Let's Talk About Obstacles

Burning Wheel Subsystem Advice and Guidance
21

I believe the AdBu talks about it - I’ll check when I get home.

But even if I can’t cite you a page right now, let’s think about it. The GM can assign an Ob penalty based on a situation, if the situation is appropriate. It’s totally within the rules, and it’s far from cut-and-dry. Here, I’ll dig up my example from the previous thread:

So they want to decipher Auntie Z’s Cookbook of Lore? Well, what do they want? Do they want a recipe? Ob 2. Ancient lore? Ob 4. Do they want to find an incantation in there? Ob 5. Let’s add a +1 Ob modifier in there because the book is old and the ink is smudged. Maybe a horde of goblins is bearing down on you - +1 Ob because of the distraction.
Yes, those things can be assigned as consequences of failure, but as the GM, you are not limited to introducing complications exclusively through failure. You can create a situation that adds additional challenge, just because. Should you do that all the time? Probably not, because then you become That Guy. But can you do it within the rules? Absolutely.

EDIT: Here’s another good example: Circles tests. I used the example previously of finding someone with the Surgery skill OMG RIGHT NOW because your friend took a Mortal Wound.

You’re supposed to apply the modifiers based on the situation - what’s relevant and what’s not. The critical factors here are time and skill - you want someone who can get the job done AND they need to be there right now. But how do you actually determine what applies to the situation?

You could totally decide that, really, the OMGRIGHTNOW is what’s at stake, so it would become an Ob 4 Circles test. I mean, of course you could find a surgeon, right? Or you could decide that it’s really the skill that’s hard to find, so that’s why it’s an Ob 4 test.

OR, you have the ability to say that, really, BOTH apply in the situation - Ob 7. And depending on how you decide, you make very different sorts of tests, and push for very different sorts of narratives. You can make a conscious decision to say, “This situation SHOULD be hard. It SHOULD be desperate. Both of the penalties should apply because I want this situation to be that dire.” Ob 7. Perfectly within the rules.

And maybe later, in a similar situation, I say it’s an Ob 4, because the test isn’t as critical to the story that time around, or because that’s not a good place to introduce the conflict. Or maybe there really is a cut-and-dry “the conflict is about this one specific aspect” situation.

But adjusting the difficulty within the scope of the rules to control the pace of the game, and to fit the situation at hand, is the GM’s job.

22

Page 28 of BWG under “Disadvantage” says that the GM can assign disadvantage penalties to any test when it makes sense.
Page 551 of BWG states, in part, that it is the job of the GM to challenge the players.

The Adventure Burner discusses obstacle setting at length, but the text agrees with what I’ve been saying. Here are some excerpts:
“The system hands out plenty of obstacle penalties on its own, but the GM can distribute disadvantage as he sees fit.”
“Furthermore, at a certain level of play, obstacle penalties are necessary to keep the advancement system running.”

And the big one:
“The GM sets the obstacles for tests. They are his prime tool for challenging the players. Some players cry foul that the GM can seemingly set an arbitrary difficulty for their goals. Well, tough luck. Someone has got to make these challenges hard. In this game, the GM does that heavy lifting. His role is to challenge the players - setting obstacles is fundamental to that opposition.”

So I guess no one statement says, “The GM may assign whatever Ob he feels appropriate to the test, for the sake of challenging the players and driving the narrative,” but that’s what the system is saying. Even an Ob 1 Sword test can be made arbitrarily harder, when the GM has cleverly assembled his narrative elements to have it make sense.

And that’s the key, and the art of GM’ing: weaving your narrative elements together in such a way that you can pull a challenge of any level out of anywhere, and have it make sense in the game fiction. Sure, if you abuse that power your players will not have as much fun, because your arbitrary difficulty setting is tantamount to railroading. However, the GM does have the power to make a test harder for almost any reason, and he often has to make a test harder in order to ensure that the players are being adequately challenged and so that they can continue to advance. It is a very powerful tool, and one that should be wielded judiciously, I agree. The key, again, is to be able to explain to the players why the test is as hard as it is, and have that make sense to them.