Is Burning Wheel dead? What systems do YOU think should be played more!

[kyoryu]

I don't recall seeing you ever mention playing Mouse Guard before, Knaight. Have you?

I have. I find it *much* more playable than BW.

[BayardSPSR]

Mouse Guard: is there any way of seeing a minimal version of the rules before spending money on it? Financial investment is something of a barrier to entry for me.

[profitofrage]

I have. I find it *much* more playable than BW.

Considering how much I enjoy BW I would absolutely love to try mouseguard.
Is the system and the setting particularly tied together? or is it fairly easy to refluff like BW.

[Max_Killjoy]

I think that you're completely right about the way around it being to meta-game, I would also say that the point of was to encourage players to meta-game. The beliefs, instinct, and trait mechanics in Burning Wheel are all encouragement for meta-gaming, they encourage you to make decisions which are probably bad ideas from the character's perspective but will be rewarded by the system, that is the point of all those mechanics, Burning Wheel characters will do things which are against their own best interest due to the meta-game because that makes a better story than people who always take the best option. The advancement mechanics serve the same purpose, if you want to advance past a certain point you need to take rolls which you are probably/definitely going to fail, because seeing the character's occasionally bite off more than they can chew is part of the game narrative. In my experience Burning Wheel works best with a cast of slightly messed up individuals with very strong motives who consistently make their own lives harder than they have to be, that seems to be the kind of people the game is designed to be about.

And if you're really struggling to get those last couple tests for advancement there's always the training rules.

I recognize that if you don't find the game fun then this isn't going to make you enjoy it, but for anyone trying to decide whether to try Burning Wheel or not I felt like I should try and explain why some of the mechanics are the way they are.

Well, as I've said elsewhere when this comes up... IMO, the story should be emergent from the actions and interactions of the PCs, NPCs, and the setting. "The Story" should never be the point of the rules or the focus of character decisions.

Even in fictional works, it's sometimes transparent that the writer(s) made a character decision based on what would make "the best story", rather than consistent and coherent characterization -- and those moments make me want to throw the book against the wall, turn off the TV, whatever. Same with when the characters are obviously written, as you say, to pass around the idiot ball for the sake of ""better story". Characters and setting that are plainly subordinate to the needs of "THE STORY" are no better than cardboard caricatures.

The last thing I want is to do play a character who's a slave to "THE STORY".

[profitofrage]

Well, as I've said elsewhere when this comes up... IMO, the story should be emergent from the actions and interactions of the PCs, NPCs, and the setting. "The Story" should never be the point of the rules or the focus of character decisions.

Even in fictional works, it's sometimes transparent that the writer(s) made a character decision based on what would make "the best story", rather than consistent and coherent characterization -- and those moments make me want to throw the book against the wall, turn off the TV, whatever. Same with when the characters are obviously written, as you say, to pass around the idiot ball for the sake of ""better story". Characters and setting that are plainly subordinate to the needs of "THE STORY" are no better than cardboard caricatures.

The last thing I want is to do play a character who's a slave to "THE STORY".

Your not a slave to the story though, your just creating a character with beliefs, motivations e.t.c knowing that they will MATTER in the game.
The STORY isnt prewritten because the beliefs/instincts e.t.c are not FORCED upon you, you pick them.

The difference is that in BW you dont get to have your dumb barbarian suddenly be super smart when it benefits him. Or more accurately...you can but it gives you an incentive to play him straight. If anything what you are advocating for isnt "freedom from the story" but freedom from your character.

[Max_Killjoy]

Your not a slave to the story though, your just creating a character with beliefs, motivations e.t.c knowing that they will MATTER in the game.
The STORY isnt prewritten because the beliefs/instincts e.t.c are not FORCED upon you, you pick them.

The difference is that in BW you dont get to have your dumb barbarian suddenly be super smart when it benefits him. Or more accurately...you can but it gives you an incentive to play him straight. If anything what you are advocating for isnt "freedom from the story" but freedom from your character.

Look at my post in the context of the post it was in response to.

The beliefs, instinct, and trait mechanics in Burning Wheel are all encouragement for meta-gaming, they encourage you to make decisions which are probably bad ideas from the character's perspective but will be rewarded by the system, that is the point of all those mechanics, Burning Wheel characters will do things which are against their own best interest due to the meta-game because that makes a better story than people who always take the best option. The advancement mechanics serve the same purpose, if you want to advance past a certain point you need to take rolls which you are probably/definitely going to fail, because seeing the character's occasionally bite off more than they can chew is part of the game narrative. In my experience Burning Wheel works best with a cast of slightly messed up individuals with very strong motives who consistently make their own lives harder than they have to be, that seems to be the kind of people the game is designed to be about.

What is being described there is, as I read it, a game in which the characters are there to serve "the story".


I'm advocating that there should be no end-goal of "the story", and that the story of the characters and their world going forward does not exist until the events happen -- as I said, that the story is emergent, driven by the characters (PCs and NPCs) and the setting they inhabit, and their interactions, NOT by intentional design.

.

