Surely, you can’t be serious.
When I was little and my older step-brother was taking biology he designed a dungeon crawl inside a living castle. We battle white blood cells in the winding tunnels of it’s arteries and plumbed the depths of it’s lungs. If you can think of a more compelling, hands on, and engaging way to teach about internal anatomy I’d like to hear it 
Maybe it should just be an elective, and yeah, there are a lot of other school reforms I’d like to see first. But given the right environment and tools roleplaying can be a powerful tool for social, emotional, and intellectual education.
But that’s totally off topic now
Made Camp less cruel and realized I forgot about advancing with help. Thoughts welcome.
Nice ideas. I’m still a raw beginner with TB so can’t offer any concrete suggestions, but… yeah, the “must get checks to camp” thing seem very obtrusive and “gamey” to me too. It’s also a bit awkward to explain to players.
P: “We want to make a camp and rest a bit”
GM: “Umm, you can’t actually do that, you have to have a ‘check’ first”
P: “What’s that?”
GM: “Well, you need to use one of your Traits to hinder your own action, then you get a check”
P: “What? So I need to make a test harder so I get the right to camp later on? What’s the logic in that?”
GM: “There is none, sorry”
It’s a great game mechanic. Unfortunately, it makes no sense in the roleplaying / “common sense” side of things, so it’s obtrusive and makes the whole thing feel less like a roleplaying game. Which is bad, and also opposite the intent (which is to have players use their Traits in interesting ways).
Not sure if this hack is the answer, but I agree that it’s a problem.
Respectfully, I disagree. The whole idea of using negative aspects of Traits makes all kinds of sense from a roleplaying/“common sense” side of things. I have lived in this world long enough to know that real people and their “common sense” very often does not resemble the best course of action. I also know that just doing everything “right” all the time can be boring, or at least not as interesting as the alternative.
The check requirement for camping seems to be in Torchbearer because TB does not have the same checks and balances of Mouse Guard (upon which TB is based). In MG, the GM’s Turn/Players’ Turn mechanic is based on the GM choosing a limited number of obstacles to throw at the players before their turn begins. Torchbearer allows the players to somewhat set the pace as to when it is “their” turn (aka. the Camp phase), rather than the mission/GM’s agenda serving that purpose.
I’ve also found that once players understand the mechanic, they have little problem with leveraging it. In fact, given Mouse Guard’s/Torchbearer’s “fail forward” approach, once the players realize that failure is an option, it’s sometimes hard to keep them from constantly “reaching” – trying to earn checks with nearly every roll, sometimes with fairly weak justifications. Most players I’ve been in MG/TB games with have actually expressed that they had more fun playing the negative aspects of their characters than they expected prior to coming into the game. This is likely because this is such a departure of what’s expected from them in nearly every other RPG they’ve ever played, where their characters are supposed to be “perfect” (or at least somewhat good) except when the dice dictate otherwise. MG/TB takes some portion of that control away from the dice, and gives it back to the players.
I have not had an opportunity to play Torchbearer as much as I’d like to at this point to test this, but I have a feeling that if the players keep in mind the standard structure of Mouse Guard (roughly 2 GM-driven Obstacles and 2 Twists before Players’ Turn), it should be easier to decide when to set up camp. It may not always be at the point that seems most convenient, which means that they need to make potentially difficult decisions, which is an interesting element of pretty much every RPG.
On a last note: The most important rule that it seems that you need to cover with new players prior to getting started with this game is to make sure that they understand how the Trait/check system works, and try to get them to earn a check on their first roll or two (and definitely at least once at some point during any Conflict). And make sure that they understand why they need to earn Checks. This is a mistake I have made in teaching the game to new players, where I wanted to really cover all the rules first, which just contributes to making the game feel too “gamey”.
If you need a GM’s trick to try to force a player to at least consider earning a Check, it is this: Provide them with an obstacle which obviously matches up against at least one of the player’s Traits, and then set the Ob to a sufficiently high number to where they are likely to fail no matter what. Explain to them that given that they are most likely to fail the test… “why not get a little something out of it by earning a Check?” Then, let them roll and fail, apply a Condition or bring in a Twist, and they will realize that it wasn’t so terrible, and will be more likely to try to earn more Checks with less prompting going forward.
Well, it’s not that I have a problem getting the players to earn checks, they understand the mechanic and the resource-management aspect just fine.
What we don’t like all that much is the disconnect; there is no logical “in-game” explanation for needing to act in a certain (slightly stupid) way before you can make a camp. None at all. “We cannot camp because you haven’t gotten into trouble with your fiery nature yet!” is a nonsense argument :).
And because there is no in-game logical justification, it’s just “what the rules say you must do”, it’s obtrusive to roleplaying and dampens suspension of disbelief, reminding everyone of the gamist aspects of the game. Am I making any sense here?
It’s not a dealbreaker. It’s a decent game mechanic, and everyone understands the game intent. It’s just that there is no logical connection between the two elements involved here. In that way it’s unlike most other connected mechanics in BW games, which do have some sort of logic to them.
