way to tell you how to play BW in a way that is pretty unique compared to older RPGs.  He doesn't just give you the mechanics and expect you to make play with them, but he presents the expectations and guidelines and agendas of play as if they were rules and alongside rules with equal billing and then tells you THIS is the right way to play.  That is IMO incredibly insightful, and recognizes something that I don't think was really recognized consciously 20 or 30 years ago.

So I'm hardly surprised that BW played very very differently than D&D; I wouldn't expect anything else.  But I think it would be a big mistake to focus on the mechanics and the way conflict is resolved as the major reason why it plays differently.



> I ran a couple of long D&D-ish campaigns using Fantasy Hero over the course of several years.  Fantasy Hero is a lot closer to D&D than BW will ever be, mechanically.  And we deliberately ran those games to be fairly close to D&D.  But even in that one, we were conscious that we were using FH instead of D&D because we wanted something D&D-like that had no Vancian spell slots or forgettable magic, had custom "class packages" that were very flexible, was generally skill-based, etc. So we knew which way to flow when there was a question.  Magic missile is not auto hit because there are no auto hits in FH.  But we'll have some low-powered but scalable spell that only a wizard can get that shoots out magic darts because D&D has magic missile.  Same tropes, different way to explore them.




Trivial mechanical differences.  I've played different games of D&D that had greater variaty of play than that.   For example, I once played under a DM that refused to let players see their own character sheets or know thier own remaining hit points because he disliked the use of metagaming to that great of an extent.  Basically all resolution was behidn the screen.  Same mechanics.  Totally different play experience, and to a certain extent total shift in story.  Magic missile being auto hit or not; doesn't signify.  There probably were differences in play, maybe even some linked to mechanics, but you aren't convincing me that you've really stepped back and evaluated that idea down to its roots.


----------



## Manbearcat (Mar 12, 2013)

None of those are weasel words in this context (you could make a case for generally...but why bother?).  They're straightforward.  But if you think willful contortion of what I wrote, 3 word sarcastic snark and lack of engagement on a non-controversial (at least it should be...but I guess you're protesting), good faith break down of an issue is going to earn you any future interest in folks talking nerd hobby on the internet with you (which I assume is why you're posting in the first place), you're mistaken.

How about this:

D&D world wants to kill you.
Don't let D&D world kill you and you will progress.

Burning Wheel world wants to challenge you.
Accept those challenges, lose them and you will progress.

You're a prolific writer with a lot to say on our hobby (from what I've seen).  I'm a good dude and a fellow kindred spirit D&D dork.  Maybe you could indulge me a few more words than 3 and mix in a breakdown of the issue showing me where those 4 innocuous statements are somehow off the reservation.


----------



## Celebrim (Mar 12, 2013)

Manbearcat said:


> None of those are weasel words in this context (you could make a case for generally...but why bother?).  They're straightforward.




Yes, they are straightfoward qualifiers.  All imply variation and exceptions or the possibility of variations and exceptions.  Since you say you don't mean them as qualifiers, then I don't know what you mean, nor am I completely sure you know what you mean.  Explain to me how treating a word that is a qualifer as a qualifier is 'willful contortion' of what you wrote.

I RP with my (young) elementary age girls.  I think they would be utterly bored and would reject a game of them as adventurers taking on risk.  They would not take that as an assumption of what it meant to play.  Monsters would not be seen as fun, least of all combat with them.  But I think they would be utterly facinated by a game where they played shopkeepers, and got to make sales and resolve conflicts with customers using profession skills, craft skills, social mechanics, appraisal and so forth.  Is it still D&D?  We are using all the same rules?  In fact, most editions explictly bless in one way or the other me awarding XP for achieving story awards, so we could even advance them up to 20th level epic shopkeepers selling hats to storm giants and balancing a top ladders and never once monkeying around with the combat rules.   If it isn't D&D what is it?  It's all the same rules?  What has changed?



> D&D world wants to kill you.




But that's just wrong.  The D&D world as personified by the DM doesn't want to kill you.   It is not my goal of play to kill the characters in any sort of normal game of D&D.  I have abundant goals in D&D, but in so far as those goals impinge on this topic, it is precisely that the 'D&D world wants to challenge the players'.   Killing characters is trivially easy.  Blue bolt of lighting, take 400 damage, you are dead.


----------



## Crazy Jerome (Mar 12, 2013)

Celebrim said:


> Ok, now that I'll listen to.  Tell me more.  I'm happy to enlarge or refine my theory.  Tell me about the experience of 'how'.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




The mechanics are inseparable from how the story is told.  That same insight that tells you how to play it isn't just tacked on.  It's telling you what will cause the mechanics to work.  Because one of the reasons the insight is there and so clear is that there is very little in BW that isn't consciously thrown in there to produce exactly that kind of play.  

Take for example how skills are mechanically handled.  We could talk for days about this (including some things I don't care for very much, BTW), but for example I'll key in on skill progression.  Generally, you can start with zero dice and eventually get to 10.  2 dice is enough to be fairly successful with routine things, while 4 is pretty darn competent.  Not by coincidence, if you spend character resources at start on a skill related to stats that you are moderately decent at, you'll nearly always get 4 dice.  In fact, there are some funky rounding rules and rough edges to make it come out that way.  Finally, getting from zero to 1 dice is a special case, fraught with risk (or a lot of practice time during down time, which ... has its own set of risks in the resource cycle).

Now let's look at why that is, and how it affects the story.  For starters, getting 3 or 4 dice at something your character is supposed to know is pretty easy and straight-forward.  You are competent with a blade, you know that 4 dice is the place to land.  3 is if you want to start almost there and hit it fast in play.  5 is if you want to start closer to a true expert.  You aren't moving much off of 4 without radically changing your character.  Whereas if you start with 1 (or even zero), you are saying that you want your character to learn this totally in play--or maybe just pick it up when and if it comes up.  Or you might bend every resource at your disposal to go higher, but this is going to have all kinds of side effects--inherently as part of character generation.

No matter which one you pick, however, you'll be chasing Artha (fate and other points for others reading at home) in order to improve.  With some cautious and clever "aid another" style play, you might get from zero to 2 without much risk, though it will take a lot longer.  But you aren't going much beyond 4 or maybe 5 without putting it all on the line--fight for what you believe in.  There's *no *clever, strategic, tactical, etc. way around this basic fact (played as written).  All of those will give you a better shot at not dying while you pursue it, and a few shots at some extra fate along the way, but they can't be used to circumvent the risk.  This fact is because of conscious design in the mechanics.

Now, the flip side of this in the BW advice, and a big part of why you need the advice, is that it isn't merely telling you about play to help you grok the intent of the rules (though that helps a great deal, as BW is an odd duck).  It's also telling you some things that aren't going to work very well.  If, for example, you decide to put on that DM rules tinker hat and award advancement outside the printed options, go for more color-driven play as the goal, you may ride along merrily the same way an imaginative DM might turn Basic/Expert into a treatise on intrigue.  But you won't be playing BW anymore.  

More likely, what you'll get is that play will be very flat.  Suddenly, the life path options look thin.  The somewhat ad hoc nature of the skills has no reason anymore.  (Why should an elf sing to do something akin to what a man does by training?)  And if advancement is bypassed without risk, you'll have to curtail it yourself some other way, or deal with the fact that the system start to break beyond the written caps.   And even worse, you could have gotten a more BW game merely by sticking to the rules but starting everyone in "gray" territory.

That's longer than I set out to write to start.  If you want another example, look at Dwarven greed and Elven grief.  It's impossible for an elf or dwarf in BW to be played like a pointy-eared or short human.  You can try, but if you play by the rules, you'll end up sailing West or babbling over your treasure before the campaign ends. That someone who worked at it could play a D&D elf or dwarf like a BW elf or dwarf does not change the fact that in BW you are *forced *to play that way to succeed.


----------



## Manbearcat (Mar 12, 2013)

Celebrim said:


> Yes, they are straightfoward qualifiers.  All imply variation and exceptions or the possibility of variations and exceptions.  Since you say you don't mean them as qualifiers, then I don't know what you mean, nor am I completely sure you know what you mean.  Explain to me how treating a word that is a qualifer as a qualifier is 'willful contortion' of what you wrote.




I'm not going to get into semantic games.  When someone uses the term "presuppose" when referring to "orthodoxy" they aren't qualifying anything.  They're merely saying orthodoxy exists and the default assumptions of the ecosystem around it behave in accordance.  As they do.  In any facet of life.  I'm not going to get into some existential debate and deconstruct orthodoxies and try to unpack if there is meaning there or if we're just living in an absurd world of orthodoxy figments.  



Celebrim said:


> I RP with my (young) elementary age girls.  I think they would be utterly bored and would reject a game of them as adventurers taking on risk.  They would not take that as an assumption of what it meant to play.  Monsters would not be seen as fun, least of all combat with them.  But I think they would be utterly facinated by a game where they played shopkeepers, and got to make sales and resolve conflicts with customers using profession skills, craft skills, social mechanics, appraisal and so forth.  Is it still D&D?  We are using all the same rules?  In fact, most editions explictly bless in one way or the other me awarding XP for achieving story awards, so we could even advance them up to 20th level epic shopkeepers selling hats to storm giants and balancing a top ladders and never once monkeying around with the combat rules.   If it isn't D&D what is it?  It's all the same rules?  What has changed?




What has changed is no you are in fact not playing D&D anymore. Its not Badwrongfun.  I'm sure its great.  But the fact remains you are now playing Shopkeepers and Artisans, specifically Celebrim's Shopkeepers and Artisans.  There are no default assumed rules that mechanically incentivize playing Shopkeepers and Artisans.  You can come up DM forced, SWAG ad hoc variants in AD&D 2e and 3.x, but that is explicitly Celebrim's house rules and Celebrim's house rules to adjudicate Shopkeepers and Artisans on their track to level 20 where they parlay their efforts toward Merchants and Aristocracy.  Story, Roleplaying and Noncombat encounter awards in AD&D 2e and 3.x are not important enough to have legitimate, designed XP systems and mechanical interfaces to facilitate them.  They are not default.  They are not orthodoxy.  And professions yield no XP either.  They offer that you can make them up and hand wave some truly vapid guidance.  But they're quiet neutral, at best, on those things (lest they would produce systems for them and advocate for those systems).  We've had default XP as treasure accrued, monsters/traps/hazards defeated and 4e has a mechanical system for XP for story awards and non-combat encounters.




Celebrim said:


> But that's just wrong.  The D&D world as personified by the DM doesn't want to kill you.   It is not my goal of play to kill the characters in any sort of normal game of D&D.  I have abundant goals in D&D, but in so far as those goals impinge on this topic, it is precisely that the 'D&D world wants to challenge the players'.   Killing characters is trivially easy.  Blue bolt of lighting, take 400 damage, you are dead.




The codified mechanical resolution systems as the means to deal with challenges and the incentive system to progress reveal the base assumptions of the game; accrue treasure, kill monsters, survive in the most fundamental sense of D&D.  That doesn't mean that as a GM you actively want to kill your players.  And it doesn't mean that you have the authority to work outside of the resolution systems and arbitrarily say "you are dead" (unless you don't want players for very long).  It means "here are the mechanical parts of the game to resolve tasks/conflict...fill in your color as you wish...but these are binding and tell you what the game part of the game is about."  If D&D was meant to be _mechanically _drifted as Shopkeepers and Artisans (by rule/default assumption...if you want to bend it to your own will...have at it), then there would be legitimate, codified resolution systems for it and accompanying codified XP.

I can try to break out a baseball game in my Sunday morning basketball but in no way does the basketball ruleset assist me in that nor is the greater culture unflinching when I attempt to do so.


----------



## pemerton (Mar 12, 2013)

[MENTION=54877]Crazy Jerome[/MENTION],  [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION], and maybe some other posters I'm missing, have all drawn attention to one significant difference between BW and classic D&D.

In BW, you can't advance your PC abilities (stats, skills and the like) without confronting a variety of challenges at a range of difficulties, some (perhaps many) of which _you will fail_. So players have a strong mechanical incentive - via these advancement rules - to put their PCs into losing situations.

In play, this is mitigated in a couple of ways.

First, there is "fail forward". So players in BW can afford to have their PCs lose. Traditionally in D&D the penalty for failure is PC death. That is a huge difference. The only edition of D&D to really go out of its way to suggest something different from this is 4e, which in various places (eg skill challenge guidelines, its "say yes" advice) advocates "fail forward"; and which has clear rules that 0 hp need not equal death.

Second, there are the "fate point" (in BW terminology, "artha") rules. Certain ingame choices, including many of those which might lead to failure, earn fate points and the like. Which means even when a player's PC is losing, the player is still deriving mecahanical benefits. And (as Crazy Jerome pointed out) those fate points can be spent to turn some of the likely failures into successes, which means that the player has at least a modicum of control over how the really key situations play out. The closest analogues to these mechanics I'm familiar with from any version of D&D are, again, in 4e: players can (per Essentials) earn Skill Challenge XP even if they fail the challenge, and you could also envisage player-designed Quests where the player gets Quest XP even if the player doesn't succeed at every encounter; and players earn action points, plus magic item unlocks (daily usages, certain items with milestone triggers, etc) for undertaking more encounters between rests.