[BayardSPSR]

I think that you're completely right about the way around it being to meta-game, I would also say that the point of was to encourage players to meta-game. The beliefs, instinct, and trait mechanics in Burning Wheel are all encouragement for meta-gaming, they encourage you to make decisions which are probably bad ideas from the character's perspective but will be rewarded by the system, that is the point of all those mechanics, Burning Wheel characters will do things which are against their own best interest due to the meta-game because that makes a better story than people who always take the best option. The advancement mechanics serve the same purpose, if you want to advance past a certain point you need to take rolls which you are probably/definitely going to fail, because seeing the character's occasionally bite off more than they can chew is part of the game narrative. In my experience Burning Wheel works best with a cast of slightly messed up individuals with very strong motives who consistently make their own lives harder than they have to be, that seems to be the kind of people the game is designed to be about.

Yeah, this does sound like it amounts to metagaming in pursuit of character progression rewards (something I've noticed Dungeon World to encourage as well), with "story" as a fig leaf on top.

In my experience Burning Wheel works best with a cast of slightly messed up individuals with very strong motives who consistently make their own lives harder than they have to be, that seems to be the kind of people the game is designed to be about.

Except this is the problem: such a system (rewarding players with character progression the character is unaware of) divorces the motives of the player from the motives of the player. So what you'd get from the metagaming isn't people acting against their own interests, but against their motives in favor of their (metagame) interests.

This is inherent to any character progression system that ties that progression to specific things, except things that the character is assumed to be motivated to pursue (for example, gold = xp).

A bunch of characters doing things with no clear motive, because their players know they get stronger if they do those things, isn't a story at all. It's a series of things happening that have no relationship to any character's fears or desires, and possibly no narrative impact at all.

[CharonsHelper]

Except this is the problem: such a system (rewarding players with character progression the character is unaware of) divorces the motives of the player from the motives of the player. So what you'd get from the metagaming isn't people acting against their own interests, but against their motives in favor of their (metagame) interests.

This is inherent to any character progression system that ties that progression to specific things, except things that the character is assumed to be motivated to pursue (for example, gold = xp).

A bunch of characters doing things with no clear motive, because their players know they get stronger if they do those things, isn't a story at all. It's a series of things happening that have no relationship to any character's fears or desires, and possibly no narrative impact at all.

Yes, you have to look at how the game's incentives are changing play. Gold = xp was intentional in making avoiding monsters the safer and more rewarding option to smashing through encounters (which would likely end up killing you back then anyway).

Since BW incentivizes doing stupid things for 'character' reasons, then people are going to do those stupid character things whether or not they want to move the character in that direction, with the motivation of exp.

[profitofrage]

Yes, you have to look at how the game's incentives are changing play. Gold = xp was intentional in making avoiding monsters the safer and more rewarding option to smashing through encounters (which would likely end up killing you back then anyway).

Since BW incentivizes doing stupid things for 'character' reasons, then people are going to do those stupid character things whether or not they want to move the character in that direction, with the motivation of exp.

I just don't see this happening in the games I play.
I think its a case of over-analysing whats going on.

You get better at a skill by doing that skill often and testing it against harder and harder skills. This isnt "doing stupid things" Since the skills you WANT to improve are often your characters focus its simply just "Attempt trickier things your already doing"

Likewise, your beliefs, instincts e.t.c ARE where you want to take the character. Why would someone create a set of beliefs / instincts they do not want to play?
Likewise going AGAINST those beliefs in a meaningful way is also character advancement and are rewarded similarly.

I think your premise from the get go is just flawed.
Its not "do stupid things for character reasons" its "dont do boring things for gamey reasons."

Remember that you specifically do not have to roll for things that are pointless or gamey, you roll for significant events / actions that matter. Otherwise its considered training and is limited for that very reason.

"A bunch of characters doing things with no clear motive, because their players know they get stronger if they do those things, isn't a story at all. It's a series of things happening that have no relationship to any character's fears or desires, and possibly no narrative impact at all."

Except there IS a clear motive...playing the character....you know roleplaying..the whole point.
You get a better/stronger character...the more you play to that character. You literally get better for playing to there fears, desires / motivations.

Its specifically the opposite of what your describing, unless something has gotten turned around somewhere.

[Max_Killjoy]

Yes, you have to look at how the game's incentives are changing play. Gold = xp was intentional in making avoiding monsters the safer and more rewarding option to smashing through encounters (which would likely end up killing you back then anyway).

Since BW incentivizes doing stupid things for 'character' reasons, then people are going to do those stupid character things whether or not they want to move the character in that direction, with the motivation of exp.

And the last thing I want to do in a game is play a character who would do those sorts of stupid things in the first place.

While my PCs will have quirks, and difficulties, and issues, they won't ever be based on worn out tropes, story-contrived nonsense, or the requirement to act like a damn fool "for story".

Except there IS a clear motive...playing the character....you know roleplaying..the whole point.
You get a better/stronger character...the more you play to that character. You literally get better for playing to there fears, desires / motivations.

What I DO NOT need is some sort of "driver" or "control" built into the system to "make" me play the character. If I created the PC and brought him/her into the game, then I wanted to play that character, and I will play that character.

[profitofrage]

And the last thing I want to do in a game is play a character who would do those sorts of stupid things in the first place.

While my PCs will have quirks, and difficulties, and issues, they won't ever be based on worn out tropes, story-contrived nonsense, or the requirement to act like a damn fool "for story".





