The nice thing about the Bishop Olm belief is that he might be the best hope, but that doesn’t mean his plans aren’t going to get messy. The reform may be better than the existing church tenets, but that doesn’t mean that he’s not going to have to break a few eggs and good people, with good intentions may get hurt. The road to good intentions, etc.
That’s a belief you can challenge all over the place!
I guess the easy answer is that you shouldn’t view them separately since neither part is a complete belief on it’s own. As I showed, a belief should express what you think about something and what you’re going to do about it. What actions a character will take is a very important part of the belief since that’s what really shows you how the player wants to be challenged and what he wants to be doing in order to earn artha. It’s very important that both the player and GM are on the same page on that so they can strive in the same direction to make the artha wheel spin.
As you say the second part makes us ask “why?”, but that it can only be challenged in one way is wrong. I can think of many ways to do it, but the point of the expressed action is to narrow it down. A belief isn’t supposed to be something very generic that opens up possibilities from every angle. Beliefs are changed often to suit the current events so there’s not even any need to make them generic. If the character doesn’t know what he will do about something then he is confused or not believing that strongly.
And in addition to that I repeat myself in that the first part makes us ask “so what are you going to do about it?”. The character is the central part of the belief, even if it’s a belief about someone else. It’s what the character will do (ergo what the player wants) that is what the game is ultimately about.
So this isn’t quite correct. You don’t evaluate whether you need that part, the rules tell you specifically that you do need it. The fact-claim explains why the character behaves like he does, but it’s the described action that drives his behavior because that is what shows how he will earn artha.
Grr, the forum ate my first reply.
Yes, I’ve read it, and I read it again after you posted it here. It leads me to believe that I’m basically right, that the core of Beliefs is a fact-claim and a disposition towards that claim. Good beliefs suggest goals and Intents, which I basically equate, and the better they are, the more strongly they’re suggested. A bad Belief is one which doesn’t have any clear suggestions of what kinds of goals or Intents should fall out of them. But a goal or Intent, by itself, isn’t a very good Belief either. “I must X” all by itself. It can’t be Validated or Undermined without knowing the fact-claim that motivates it, it can only be Opposed. Sufficiently clever players can fine-grain such goals so that every Task they undertake earns Persona if it succeeds.
The reason this is important to me stems from the last (and so far, only) BW game my group attempted. It was an utter fiasco. We didn’t play the Artha system at all the way it was intended, the GM, when he remembered, handed them out at the end of the session as if they were XP points, because there was some initial resistance to the idea of voting on them. We had this resistance at least in part because we viewed our Beliefs as Goals, and virtually everybody’s Beliefs were of the form, “I must X,” or “I will Y.” This made it hard for us to see the difference between fulfillment and manifestation. And I don’t want to disparage our GM here, we ultimately ended up having fun with it, it was one of our more memorable campaigns even without the drama surrounding interpreting the system. But we ended up just using the conflict resolution mechanics of BW, and role-playing as we normally do. The specific role-playing mechanics of BW, that which makes BW BW, in my opinion, was dropped out. I don’t want that to happen this time, so I want to be able to make it very clear to myself, and my players, what a Belief is at its core, what their relationship to Goals/Intents are, and how they result in Tasks and Artha.
With fact-claims, this distinction is clear, at least to me. A fact-claim is “fulfilled” when it’s no longer capable of being a clear source of Intention. There’s no longer any controversy about it, or it’s no longer relevant to what’s going on. There’s basically nothing more to “do” about it. And you get a Persona point when your character acts to make that the case. It’s manifested when the fact-claim motivates an Intent, which results in a Task. Whenever your character engages in a Task whose Intent is motivated by that fact-claim that is the Belief, and does it in such as way as to make things more interesting or opens up opportunities for other players, you get a Fate Point.
