Coming into Torchbearer I have spent quite a while familiarising myself with the rulebook and preparing to sell the idea to non-gamers and veterans alike. The most perplexing times I have had in imagining the flow of play has been the conflict mechanics. While I understand the almost inexhaustible ability of the imagination to contextualise the abstractions involved, I do have trepidation regarding the arbitrary nature of the 3 round system and a commitment to what I have heard described as rock-paper-scissors, but what I prefer to see as an elemental versus.
After absorbing as many podcasts, examples and transcripts as I was able, reading your mini essay above finally crystalised a few things for me. Torchbearer is a very structured game which hopefully has more of a trellising effect on roleplay than a confining one - and in that spirit your Forcing Description Forward proposal I believe is an excellent balancing act, whereby the narrative auto corrects awkward or ill-fitting choices by being difficult to describe. An excellent alternative to choosing an action (say Maneuver against a horde of rats) and then attempting to describe how you manage to disarm all of their teeth after the fact. And you may well after a moment decide they “jump on a table where the rats can’t reach” but still suffer that awful sinking feeling of covering for the rules before pulling something out of the hat. That breaks immersion and if it was to continue may devolve into an abstract mini-game with roleplay as justification of outcome.
I am very interested in your ideas on the 3 part round, but unless I am mistaken you haven’t offered up any alternatives. I appreciate the idea of strategic deployment and probably the only change I would even contemplate at my very early stage, is to trial a one shot per member of the party per round. Fortunately for me it looks like a party of 3 so I don’t have to feel disrespectful to the creators of an excellent game.
Thanks for your insights and questions as I found them very helpful.