What I DO NOT need is some sort of "driver" or "control" built into the system to "make" me play the character. If I created the PC and brought him/her into the game, then I wanted to play that character, and I will play that character.

You keep saying "doing stupid things" what things are you talking about? were not talking about attempting impossible tasks, just difficult ones...were not talking about making a thief try to fight a bear here...just have him pick the really tricky lock instead of climbing through the window (if its important to you to get better at lock picking mind you)

Likewise your not "made too" your "Rewarded for doing what your already doing."
your essentially complaining about free XP at this point if you already concede you'd do it anyway.

[ImNotTrevor]

I'm guessing that the home of the problem lies in our friends having a lot of experience with D&D, a system which is:
A) A combat-simulator first and roleplaying game second. (If you don't believe me, compare the size of the Combat section to any other section of the PHB, and consider its heritage being the descendant of wargames.)
B) Entirely devoid character-driven-goal mechanics.
C) One of the best examples of "how NOT to do flaws."

GURPS and other d20 systems have inherited a lot of these flaws.

So for some examples:

Acting out your flaws in Burning Wheel does not give you free skill upgrades. It gives you Artha, which is not (as far as I'm aware) used to level up skills but is a metacurrency. Basically, you do something disadvantageous now to buy yourself advantages later. For this reason, Flaws in Burning Wheel COST points, rather than giving you more. Because flaws are an advantage.

(Hold your applause)

Best of all, not using your flaws makes them disappear over time. So if you buy the Alcoholic flaw, you better be drinking all the time or else you'll lose the flaw. By taking the flaw, you make a declaration about your character's future behavior. If they don't behave accordingly, you lose the advantage the flaw gives you.


The point of roleplay-centric games is for the persons therein to feel REAL. Real people tend to make poor, suboptimal decisions and from such decisions come interesting twists in the story. There is a reason why people tend to like fallible characters over Mary Sues. Arguing that systems shouldn't reward you for building someone fallable rather than perfect when the goal is to make realistic, fallable characters strikes me as weird.

Now, it might not be your cup of tea if what you want from a game is the be the biggest BAMF on the map and make all the most optimal, butt-kicking decisions and destroy your opponents like they were made from paper mache and scotch tape. Which is a very fun way to play sometimes.

If you want to argue about people making stupid decisions, go read The Hunger Games very carefully. Katniss makes a LOT of very stupid, but very in-character, decisions through the series. Seriously.
So does Harry Potter.
And Frodo.
And Bilbo
And (insert protagonist here.)

Because they follow their instincts, flaws, and goals around and sometimes they wind up in trouble. So long as your GM subscribes to the school of "Killing PCs is the LEAST interesting thing I can do to them," then you shouldn't have to worry about taking risks and losing a character, though you'll still end up in a big heaping mess of trouble. Which is fun.

[BayardSPSR]

Because they follow their instincts, flaws, and goals around and sometimes they wind up in trouble. So long as your GM subscribes to the school of "Killing PCs is the LEAST interesting thing I can do to them," then you shouldn't have to worry about taking risks and losing a character, though you'll still end up in a big heaping mess of trouble. Which is fun.

Jumping straight to this point, I want to observe that killing PCs can in fact be an extremely interesting thing to have happen, when handled well - and that when I'm on the player side, risking death with the certainty that the GM won't let my character die isn't all that fun, and can diminish the tension of doing dangerous things.

[goto124]

Real people tend to make poor, suboptimal decisions and from such decisions come interesting twists in the story.

When everyone else makes poor suboptimal decisions, their stories get interesting twists.

When I make poor suboptimal decisions, my party's story goes down the drain and I regret ever starting the RP.

Why

If you want to argue about people making stupid decisions, go read The Hunger Games very carefully. Katniss makes a LOT of very stupid, but very in-character, decisions through the series. Seriously.
So does Harry Potter.
And Frodo.
And Bilbo
And (insert protagonist here.)

That explains a lot - when I read Harry Potter, I didn't see him as a character, but a plot device to guide the readers through the complexity of the story and the world. No wonder I feel so different when I'm actually invested in and playing out my own character...

biggest BAMF on the map

I'm tempted to make Overwatch references here

[Lorsa]

Yeah, this does sound like it amounts to metagaming in pursuit of character progression rewards (something I've noticed Dungeon World to encourage as well), with "story" as a fig leaf on top.


Except this is the problem: such a system (rewarding players with character progression the character is unaware of) divorces the motives of the player from the motives of the player. So what you'd get from the metagaming isn't people acting against their own interests, but against their motives in favor of their (metagame) interests.

Yes, this is one of the biggest problems BW has according to me. This meta-game creates a separation between myself, the player, and the character. Rather than roleplaying, I become more of a script-writer for a character in a show. If I want my character to remain relevant to the show, I better make decisions that are illogical when looked at from the character's perspective.

You keep saying "doing stupid things" what things are you talking about? were not talking about attempting impossible tasks, just difficult ones...were not talking about making a thief try to fight a bear here...just have him pick the really tricky lock instead of climbing through the window (if its important to you to get better at lock picking mind you

Well, technically, at some skill levels you have to do things that are rated "impossible" to advance. But it's not even like that. Sometimes you have filled all your difficult or impossible circles and all you need is an "easy".