But with Goals, this distinction becomes much less clear to me. Take the “I must defend Bishop Olm against his detractors” belief. Is it fulfilled every time you defend Bishop Olm, or is it only manifested, and only fulfilled when defense is no longer required? If it’s the latter, and as a player, if I really wanted a bunch of Persona points, why wouldn’t I instead write, “I must defend Bishop Olm against Cardinal Frank” when Cardinal Frank’s on the warpath, and then change that to, “I must defend Bishop Olm against Brother Fred” when it’s Fred’s turn to take shots at Olm? It seems to me that I would get Persona points every time I made Olm’s opponents switch attackers. The Cardinal Frank one’s fulfilled when I beat off Frank, now it’s Fred’s turn, so I beat off Fred, then it’s Franks turn again, and so on. (Is it just me, or did that take a decidedly homoerotic turn?) And when are those beliefs manifested, instead of fulfilled, when they’re half-way done, or just started? Goals-as-Beliefs seem incomplete to me, without the fact-claim that motivates them.
Which doesn’t say that Goals don’t have a role to play in Beliefs, just to say that they are not the core of the Belief. The role of a Goal written into a Belief is specifically to limit and direct both the player and the GM in their manifestation and challenge of Beliefs. But that aspect of them is an accessory, and the same thing can be accomplished by good communication between GM and player and good set-up of the scenario. The core of a belief is a motivating fact-claim. That is, a claim, “X is true, and X is good,” or “X is true, and X is bad.” The “X is good/bad” part is what motivates the setting of goals and Intents, and those can be tacked on to the belief in order to signal how that belief will be manifested and what should be challenged about it. But they must always remain accessories. Making a goal/Intent the core of a belief blurs the lines between manifestation and fulfillment, making it hard to tell when to award Fate vs Persona. Without that fact-claim and the disposition towards it, it’s hard to know where to push the narrative after the goal has been achieved. And it’s harder to know when to use Moldbreaker, when the character acts so as to make their goal impossible, or merely when they stop pursuing it for a while?
That’s exactly what I meant that you should do in order to get Persona points; make several smaller goals to achieve on the way to the big one (reforming the church, which might even be Deeds worthy in the right campaign). In this case I’d suggest stating the action a little bit differently though, since “I must defend Bishop Olm against Cardinal Frank” is something that doesn’t really have a clear end. I’d instead write something about defending him from a specific action you expect from Cardinal Frank, or perhaps making sure Olm is safe until a certain event (could be an upcoming meeting of the church, or something like that). Those are clear goals where no one has to wonder when they are done and that’s something that you always want out of a belief - clarity. When the specific action is thwarted, or you’ve gotten Olm safely to the meeting, then you can change the belief to the next goal that’s important.
As for gaining Fate from such a belief, you’d get it every time you acted toward that goal during a session but haven’t actually completed it. It could be taking measures to improve security around the bishop, investigating to find out who is hired to assassinate him etc. If you instead just left the second part as “I must defend him against his detractors and enemies” I’d say that the belief is a Fate mine and you’ll never get a Persona out of that. Note that it’s nothing wrong at all with having believes that just generate Fate, you should probably mix such beliefs with goal oriented ones for your character (but it’s of course up to the individual).
And just as I’ve said previously, both parts of the belief are required so there’s not much point in wondering which part is the most important. You need to show what your character believes and you need to show what he’s going to do about it.
Well, first I want to be clear that I’m not trying to be belligerently argumentative here. Arguing is how I figure things out.
Second, both parts being required is specifically not in the rules, either the Brown book or that .pdf. In fact, it specifically mentions under the 3rd belief guidelines of the .pdf that some of the best and most interesting rules don’t explicitly specify any goal or action that falls out of them. They’re the moral or philosophical stances that can motivate any number of different kinds of goals/actions. It does say that those beliefs can be hard, but that the key to them is to make sure they’re motivating and controversial, that they can be contradicted. Goals can be opposed or supported, which correlates to validating them and undermining them, but they cannot be contradicted or verified, such a concept literally doesn’t make sense.
It does say that it can be a good idea to put them in there, and I don’t dispute that, at least, not very much. Beliefs should definitely be motivating, and there should be clear Goals that fall out of them given the scenario, but adding those goals only serves to direct the players in manifesting the “fact-claim + disposition” part of the Belief, and direct the GM in challenging that Belief, should the Players and the GM need that direction. I tend to think, however, that if they do need that direction, then that’s evidence that there needs to be better lines of communication opened up between the GM and the Players overall, and that more effort needed to be spend on the set-up, where players and GM decide what kind of game they want to play, what sorts of things they want to pursue, and what “feel” they want their game to have.
