Hi!
Here’s a tough one for me…In Burning Wheel or Burning Empires there’s this idea of conflicting beliefs (goals); like in The Sword for exemple…Can it be done in Torchbearer or it gets in the way of the leveling up economy with the persona points getting in the way, as the winner gets the persona but the losers won’t…is it part of the game that everyone works toward the same goal or completely different ones?
thank you!
in TB, the players need to have more cooperation and might find coordination of goals is a more successful method of playing as a group together. There is still an aspect of prodding and pranking one another than can happen, but the level of teamwork could said to be more important in TB than in BW or BE: the grind impacts everyone in the play group.
I was about to say equally, but level benefits can alter the degree to which the grind impacts individuals during play. Regardless, it does exist as a shared economy of turns: turns of light and turns of tests. (TBH, there are probably other ways in which the grind impacts shared resources, but it is not on the tip of my tongue.)
Torchbearer emphasizes, “Survive together or perish.”
Players can have overlapping but distinct goals like one wanting to find a magical sword while another seeks its lore. However, if two players share the exact same goal, only one can earn rewards for completing it. Unlike Burning Wheel, where conflict arises between players’ beliefs, Torchbearer’s tension comes from the environment and its enemies, not PvP.
That said, it has happened that characters want different things or take different sides or have conflicting goals. It usually does not end well.
Typically, everyone shares a common objective of “plundering the dungeon”–so in that sense, they actually share the same goal. But, before you get there, it is best to have a clear adventure hook so everyone is on the same page to begin with.
One area conflict between characters can be rewarding for all is Creed as it gives the award for meaningufl struggle rather than for aligning with it.
So, for example, a character with the Creed “The Graelings are weak and must be purged to ensure humanity is strong enough to defeat the Jotun” and a character with the Creed “A dead man cannot improve and so I will only kill to survive” can both net shiny rewards from encountering some Graeling opponents if they lean into the conflict between their beliefs.
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