Which means you can have a situation like this:

Goal is to get into a room and steal an item before a man living there gets home. His wife is sleeping in the house.

Thief: "What is the Ob for picking the lock?"
GM: "It is difficult."
Thief: "Ah, damnit, what is the Ob for convincing the wife to let me in if I pretend to be a guard and claims her man has just been arrested?"
GM: "Uhm, it is impossible."
Thief: "Great! I don't have any Persuasion skill at all, so that'll do!"

Now tell me how that decision makes any sort of sense other than from a character advancement, meta-game standpoint? Clearly, by playing to the personality and skill set of the Thief, attempting to pick the lock would be the logical choice.

From the character's point of view, completing the mission should be the highest priority. However, from the player's point of view, it is not, especially since failure just leads to more complications (and thus more chances for character advancement). Thus, you are constantly incentivized to steer your character towards actions that would make her fail, even though it is not what the character would do (given the stated personality). Unless, of course, you need those Easy obstacle skill checks, which tend to be the most problematic to get most of the time.

The point of roleplay-centric games is for the persons therein to feel REAL. Real people tend to make poor, suboptimal decisions and from such decisions come interesting twists in the story. There is a reason why people tend to like fallible characters over Mary Sues. Arguing that systems shouldn't reward you for building someone fallable rather than perfect when the goal is to make realistic, fallable characters strikes me as weird.

Real people tend to make poor, suboptimal decisions that are in line with their personality. BW has your character make poor, suboptimal decisions for meta-game reasons, leading to rather strange characterizations.

Realistic people will tend to try their best to succeed at really important tasks, not think "hmmm, which course of action will lead me increase my skills".

[ImNotTrevor]

Jumping straight to this point, I want to observe that killing PCs can in fact be an extremely interesting thing to have happen, when handled well - and that when I'm on the player side, risking death with the certainty that the GM won't let my character die isn't all that fun, and can diminish the tension of doing dangerous things.

I would disagree, with the sole exception of making a quest about retrieving said character from the afterlife/otherwise reviving them. Outside of that one instance, it's really boring/anticlimactic.

Why?

Well now we'll never find out the ends of his/her story threads. (Unless, obviously, you're playing a game of murderhobo simulator 2016, in which case toss this out the window entirely because this isn't the kind of fun you're looking for.)
There's no reason to figure out who murdered Kaldred's estranged father once Kaldred is in the ground. Who's going to care outside of Kaldred? Especially if his/her dad was just some nobody.
So that potential arc of story dies. All of the potential action, drama, interaction, poof. Vanished

When everyone else makes poor suboptimal decisions, their stories get interesting twists.

When I make poor suboptimal decisions, my party's story goes down the drain and I regret ever starting the RP.

Why

Wrong group or wrong game.

Some groups/GMs approach the game like a turn based strategy game with roleplaying elements rather than a roleplaying game with turn based strategy elements.

That explains a lot - when I read Harry Potter, I didn't see him as a character, but a plot device to guide the readers through the complexity of the story and the world. No wonder I feel so different when I'm actually invested in and playing out my own character...

Harry is meant to be the lens through which we discover the wizarding world. After all, he's discovering it at the same pace we are. So to a certain degree he needs to act as a witness to that world. But Harry definitely has a personality, goals, and feelings as well. Which happen to involve a desire to learn more about this amazing world he has found himself in (which aligns with the same desire that the readers should have.) I'm gonna stop there before I begin doing literary analysis.

I'm tempted to make Overwatch references here

The Current Time Is 12:00 PM.

Real people tend to make poor, suboptimal decisions that are in line with their personality. BW has your character make poor, suboptimal decisions for meta-game reasons, leading to rather strange characterizations.

Realistic people will tend to try their best to succeed at really important tasks, not think "hmmm, which course of action will lead me increase my skills".

If your players are faced with a situation where they would rather hunt XP than succeed, then they clearly don't think much is at stake and/or you've done a poor job informing them of what is at stake and/or there really isn't all that much at stake.

When faced with certain death, a player who chooses to go for XP is an idiot, and that's probably not the system's fault. (Especially since there are many ways to get xp, as far as I'm aware.)

I will admit my experience with Burning Wheel is limited, but I never observed players purposefully making the worst possible decision for the sake of stats while in situations where a lot was at stake. Bear in mind that most people who are attracted to Burning Wheel in the first place tend not to be huge fans of optimization, and thus aren't going to try to optimize their stats.

You have to make some assumptions about the goals of the player to get to this conclusion, namely that the player's goal is to have as many skills as high as possible at the cost of all other things. Which I'm sure can and does happen, but is far from most common practice.

Planes occasionally crash, but you don't see much by way of movements saying that flying is bad because some of the planes come down wrong. Every system can be pushed to extremes for truly bizaare outcomes, and otherwise all systems have flaws. But to make them out as commonplace is inaccurate.

[Lorsa]

If your players are faced with a situation where they would rather hunt XP than succeed, then they clearly don't think much is at stake and/or you've done a poor job informing them of what is at stake and/or there really isn't all that much at stake.