And adding a specific Goal half to the Belief that can be rapidly achieved, then swapped out for a new Goal such that the core fact-claim and disposition towards that fact aren’t changed, solely for the purpose of farming Persona points, seems cheaty to me. Ultimately, though, this comes down to GM approval of the Beliefs in the first place. “Dulcinea is beautiful and pure, I must win her heart by picking her some flowers from the Count’s garden” turns into “Dulcinea…I must pick the lock to her bedchamber to leave the flowers for her to discover” turns into “Dulcinea…I must remain undiscovered behind her curtains so that I don’t make her father mad at me” and so on, earning Persona points at each change. That seems excessive to me, given all the other ways Persona points can be earned.
Further, the Persona section mentions Beliefs just once under the Personal Goals heading, where it says that they should be “clearly described in a character’s Beliefs, or should be an explicitly stated goal for the group.” “Clearly described” =/= “explicitly stated.” A clear description of a goal can be attained by having a highly motivating Belief of a “fact-claim” form together with a clear and well-defined setting. “Count Vladd deserves to die, and can only be defeated by an expert swordsman wielding the Blade of Woe” can be viewed as having three clear goals described within it, as long as it’s very clear in the setting that the character is the only one in a position to do anything about those facts. “Kill Count Vladd,” “Become an expert swordsman,” and “Get the Blade of Woe.” Doing any of those things can earn a Persona point as well, as long as it’s clear from the set-up and scenario that those are the goals of that character that follow from that belief. If the set-up and scenario are different, the character might have the same belief, but goals of “Find an expert swordsman to wield the Blade of Woe, which I already have, and convince him to kill Count Vladd with it.” Specifying the goals serves only to highlight the point where the character wants to earn their Persona, and that specification can be equally clearly made in the set-up of the scenario and the meta-communication between Players and GM.
Further, it seems to me that Fate points are pretty explicitly aimed at the “fact-claim + disposition” part of the Beliefs. They’re awarded for “manifesting” those beliefs, not for “making progress” on them. If they were about making progress towards a goal, then how much progress is a Fate point worth? If my goal is to “discover the murderer” and I find a clue, do I get a Fate point for that even if the clue turns out to be a dead end? Do I get Fate points only when I find a clue that turns out to further the investigation? How will I know until the investigation’s done? Do I get Fate points for trying to find clues, whether I find them or not? I don’t suppose I can get a Fate point for claiming to be going out to investigate the murders, but ending up in a bar drinking myself into a stupor and happening to overhear the murderer bragging to his friends?
On the other hand, a Belief like, “The murderer killed my sister, and must be found before he strikes again” is clearly manifested in any number of ways. When I convince the Duke to hang the murderer as soon as he’s found, without a trial, I’m manifesting the (implicit) disposition I have towards the death of my sister. When I beat up the fences and snitches hanging out in the alleys to get a lead on the guy, I’m manifesting the fact that I think he must be found. When I Torture the murderer’s accomplice Quickly to find out where his hideout is, I’m manifesting the fact that I think he must be found before he strikes again, and when I search the hideout Carefully to discover clues as to where he fled, I’m again manifesting the fact that I think he must be found. It seems to me that a Belief that can only earn Persona Points, but cannot be manifested in a clear way to earn Fate Points is at least an incomplete belief.
I’ll just throw out that I think Pete is still espousing the kind of Belief-lawyering that I find maddening. It’s the magnitude of accomplishment, and its finality, that are the metric for Fate vs. Persona award. Writing niggling beliefs shouldn’t get you showered with Persona, it should get scorn. Because “The Church must be reformed, so I will get up and put on trousers tomorrow morning,” has an ideology, mandates action, and falls into the category of asinine behavior that justifies chucking dice at players. So is defending against Bishop Frank if Bishop Frank is just the roadblock of the day. If Bishop Frank is spearheading the opposition and bringing him into line or silencing him is a huge step forward for reform, yes, Persona! But that’s about the plot, not about how you format the Belief.