This relationship, in BW, between PC failure and mechanical rewards for players (advancement, fate points) also feeds into the game in at least a couple of other ways.

First, it helps give the game a type of crisis-ridden or potentially pathos-ridden air: because of the Fate Points on offer, players have an incentive to hurl their PCs hopelessly at the things their PCs care about, or that are related to their PCs, rather than at any random losing cause. Which means the dramatic stakes of those situations where the PCs are clearly outmatched are likely to be high.

No version of D&D that I'm aware of has this feature (though 4e might come closest, if player designed Quests loom large at a particular table). For instance, the milestone rules give the players an incentive to press on, but it's not linked in any mechancal fashion to player-set dramatic stakes. This is one thing I have in mind when I talk about 4e as supporting vanilla narrativist play - there are no mechanics that will automatically engender this sort of dramatic cycle, the game instead relying on the GM to do it him-/herself in framing scenes.

A second important consequence of the role of failure in BW is that, because players have a mechanical incentive not to always confront mechanically easy challenges (because if they do, their PCs won't advance), so they have an incentive not to always use all the bonuses that might be available in a given situation. This means that you can have rich and flavourful augment rules (in BW terminology, "helping" and "ForRKs = Fields of Related Knowledge") without worrying that they will break under the strain; because players won't always want to use them.

A related consequence is that BW's system of "objective" DCs isn't always subjected to maximum pressure, because it's not always in the players' interests for DCs to be as low as possible. (Because high DCs help advancement).

A further related consequence, pointed out explicitly in the Adventure Burner, is that it's not always a bad thing to get wounded, because wound penalties increase the difficulty of challenges and therefore open up adavancement opportunities.

These all take pressure off the GM and the role of GM adjudication in important ways: the augment rules are somewhat self-regulating; the DC-setting rules are also somewhat self-regulating; having your PC wounded is good as well as bad, and hence there is no sense that the GM, in wounding your PC, is just hosing you.

These are elegant design features. No version of D&D has anything like them that I can think of. 4e's approach to managing DCs is to go for scaled rather than objective DCs. Its approach to wounds is to go for scaled damage in a hit point system, and a complex system of conditions and condition removal, rather than wound penalties. And it has no very good system for augments at all (as can be seen in various iterations of the skill challenge rules).

Anyway, these are all things one would have to think about if trying to play D&D in a more BW-ish style.


----------



## pemerton (Mar 12, 2013)

Celebrim said:


> I recently was sent by pemerton to read the Burning THACO pdf, and although it didn't achieve what I wanted to see achieved (a module for No Myth play), it was rather interesting in that it largely proved an assertion I had once made, namely, that if you prepared to play by creating a dungeon map, stocking it with monsters and treasures, and then your players came to the table with the expectation that the game was about killing things and taking their stuff, that pretty much every system would or at least could be played like 'conventional D&D'.





Celebrim said:


> In one game system, you take on risk, get yourself out of trouble, and then recieve a reward.   And in the other game system, you take on risk, get yourself out of trouble, and then recieve a reward.



I don't see a hugely strong resemblance, especially once we go beyond simple tropes ("What scrapes will our heroes get themselves out of this week?") and into actual gameplay.

For instance, it is a default assumption in D&D that the content of the module is secret from the players. And there's a good reason for this - part of the challenge of play is a result of being surprised by the GM's challenges. Whereas Burning THACO gives the following advice for dungeon-bashing BW play (at p 11):

I recommend discarding any of the old notions that the players should be completely surprised by what's coming. Show the players the cover of the module you're running. Read them the back cover blurb. If it has an intro section, consider reading that to them.

You don't have to reveal every twist and secret; just give them a broad overview. In other words, if the module is about delving into the Lost Temple of Whatsit to recover the Orb of Destiny that was stolen by Whosit during the reign of Thatguy, etc., tell the players! Then all of them should write at least one belief that takes them on the quest.​
And this isn't just a stylistic thing. In classic D&D, knowledge is key - and by using it you can circumvent challenges and get the treasure, which is where the real action is. So rationing knowledege is a GM responsibility, and trying to acquire it is a player strategy (which Gygax and Lewis Pulsipher both discussed at length in early D&D texts).

Whereas in BW, _telegraphing the stakes_ is more important - once they're known to the players, then the players have a reason to engage despite the fact that the challenges are horrible. (The canonical mode of monster building in the BW Monster Burner involves player feedback on GM monster designs. Think about how out of place this would be in Gygaxian dungeon play!)

The reasons that BW plays differently in this respect have been set out by Crazy Jerome and me above. The version of D&D that comes closest to this, of those I'm familiar with, is 4e - because it has resolution mechanics (especially in combat, but skill challenges also display a similar character) which makes telegraphing the stakes a way of engendering engagement and upping the pressure. (This is part of, though only part of, what people are getting at when they describe 4e as "combat as sport".)



Celebrim said:


> just changing the simultaneous secret declaration to one action at a time (rather than 3 at a time) and doing some things to model Basic D&D's order of play would get you really darn close.



That's kind of like saying "Take RM combat, but strip out the crit and wound mechanics in favour of hp attrition, and you'd have something pretty close to D&D."

The simultaneous secret declaration of 3 "volleys" (which may be anywhere from 1 to 6+ actions) at a time is a key part of the game. It's how you can win in melee even if you're weak, for instance: because you outsmart them and strike when they're not defending.


----------



## Libramarian (Mar 12, 2013)

pemerton said:


> Libramarian, I enjoyed your two posts which both  made sense to me, and just wanted to ask a bit more about this: at what  point do you think it gets unfair in classic D&D (eg the elevator  is supersilent, the basement room is visually indistinguishable from top  floor room, the whole thing is warded against scrying, etc)? I don't  feel that the classic D&D advice always made clear how far the GM is  expected/permitted to push this sort of stuff.



I've never  secretly moved PCs up or down levels, but the dwarf and gnome do have a  "determine approximate depth underground" ability that could stand to  see some more use. I would either have the elevator make a slight  whirring noise or have some sort of visual clue that they're on a  different level.

I would say I am a notch less hardcore than the style of play that comes  across in the 1e books. Generally, a trap/trick that the players could  conceivably anticipate based on physical/cultural knowledge outside of  the game is better than a trap/trick that only exists as a trope inside  the game that someone playing for the first time would have no chance of  understanding, like earseekers or random contact poison. But I don't  have a huge theoretical problem with the latter. Sometimes it's OK to  use a thing where there's no substitute for having played the game and  seen it before. It's a cheaper thrill but coming up with good, unique  traps is hard work, sometimes you've got to water down that orange drink  a little bit.

My five room dungeon  here  is a pretty good example of the kind of tricksy stuff I like. Those are  basically the five most interesting rooms taken from a much larger  dungeon strung together, the rest of the dungeon being mostly random  monsters/treasure and a few basic traps like tripwires and pit traps, so  in reality that much creativity is good for about 10 hours of play. I  used a map from the donjon generator.

I think the texts could be  better on this issue...but at the same time I think this is the point  where perception is going to vary based on the experiences and  subjectivities of the real people around the table, so there's only so  much that advice text can do, you just have to develop a good feel for  it. Just like how a narrativist game text can try to help you develop a  knack for scene-framing but can't give you a rule determing exactly what  scene to frame at a particular point in-game, I think, following the  symmetry between gamism and narrativism as the two metagame agendas.

I've heard that the advice for trap design is really good in Adventurer Conqueror King but I've never read it.


----------



## pemerton (Mar 12, 2013)

[MENTION=6688858]Libramarian[/MENTION], thanks for the link (I hadn't noticed that thread before). What level(s) was that for?

(Also: good point about the balance between advice and experience/knack, and the symmetry across agendas.)


----------



## Libramarian (Mar 12, 2013)

Level one (I -- roman numerals for dungeon levels!). And yeah, I can see how hosing a player's PC in a way that they felt was cheap or arbitrary seems like a much riskier thing to do than just framing a pointless or...what would a poorly framed scene be--being too aggressive, skipping past important stuff? But I think those are actually equivalent things, in terms of the gamist and narrativist creative agendas. I don't think one is inherently riskier or more of a recipe for social contract breakdown than the other, if everybody is on the same page and has adjusted their perception of the player-PC relationship appropriately in both cases.


----------



## Nagol (Mar 12, 2013)

pemerton said:


> <snip>
> 
> First, it helps give the game a type of crisis-ridden or potentially pathos-ridden air: because of the Fate Points on offer, players have an incentive to hurl their PCs hopelessly at the things their PCs care about, or that are related to their PCs, rather than at any random losing cause. Which means the dramatic stakes of those situations where the PCs are clearly outmatched are likely to be high.
> 
> <snip>




Why not at any random losing cause?  Neither advancement nor Artha comes with a restriction that the PC need care about the cause.  The PCs should be grabbing at everything so far as I can tell.


----------



## Celebrim (Mar 12, 2013)

pemerton said:


> IFor instance, it is a default assumption in D&D that the content of the module is secret from the players.




It's not necessarily a strong assumption that a module is more secret from the players than is recommended by the Burning THAC0 pdf.  It was the interior of a module that was deemed secret and the reason modules were shrink wrapped.  It wasn't strongly assumed that players couldn't see the front cover or read the back blurb and many would have been familiar with the product from the blurb product catalog, and at least known the title of the module (which in many cases was a blurb itself).  In fact, some DMs did show players this much in order to obtain permission from the players for running the module, as in, "Is this something you think your characters would do?" or "Is this something you are interested in as a player?"  A DM in a long running campaign probably just isn't going to assume the players go to the Tomb of Horrors.   He's going to in some fashion obtain their permission to frame the scene.  

What's important about Burning THAC0 is it does assume some degree of secret knowledge is best ("You don't have to reveal every twist and secret"), usage of the maps in some cases, preplanned encounters, a predictable and therefore roughly linear plot, etc. 



> Whereas in BW, _telegraphing the stakes_ is more important - once they're known to the players, then the players have a reason to engage despite the fact that the challenges are horrible.




This is get really silly.  D&D telegraphs the stakes to, "Fantastic treasure or horrible doom await!  Step on up!"  And how many D&D groups have been hooked by appealing to the characters idealism, "Innocents are endangered!  My Paladin just can't stand by, we must make haste to Durbinshire!"



> (The canonical mode of monster building in the BW Monster Burner involves player feedback on GM monster designs. Think about how out of place this would be in Gygaxian dungeon play!)




Yes, but Burning THACO has moved out of that canonical mode into a new equally valid mode.  It's still BW, but its got a list of monsters in the module discussed as an appendix.  Remember the goal here is to capture old school feel.  It does that not mostly by changing mechanics, but mostly by changing the approach to play.



> That's kind of like saying "Take RM combat, but strip out the crit and wound mechanics in favour of hp attrition, and you'd have something pretty close to D&D."
> 
> The simultaneous secret declaration of 3 "volleys" (which may be anywhere from 1 to 6+ actions) at a time is a key part of the game. It's how you can win in melee even if you're weak, for instance: because you outsmart them and strike when they're not defending.




Ok, sure, but I'm not saying that you need to make these alterations.   Keep the 3 volleys, and its still going to play like D&D.   My point was just how minor the mechanical differences really were between BW and various editions of D&D.   And as far as simultaneous secret declaration goes, the 'strike when they're not defending' is as applicable in shorter volleys as it is in longer.  It's an aspect of 'secret simultaneous' and not of '3'.


----------



## pemerton (Mar 12, 2013)

Nagol said:


> Why not at any random losing cause?  Neither advancement nor Artha comes with a restriction that the PC need care about the cause.



Artha gain is linked to Beliefs, Instincts and Traits - so the incentive is to engage with situations that the PC cares about, or that s/he is related to via these character features.


----------



## Nagol (Mar 12, 2013)

pemerton said:


> Artha gain is linked to Beliefs, Instincts and Traits - so the incentive is to engage with situations that the PC cares about, or that s/he is related to via these character features.




Odd.  My copy of BW suggests artha gain for roleplaying, player handling pressure with grace, teamwork, and achieving goals -- both player designed and GM provided.  There is nothing about Athas gain from Beliefs, Instincts, of Traits -- though you can LOSE artha by straying from Belief.


----------



## pemerton (Mar 12, 2013)

[MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION], given that what you describe is not in Revised or Gold, perhaps you have a 1st ed? (I have never seen the original version.)


----------



## Nagol (Mar 12, 2013)

pemerton said:


> [MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION], given that what you describe is not in Revised or Gold, perhaps you have a 1st ed? (I have never seen the original version.)




It's a (c) 2002 and isn't labeled as anything but BW.  I figured it had to be a different version.