When faced with certain death, a player who chooses to go for XP is an idiot, and that's probably not the system's fault. (Especially since there are many ways to get xp, as far as I'm aware.)

I will admit my experience with Burning Wheel is limited, but I never observed players purposefully making the worst possible decision for the sake of stats while in situations where a lot was at stake. Bear in mind that most people who are attracted to Burning Wheel in the first place tend not to be huge fans of optimization, and thus aren't going to try to optimize their stats.

You have to make some assumptions about the goals of the player to get to this conclusion, namely that the player's goal is to have as many skills as high as possible at the cost of all other things. Which I'm sure can and does happen, but is far from most common practice.

Planes occasionally crash, but you don't see much by way of movements saying that flying is bad because some of the planes come down wrong. Every system can be pushed to extremes for truly bizaare outcomes, and otherwise all systems have flaws. But to make them out as commonplace is inaccurate.

Well, technically, in BW there has to be *something* at stake for there to be a roll at all. However, what is at stake should never be certain death, just an added complication.

The problem is that you need to engage in this weird skill-advancement meta-game in order to have any advancement at all (unless you're lucky). If you really don't care, it's all fine and dandy, but I've yet to encounter a player who doesn't get at least a little grumpy when another player has increased in 10 skills while they have increased in none.

BW is built so you can have characters at very different power levels, that's what the life path thingy does. However, if you purposefully choose a certain power level difference in order to achieve a certain group/character dynamic in order to tell a certain story, and then the character advancement system rips that dynamic into shreds, it can get a little frustrating.

To expand on your plane analogy; not all models are made equal. Some crash more easily than others, meaning you have to do a lot of steering to prevent it from happening. Steering a plane is equivalent to meta-gaming in this case.

When I look for roleplaying games, I prefer those that limit the amount of meta-game necessary in order to make it function smoothly. I like to be able to engage the auto-pilot of my plane so I can relax, sit back and enjoy the ride.

[Max_Killjoy]

I'm guessing that the home of the problem lies in our friends having a lot of experience with D&D, a system which is:
A) A combat-simulator first and roleplaying game second. (If you don't believe me, compare the size of the Combat section to any other section of the PHB, and consider its heritage being the descendant of wargames.)
B) Entirely devoid character-driven-goal mechanics.
C) One of the best examples of "how NOT to do flaws."

GURPS and other d20 systems have inherited a lot of these flaws.

So for some examples:

Acting out your flaws in Burning Wheel does not give you free skill upgrades. It gives you Artha, which is not (as far as I'm aware) used to level up skills but is a metacurrency. Basically, you do something disadvantageous now to buy yourself advantages later. For this reason, Flaws in Burning Wheel COST points, rather than giving you more. Because flaws are an advantage.

(Hold your applause)

Best of all, not using your flaws makes them disappear over time. So if you buy the Alcoholic flaw, you better be drinking all the time or else you'll lose the flaw. By taking the flaw, you make a declaration about your character's future behavior. If they don't behave accordingly, you lose the advantage the flaw gives you.


The point of roleplay-centric games is for the persons therein to feel REAL. Real people tend to make poor, suboptimal decisions and from such decisions come interesting twists in the story. There is a reason why people tend to like fallible characters over Mary Sues. Arguing that systems shouldn't reward you for building someone fallable rather than perfect when the goal is to make realistic, fallable characters strikes me as weird.

Now, it might not be your cup of tea if what you want from a game is the be the biggest BAMF on the map and make all the most optimal, butt-kicking decisions and destroy your opponents like they were made from paper mache and scotch tape. Which is a very fun way to play sometimes.

If you want to argue about people making stupid decisions, go read The Hunger Games very carefully. Katniss makes a LOT of very stupid, but very in-character, decisions through the series. Seriously.
So does Harry Potter.
And Frodo.
And Bilbo
And (insert protagonist here.)

Because they follow their instincts, flaws, and goals around and sometimes they wind up in trouble. So long as your GM subscribes to the school of "Killing PCs is the LEAST interesting thing I can do to them," then you shouldn't have to worry about taking risks and losing a character, though you'll still end up in a big heaping mess of trouble. Which is fun.

Actually, I left D&D over two decades ago, and I won't be going back.


-10 points for committing the mary sue fallacy, never mind the false dichotomies you're piling on here. Whether a character is believable or not, is not determined by the number of cliched Fiction 101 flaws piled on the character, and "character quality" is an entire multi-dimensional space, not two buckets of "flawed good characters" and "perfect bad characters".


Harry, Frodo, etc, make my pull my hair out with some of their decisions -- Harry especially. There are clearly moments when the only reason they survive, let alone succeed, is in spite of their decisions and because of authorial fiat. And then you have the problem of the idiot plot that comes up too often in fiction.


The rules of an RPG are largely tangential to whether the characters played feel real. In systems as different as HERO, WEG SW d6, WW "storyteller", a giant homebrew project, and others, we always had an array of "character believability". If someone wants to get in depth with their character and portray a multi-dimensional person, there's no need for the system to hold their hand. If someone is interested in using their character as an empty avatar within the game world to act out "cool stuff", then no system is going to force them out of that.