Of course, this is based on D&D, which is full of stupid rules for the sake of rules. Wizards can only use daggers. Why? Because. 
@slashdevnull Right, playing your traits negatively is good role playing. Also right, camp needs a mechanic to keep players from setting up camp after every action (aside from constantly being chased by enemies). I don’t think Petri would argue with either of those points. I think his point was, why are these two needs connected? Is there a role playing reason for that, or is it a convenient game mechanic?
You’re right, though, after a few sessions the connection between using traits against yourself and camping just becomes part of the scenery and feels less obtrusive. You get used to the idea and forgive it, because it works rather well. However, the connection there still isn’t justified, it’s just accepted as a good compromise between a roleplaying need and a game need that are rather distinct and unrelated.
eta: ninja’d by Petri, sorry to gang up on you
It’s a bribe.
DM: “Entertain me and I’ll let you guys do stuff you want to do.”
What’s the in-game reason for a dungeon master?
That’s ok; It only adds 1D. 
Regarding “Is there a roleplaying reason for that, or is it a convenient game mechanic?”: I see the point, and agree that there’s probably no solid roleplay reason that connects these two things. I could probably come up with some kind of justification based on how the “slightly stupid” things done to earn checks are major contributors to the characters wanting to stop and recover, but that feels almost like justifying the stupid rules of Vancian magic, which everyone seems to accept and love for some bizarre reason.
Anyhow, I feel that this game mechanic promotes a certain style of roleplay which is not common in most RPGs… one which encourages players to acknowledge and treat their characters as flawed, imperfect people who do not always do the right thing the right way at the right time, and the characters do these things because of conscious or unconscious decisions on their part, not simply due to chance (dice).
The check/camp economy is something that players seem to be very against at first, and say things like “It feels too crunchy/gamey”, then seem to latch onto and even enjoy once they get used to it. Given that, it seems that GMs and players should try to get a few full game sessions under their belts before they decide whether or not to start hacking this (or any) aspect of the game.
I don’t know about you, Jared, but I’m in it for the hookers and blow.
edit: Clarification: And, uh, yes, I mean the in-game hookers and blow…?
But the dungeon master is not merely a mechanic, the dungeon master is a role player that plays the roles of everyone else. The in-game reason for having other characters and a setting and results to actions is that all those things exist in the game. That seems pretty straightforward. It’s not connecting two unrelated in-game mechanics, it’s defining an out of game arbiter for an in-game mechanic.
Yeah, now that I’ve had more time to play, I can agree with that. Like I said, it’s a great mechanic, and the disconnect inherent in it blends into the background pretty quick. It’s hard to think of another way to encourage players to play their faults, I don’t think the mechanic I’ve proposed here does nearly as good a job of that. It’s more internally consistent or explainable and lets the players play more freely without having to worry about a disconnected resource, but my suggestion here can easily be ignored by players, they don’t need to play their traits against themselves, it helps them if they do, but it isn’t as essential to the game with my hack.
An update on using these hacks:
I tried out the modified camp system with my inexperienced players and it’s been working pretty well. They no longer have to metagame as much, and they spend less time stopping play and wracking their brains to figure out how their traits could apply to any given situation.
However, what I’ve found is that this metagaming and interrupting play also seems to happen with traits benefiting themselves. Anything that interupts play and makes them think about how they can apply the rules and what’s on their character sheet to benefit themselves is taking away from the power of describe to live…
Traits for Rewards not Bonuses
No more +1D for using a trait to benefit yourself. No more checks for using traits to hinder yourself. Traits are no longer a mechanic, they are a part of your character that you either play or don’t, so instead…
At the end of each session we do a modified and abbreviated “winter phase” type thing. Each person at the table including the GM names one action or bit of roleplaying that they think expressed something about another character. The GM then extracts an adjective from that description in the form of a trait. If the character already has that trait or something like it, then they get a fate point. If they don’t then they may add that trait to their list or replace one of their existing traits with it.
Working Toward Goals as Bonuses not Rewards
Since I’ve added a new source for fate points with traits, I decided to remove the fate point for working toward your goal (though you still get a Persona point when you achieve a suitably challenging goal). Instead the players can once per session add +1D to any test they make that is working toward their goal. If they have the same goal for more than one session then they may gain this +1D twice that session.
I like this hack a lot. The rules-as-written are cool, but the earning of checks are by far the most abstract thing in the game. I’m probably still not going to adopt this hack, but I definitely see the appeal. Here’s the minimalist rules text I’m using to present it to my group:
Instead of playing traits against yourself to earn checks, you have two separate systems: Trait Leveling and The Watch.
Trait Leveling: You play traits for and against yourself a number of times equal to your nature, and the trait goes up a level.
The Watch: Risk starts at zero. When you make camp, you subtract your Risk from the Camp Events roll. Every fourth turn in camp, Risk increases and you roll again on the camp table.
Every turn that passes in the normal Grind decreases your Risk, to a minimum of zero. Some compromises, especially for drive-off conflicts, increase your Risk.
Pretty cool stuff. Thanks for the ideas!
You can use traits against yourself as often as you want. The limitations on traits are for adding bonus dice to a roll.