----------



## Crazy Jerome (Mar 13, 2013)

Celebrim said:


> Ok, sure, but I'm not saying that you need to make these alterations.   Keep the 3 volleys, and its still going to play like D&D.   My point was just how minor the mechanical differences really were between BW and various editions of D&D.   And as far as simultaneous secret declaration goes, the 'strike when they're not defending' is as applicable in shorter volleys as it is in longer.  It's an aspect of 'secret simultaneous' and not of '3'.




The more salient point is that even if you did effectively make these changes in Burning Thac0, it would play marginally more like D&D, but still not very much like it all.  "Fight for what you believe" supported by mechanics is not "Kill/Trick/Evade the monster, get the treasure, get power" supported by mechanics.  You might end up killing the monster, getting the treasure, and gaining power in BW by fighting for what you believe.  In Burning Thac0 you'd almost assuredly do so.  You obviously might, in any number of D&D campaigns, fight for what you believe while doing that killing/looting/power thing.  

I also might get wet while while cutting timber and might have a tree fall on me while at a pool party.  The experiences would be about as close as playing D&D and BW.


----------



## Crazy Jerome (Mar 13, 2013)

Nagol said:


> Odd.  My copy of BW suggests artha gain for roleplaying, player handling pressure with grace, teamwork, and achieving goals -- both player designed and GM provided.  There is nothing about Athas gain from Beliefs, Instincts, of Traits -- though you can LOSE artha by straying from Belief.




That's the original.  I've got BW Revised and Gold.  In Revised, it's page 65. in the first book, "Earning Artha".  That section has all the ways that you can earn artha, and the fast majority of them are from the BITs.  For example, there are five basic ways to get Fate:  dramatically playing a belief, following an instinct when it gets you into trouble, invoking a trait to get into trouble or drastically alter the course of the story, stopping the table dead with humor, or having the right skill (as a reward for clever character burning, but cautioned to keep _rare_).  The persona section is similar.  Deeds are so rare and quest given that it is more indirect.  (You'll never live to get a Deed point if you don't gain some Fate and Persona along the way, but you get the Deed for completing a major story line successfully at some sacrifice.)

The gold version has this on page 61. not much changed from revised.


----------



## Manbearcat (Mar 13, 2013)

@*Crazy Jerome* Can't xp but 106 is full of good words that make good sentences!  That's what I was getting at but more succinctly put.


----------



## pemerton (Mar 13, 2013)

Nagol said:


> It's a (c) 2002 and isn't labeled as anything but BW.  I figured it had to be a different version.



That would be the original.

Like CJ, I've only got the later two versions. It's interesting to look at the Revised acknowledgements/bibliography, which has separate headings for each edition: for 1st ed, it lists AD&D 2nd ed, Cyberpunk, Warhammer and maybe one or two other RPGs; for revised ed it lists DitV, Sorcerer, maybe Inspectres and some other indie games. So I think there was a pretty self-conscious development between the two editions (whether you describe it as a "tightening up" or a "change of direction" I guess would be a matter of perspective).

Without knowing the history, my speculation would be that the sucess of the original edition brought Luke Crane into communication with The Forge/indie scene, resulting in the changes to Revised. Gold is in basic outline pretty similar to Revised - I would say the changes are more in terms of mechanical minutiae rather than fundamental principles - and has a preface by Jake Norwood (from the Riddle of Steel). I think that's interesting in itself as showing where the BW guys think their game is situated in relation to other fantasy RPGs: they're carrying on TRoS's legacy of indie, narrativist, mechanics-heavy, somewhat gritty fantasy RPGing.


----------



## chaochou (Mar 20, 2013)

So I know this thread kinda petered out, but anyway, here's a statement from Burning Wheel:

"Nothing happens in the game world that doesn't involve a player character."

What is being stated and what is being implied by that statement? Would adhering to that statement cause a change in your game?


----------



## Nagol (Mar 20, 2013)

chaochou said:


> So I know this thread kinda petered out, but anyway, here's a statement from Burning Wheel:
> 
> "Nothing happens in the game world that doesn't involve a player character."
> 
> What is being stated and what is being implied by that statement? Would adhering to that statement cause a change in your game?




It would cause a huge change in my game.  In addition to providing feedback of their efforts to date, the evolving world is the primary way players receive hook invitations and notification of stake changes.

For example, the player may hear the nearby town of Durbindale has scattered reports of undead trickling out of the woods.  The PCs decide to do nothing about it because they're busy.

Next the PCs hear the town of Durbindale is under siege by a lich commanding an undead army and wielding some form of magical staff.  The PCs decide to investigate once thier current mission is done.

A week goes by and the PCs hear that the town of Durbindale was overrun by undead and a new much larger undead army is marching on DaleDurbin.  In addition to the lich, several mummies are seen in the ranks.

So far the PCs aren't involved, but they could have been at any stage if they so chose.  They can decide to engage, flee, advise, or anything else they can envision or do nothing and let the situation resolve itself one way or another.


----------



## Nytmare (Mar 20, 2013)

chaochou said:


> "Nothing happens in the game world that doesn't involve a player character."




I think that it's really easy to misunderstand that that sentence means in regards to what Burning Wheel is trying to do.  It's not saying that the world beyond the bounds of what the characters can see and hear is in stasis, waiting till they get within eye and earshot.  It's saying that changes to the game world that are not meant to poke and prod at the characters, and especially the characters' beliefs and instincts can be ignored by the game master.

As for Nagol's example, the Burning Wheel would suggest either not littering the landscape with things that the players are going to ignore, or more to the point, make it so that the players want to pay attention to it.

I always see Instincts and Beliefs almost like an adventure "wish list."  You should be able to see what kind of game and story the players are hoping for.  Is there a character that lives to root out and destroy the undead?  Someone who races to the defense of helpless people at almost any cost?  Someone hunting for a powerful magical staff that was lost somewhere in the nearby area?  

There's nothing about that sentence that would prevent you from dangling hooks in front of your players, it's just telling you to make sure that the hook is baited with things that they'd bite at.


----------



## billd91 (Mar 20, 2013)

chaochou said:


> So I know this thread kinda petered out, but anyway, here's a statement from Burning Wheel:
> 
> "Nothing happens in the game world that doesn't involve a player character."
> 
> What is being stated and what is being implied by that statement? Would adhering to that statement cause a change in your game?




It would cause a substantial change because I do usually have events transpiring in the background that PCs may elect to get involved in or not. If they don't get involved, the events still occur. I very much prefer that sort of game, in which the world exists and has its own heartbeat. We've often played in campaigns like this since the early 1980s. We would bring different characters in and out of active play, mixing and matching up groups to take on evil as it rose up all as part of one long campaign.

Generally, I don't like the idea that nothing happens unless the characters or, as a player, my character group are involved. I don't feel like I'm immersed in a real setting. While it may be true that everything going on in the game really is for my benefit as a player, I want to have the *impression* that my character is part of a *broader* story, part of a *larger* ongoing concern and not just the current scene or plot thread.


----------



## Nagol (Mar 20, 2013)

Nytmare said:


> I think that it's really easy to misunderstand that that sentence means in regards to what Burning Wheel is trying to do.  It's not saying that the world beyond the bounds of what the characters can see and hear is in stasis, waiting till they get within eye and earshot.  It's saying that changes to the game world that are not meant to poke and prod at the characters, and especially the characters' beliefs and instincts can be ignored by the game master.
> 
> As for Nagol's example, the Burning Wheel would suggest either not littering the landscape with things that the players are going to ignore, or more to the point, make it so that the players want to pay attention to it.
> 
> ...




And that's great when you have a mechanism where the GM can reasonably know what the players want to pay attention to -- disadvantage in CHAMPIONS, beliefs and instincts in BW.  It also helps if the campagn is set up so the PCs are primarily reactive.

I can guess what my players will react to based upon a few tells, but it's no where near an exact science.  In addition, I don't track how the players are prioritising ther agendas and what lenses they are filtering the incoming information through.  All I know is what ties if any the PCs have developed with the situation and what the PCs are currently planning.  They get to make the (hopefully) meaningful decisions of what to do and when to do it.

Once the hook is baited and cast ("Undead in Durbinsdale!  Home of friends, allies, and rivals!") then the PCs make a choice about how to respond.  If they choose not to engage then the situation needs to play itself out so that choice can be meaningful and determine what the next set of hooks may be.  Their choices and the effects on the world will affect how the world reacts to them even and in some cases especially if they decide to remain uninvolved.  "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice!"


----------



## Celebrim (Mar 20, 2013)

chaochou said:


> So I know this thread kinda petered out, but anyway, here's a statement from Burning Wheel:
> 
> "Nothing happens in the game world that doesn't involve a player character."
> 
> What is being stated and what is being implied by that statement? Would adhering to that statement cause a change in your game?




Without seeing the context, I can't really answer definitively.  

I think it is being implied that since the story is about the player characters, everything about your preparation to play or play should be focused on the player characters.  At one level, I find that a very obvious statement.  At another level, I think that strictly adhering to that would be very difficult in practice especially if you wanted to avoid railroading a player and especially if you want to make the story meaningful.  The word 'involve' here is so vague, that I think in practice it will be defined in a lot of different ways and as a constraint is almost meaningless.  For example, at the start of 'The Lord of the Rings', Sauron's attack on Gondor profoundly involves Sam Gamgee and has huge implications for his future, but neither Sauron nor Sam can possibly know or foresee this.   At some point these events must be assumed to have occured either before or during a particular session, as Sam's story progresses.  This means that 'involve' doesn't mean that the only things that happen in the game world are the things he can immediately percieve.  Rather, I think the meaning is closer to the fact that Tolkien doesn't bother to tell the important stories of Dain's war in the North or Celeborn's cleansing of Mirkwood even though his world is alive enough he can imagine them happening, because they aren't really immediately pertinent to the story being told.  It's not that things don't happen, it's that we don't have to distract the players with them if they aren't part of the core story.

Likewise, Harry Potter is profoundly involved in the life of a man named Tom Riddle, but it will be many years before he really understands how much his past which we may think of as being briefly sketched by the player as 'my parents died in a car accident (*wink*) and I'm an orphan' and his future is linked to the offstage actions of Tom Riddle, Sirius Blank, Severus Snape, and others.  Think how much poorer the story would be if none of those connections existed, or how much poorer the experience would be as reader if we knew them all ahead of time.

As I see it, BW is about giving the players meaningful choices backed by a dynamic action resolution system that intends at least to create meaningful choices, be cinematic, and pile on the tension to make the moment where the fortune is determined - the roll of the dice - exciting every time.   There are a lot of games you could make out of that system, but it seems like the default game - the one explicitly affirmed and blessed by the text - is about two things - first, exploration of character through a sort of simulation of basic personality including provisions for tracking growth and change (along side more traditional mechanical growth and change) and second, a sort of versimiltude to the source material of fantasy fiction (the "accuracy" spoken of in the introduction).  Of course, even that is a really broad pallette for creating games.  What fantasy fiction are you inspired by?  Tolkien?  Leiber?  Moorcock?  Brother's Grimm? GRR Martin?  Kirosawa?  D&D?  What sort of assumptions do you have about the role of character in such fiction?  Are your characters mythic and archetypal?  Are they assumed to be on a hero's journey?  Is Bilungsroman consciously or unconsciously your default model for fantasy fiction?

Oddly enough, the character burner - with its elves and dwarfs and other stock fantasy elements - seems to assume that the primary purpose of the game is to better emulate D&D than D&D does.

The character burning system is designed to create mechanical linkage between the character and a backstory, strongly encouraging the player to engage in backstory authority.  As the game has evolved, it seems to have moved from 'beliefs as ethos' to beliefs as 'forestory authority' where the player not only includes a stake in the belief, but a future course of action and as a way of cueing the GM in on the sort of direction he wants to take the character in.

But its not at all clear to me that the best way to achieve these goals is 'No Myth' or 'No prep' or any thing else of the sort.  Nor is it really clear to me that something as vague as that advice would really change how I approach the game.  For one thing, I never assume - even with a player cue - that the player will bite on any particular hook or choose to follow up on it.  All I can do is dangle stories and hope to get players running to engage them rather than running out of them.  Once you get engagement, then you try to provide some more of the same and follow on player direction.  But I think that it is a bit ridiculous to imagine the world as empty or static save in the exact spot a PC stands, and won't make much of a story.


----------



## chaochou (Mar 20, 2013)

@_*Nagol*_  and  @_*billd91*_ 

Thanks for the answers. I get where you're both coming from. My follow up question would be - given the changes you feel would happen, would you expect anything positive to come from adhering to the Burning Wheel statement? And what do you feel you would lose?



Nytmare said:


> I think that it's really easy to misunderstand that that sentence means in regards to what Burning Wheel is trying to do.  It's not saying that the world beyond the bounds of what the characters can see and hear is in stasis, waiting till they get within eye and earshot.  It's saying that changes to the game world that are not meant to poke and prod at the characters, and especially the characters' beliefs and instincts can be ignored by the game master.