[CharonsHelper]

Harry, Frodo, etc, make my pull my hair out with some of their decisions -- Harry especially. There are clearly moments when the only reason they survive, let alone succeed, is in spite of their decisions and because of authorial fiat. And then you have the problem of the idiot plot that comes up too often in fiction.

Indeed. Rowling is a great author in a lot of ways (I consider her the absolute master of pacing & fluid backstory) but believable characters and consistent world-building are not skills in her wheelhouse. (For an obvious world-building issue: if truth serum exists, then the bulk of their world's issues with falsely incarcerated wizards and letting bad guys off etc. shouldn't have ever happened.)

[Lorsa]

Indeed. Rowling is a great author in a lot of ways (I consider her the absolute master of pacing & fluid backstory) but believable characters and consistent world-building are not skills in her wheelhouse. (For an obvious world-building issue: if truth serum exists, then the bulk of their world's issues with falsely incarcerated wizards and letting bad guys off etc. shouldn't have ever happened.)

Believable characters are consistent world-building are often forgotten by too many authors. Unfortunately.

The thing with characters making bad/poor/strange decisions leads to one of the largest benefits with RPGs as opposed to books or movies. You, the player, can actually make decisions that matter. Unless you have a railroading GM of course.

This is something BW does rather well to emphasize, that it's the players who should guide the story, not the GM. Unfortunately I don't think any game system can solve that problem for you. If a game system is an airplane, the GM is the planet. If a GM is of the railroading type, you won't be able to escape him regardless of what plane you jump into. You need a spaceship.

[ImNotTrevor]

Well, technically, in BW there has to be *something* at stake for there to be a roll at all. However, what is at stake should never be certain death, just an added complication.

I wasn't suggesting certain death as a good idea for a thing being at stake. I was overspeaking to make my point. :P

The problem is that you need to engage in this weird skill-advancement meta-game in order to have any advancement at all (unless you're lucky). If you really don't care, it's all fine and dandy, but I've yet to encounter a player who doesn't get at least a little grumpy when another player has increased in 10 skills while they have increased in none.

BW is built so you can have characters at very different power levels, that's what the life path thingy does. However, if you purposefully choose a certain power level difference in order to achieve a certain group/character dynamic in order to tell a certain story, and then the character advancement system rips that dynamic into shreds, it can get a little frustrating.


To expand on your plane analogy; not all models are made equal. Some crash more easily than others, meaning you have to do a lot of steering to prevent it from happening. Steering a plane is equivalent to meta-gaming in this case.

When I look for roleplaying games, I prefer those that limit the amount of meta-game necessary in order to make it function smoothly. I like to be able to engage the auto-pilot of my plane so I can relax, sit back and enjoy the ride.

I'll focus primarily on this last paragraph. It ends up being a preference thing. Some people want 0 metagame, other people don't really care.
I'm in the latter camp. I'm playing a game, after all, so elements of gameplay that feel like a game don't bother me. Because it's all a game.

But hey, if it doesn't float your boat, don't play it. Some people don't mind that kind of thing and find it interesting.

Of course, calling it bad design hinges on metagaming being some kind of gaming sin. Which it isn't. There's nothing wrong with metagaming so long as everyone is having fun. *shrug*

Then again I think Immersion is a silly concept because you're never going to be unaware of the fact you're playing a game with dice, you will always be trying to secure a good position for yourself/your character even with flaws and characterization in play, and there's really no reason to make that a top priority in my eyes. But others obviously disagree.

[Max_Killjoy]

Indeed. Rowling is a great author in a lot of ways (I consider her the absolute master of pacing & fluid backstory) but believable characters and consistent world-building are not skills in her wheelhouse. (For an obvious world-building issue: if truth serum exists, then the bulk of their world's issues with falsely incarcerated wizards and letting bad guys off etc. shouldn't have ever happened.)

I'm able to forgive some degree of that in the Potter series because Harry is a kid (with a terribly abusive background), and because Rowling is in a way telling a faerie tale, in which things are "just so".

It's not a setting I could write stories in, the issues with the unconsidered implications of certain magical "tools" (the time-turners, for gob's sake) not changing the setting or being used when they're obvious solutions, would drive me out of my gourd. BUT, they made for decent reading, and I felt as a would-be writer that I needed to read them.

[Max_Killjoy]

Believable characters are consistent world-building are often forgotten by too many authors. Unfortunately.

The thing with characters making bad/poor/strange decisions leads to one of the largest benefits with RPGs as opposed to books or movies. You, the player, can actually make decisions that matter. Unless you have a railroading GM of course.

This is something BW does rather well to emphasize, that it's the players who should guide the story, not the GM. Unfortunately I don't think any game system can solve that problem for you. If a game system is an airplane, the GM is the planet. If a GM is of the railroading type, you won't be able to escape him regardless of what plane you jump into. You need a spaceship.

The player characters' actions and intentions should drive the events forward, and the story should emerge from that. I'm VERY uncomfortable with the idea of story being the point, rather than something that emerges from the game as played.

When a story or THE story is the goal, rather than emergent, then we get issues like your first line -- the author makes the consistency, continuity, and internal coherence of setting and characters subservient to what they perceive as the present needs of their desired narrative.

[Lorsa]

I wasn't suggesting certain death as a good idea for a thing being at stake. I was overspeaking to make my point. :P

It's not like I haven't been guilty of that myself on occassion.

