Well, there’s two parts to that answer. Yes, I think that, though a bunch of these newer techniques existed when the game was written and Luke would have had exposure to them in the Forge (he can correct me if I’m full of shit), the archetypal game that the book assumes is one where the GM has a lot of power, and the text seeks to channel and limit that power in certain ways and gives players some additional agency (like Circles), but primarily they’re playing their characters. I think that BW does amazing and revolutionary things, but it’s not the game that creates an egalitarian game of “everyone decides what would be fun to have happen now.” So, no, I don’t fall into the camp that says “sure just bring all these newer techniques into your BW game. It’ll work fine.”
Don’t get me wrong, I love all that stuff. Fate is a favorite game of mine and I enjoy a game of Fiasco. I’m all over the map when it comes to narrative control. I’m just a bit of a conservative when it comes to porting lots of narrative control mechanics and other “newer techniques” into BW. When I come to play BW, it’s because it doesn’t have any of that. I want to get into a tussle with the GM about the central Beliefs that drive my character. I want to engage system around that. I want to see my character bent and mutilated fighting for what he or she believes. And I think all of the game is geared to function best, and yield amazing play experiences, if approached that way.
If I want to play a game where the players do a lot of scene framing and describing their own failures, I’ve got a bunch of games to reach for before I grab BW off the shelf. So, that’s where I’m coming from when I answer questions in the forum. You’re mileage may vary.
Just want to +1 this. It’s the reason I’m hooked on BW games at the moment. It’s Trad enough that we still have to engage with the mechanics and can’t handwave anything away in the story; I mean, if the orcs are a threat, you still gotta fight them, using the mechanics, more or less. But it’s “indie” enough to let me focus on the story bits I was going to focus on anyway, and reward the players for doing that too.
Like, I’ve run LOTS of FATE games, and they always peter out for me because of that narrative control from the players side. For the groups I’ve played with, either the story became so much the focus that the game lost the fun of die-rolling, or everyone spent time trying to strictly define what they could do based on not terribly strict mechanics. Often all at once in the same group from different people, which lead to all sorts of hilarity or time-wasting arguments.
Enter BW. I’ve got tough enough mechanics that I can take swings at the players and have it matter. And since this isn’t “everyone gets narrative control” I can figure out when to take those swings to make a good story. At the same time, I’m limited by the rules as a GM in certain ways so that the players can take a swing at what they want, to drive the story forward, and have their swings be for, or at, concrete things. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that BW did something nifty by making Task and Intent this thing where you concretely settle what a particular die-roll will be about, rather than this “after the fact reporting,” or as often happened, “Can I try X?” And then the long, useless process, of negotiating with the GM on just how much you did or didn’t affect the narrative.
Not much of a BW expert yet, but just from the general theory about GM-ing is to avoid NPC vs NPC scenes/roleplaying as this example was. I read an article a while ago about top newbie GM mistakes and I remember the answer was that if you as a GM find yourself talking to yourself (in a dialog) too much, then the focus is shifting away from the PCs, who should be the main characters of the story. So as others have suggested, do not play throgouh scenes out between NPCs, but just decide what is good for the story. It should be more about the player characters. The GM challenges the player character beliefs.
I really like what Apocalypse World has to say about NPCs in the GM section. Whenever the GM’s attention is focused on something that they control, they should first consider whether to destroy it.
That, along with the instruction to keep NPC motivations simple are useful things to bring to GMing BW.
In other words, “You’re playing the world and the NPCs. But those elements are only relevant when they impact the protagonists. If you’re playing with the world and the NPCs in a way that doesn’t involve – and focus on! – the protagonists, you’re just wasting time.”
Sorry for the confusion. It’s all about the GM not protecting his own creations from the fiction. The GM should look at everything that the GM controls through crosshairs.
“Look through crosshairs. Whenever your attention lands on someone or something that you own - an NPC or a feature of the landscape, material or social - consider first killing it, overthrowing it, burning it down, blowing it up, or burying it in the poison ground … You can let the players think that some arrangement or institution is reliable, if they’re that foolish, but for you yourself: everything you own is, first, always and overwhelmingly a target.” -Apocalypse World
My take on it is that in Apocalypse World, it’s not just about not protecting your own creations from the fiction, it’s about eagerly thrusting them onto the path to destruction. Maybe at the hands of the PCs, maybe in a way that only the PCs can - but may or may not - save them from. Or maybe the PCs just wake up one day and the local community’s been overrun by mutant dogs or their favorite NPC’s head has just been put up on a spike on the local warlord’s outer wall.
That might be too extreme for a given Burning Wheel game, I dunno. But surely at least you shouldn’t protect 'em, even if you don’t actively seek their destruction.
I can’t claim to be an expert, but I think Burning Wheel has its own equivalent to Apocalypse World’s principles: challenge the characters’ beliefs. You can have any scene or explore any facet of the world, but the game really sings when you hammer on the core of the characters and what they’re willing to fight for. It’s not so much that you’re seeking their destruction, but the players want you to put their characters through the fire. That’s my take on NPC vs NPC stuff too: if the characters don’t care about it, they players probably don’t either.
This is a step back from the original question, about moment to moment techniques, but hopefully it clarifies the kind of motivation behind my actions when when I GM.
I think with this game moreso than others there is a gap between how people talk about the rules and how people actually play. I think many people play with players framing scenes and having narrative control. Some will say that the game is top-down with the GM in narrative control in the rules as written. But in practice, I don’t think that’s how many people actually play, and I think many ideas praised on these boards point towards shared narration.