Thrasymachus, I think you have a solid handle on Beliefs. You’ll never wrangle unanimous consent out of these forums—not without a Duel of Wits and likely some major concessions—but you grok the system amply and can go ahead and make good games happen. You understand good Beliefs and bad Beliefs, different types of Beliefs, and different styles of Belief. What more do you need?
(The big book doesn’t capitalize Belief or the types of artha, but now I do. I’m annoyed but I can’t stop.)
Mostly, I wanted confirmation that fact-claims are the core of Beliefs, not “I will…” or “I must…” claims, unless those are attached to those fact-claims, because I pretty much explicitly told my players to think about their Beliefs that way, and that I would probably reject beliefs of the form “I will…” or “I must…” unless they were attached to those fact-claims. In fact, I pretty strongly emphasized that. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t wrong about that emphasis.
Could it be that there’s some over-thinking going on here? Most of your objections to petty-goal-beliefs are applicable to petty-fact-claim beliefs as well.
“A tidy desk is an efficient desk. I will move my inkwell to the right, next to my paperweight.”
But only an arse creates such beliefs, and the solution, as ever, is to communicate then kick.
If a belief drives play what’s the problem? If there is debate after the session about artha, well, that’s what you want. And if there’s too much debate, your players will learn to avoid that in future.
As far as outright rejecting beliefs…seems a bit tyrannical and unnecessary to me.
“I will stamp out heresy wherever I find it!” is a decent Belief in my book. I can see what action it impels, I can envision the challenges, and the lack of a fact isn’t a problem. Yes, it has implications—there is heresy, it’s bad, and it should be crushed—but it’s simple and to the point. I actually like these for simple characters who will be challenged on their black and white views.
“I will become the richest woman in the Three Lands!” is, again, not perfect but quite serviceable. I’d love to know why this lady’s so greedy, but maybe that’s just who she is. Some steps after the core would help ("…and I will start by gaining the loyalty of Guildmaster Freyn"), but they’re not necessary. I can run a plot with just the Belief as written.
Your guidelines are good, but they’re just that: guidelines. The critical thing is for you, the GM, to be able to hang plots and challenges on the Beliefs. If you can’t, ask them to clarify, rephrase, or try again. If you can, you can worry about getting refinements later.
If it helps you and the players get a handle on Beliefs, it’s not wrong. The worst thing would be confusion about how to pursue or challenge a belief.
It’s probably worth pointing out that the Beliefs chapter explicitly allows for open-ended Beliefs like ethical stances. That’s one of the three types of Beliefs called out, albeit mentioned as the hardest type to do.
Ahh, but it all depends on what kind of game you’re looking for:
GM: “Okay, roll Agility, Ob 1. If you fail, you drop the ink and it breaks, spilling all over your papers.”
Player: “What an exciting and dramatic conflict! I’d better spend a Persona to be sure.”
You never know, maybe someone out there would get a kick out of this…
Or maybe,
GM: “As you lift the inkwell, a representative of the Termite People comes dashing out from behind a stack of forms. ‘Wait!’ he cries, ‘if you move that inkwell, we will have no fortifications against the Arachnid Armies! Our women and larvae will be slaughtered! It may not mean much to you, but hear me out - we can make it worth your while to help us!’”
That could make for a very interesting, if silly, game!
Or, a slight bit more seriously,
GM: “As you lift the inkwell, you here the cries of the revolutionaries in the plaza outside. There are shouts and the clang of swordfighing as the guards move to intercept them. Suddenly, a sizzling, black gunpowder bomb comes crashing in through your window! You have time to put the inkwell down carefully on the desk, or to try to do something about the grenade, but not both.”
…but yeah, Beliefs like that probably mean your players need to be talked to.
Sounds like a good setup for Burning Monk, actually.
The argumentation would be better if you commented more directly on what I said. I comment on specific things you say and it seems like I get more general comments back. The notion that you should include what you’re going to do about what you believe is written in the core book (if you’re talking about the brown book then you’re talking about BW Revised, not BW Gold which this forum part is for, although I don’t think it matters in this case). I gave you a direct quote from the book earlier and that paragraph says that the example belief that’s just an opinion is weak, but it becomes strong when the character wants to do something about it. There’s also a paragraph on p.99 in BWG that’s named Broad Statements are Bad which comments on an example being bad because it doesn’t involve the character in action.