I'll focus primarily on this last paragraph. It ends up being a preference thing. Some people want 0 metagame, other people don't really care.
I'm in the latter camp. I'm playing a game, after all, so elements of gameplay that feel like a game don't bother me. Because it's all a game.

But hey, if it doesn't float your boat, don't play it. Some people don't mind that kind of thing and find it interesting.

Of course, calling it bad design hinges on metagaming being some kind of gaming sin. Which it isn't. There's nothing wrong with metagaming so long as everyone is having fun. *shrug*

Then again I think Immersion is a silly concept because you're never going to be unaware of the fact you're playing a game with dice, you will always be trying to secure a good position for yourself/your character even with flaws and characterization in play, and there's really no reason to make that a top priority in my eyes. But others obviously disagree.

I'm not sure I did say that metgaming is a sin. Obviously if people enjoy that aspect of the game, they should engage in it! It's one of the big issues *I* had with BW (since people had already engaged in discussion of things they liked / dislike about BW in this thread, I thought it was okay to join in).

I did try BW, some of the design ideas seemed interesting to me, but in the end it turned out not to be my thing. Could still be others' thing of course, I've always argued for that people should be allowed to have their own preferences.

I don't think immersion is a silly concept though. Obviously you will always be aware of the fact that you are playing a game, but it's not Boolean variable, it's a scale like most other things. BW's game mechanics brings me farther down on the immersion scale than I'd like (with up being higher immersion factor). Then again, I've always had an easy time to forget about the world and live in my headspace. One of the reasons why books used to be like crack for me, and why people had to come and shake me to get my attention while reading, as calling my name wasn't nearly enough.

The player characters' actions and intentions should drive the events forward, and the story should emerge from that. I'm VERY uncomfortable with the idea of story being the point, rather than something that emerges from the game as played.

When a story or THE story is the goal, rather than emergent, then we get issues like your first line -- the author makes the consistency, continuity, and internal coherence of setting and characters subservient to what they perceive as the present needs of their desired narrative.

I agree. I much prefer when the story is emergent from play rather than pre-determined in some way or another. Both as a player and a GM (arguable even more as a GM).

If I phrased myself poorly (that is, to contradict what you said), I apologize. Then again, maybe we're better off disagreeing anyway; not having a discussion is such a killjoy.

[kyoryu]

Real people tend to make poor, suboptimal decisions that are in line with their personality. BW has your character make poor, suboptimal decisions for meta-game reasons, leading to rather strange characterizations.

Realistic people will tend to try their best to succeed at really important tasks, not think "hmmm, which course of action will lead me increase my skills".

Well, ideally in BW you're failing because you're trying hard things, not because you're making them hard on yourself. But that's a real possibility.

Jumping straight to this point, I want to observe that killing PCs can in fact be an extremely interesting thing to have happen, when handled well - and that when I'm on the player side, risking death with the certainty that the GM won't let my character die isn't all that fun, and can diminish the tension of doing dangerous things.

Death is a useful consequence. It's just not the *only* consequence.

What is being described there is, as I read it, a game in which the characters are there to serve "the story".

I'm advocating that there should be no end-goal of "the story", and that the story of the characters and their world going forward does not exist until the events happen -- as I said, that the story is emergent, driven by the characters (PCs and NPCs) and the setting they inhabit, and their interactions, NOT by intentional design.

Agreed. But usually, in the case of games like BW, "the story" is understood to be "the stuff that happens". The difference being that games like BW are more predicated on character-focused stories rather than a series of combats.

Considering how much I enjoy BW I would absolutely love to try mouseguard.
Is the system and the setting particularly tied together? or is it fairly easy to refluff like BW.

I'd say it's slightly harder to refluff. There's a few things (Nature, especially) that are really tied into the idea of the characters being mice. Should be doable, though.

[ImNotTrevor]

Actually, I left D&D over two decades ago, and I won't be going back.

Awesome! I can support this decision.

-10 points for committing the mary sue fallacy, never mind the false dichotomies you're piling on here. Whether a character is believable or not, is not determined by the number of cliched Fiction 101 flaws piled on the character, and "character quality" is an entire multi-dimensional space, not two buckets of "flawed good characters" and "perfect bad characters".

Really? The scoreboard thing? We're dragging points into a friendly discussion...why?

I'm not sure what the fallacy states, but I sense it's not actually the point I made.

I never said more flaws=better character. Because that isn't true. However, 0 flaws does equal boring characters, because nothing interesting happens to flawless, perfect people with perfect lives. Or at the very least, we never feel like they're confronting any actual threat.

Granted, you can't technically have a Mary Sue in 99% of TRPGs. (I can think of exactly one where you can.) But systems mechanically rewarding you for not trying to make one isn't a bad thing and it simply strikes me as weird to say it is.