I certainly agree that it's a statement which could have multiple interpretations. So I don't disagree with yours, but I think maybe there are alternatives.

_It's not saying that the world beyond the bounds of what the characters  can see and hear is in stasis, waiting till they get within eye and  earshot_.

is interesting to examine. Because it could be said that 'the world' in any rpg is only present while it is being jointly imagined - ie while play is happening. And that it comes into existence by people proposing things and having them affirmed or denied by the group. In that sense 'the world' is made up of the focus of group imagination at a particular time and the collective memory of past proposals being accepted or rejected. Is 'the world' ever moving or in stasis? Or does it remain undefined up until the moment someone focuses attention on some part of it during play?

I think billd91 was quite subtle (I mean that in the sense of perceptive or astute) in saying he wants 'the impression' of a 'larger, ongoing concern'. Can anyone say where these impressions come from or are they part of what we mean by creative agenda or playstyle preference?

_It's saying that changes to the game world that are not meant to poke  and prod at the characters, and especially the characters' beliefs and  instincts can be ignored by the game master._

Yes, I think it can mean that. But again, I think it can mean something else. Because we could ask the question 'Who decides if a player character is involved?'

I would suggest it is the player. So I think you're correct that if the GM can offer 'hooks' with a 100 per cent success rate you end up with play in which the Burning Wheel statement is adhered to.

An alternative is to let the player make the first move and thereby dictate the direction of play. I see this as distinct from what is commonly seen as a 'player offers the GM a hook'. I'd suggest Beliefs allow the player to launch directly into action without the GM saying anything or offering anything beyond what was established by the group during set-up. Play can be driven by pro-activity or reactivity on the part of the players. I read the BW statement as a call for players to be pro-active from the very start of Act 1 Scene 1, and for GMs to react, to make them fight for what they believe.


----------



## Nagol (Mar 20, 2013)

chaochou said:


> @_*Nagol*_  and  @_*billd91*_
> 
> Thanks for the answers. I get where you're both coming from. My follow up question would be - given the changes you feel would happen, would you expect anything positive to come from adhering to the Burning Wheel statement? And what do you feel you would lose?
> <snip>




I GM a lot of different systems.  I use scene framing and styles closer to BW for _Strands of FATE_, some _CHAMPIONS_, and _Teenagers from Outer Space_.  I'd also use these techniques if I were willing to run horror genre.  _Ars Magica_ and _Pendragon_ also skirt closer to this line than D&D.  

It's not so much getting something positive as it is picking a style that supports the game experience I want from a particular campaign.  I find very strong PC focus, scene-framing, et al. are great for dealing with games with a strong inward focus on character personality, the relationship between the PCs, and inward struggles.  Games that offer strong definition of those aspects are the games I use these techniques in.

When I'm running D&D, I'm not looking for that form of game.  The game engine offers very limited PC definition in these areas and almost no resolution mechanisms for these forms of conflict.  When I'm running D&D, I'm looking to focus on proactive engagement and struggles against the environment -- both in the 'dungeon' and in the wider world the PCs occupy.  That is where D&D spends its strength and energy providing resolution and definitional systems.


----------



## Celebrim (Mar 20, 2013)

chaochou said:


> it could be said that 'the world' in any rpg is only present while it is being jointly imagined - ie while play is happening. And that it comes into existence by people proposing things and having them affirmed or denied by the group. In that sense 'the world' is made up of the focus of group imagination at a particular time and the collective memory of past proposals being accepted or rejected. Is 'the world' ever in moving or in stasis? Or does it remain undefined up until the moment someone focuses attention on some part of it during play?




Ok, I think I understand where you are going now and how you understand the advice.

I'm not sure 'undefined' is the only quality to consider.  Something can be defined, but still be flexible, in that as long as you haven't introduced it you can still change it.  Something can be defined, but also be unrefined, in that you may have a notion in a broad outline but not have imagined out all the particular details.   

Also keep in mind that even by your terms, things exist outside of the knowledge of anyone at the table.  People at the table, especially but not exclusively the storyteller, can know things about the scene that aren't revealed to anyone else - and therefore exist in the world but NOT within the groups shared imaginative space.  Therefore we can never say the whole world is in the group's collective imaginative space alone.  What exists in a collective space might be only the tip of a very large unrevealed iceberg.

By your understanding of what it means, I think i can take a stab at the question.

What you gain by being flexible is that if you see that your original conception is definately going to not work out, you can always switch to something that might.  I might point out though that this doesn't necessarily have to be approached as changing the setting.  Often it is enough to change your plans about the mechanical resolution of the player's interaction with the setting.  

What you put at risk is a player's sense of accomplishment, the player's trust, your own ability to remain unbiased and neutral, and to a certain extent the ability to surprise the player.  I also find that often during a session as a DM it's easy to lose confidence in your self and panic, and that often you don't make the best of decisions when paniced, stressed, hurried, or harried.  Many of the times when I've waved my story teller wand behind the screen to change my original conception, it's been something I've regretted, making the scene worse rather than better.

Ultimately, should you come armed with firm ideas, should you invent on the fly, should you change your ideas, or stick to your plans are decisions with no easy right or wrong answer.  If the goal is to make the best possible game, I think it would be a mistake to say, "You should always act this way."  There are too many circumstances where that would be wrong.  The trouble is, since we can't see the future, we are always going to make some mistakes.  I think what can happen though is a player or storyteller can be the victim of one of those mistakes, ruining the game, and thereafter they assume that the problem is with the tool, and not the application of the tool.   There are some tools that I would strongly caution players against using, in the same way I might caution a writer against using sentence fragments.  But I would never tell an artist, "Never do this."  I would strongly discourage for example using railroading techniques.  There are times however when a railroading technique can be used as a form of player empowerment or to escape potential pitfalls along the way, that no one, not even the players would want.  The trick is knowing when to use what, how to use it skillfully, and not getting too locked into the idea that there is one right way to achieve a particular goal.



> Yes, I think it can mean that. But again, I think it can mean something else. Because we could ask the question 'Who decides if a player character is involved?'
> 
> I would suggest it is the player. So I think you're correct that if the GM can offer 'hooks' with a 100 per cent success rate you end up with play in which the Burning Wheel statement is adhered to.




Again, the GM isn't a prophet.  Besides which, this is strictly speaking wrong.  A GM that gets 100% bite rates on his hooks almost certianly doesn't have players that feel empowed to make important choices.   He has players that think they don't have any choice but go along with the DM's ideas.   No matter how much you are playing to player interests, you'll never get things 100% right.



> I'd suggest Beliefs allow the player to launch directly into action without the GM saying anything or offering anything beyond what was established by the group during set-up.




You don't need mechanics for proactive play.



> I read the BW statement as a call for players to be pro-active from the very start of Act 1 Scene 1, and for GMs to react, to make them fight for what they believe.




I believe that that is the BW author's intention.  Whether or not that statement says anything of the sort no its own, I'm very skeptical of.   Whether any given player can simply be proactive is a wholly different matter.   In my experience, a proactive player is proactive regardless of the system.  The trick to allowing proactivity in my experience is to provide a detailed sandbox, with the expectation of refining the detail depending on player action.  It would require an extraordinary GM to improv a sandbox for a proactive player and not end up with either a rowboat world or an unsatisfying thin gruel of validated expectations fed back to the player.   If you don't put enough toys in the sandbox, it's very hard for even an creative player to be inspired enough to be successful.   I have definately played under improv DMs where both I and the DM could never quite get a finger on where to go with each other's direction, and in retrospect I've seen things I could have done that just didn't occur to me at the time.  And I've gone home as a DM having improv'd a scene to an unhappy conclusion, sit down to record the results write about what to do next and just smacked myself on the forehead because I overlooked something I probably wouldn't have overlooked had I made better contingencies.  On the other hand, some players simply aren't proactive by inclination.  You have to prompt them into action, and they have varying degrees of inertia once moving.  You can't dump a bunch of sand (or even legos) in to their lap and say 'build something', whereas if you present them with a problem and a pile of junk to solve the problem with they will come up with a creative solution.


----------



## am181d (Mar 20, 2013)

Nagol said:


> I find very strong PC focus, scene-framing, et al. are great for dealing with games with a strong inward focus on character personality, the relationship between the PCs, and inward struggles. Games that offer strong definition of those aspects are the games I use these techniques in.
> 
> When I'm running D&D, I'm not looking for that form of game.  The game engine offers very limited PC definition in these areas and almost no resolution mechanisms for these forms of conflict.




And that's the reason why I think D&D is great for games like that. I'm generally not looking for the game system to provide rules for that stuff...


----------



## Nagol (Mar 20, 2013)

am181d said:


> And that's the reason why I think D&D is great for games like that. I'm generally not looking for the game system to provide rules for that stuff...




At least half the rules in more inward-focused games drive making the character drivers visible to the GM and the table while at the same time giving everyone a common expectation of where play is likley to go and the effective level of difficulty to overcome the challenges.  I find they realy help in helping me determine what scenes make sense, are engaging, and offer reasonable tension for the table.


----------



## Celebrim (Mar 20, 2013)

Nagol said:


> At least half the rules in more inward-focused games drive making the character drivers visible to the GM and the table while at the same time giving everyone a common expectation of where play is likley to go and the effective level of difficulty to overcome the challenges.




Yes, but in doing so you risk turning what was intended(?) to be an emotional experience into a purely analytical experience potentially approachable as just another problem of system mastery like checking for traps or selecting the best tactical approach in a particular combat.

And as for, "I find they really help in helping me determine what scenes make sense, are engaging, and offer reasonable tension for the table.", it's never clear to me what formal mechanical markers provide that less formal markers like backstory writeups don't.  If for example a player writes that he was dropped of in a monestary by his parents at a young age and never saw his parents again, and that his character has always wanted to know why, do I need something in the game called 'Beliefs' to tell me that the player is going to be engaged by clues to the secret in his backstory and the current location of his family?


----------



## billd91 (Mar 20, 2013)

Celebrim said:


> And as for, "I find they really help in helping me determine what scenes make sense, are engaging, and offer reasonable tension for the table.", it's never clear to me what formal mechanical markers provide that less formal markers like backstory writeups don't.  If for example a player writes that he was dropped of in a monestary by his parents at a young age and never saw his parents again, and that his character has always wanted to know why, do I need something in the game called 'Beliefs' to tell me that the player is going to be engaged by clues to the secret in his backstory and the current location of his family?




No, I don't think you need them in a formal sense. But there are times I think going through a process to define them is helpful for players and DMs alike. I still think *Pendragon* has one of the best systems for doing so with its personality inventories, passions, and loyalties. They can provide for some nice mechanical reinforcement for particularly notable scores or combinations of scores. And they translate over into D&D and PF very easily.


----------



## Nagol (Mar 20, 2013)

Celebrim said:


> Yes, but in doing so you risk turning what was intended(?) to be an emotional experience into a purely analytical experience potentially approachable as just another problem of system mastery like checking for traps or selecting the best tactical approach in a particular combat.
> 
> And as for, "I find they really help in helping me determine what scenes make sense, are engaging, and offer reasonable tension for the table.", it's never clear to me what formal mechanical markers provide that less formal markers like backstory writeups don't.  If for example a player writes that he was dropped of in a monestary by his parents at a young age and never saw his parents again, and that his character has always wanted to know why, do I need something in the game called 'Beliefs' to tell me that the player is going to be engaged by clues to the secret in his backstory and the current location of his family?




As for the first, it is addressed like you addrress any other table convention -- by outlining expectations at the table level prior to play.

An effective backstory can be just as useful.  The formal mechanism puts in place an effective 'minimum' for the backstory.  Every character will have some aspects, beliefs, psych limits, relationships, and what-have-you that are known to the table and they are described in the same language and in many systems, describe the player's expectation for frequency of occurrance and severity of incidents.


----------



## Celebrim (Mar 20, 2013)

billd91 said:


> No, I don't think you need them in a formal sense. But there are times I think going through a process to define them is helpful for players and DMs alike. I still think *Pendragon* has one of the best systems for doing so with its personality inventories, passions, and loyalties. They can provide for some nice mechanical reinforcement for particularly notable scores or combinations of scores. And they translate over into D&D and PF very easily.




It's good you bring up Pendragon, because it seems to me that Pendragon is concerned with something that BW doesn't put a lot of priority on. Pendragon seems to me to have all those passions and opposing personality traits because it wants to exert force on players to play their characters in ways that are contrary to their immediate player and character interests.  BW in its orginal form seemed to be completely unconcerned with that, although I understand that its evolved into a system where it tries to encourage players to play against their characters immediate interests by trying to make it in the player interests to do so. 