And as I said about the beliefs on the bishop, if reforming the church is what you want to do then the belief doesn’t really state why. You can play on it but it’s more powerful if you state why the character wants the church reformed.
I advise you to read the paragraph called “Little Goals” on p.99 in BWG.
That makes the belief less clear and just looks like a way to get three beliefs in one.
As the book says the criteria for Fate points are deliberately very open. If you play according to your belief in any relevant way (yes, I’d definitely include dead ends because that’s not up to the character, he is still trying just as hard) you get a Fate point. As for your last example, no that doesn’t sound like the character fighting for what he believes. If that happens and he then acts on the information he can get a Fate point for that though. The whole example is absurd though as the characters do what the players say that they do, so in this case the player says he’s doing two completely different things.
I don’t think it’s possible to write a belief that can’t get Fate points. A goal can always be attempted to be achieved and failed for some reason.
Silly hyperbole is an extremely unproductive way of arguing. Or do you find it rewarding if I would respond with some other silliness like that you have no need for Persona when the campaign is over?
The idea to set up smaller goals is explicitly written in the book. The paragraph is called “Little Goals” and is found on page 99. It even goes further than anything I said since it tells you to use goals that you can at least try to accomplish this session. If you don’t like it that’s fine but house rules aren’t really what was asked for as far as I understood the issue.
As for reforming the church, I think that sounds like a campaign in itself, or at least a very significant mile post that might reward a deeds point.
Interesting! That’s a new section that I overlooked in the shift from Revised to Gold; most of my Belief beliefs come from AdBu anyway, but as advice, not core rules.
The first example was silly, but it was an attempt at reductio ad absurdum, and I still think it’s possible to break Beliefs down too far. “…So I will stop/discredit/destroy Bishop Frank” could be a great Belief or a terrible one. If Bishop Frank is the driving antagonist of the game, this still isn’t a short-term goal and won’t help get Persona. If Bishop Frank is someone else’s stooge who is overcome in a single roll in the course of larger and more important matters I still wouldn’t give artha for it; it doesn’t live up to the Persona requirement. And if he’s the villain of the week, if you will, it’s a perfect fit. The wording doesn’t determine whether or not it’s a good Belief; conversely, I think a good GM should not penalize players for badly worded Beliefs that are, in fact, solid in intent.
(And if the player is signaling that he/she really likes Bishop Frank, a bit character, and wants him to become a more important player in events, that’s a different use of Beliefs and important to know!)
I like the Little Goals a lot, actually. It advances leaps and bounds in clarifying goals’ optimal scope. All it’s missing is the standard “Big Picture Goal: Little Step Goal” formula to really clarify how most people do it. But it does something more important: it says exactly how big or small the step should be. Bigger than trousers in the morning, smaller than reforming the Church. One session. That’s really perfect.
Fair enough. I think it’s good rule of thumb and the book recommends it. But, you’re only focusing on that advice on belief construction and ignoring the chapter from the Adventure Burner that at least rethinks a little of this. Example: Ethical or Philosophical Beliefs
Some of my favorite Beliefs contain no goal or opinion, no action at all. They are philosophical guides. They are the moral underpinning of the character. These are by far the hardest Beliefs to write…Make your third Belief an ethical, moral or philosophical statment. AdBu, Page 210.
Also, Guiding Light Beliefs.
A guiding light Belief is one that is not accomplishable by any means. It provides an ethical rule upon which the player can measure his character’s actions…Guiding light Beliefs help you “Get into character.” They encourage you to offer a different perspective on the situation. AdBu, page 216.
Advanced BW kung-fu to be sure, but it’s just not the case that a belief that doesn’t include a little goal is wrong. Arguably, it may not be the best choice for a beginning player, but it’s definitely not a House Rule.
Page 98: “When writing Beliefs for your character, make sure at least one of them is an active goal - something your character can accomplish.”
So there you go. Yes, some of them should be. No, all of them don’t have to be. Doesn’t get much clearer than that, right?
CarpeGuitarrem, what’s Burning Monk?
Monk is a TV show about an obsessive compulsive detective, Adrian Monk.