[QUOTE)
Harry, Frodo, etc, make my pull my hair out with some of their decisions -- Harry especially. There are clearly moments when the only reason they survive, let alone succeed, is in spite of their decisions and because of authorial fiat. And then you have the problem of the idiot plot that comes up too often in fiction.
[/QUOTE]
Calling any suboptimal choice made by a character "idiot plot" is a vast overapplication of the concept. And if you're analyzing all of your media for potential places where people are doing things that maybe suggest imperfect planning, I hear CinemaSins is hiring. :P

The rules of an RPG are largely tangential to whether the characters played feel real. In systems as different as HERO, WEG SW d6, WW "storyteller", a giant homebrew project, and others, we always had an array of "character believability". If someone wants to get in depth with their character and portray a multi-dimensional person, there's no need for the system to hold their hand. If someone is interested in using their character as an empty avatar within the game world to act out "cool stuff", then no system is going to force them out of that.

And if I want to be mechanically rewarded for roleplaying a multifaceted character?

Just as no system can force me to optimize and I can do my darndest to optimize in virtually every system, there's no reason to say rewarding optimization is bad.


For an example of some of what I mean:
Errant is a character of mine in Apocalypse World. He's a Faceless, a class built on barfing out violence and, occassionally, disappointing everyone close to them.

So when faced with a situation where Errant can be subtle, which is the smart choice, or run in screaming and go full-on murdermachine, even if it's the dumber decision, I will pick the latter.

Why?

Because that's what Errant does when the chips are down. He follows his own bloody hands everywhere he goes, because violence is what he's good at, what he knows, and what he wants. Doing something else would not be accurate to his character. Even if Errant has the capacity for kindness, when the chips are down and a hard choice needs to be made, he will choose the bloodiest path. Maybe not always, but very nearly.

This is not optimal behavior, but it is behavior that makes sense within its context. *shrug*

[Koo Rehtorb]

Which means you can have a situation like this:

Goal is to get into a room and steal an item before a man living there gets home. His wife is sleeping in the house.

Thief: "What is the Ob for picking the lock?"
GM: "It is difficult."
Thief: "Ah, damnit, what is the Ob for convincing the wife to let me in if I pretend to be a guard and claims her man has just been arrested?"
GM: "Uhm, it is impossible."
Thief: "Great! I don't have any Persuasion skill at all, so that'll do!"

You don't get told the Ob until you've already committed to a course of action.

[profitofrage]

People keep saying things...and its getting more and more clear that they either haven't played it or read the advancement rules wrong.

You do not get caught up in a metagame....because you ONLY advance in the skills you use...
Let me explain that further. You do not have the situation of "ok I want to pick the lock is it difficult" "no its easy" dang, ok ill convince the guards of blahblahblah" because that would be a different skill...and hence achieve nothing towards the lockpicking you were aiming to improve.

Likewise...you can use difficult tests in place of easy ones...so again...it just encourages you to push your character.
This does NOT MEAN STUPID DECISIONS. Just challenging ones. Lets not forget that you GAIN EXPERIENCE even if you FAIL the tests. That doesnt mean "fail so bad you lose a leg" were talking a system of degrees of failure. Fail by one? eh...not all that bad in the grand scheme of things.

Again it seems people didnt know this but Artha IS USED FOR ADVANCEMENT. It is in fact the MOST USEFUL advancement as you use it to grey scale or white scale your skills. Something easily worth 3x extra dice in those skills. So again you are literally rewarded for JUST ROLEPLAYING.

I had a character in the game do nothing BUT advance his character this way by playing to his interesting character traits. Not to mention picking new ones up with Artha and FoRKing his way to great skill tests.

[Cluedrew]

I have never played Burning Wheel myself, but the system I think should be played more is Roll for Shoes. Feel free to check it out, it is free and rules light. It doesn't need a rule book, a rules pamphlet will do and it would still be mostly pictures.

Anyways the thing is it is also a system that rewards failure. It is the only way to get XP in the system. And you know what, I have never seen anyone go out of there way to fail at something. It really works out to taking the edge off of a failure, it is rarely (almost never) better to fail and get the XP, you still want to succeed. And this is a game that doesn't have many (any) ways of punishing failure, people still want to do well.

It does encourage some risks because you can add "... and if it doesn't work I get XP" to the decision making process.

[BayardSPSR]

I would disagree, with the sole exception of making a quest about retrieving said character from the afterlife/otherwise reviving them. Outside of that one instance, it's really boring/anticlimactic.

Why?

Well now we'll never find out the ends of his/her story threads. (Unless, obviously, you're playing a game of murderhobo simulator 2016, in which case toss this out the window entirely because this isn't the kind of fun you're looking for.)
There's no reason to figure out who murdered Kaldred's estranged father once Kaldred is in the ground. Who's going to care outside of Kaldred? Especially if his/her dad was just some nobody.
So that potential arc of story dies. All of the potential action, drama, interaction, poof. Vanished

No. Not at all.

If Kaldred dies, the plot isn't (or is no longer) "who murdered Kaldred's estranged father." The plot is "Kaldred died ." That becomes the most important thing to have happened in that session, and possibly in the game up to that point. At least, if handled well, the drama doesn't vanish: it explodes!

Likewise, the timing of the death matters: dying in the first session of a campaign intended to last a year is far less fun than dying at the climactic moment of the final session.

Death is a useful consequence. It's just not the *only* consequence.

True, far from it. It does need to be a possible consequence when a character is deliberately staking their life on something, though. "I would die to protect you" doesn't mean much if you literally can't die.

Also, the way I approach death as a player is different from the way I approach it as a GM.