In this sense though, Pendragon's personality inventory and passions are playing a far stronger role in the game than beliefs or instincts.  If you took Pendragon and gutted it by removing personality and passions mechanically, did an informal marker of those things by a back story write up and then just asked to players to adhere if they liked to what they thought thier character would do in that situation, it seems to me that the game would play very very differently (if at all).   But if you gutted BW, and removed an inventory of beliefs and instincts, did informal marker of those things by a backstory writeup, and asked players to adhere if they liked to what they thought thier character would do in that situation, it seems to me that the impact on the game would be much much smaller because BW's beliefs, instincts and the like are much much closer to be merely running a highlighter through your backstory to bring out the important points than they are to Pendragon's mechanics.

Can anyone with strong experience with both systems comment on that?


----------



## Celebrim (Mar 20, 2013)

Nagol said:


> As for the first, it is addressed like you addrress any other table convention -- by outlining expectations at the table level prior to play.




On the spectrum of 'System Matters' to 'System Doesn't Matter', I'm a lot closer to the later than the former because Mechanics != Aesthetics, rather Mechanics => Dynamics => Aesthetics.   However, even I wouldn't say system matters that little.  If you created a 'social combat' mechanic that was sufficiently intricate and objective you could concievably resolve all RP mechanically without recourse to IC verbalization.  In such a system, you could add IC verbalization on top of the system, but it would be purely optional color - no more important to the system than describing speaking IC as the pawn or bishop in a game of chess.  In such a case, I don't think you could convince me that the system wasn't tending to force the aesthetics of play in a particular direction away from emmersion in the scene and towards emmersion in the game mechanics.   Simply saying to the players in this case, "I expect you to offer up RP in social scenes" doesn't strongly change the experience of play toward a natural Turku interaction if 5 minutes of dialogue involves 20 dice rolls and 20 declarations of game rule intent.

This is what I think am181d means by saying, "I don't want rules for that."



> An effective backstory can be just as useful. The formal mechanism puts in place an effective 'minimum' for the backstory.




If pemerton doesn't blow his fuse reading that, then I don't think he's paying attention anymore.


----------



## pemerton (Mar 20, 2013)

Nytmare said:


> the Burning Wheel would suggest either not littering the landscape with things that the players are going to ignore, or more to the point, make it so that the players want to pay attention to it.
> 
> I always see Instincts and Beliefs almost like an adventure "wish list."  You should be able to see what kind of game and story the players are hoping for.  Is there a character that lives to root out and destroy the undead?  Someone who races to the defense of helpless people at almost any cost?  Someone hunting for a powerful magical staff that was lost somewhere in the nearby area?
> 
> There's nothing about that sentence that would prevent you from dangling hooks in front of your players, it's just telling you to make sure that the hook is baited with things that they'd bite at.





chaochou said:


> I'd suggest Beliefs allow the player to launch directly into action without the GM saying anything or offering anything beyond what was established by the group during set-up. Play can be driven by pro-activity or reactivity on the part of the players. I read the BW statement as a call for players to be pro-active from the very start of Act 1 Scene 1, and for GMs to react, to make them fight for what they believe.



Interesting exchange.

I think that what Nytmare describes can be reasonably easily done in D&D (at least 4e). What chaochou describes, not so easily, because the game doesn't have enough robustness at the initial set-up phase. Even if the players send their signals in set up, they rely on the GM to introduce the particular story elements (especially antagonists) against which they react. This is escpecially because 4e means that a PC's relationships, positioning etc are likely to be defined by reference to cosmological elements that a 1st level PC can't really hope to confront directly.


----------



## pemerton (Mar 20, 2013)

Celebrim said:


> If pemerton doesn't blow his fuse reading that, then I don't think he's paying attention anymore.



Why would I blow a fuse at what [MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION] said?

I'm pretty sure I described upthread the approach I used in my 4e game to get an effective minimum - at least one loyalty, and at least one reason to be ready to fight goblins.

And I don't think it's a coincidence that it was with (1st ed AD&D) Oriental Adventures that I first really found my feet as a GM - it has mechanisms, like the family generation rules and the martial artist master rules, that impose a minmum for backstory.


----------



## Manbearcat (Mar 20, 2013)

chaochou said:


> So I know this thread kinda petered out, but anyway, here's a statement from Burning Wheel:
> 
> "Nothing happens in the game world that doesn't involve a player character."
> 
> What is being stated and what is being implied by that statement? Would adhering to that statement cause a change in your game?




The statement makes perfect sense in a game that puts ethos mechanics (mechanical resolution and character progression) squarely at the center of its design space.  The primary order of business is testing characters' convictions and putting them under pressure to reconsider when the utilitarian, pragmatic route may be yield a more accessible route to the immediate sought end.  Essentially, if you don't care about serial, story coherency, the GM or a player (in the case of a player authored bang/opener to the scene) can compose any number of borderline disconnected, ethos-centered vignettes in succession.  I wouldn't recommend it (I've done it in practice as an evening of training exercise for new players), but its doable.  A "living, breathing world" need not exist.

I think one  of the main ways that "system matters" is in the robustness of the  resolution systems and the contest mechanics; especially with respect to  the "win or loss condition and character and story progression".

- Robust combat mechanics when dealing with violent opposition
- Robust humanity/sanity/horror mechanics when dealing with the occult or supernatural
- Robust ethos mechanics when dealing with tests of faith, conviction, belief
- Robust social, investigation, or exploration mechanics during non-combat resolution

There  is a gamist inclination in many (most?) gamers that inclines them  toward being pro-active when their engaging and interacting with the  various facet of games will reward them with a legitimate, codified  contest and transparent resolution to that contest based on their own  acumen/merits.  D&D has wargame roots and a corresponding evolution,  has always had robust combat mechanics and PC build tools centered  primarily on combat resolution, especially with respect to other  resolution mechanics.  I suspect that if its cultural genesis and  evolution involved much more robust humanity and ethos testing and  non-combat resolution mechanics (and corresponding PC build tools and  progression paths) that D&D (and its overarching culture) would be a  different beast than it is today.


----------



## Nagol (Mar 20, 2013)

Celebrim said:


> On the spectrum of 'System Matters' to 'System Doesn't Matter', I'm a lot closer to the later than the former because Mechanics != Aesthetics, rather Mechanics => Dynamics => Aesthetics.   However, even I wouldn't say system matters that little.  If you created a 'social combat' mechanic that was sufficiently intricate and objective you could concievably resolve all RP mechanically without recourse to IC verbalization.  In such a system, you could add IC verbalization on top of the system, but it would be purely optional color - no more important to the system than describing speaking IC as the pawn or bishop in a game of chess.  In such a case, I don't think you could convince me that the system wasn't tending to force the aesthetics of play in a particular direction away from emmersion in the scene and towards emmersion in the game mechanics.   Simply saying to the players in this case, "I expect you to offer up RP in social scenes" doesn't strongly change the experience of play toward a natural Turku interaction if 5 minutes of dialogue involves 20 dice rolls and 20 declarations of game rule intent.
> 
> This is what I think am181d means by saying, "I don't want rules for that."
> 
> ...






			
				me said:
			
		

> As for the first, it is addressed like you address any other table convention -- by outlining expectations at the table level prior to play.




My comment was meant to reflect char-op system activity -- that a modicum of restraint in design in much the same way restraint is design is shown in terms of D&D character builds.  In many ways it is simpler as the systems that focus on strong character internal motivation have few splat books bringing in new material and the material that is presented usually has the player able to dictate how frequently and the severity of the built-in hooks will appear and is compensated appropriately.  There are fewer world assumptions built in that can be creatively exercised.

I'm a huge "System Matters" guy too -- that's why I play so many different systems.  Mechanics stress different behaviours, focus on different aspects of world interaction, and provide opportunity for different levers to affect player action.  These differences drive different dynamics from the individual players and the group dynamic.

_Strands of Fate_ effectively uses the same engine for interpersonal conflicts and combat.  It can result in a player taking a 3rd-person voice for the combat, but it doesn't require it.  It does tend to break the conversation/debate into 'rounds' or activity.


----------



## Campbell (Mar 21, 2013)

I'm really not sure why 'Let it ride' should be treated any differently from 'roll x d6, count 4-6 as a success'. Both are just as easy to ignore in play. Both are going to have a dramatic effect on play dynamics.

The purpose of RPG material is to set expectations for play. It is all a presentation of a particular play aesthetic. They're selling us on an approach to play. Mechanics only exist in our head space. They can be changed on a whim. That does not mean they have no value. They are part and parcel of the social contract that binds a group together. Players divest a GM with a certain amount of authority and the play group as a whole divest a certain amount of authority to the game as a whole. No authority exists without being granted.

The value of mechanics, settings, etc. is that they all help instruct a group and form the assumptions of play. This is valuable because otherwise we would have to negotiate a lot more of the social contract on our own and can help us develop new approaches to play. Of course if you play Burning Wheel exactly like you play D&D it will feel like D&D. If you ignore beliefs, let it ride, say yes or roll the dice, the way wises are meant to play, Elven Grief, Dwarven Greed, Human Faith, and Steel Burning Wheel will resemble any traditional RPG, albiet one with a trivial game-able advancement system. You'll also have gutted it. 

Presentation is important. Resolution mechanics are a piece of presentation.


----------



## Crazy Jerome (Mar 21, 2013)

On the whole I lean slightly more towards "system doesn't matter" than that it does--even in the broad definition of "system" associated with that statement, where system is everything that happens by convention (rule, social, etc.) at the table.  This is primarily because I have such a strong preference for playing with people that I truly enjoy being around.  I'd rather have a substandard RPG experience with friends than a better RPG experience with dedicated gamers.  The former ends up being a better "play" experience.

Despite that, I consider BW to be an example of a system that proves the rule that "system matters".  Not many systems do exactly what they promise, when you play them the way they say to play--and then also stop doing it when you tweak them.


----------



## Ratskinner (Mar 21, 2013)

Manbearcat said:


> <snip some really good stuff>
> There  is a gamist inclination in many (most?) gamers that inclines them  toward being pro-active when their engaging and interacting with the  various facet of games will reward them with a legitimate, codified  contest and transparent resolution to that contest based on their own  acumen/merits.  D&D has wargame roots and a corresponding evolution,  has always had robust combat mechanics and PC build tools centered  primarily on combat resolution, especially with respect to other  resolution mechanics.  I suspect that if its cultural genesis and  evolution involved much more robust humanity and ethos testing and  non-combat resolution mechanics (and corresponding PC build tools and  progression paths) that D&D (and its overarching culture) would be a  different beast than it is today.




I suspect that all of tabletop rpgs would be different through inheritance. Assuming that that kind of game has as much appeal, anyway.


----------



## Manbearcat (Mar 21, 2013)

Ratskinner said:


> I suspect that all of tabletop rpgs would be different through inheritance. Assuming that that kind of game has as much appeal, anyway.




To be sure.  Mini-games are...erm...game-changers.  If D&D in its primordial ooze had a truly awesome (fun) social interaction resolution system/mini-game (with corresponding player progression/advancement as a result of victory), we might be complaining about Strength as a dump stat rather than Charisma!


----------



## Celebrim (Mar 21, 2013)

Manbearcat said:


> To be sure.  Mini-games are...erm...game-changers.  If D&D in its primordial ooze had a truly awesome (fun) social interaction resolution system/mini-game (with corresponding player progression/advancement as a result of victory), we might be complaining about Strength as a dump stat rather than Charisma!




The problem with that theory, on really any theory that depends on claiming that it was just random chance that lead to something being invented first, is that methodologies tend to be invented first because they are natural, powerful, and successful.  

People have been trying to make social interaction as compeling mechanically as tactical combat for decades now.  It's practically a Holy Grail in cRPGs.  If you can come up with a system for making dialogue as compelling tactically as it is important for advancing a story, you are going to be famous.  The guy that popularizes that system is going to be a household name, at least among households with a certain geekiness score.  

On the social resolution front, its just not clear that it is out there.  It's not clear that the elements that make social interaction engaging map well to any sort of tactical mini-game.  It's entirely possible that the thing that is most compelling and engaging about social interaction just isn't wired up the same in the human mind as the thing that makes combat mini-games compelling.  Combat mini-games, even in abstract form say chess or some bubble popping puzzle game, are pretty clearly wired to that human core firmware that is about running from lions, throwing sticks, and bringing home dinner.  It's all those spatial reasoning centers that let us predict where the antalope is going to be so that when we throw the pointy stick it performs a ballistic trajectory those third order differential equations intersect at food.  It's all beating down the leopard in a bloody visceral gut spill battle stuff so that the tribe is safe.  That's where most games go, and that's the natural ticklable pleasure center for gaming.

But its not at all clear that the whole, forge bonds with the tribe and improve my social standing firmware is tickled by the same things.  It's not clear that we want to use our brains to solve those problems in the same way.  It's not at all obvious that the way to engage that part of our brain in a social setting like an RPG isn't just to engage that part of our brain directly and let that firmware run.  It's not at all clear that the direct and most powerful way to engage or social fantasy isn't just to engage in a social fantasy with as little of the rock-papper-scissors metagame for determining who 'wins' getting in the way as possible.

One of the reasons I think that is that its the way 3 year olds, or 5 year olds, or 7 year olds engage in fantasy social play.  If they play 'war' or anything else in the genera, they start figuring out the rules to determine who really wins.  They make up some sort of system of arbitration.  But if they play 'house' or anything like that, they don't.  They just talk it out.  And that tells me that we may have hit upon that system not because of some arbitrary accidental heritage of wargames, but rather because that is what largely what we want and need.


----------



## Ratskinner (Mar 21, 2013)

Manbearcat said:


> To be sure.  Mini-games are...erm...game-changers.  If D&D in its primordial ooze had a truly awesome (fun) social interaction resolution system/mini-game (with corresponding player progression/advancement as a result of victory), we might be complaining about Strength as a dump stat rather than Charisma!




There's actually an interesting discussion on the FATE Yahoo group right now about the utility of social skills in forcing an end to a (physical) conflict and examples in cinema and fiction.


----------



## Balesir (Mar 21, 2013)

Celebrim said:


> People have been trying to make social interaction as compeling mechanically as tactical combat for decades now.  It's practically a Holy Grail in cRPGs.  If you can come up with a system for making dialogue as compelling tactically as it is important for advancing a story, you are going to be famous.  The guy that popularizes that system is going to be a household name, at least among households with a certain geekiness score.



I'm not sure cRPGs is the place the progress is being made. Take a look at Paradox Interactive's "Crusader Kings 2" - it's getting a fair number of rave reviews around now. It doesn't extend the mechanisms to a "conversational" interface - you just select actions that are abstractions of the conversations that are assumed to happen, in a similar way to "taking actions" in RPG combat - but it has a rather sophisticated system of influence, popularity, plots, factions and such like in its medieval courts. As an added bonus, it's a very fun game 



Celebrim said:


> On the social resolution front, its just not clear that it is out there.  It's not clear that the elements that make social interaction engaging map well to any sort of tactical mini-game.  It's entirely possible that the thing that is most compelling and engaging about social interaction just isn't wired up the same in the human mind as the thing that makes combat mini-games compelling.



For the everyday interactions within the "tribe" I think you may well be right. I am much less sure, however, when it comes to dealing with other "circles", leadership of the "tribe" and diplomacy between "tribes". I hear so much of "games of intrigue", "machinations of his plots" and "pulling the strings" of power that I am pretty convinced that there is (at least) one good mini-game in there. Give some rules for societal structures ('circles', say, each with its own leader and allowing for circles within circles and rivalries for leadership) and abilities associated with perceiving and manipulating these constructs and I think you could find a very fine mini-game.


----------



## Ratskinner (Mar 21, 2013)

Celebrim said:


> The problem with that theory, on really any theory that depends on claiming that it was just random chance that lead to something being invented first, is that methodologies tend to be invented first because they are natural, powerful, and successful.




I'd say that that doesn't match my experiences...at all. I wouldn't say its "random chance" either, there's history involved, of course. IME, "natural, powerful, and successful" don't hold a candle to other factors like profitable, traditional (in a very broad sense including backwards-compatible), and...how to put this...psychologically rewarding for the decision makers. I've always been amazed at how much of the human world is built upon the accumulated methodological band-aids, bailing wire, and duct tape of previous generations.

Do rpgs fall into that category? Hard to say definitively. However, I think there's quite a bit to that "network externalities" talk. And that's the kind of thing that feeds into crusty human behavior, rather than



Celebrim said:


> People have been trying to make social interaction as compeling mechanically as tactical combat for decades now.  It's practically a Holy Grail in cRPGs.  If you can come up with a system for making dialogue as compelling tactically as it is important for advancing a story, you are going to be famous.  The guy that popularizes that system is going to be a household name, at least among households with a certain geekiness score.
> 
> On the social resolution front, its just not clear that it is out there.  It's not clear that the elements that make social interaction engaging map well to any sort of tactical mini-game.  It's entirely possible that the thing that is most compelling and engaging about social interaction just isn't wired up the same in the human mind as the thing that makes combat mini-games compelling.  Combat mini-games, even in abstract form say chess or some bubble popping puzzle game, are pretty clearly wired to that human core firmware that is about running from lions, throwing sticks, and bringing home dinner.  It's all those spatial reasoning centers that let us predict where the antalope is going to be so that when we throw the pointy stick it performs a ballistic trajectory those third order differential equations intersect at food.  It's all beating down the leopard in a bloody visceral gut spill battle stuff so that the tribe is safe.  That's where most games go, and that's the natural ticklable pleasure center for gaming.




I actually think its a lot more subtle reason than that. Considering how much and how many people engage in Soap Operas and the like I'd say we are easily fascinated by such interpersonal action. (I'm also willing to bet that audience is bigger than the fantasy rpg audience....) The real problem mechanizing it for cRPGs, and to some extent TTRPGS is that it is so varied, subtle, and emotionally creative by comparison. None of which are strong points for computers or logic mechanics. The most successful rpgs to handle this all involve heavy human interpretations of the narrative. It just not something that computers or objective mechanics handle very well. 



Celebrim said:


> One of the reasons I think that is that its the way 3 year olds, or 5 year olds, or 7 year olds engage in fantasy social play.  If they play 'war' or anything else in the genera, they start figuring out the rules to determine who really wins.  They make up some sort of system of arbitration.  But if they play 'house' or anything like that, they don't.  They just talk it out.  And that tells me that we may have hit upon that system not because of some arbitrary accidental heritage of wargames, but rather because that is what largely what we want and need.




I don't recall figuring out any rules to my "war" play as a child, nor witnessing any with my kids. I haven't seen any particular difference in playground negotiations about war, house, cops-and-robbers, or cowboys-and-indians. They have always seemed more like improv troupes negotiating a "script" (and in a very social manner).  I suppose it could happen, but...I've never seen playground kids doing rock-paper-scissors or breaking out dice to make any combat decisions. I think there is a bit of gap there. I don't see a continuum between playground fantasy and tabletop fantasy.


All that being said. I think you may be right, there may be a fundamental difference in popularity or appeal between narrative and non-narrative systems. I just don't think there's much definitive evidence for the case one way or another.


----------



## Nytmare (Mar 21, 2013)

Ratskinner said:


> There's actually an interesting discussion on the FATE Yahoo group right now about the utility of social skills in forcing an end to a (physical) conflict and examples in cinema and fiction.




Is there a link or Cliff's Notes version you can give us?


----------



## Celebrim (Mar 21, 2013)

Ratskinner said:


> I'd say that that doesn't match my experiences...at all. I wouldn't say its "random chance" either, there's history involved, of course. IME, "natural, powerful, and successful" don't hold a candle to other factors like profitable, traditional (in a very broad sense including backwards-compatible), and...how to put this...psychologically rewarding for the decision makers. I've always been amazed at how much of the human world is built upon the accumulated methodological band-aids, bailing wire, and duct tape of previous generations.




There is some truth to that, but I think it is like evaluating 'common sense'.  For things that humans have ordinary experience with, common sense tends to be fairly accurate.  For things that they've never experienced or which aren't part of daily experience, common sense tends to be wildly inaccurate.  I think a lot of human methodologies, especially the less formalized ones, end up subject to that.  Much of reality is just counter-intuitive and actually paradoxical.

You'll hear people arguing that the procedural programing paradigm won out over oop, functional, etc. simply by accident.  I think that that ignores that describing what you want to do tends to naturally take the form of a procedure accept in special cases.  I remember taking early classes in oop, where the instructor - true to the thought of the day - was arguing that it was natural to think of everything as a noun.  Well, that's true until you have a verb, in which case you end up with nouns are data and verbs are procedures.  It's not natural to think of a sort as a noun.  And then don't get into how we were supposed to create these elaborate multi-tier object hierarchies implementing multiple inheritance and this was just going to automatically lead to good design.



> Do rpgs fall into that category? Hard to say definitively.




Yeah, it gets hard to say anything definitively without ways to make measurements and apply math.



> I don't recall figuring out any rules to my "war" play as a child, nor witnessing any with my kids. I haven't seen any particular difference in playground negotiations about war, house, cops-and-robbers, or cowboys-and-indians.




Maybe I'm wierd, but since I played 'war' well into high school, I can remember all sorts of evolutions in how we handled the game negotiations begin from the simple, "I shot you.  No you missed.", conflict that started to derail early games.  One early example was that you had to take turns.  If I missed you last time, you couldn't declare I missed the second time.  That ended up turning into complex negoitated fairness rules that I won't even try to understand childish logic around.  But around that time we discovered we could play 'swords' with cane sticks and solve the arbitration problem - it was obvious who hit who.  A bit later on we came up with a 'no miss' rule.  All guns were infinitely accurate as long as you were in line of sight and shouting range, which turned 'war' in to a game of pure stealth.  It was like playing hide and seek where everyone was it.  

That game survived at least between me and my brother from about age 7 until high school, as did the 'stick fighting' game until we got strong enough to really hurt each other and started worrying about putting out eyes (which turned into fencing once we got helmets).  On the gun front, we early on had evaluated 'snow ball fight' as a general way of arbitrating guns, but since snow was not reliable any light weight ammunition would do - pine cones, hickory nuts, etc.  On occasion, this was played with sling shots.  By college, paintball guns were added to the possibilities.

The thing to keep in mind is that while these games became highly gamist in the long run in that they could be played without the RP and still be fun, initially there was a lot of blur between the fantasy RPG and the increasingly gamist resolution mechanics.  And to some extent, when you see guys playing paintball, there are often many that are still playing at soldier/warrior and still fundamentally playing war - especially when played competively (especially early in the paintball era).  And that's even more true of the guys using airsoft guns.

And that isn't even to get into the discussion of the early minitures wargaming being invented with plastic army men and gi joe figures, well before I got exposed to the notion that you could dice for those things, or even the paper transfer 'tie fighters and x-wings' games where you'd close your eyes and make a dot, and then overlay to the sheets of paper to see if you blew up the units in the other guys drawings.



> I don't see a continuum between playground fantasy and tabletop fantasy.




I came to tabletop fantasy at age 8.  So it was a pretty natural progression for me, especially as someone playing house with the girls and then going outside and whacking each other with sticks (including a few of the girls) or hiding in the woods waiting to scream, "Bang I shot you" (and then trying to work out who had died when if 6 boys screamed in quick succession).


----------



## Ratskinner (Mar 21, 2013)

Nytmare said:


> Is there a link or Cliff's Notes version you can give us?




The topic is "Mental to Physical Combat transition"

At http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/FateRPG/messages.

 FATE is a very different game from D&D (at least in the relevant mechanics), so if you're not familiar with the mechanics, it might not make much sense. (The group's top-posting ways won't help, either.)

A Cliff Notes version....hmmm I'll give it a go.

It starts with a (I think) new GM's question about stress & consequences so:

 <Background: can be skipped, if you are familiar with FATE>
 In FATE, characters have multiple tracks of stress boxes (usually Physical and Mental, sometimes a Mana, Psychic, or Social box depending on setting.) Usually these lines are only a few boxes long, but they are (for the most part) like non-injury HPs. If you cannot absorb the stress dealt by an attack, you take a consequence. Characters have only one consequence track. Consequences represent wounds, loss of mental cool, social status or other repercussions from losing which don't vanish immediately. In most FATE games, you can only take 3 consequences of increasing severity. After that, you are "taken out" which means "at the mercy of your opponent"...very bad.

Unlike typical D&D injuries, these consequences matter for future conflicts....they can matter a lot. Much like an aspect in FATE, consequences can be tagged. So if you've taken a "sprained ankle" consequence, your enemies can use it to gain a bonus against you. 

The trick is...the type of conflict from which a consequence derived is irrelevant. So, if you have an "upset over losing the girl" or a "quaking in my boots" consequence, it can be used against you in a physical fight to represent distraction or anything else the other players might come up with. Similarly, a physical consequence can be used against you in a social conflict, provided your enemies can justify it narratively.

It should also be noted that, in FATE, conflicts go to the bitter end far less often than in D&D (unless you're intentionally playing a D&Dish world, of course.) Instead, the players or GM (not the characters) may offer a concession to end the conflict.
</Background>

So, the thread started with a new GM not quite getting that FATE makes no real distinction between forms of combat (mental, social, psychological, etc.). There's some mechanical discussion about the above-stuff. He asked for examples of what that would look like (mixing social and physical combat). Then folks started chiming in with examples from games and movies. Including:



			
				efindel on the FATE list said:
			
		

> Just spinning your guns wouldn't make a lot of sense, sure - but imagine this:
> 
> GM:  "Billy gets tired of talking, pulls his gun, and fires."  <rolls happen>
> 
> ...




I suppose the takeaway for D&D discussions is that this kind of thing is possible in FATE because physical, social, mental, etc. conflicts all follow the same mechanics. (Unless you modify them for a particular kind of conflict for your game.)


----------



## Crazy Jerome (Mar 22, 2013)

"Procedural programming won out"?  We are so not on the same page.


----------



## Manbearcat (Mar 22, 2013)

Ratskinner said:


> I suppose the takeaway for D&D discussions is that this kind of thing is possible in FATE because physical, social, mental, etc. conflicts all follow the same mechanics. (Unless you modify them for a particular kind of conflict for your game.)




Thanks for the link and very good post.

This is pretty much what I was thinking of above.  If D&D had gone the route of a "generic" all encompassing conflict resolution system, a la FATE or MHRP, we may have had, at least slightly, a different culture and a greater variance in players' approaches to adversity/opposition.  The same goes for character progression rewards.  Consider the implications of "Gold pieces as XP" rather than monster slaying.

I'm working on hacking a D&D version of MHRP and I'm going to use it in the stead of my standard, yearly 1e game when my old buddies and I get together for a one-off.  My hypothesis is that their standard, system oriented builds and strategic routines for dealing with adversity/opposition will likely experience some level of shift.  

 I also wonder if you couldn't have an actual tactical interface and PC build resources centered around a "social combat" mini-game.  You could have attacks and defenses off of some collection of "Bluff", "Logic", "Charm", "Intimidate", "Double-Talk/Confuse/Fluster", "Wit", "Stall", "Empathic Read", "Obscure Reference", "Comprehension", "Cool/Poise", "Presence".  You could have an action economy of "Standard Action", "Augment", "Triggered Immediate Actions" (which could be defense or offense; rejoinders, comprehension effects, stall tactics or witty repartee).  You could either go with a mental/social condition track or a social resource to ablate.  You could go with a dice pool approach with each actions' results contributing to/modifying an ultimate resolution pool which is rolled at some pre-determined point and the conclusion of the social contest is rendered via that pool's results.


----------



## pemerton (Mar 22, 2013)

Ratskinner said:


> There's actually an interesting discussion on the FATE Yahoo group right now about the utility of social skills in forcing an end to a (physical) conflict and examples in cinema and fiction.



This is an interesting issue.

Both BW and HeroQuest revised have special provisos in their conflict resolution rules to insist that, once steel is drawn and being swung, words on their own can't defend. In BW, it is put along the following lines: "I plead for mercy" is not at odds with "I chop his head off", and so there being no contest the chopping is resolved with no need to roll and the pleader is decapitated.

In BW it might also depend on the resolution system being used. In a simple versus test resolution is simultaneous, which means the pleading takes place as the head is cut off.

But in Fight! (BW's complex melee resolution system), actions are sequenced, and so you could - for example - use Intimidate before they swing, hoping to force a Steel (= morale) check before they get a chance to try and hit you.

The rules aren't entirely clear how Intimidate vs swordswing should be resolved in a versus test.



Ratskinner said:


> I suppose the takeaway for D&D discussions is that this kind of thing is possible in FATE because physical, social, mental, etc. conflicts all follow the same mechanics. (Unless you modify them for a particular kind of conflict for your game.)



At least one published 4e adventure - the Cairn of the Winter King (? - it comes with the MV boxed set) - allows social skill checks to inflict hit point damage in the boss fight.

Something a little similar was in the early 4e adventure Heathen (from the 1st or 2nd 4e Dragon magazine). When I ran a version of Heathen last year I adapated the Winter King approach of having the social skill challenge deliver damage. When the enemy reached 0 hp he (as per the module) tried to kill himself out of shame and repetance, but the PCs used an immediate action to save him.

That's not meant to argue that 4e is as elegant in this respect as a game like HeroWars/Quest, MHRP or FATE. More to point out that there are some workarounds that can be used for those who want to.


----------



## Nemesis Destiny (Mar 22, 2013)

pemerton said:


> At least one published 4e adventure - the Cairn of the Winter King (? - it comes with the MV boxed set) - allows social skill checks to inflict hit point damage in the boss fight.




I'd forgotten about that! I really liked the concept of using a skill challenge within the boss fight to wear him down. I need to use this more often, maybe even consider making it a regular rule, as long as the player(s) actually put some effort into it and not just throw more dice at the problem.


----------



## Ratskinner (Mar 22, 2013)

Manbearcat said:


> Thanks for the link and very good post.
> 
> This is pretty much what I was thinking of above.  If D&D had gone the route of a "generic" all encompassing conflict resolution system, a la FATE or MHRP, we may have had, at least slightly, a different culture and a greater variance in players' approaches to adversity/opposition.  The same goes for character progression rewards.  Consider the implications of "Gold pieces as XP" rather than monster slaying.




Indeed. I suspect such a culture would produce/value a game to more directly reflect the genre sources as well.



Manbearcat said:


> I'm working on hacking a D&D version of MHRP and I'm going to use it in the stead of my standard, yearly 1e game when my old buddies and I get together for a one-off.  My hypothesis is that their standard, system oriented builds and strategic routines for dealing with adversity/opposition will likely experience some level of shift.




I am so very desperate to try a similar experiment. I hope you will post results!



Manbearcat said:


> I also wonder if you couldn't have an actual tactical interface and PC build resources centered around a "social combat" mini-game.  You could have attacks and defenses off of some collection of "Bluff", "Logic", "Charm", "Intimidate", "Double-Talk/Confuse/Fluster", "Wit", "Stall", "Empathic Read", "Obscure Reference", "Comprehension", "Cool/Poise", "Presence".  You could have an action economy of "Standard Action", "Augment", "Triggered Immediate Actions" (which could be defense or offense; rejoinders, comprehension effects, stall tactics or witty repartee).  You could either go with a mental/social condition track or a social resource to ablate.  You could go with a dice pool approach with each actions' results contributing to/modifying an ultimate resolution pool which is rolled at some pre-determined point and the conclusion of the social contest is rendered via that pool's results.




This is where, I think, the standard D&D architectures break down a bit, or maybe just reaches a limit. I've speculated before that if 4e had "Combat" and perhaps "Magic" skills, that you could run everything as a Skill Challenge. Just use the flavor text of the powers, if that. That's a very simple game. D&D seems to resist being a simple game, though. D&D loves to have fiddly bits, in particular _fixed_ fiddly bits. Powers, feats, proficiencies, whatever, D&D loves to define what you can do, especially in combat! Whether and how much that also _constrains_ what you can do seems to be subjective.

 The problem is that, to some extent, I think non-physical conflicts suffer from that level of definition, and it becomes a constraint. Non-physical conflicts seem to do okay with some broad stroke descriptors or traits, letting the players fill in the details. So what you suggest above sounds okay, but would you really gain a lot vs. a Skill Challenge? ::shrug:: Maybe. I _don't_ think it would give you the ability to use social skills in an otherwise physical conflict. To do that, you've got to have some way to tie directly into things like the HP, movement, etc. and use the same action economy. That is, you'd need to merge the social and physical combat mini-games. To do that would necessitate (I think) changing the conceptualization of things like HP, AC, and injury in ways that most D&D players would find intolerable. Just look at the reaction to 4e's non-magical healing. Maybe there is some clever solution I can't see, but I don't know if most folks even see this as a problem.


----------



## Ratskinner (Mar 22, 2013)

pemerton said:


> This is an interesting issue.
> 
> Both BW and HeroQuest revised have special provisos in their conflict resolution rules to insist that, once steel is drawn and being swung, words on their own can't defend. In BW, it is put along the following lines: "I plead for mercy" is not at odds with "I chop his head off", and so there being no contest the chopping is resolved with no need to roll and the pleader is decapitated.
> 
> ...




Dogs in the Vineyard came up in the FATE discussion, because it views physical combat as a strict escalation of social conflict a very similar to what your saying here. I think, for any game claiming to be narrative, a strong distinction between conflict resolution in and out of combat gets to be a problem. 

Which is not to say that distinctions can't exist. FATE, at least, would allow you to have a scenario or setting aspect like "talk is useless when bullets are flying" that could be tagged by any character to make social moves harder in physical combat. You could also have the reverse, "Scandal beats pistol every time!" (pinched from a recent Dr. McNinja strip) However, low-level hard-coded distinctions between resolution systems seem to discourage the sort of mixing that the thread was talking about. 



pemerton said:


> At least one published 4e adventure - the Cairn of the Winter King (? - it comes with the MV boxed set) - allows social skill checks to inflict hit point damage in the boss fight.
> 
> Something a little similar was in the early 4e adventure Heathen (from the 1st or 2nd 4e Dragon magazine). When I ran a version of Heathen last year I adapated the Winter King approach of having the social skill challenge deliver damage. When the enemy reached 0 hp he (as per the module) tried to kill himself out of shame and repetance, but the PCs used an immediate action to save him.
> 
> That's not meant to argue that 4e is as elegant in this respect as a game like HeroWars/Quest, MHRP or FATE. More to point out that there are some workarounds that can be used for those who want to.




Sure, this is definitely the way to go wrt recent D&D design. However, it is rather limited to the DM-side of things. Would it be "legit" to p42 an Intimidation check in or before combat as dealing damage? I'm not sure. Would any player ever find it advantageous or tempting to do so, rather than use a combat power? I'm even less sure. It might be interesting to go through the 3.5 or 4e skill list and make sure all the interaction skills had combat uses. This is where HP gets into trouble. On the one hand its a pacing mechanic, but on the other it isn't.


----------



## Manbearcat (Mar 22, 2013)

Ratskinner said:


> I am so very desperate to try a similar experiment. I hope you will post results!




It won't happen until early fall but I likely will. I still have to finalize and post my hack. But honestly, that won't be too difficult. There is already a decent enough generic hack for sword and sorcery out there so I'll use some of that and manipulate things as needed to make it sufficiently "D&Dish".



Ratskinner said:


> This is where, I think, the standard D&D architectures break down a bit, or maybe just reaches a limit. I've speculated before that if 4e had "Combat" and perhaps "Magic" skills, that you could run everything as a Skill Challenge. Just use the flavor text of the powers, if that. That's a very simple game. D&D seems to resist being a simple game, though. D&D loves to have fiddly bits, in particular _fixed_ fiddly bits. Powers, feats, proficiencies, whatever, D&D loves to define what you can do, especially in combat! Whether and how much that also _constrains_ what you can do seems to be subjective.
> 
> The problem is that, to some extent, I think non-physical conflicts suffer from that level of definition, and it becomes a constraint. Non-physical conflicts seem to do okay with some broad stroke descriptors or traits, letting the players fill in the details. So what you suggest above sounds okay, but would you really gain a lot vs. a Skill Challenge? ::shrug:: Maybe. I _don't_ think it would give you the ability to use social skills in an otherwise physical conflict. To do that, you've got to have some way to tie directly into things like the HP, movement, etc. and use the same action economy. That is, you'd need to merge the social and physical combat mini-games. To do that would necessitate (I think) changing the conceptualization of things like HP, AC, and injury in ways that most D&D players would find intolerable. Just look at the reaction to 4e's non-magical healing. Maybe there is some clever solution I can't see, but I don't know if most folks even see this as a problem.




I agree in that I don't think it would add much over skill challenges or generic conflict resolution systems. In fact, I personally prefer those sorts of resolution systems for non-combat conflict resolution (and as a fascilitator for small, primarily color, TotM combats, they are my preference as well) as the open-ended abstraction, rather than hard-corded mechanization, generally opens up the narrative space to more diverse interpretations/renderings. 

I was just (and have plenty in the past) thinking on how you could functionally mechanize social interaction/parlays/disputes into tactical mini-games. How would you break out the components of the conflict, the relevant resources deployed by either side and resolve the dispute. Consider the below Simpson's exchange with Homer and Marge where Marge wants Homer to take the trash out but Homer, being Homer, wants to be lazy, eat ice-cream, and watch TV:

*Marge* - "Homie, please take the trash out." - Uses her "Charming Wife" and defeats Homer's defense/has success. 

*Homer* - "Maaaaaaaarge, but I just took the trash out..." - Uses his "Bluffing Bafoonery". But Marge interjects with her "History Hoarder" (immediate interrupt triggered on a Bluff attack agasint her) which gives her a bonus to her defense against Bluff attacks or gives Bluff attacks some kind of negative. Homer fails.

Etc, etc. Homer would probably have "Play Dumb", "Fluster", "Stall", "Redirect" resources and Marge would probably have things like "The Way to His Heart is Through His Tummy" or "Involve the Kids" resources or something. Now you could run this until someone moves down the stress track until they're stressed out or you could have each resolution add dice favorable to the winner to a "doom pool" that is rolled once the situation is resolved. The results of that pool then dictate the outcome. Ultimately, Marge might get Homer to take out the trash, he might fluster her into doing it herself (and perhaps granting her a plot point for future usage), or somethiing else tangentially related might happen (perhaps some greater conflict arises if the dice so dictate). 

I think you could make it functional. Is it a fun, tactical mini-game for social conflict thats actually of use to folks? I don't know. But I do think you could make it functional from a mechanical level (action economy, deployable resources, and ultimate resolution mechanic) and set up resources schemes to support it.


----------



## Ratskinner (Mar 22, 2013)

Manbearcat said:


> It won't happen until early fall but I likely will. I still have to  finalize and post my hack. But honestly, that won't be too difficult.  There is already a decent enough generic hack for sword and sorcery out  there so I'll use some of that and manipulate things as needed to make  it sufficiently "D&Dish".




Cool. I suffer from currently living in an area with a paucity of indie-friendly gamers. Well, that and a lack of time...



Manbearcat said:


> <snippage>
> I think you could make it functional. Is it a fun, tactical mini-game for social conflict thats actually of use to folks? I don't know. But I do think you could make it functional from a mechanical level (action economy, deployable resources, and ultimate resolution mechanic) and set up resources schemes to support it.




Could be. Most of the games I know that handle that kind of thing well aren't very popular so I still can't help answer the "fun or useful" part adequately.  The core of such a system would be fairly adaptable, but the list of resources, I suspect, it would be hard to make consistent for a very wide array of source. (Unless you went generic free-form.)


----------



## am181d (Mar 22, 2013)

Nagol said:


> At least half the rules in more inward-focused games drive making the character drivers visible to the GM and the table while at the same time giving everyone a common expectation of where play is likley to go and the effective level of difficulty to overcome the challenges.  I find they realy help in helping me determine what scenes make sense, are engaging, and offer reasonable tension for the table.




Sorry if I lost track of it in the thread, but do you have an example of a particular rule from a particular game that is a significant improvement on (a) coming up with story hooks for characters prior to the start of play (flaws, motivations, relationships, etc.) and (b) aligning player and gamemaster expectations on what sort of campaign this will be (heavy on combat, heavy on story and social interaction, etc.)?

My sense is the rules in such games are generally a place holder for the conversations above. As was noted elsewhere, I would be extremely wary of a system that introduced complex story mechanics (ala combat) that obviated the need for roleplaying all together.


----------



## pemerton (Mar 23, 2013)

Ratskinner said:


> this is definitely the way to go wrt recent D&D design. However, it is rather limited to the DM-side of things. Would it be "legit" to p42 an Intimidation check in or before combat as dealing damage?



Good question. It's all a bit unclear, I think.

A similar question that LostSoul and I discussed once was how to adjudicate Diplomacy used to restore lost hp.


----------



## pemerton (Mar 23, 2013)

This "mixed modes of conflict" tangent has also reminded me of the Depression crit table in Rolemaster (I think found in RM Companion 3).

Depression crits inflict penalties to all action.

But mechanically, the only sure way to inflict a Depression crit is using Evil Mentalist attacks. We had an informal practice where, if a player felt that some emotional event would really knock his/her PC about, the PC would voluntarily take a Depression crit of the appropriate severity. (Rolemaster also had Cure Mind Disease spells for recovering from the crit penalty, naturally!)


----------



## Nagol (Mar 23, 2013)

am181d said:


> Sorry if I lost track of it in the thread, but do you have an example of a particular rule from a particular game that is a significant improvement on (a) coming up with story hooks for characters prior to the start of play (flaws, motivations, relationships, etc.) and (b) aligning player and gamemaster expectations on what sort of campaign this will be (heavy on combat, heavy on story and social interaction, etc.)?
> 
> My sense is the rules in such games are generally a place holder for the conversations above. As was noted elsewhere, I would be extremely wary of a system that introduced complex story mechanics (ala combat) that obviated the need for roleplaying all together.




Let's use the Hero System (CHAMPIONS) as an example.

First, let's not oversell the rule set.  It doesn't align player--GM expectations, but negotiations/discussions around the rules can dispel incorrect assumptions.  The GM still maintains control over what he plans to run.

A bit of background on the system:


It is a classless design system
Characters are created by spending points on attributes, skills, perks, and powers
The number of points available to spend is assigned by the GM as part of the campaign design and a typical restriction would look like “Characters may be constructed on 100 points plus up to another 100 points from Disadvantages”.

When a PC is constructed, a player may -- and almost universally does -- take Disadvantages.  Disadvantages increase points with which the player may construct the character.

Disadvantages range in scope from things that limit the character compared to a normal person (something that wouldn't hurt a normal person will knock out or kill this character, the character has reduced or missing physical capabilities), the character has emotional attachments or social obligations that opponents can take advantage of (has a rival or loved one that gets into trouble), the character has a history (hunted by someone, is actively monitored, (in)famous), or the character has mental restrictions on behaviour – (phobias, personality ticks, oaths and codes of honour, etc.).

Each disadvantage is effectively rated two ways: the approximate frequency of occurrence in play (infrequent or about 25% of adventures, frequent or about 50% of adventures, or very common 90% of adventures) and severity.  When a character is presented to the GM, the GM takes note of the disadvantages and assumptions found therein and should compare them with the expected campaign play.

The character is hydrophobic and becomes near catatonic when near large amount of open water, but that happens rarely?  So the planned Arabian desert --> Mediterranean ship transition probably won't be good for this character.  The GM should  mention open water is expected to occur more frequently that 'infrequent' in the campaign and perhaps the points should be re-distributed from “infrequent,total” to “frequent,moderate”,

So how does this supply story hooks?  Half the disadvantages are things in the campaign world that have an established interest in the character or ways for things in the campaign world can find that character.

The other half are player cues of situations the player wants to occur.  If the player buys something as “almost always” or “frequently occurring” then the player is explicitly accepting and expecting its occurrence.  If a player buys something as infrequent, it is a signal the player is willing to occasionally experience the event, but doesn't want it a focus or ubiquitous in the campaign world.  Anything not mentioned by any character sheet should be of limited concern for the campaign unless the original campaign write up mentioned it -- no player cares enough about it for even infrequent occurrence.


----------



## am181d (Mar 23, 2013)

Nagol said:


> Let's use the Hero System (CHAMPIONS) as an example.




The thing about disadvantages in superhero games is that they tend to serve too purposes: One is the "story complication" piece and the other is the "weakness" piece. So, yes, "code of honor" is a disadvantage, but the REAL reason that the system is there is so that you can make a character vulnerable to kryptonite. Some of the disadvantages (like vulnerability to kryptonite) need clear mechanics around them. I'm not sure that something like "code versus killing" does.

I'll admit that I don't generally talk to players about how *frequently* they want their various story hooks to come into play, but that aside, I don't know know that you're getting much from the "story complication" side of Disadvantages that you can't get from any RPG, if you spent the requisite time setting up back stories.

I do think that using a reward system tied to story elements (you get an action point when your particular story hook becomes relevant) can be a useful *motivator* for role-playing and engagement, but if everybody in the group starts out motivated, I don't see it as a necessity.

And I guess that's the big thing for me. If folks come together intent on playing a game rich with story elements and role-playing and what have you, the mechanics aren't really necessary. (Whereas, the same generally can't be said for combat, spellcasting, etc.)


----------



## am181d (Mar 23, 2013)

pemerton said:


> Interesting exchange.
> 
> I think that what Nytmare describes can be reasonably easily done in D&D (at least 4e). What chaochou describes, not so easily, because the game doesn't have enough robustness at the initial set-up phase. Even if the players send their signals in set up, they rely on the GM to introduce the particular story elements (especially antagonists) against which they react. This is escpecially because 4e means that a PC's relationships, positioning etc are likely to be defined by reference to cosmological elements that a 1st level PC can't really hope to confront directly.




BTW: Can you say a little more about this last piece? I'm not sure what you mean by "cosmological elements" in this context.


----------



## Nagol (Mar 23, 2013)

am181d said:


> The thing about disadvantages in superhero games is that they tend to serve too purposes: One is the "story complication" piece and the other is the "weakness" piece. So, yes, "code of honor" is a disadvantage, but the REAL reason that the system is there is so that you can make a character vulnerable to kryptonite. Some of the disadvantages (like vulnerability to kryptonite) need clear mechanics around them. I'm not sure that something like "code versus killing" does.
> 
> I'll admit that I don't generally talk to players about how *frequently* they want their various story hooks to come into play, but that aside, I don't know know that you're getting much from the "story complication" side of Disadvantages that you can't get from any RPG, if you spent the requisite time setting up back stories.
> 
> ...





Kryptonite is another form of story-hook, albeit an outlandish one as befits the milieu.  It serves the same basic purpose as handcuffs or knockout drops do for a regular person -- how can we make this competent individual feel helpless and weak?

I use the Hero system quite a bit for "little" (i.e. no special powers) games like pulp/modern espionage/investigation and the like.  Disadvantages work very well as a set of hooks for PC engagement and as a way for the players to signal what they are looking for from the game so you don't end up continually threatening a PCs love interest whose player has limited interest in saviour stories, for example.  

An effective backstory can be just a useful, but disadvantages are a terrific tool to get the same basic amount of backstory from each player and get the players thinking about what they want/can tolerate in the campaign.  The player gets compensated for taking the disadvantages  through the increased competency of his character.  The GM gets a snapshot view of expected complications and obvious directions for campaign flow.  The GM can also provide a basic steering mechanism by assigning a specific set of disadvantages to all PCs in the campaign.

I'm played games with zero combat and others where either the GM or group decided how the combat went or how magic manifested.  If folks come together intent on playing a game narratively, no rules are necessary -- just convenient.


----------



## chaochou (Mar 23, 2013)

Manbearcat said:


> I also wonder if you couldn't have an actual tactical interface and PC build resources centered around a "social combat" mini-game. <snip> .




Isn't this a Duel of Wits redux?

For a different take you could check out Diaspora. The social conflict chapter is basically a toolkit for building your own social conflict minigames based on drawing different types of network maps showing relationships, goals, intents, attitudes, states of mind (whatever is called for in that conflict) and participants then announcing actions to try and shift themselves or other people around the board.

You can also announce actions or make speeches to place aspects on different 'areas' of the board (ie, you could say something to try to put a doubt in someone's mind to hinder them if they move into a certain area of the map. Cool stuff like that.).

It's worked very well the times I've run it.


----------



## Manbearcat (Mar 23, 2013)

chaochou said:


> Isn't this a Duel of Wits redux?




Yup.  That is pretty much what it is.  I was thinking on trying to skin it to a 4e paradigm.



chaochou said:


> For a different take you could check out Diaspora. The social conflict chapter is basically a toolkit for building your own social conflict minigames based on drawing different types of network maps showing relationships, goals, intents, attitudes, states of mind (whatever is called for in that conflict) and participants then announcing actions to try and shift themselves or other people around the board.
> 
> You can also announce actions or make speeches to place aspects on different 'areas' of the board (ie, you could say something to try to put a doubt in someone's mind to hinder them if they move into a certain area of the map. Cool stuff like that.).
> 
> It's worked very well the times I've run it.




I'm not familiar with Diaspora.  I'll have to look into it because it sounds to be precisely what I was thinking on.  Thanks for the heads up!


----------



## pemerton (Mar 23, 2013)

am181d said:


> BTW: Can you say a little more about this last piece? I'm not sure what you mean by "cosmological elements" in this context.



I meant gods, demon lords, primordials, titans etc.

So we know that a dwarf is (by default, at least) opposed to the titans, and that a paladin of the Raven Queen is opposd to Orcus. But the PC, at 1st level, can't just set out to take on Thrym, or Orcus. The player is reliant on the GM introducing low-level cultists, servitors etc.


----------



## LostSoul (Mar 24, 2013)

pemerton said:


> Good question. It's all a bit unclear, I think.
> 
> A similar question that LostSoul and I discussed once was how to adjudicate Diplomacy used to restore lost hp.




I think I once used an Intimidation check to deal HP.  One of the first 4E games I DMed, I think.  I am going to check to see if I wrote it up.

edit:  I found something, not what I was expecting!



LostSoul said:


> "I will finish what my fallen brothers started! Irontooth will kill you all - starting with you!" He rolled Intimidate vs. Will + 5 against the Warlock (who went down a couple of times last game), hoping to deal some psychic damage. He missed - the Warlock got over his near-death experience from the last game.




I guess the NPC Irontooth made that check.  I probably would have set the damage to low multiple use or whatever it's called.  (1d6+3? since they were 1st-3rd level.)  I was probably trying to get the players to exploit the system in interesting ways.  I don't think that really worked out, though.


----------



## am181d (Mar 24, 2013)

pemerton said:


> I meant gods, demon lords, primordials, titans etc.
> 
> So we know that a dwarf is (by default, at least) opposed to the titans, and that a paladin of the Raven Queen is opposd to Orcus. But the PC, at 1st level, can't just set out to take on Thrym, or Orcus. The player is reliant on the GM introducing low-level cultists, servitors etc.




Got it, thanks. I don't think I've played a campaign in any edition of D&D that's used the games' generic backstory, but I can see how this makes sense as a broader critique of leveled play. (Assuming the players have big goals, they'll have to start out small.)


----------

