What are PC's skills, really?

Burning Wheel First Reading
21

I very much appreciate your thoughts.

I picked “4” because Luke suggests it in BWG for a gritty feel, which this game is intended to be. BWG is also less concerned about a cap on lifepaths than a cap on exponents–I was going with the book’s suggestion. But you have actual experience, and maybe the book doesn’t reflect how people actually play, so I apprecaite your thoughts, insight, and experience. I’m going to chew on it and we’ll see how things look like when people are makin’ dudes up.

Limiting them to 4 lifepaths helps ensure more focused characters and forces the players to make some tough decisions about what’s really important to them.

I’m kind of okay with someone playing an old character with lots of experience. I suspect the players will not go crazy–they’re afraid of getting lost in the numbers.

I’ll grant you, there’s a little bit of a disconnect, but it’s pretty minor. It just boils down to the fact that you’re rolling to get what you want, not to succeed at your task.

Yeah, it’s a handwave-don’t-much-mind-it kind of thing people don’t give much notice to because they’re focused on the flow of play, and that’s cool. This is not a criticism–it’s me trying to understand whether I am right. It would be bad if you focused on the disconnect at the table and it became an issue and had a bad effect on play. People seem not to focus on potential disconnects. I believe I will flag the dual roles to my players so we’re all on the same page–denying it in this case would be weird.

22

Yeah the rules are clear on that–wises are one way to divide narrative control. Knowledge of the weather doesn’t generally grant weather control–but a character’s knowledge of weather in the game can allow a player to narrate the weather in the game.

23

Sure. It’s a table-by-table, scene-by-scene thing. Maybe you minimize focus by minimizing any disconnect.

But you would agree that skills do both, yeah? Describe a character and allocate narrative control, and that the game allows, and at least at times encourages, the latter over the former. Again, this is not a criticism. This is an attempt to understand how people actually employ the rules (as I had some bad, confusing first experiences that I do not wish to recreate).

24

Could you provide a concrete example? That would help make sure we’re all on the same page.

25

Of where there’s a disconnect and you sensibly opt to ignore or gloss over it? Well there’s a few cited here already. I’ll start with the read skill one.

Andrew is playing Yoler, who has has a B2 in read.
Bob is playing Zorch, who has a B6 in read.

Yoler and Zorch are interested in Wolf Keep; they want to gain entry and circumvent certain guards. Separately, Yoler and Zorch acquire The Great and Adventurous History of Wolf Keep Volume I (Yoler) and Volume II (Zorch), both written by one Fenir Fenrisson. Reading a book is Ob 4.

The players are having their characters pursue the same intent and task. They both intend to find in the a way to circumvent the guards and gain entry. The task for each is to read a book.

Andrew rolls for Yoler, who fails, mainly because his skill is crummy. The GM tells Andrew that Yoler discovers that there is another way through an old sewer system but that the text suggests that the sewers are haunted. (The GM chose this new dilemma because it fits the larger story.)

Bob rolls for Zorch, who does awesome, mainly because Zorch has a hot skill rating in read. Bob chooses to narrate that the castelleon’s chambers have a faux fire place. Goonies style, the fireplace conceals a chute that connects to a cave network, including a well in a nearby village.

The results here have nothing, nothing at all to do with the literacy of each character, except in perhaps the most attenuated fiction. The meat of the mechanic is who can control narration. But at the table–you don’t dwell on any disconnect. Bob likes making up history and so on, so he designed Zorch to have narrative control when books come up. Andrew put Yoler’s focus elsewhere. Andrew likes narrating action.

Okay, the pair have had their little raid on Wolf Keep and now they’re making an escape. They’re using the same route by which they gained entry–the tunnel attached to the castelleon’s faux fireplace. They come back to the well, and they gotta’ climb out.

It’s kinda’ dangerous. People die in wells and break their necks climbing narrow shafts. The characters don’t have a collie named Lassie nearby to help. Thankfully, they left ropes tied at the top for themselves. Several. GM calls this an Ob 3.

The intent for each character is to escape unharmed. The task is to climb.

The GM doesn’t want to have the guys captured for whatever reason–just pace at the table or he has something he wants to do more. GM says that if the characters fail, they will take a light wound.

Bob rolls poorly for Zorch. GM narrates that Zorch pulls on the wrong rope at one point, and the bucket in the well falls on his head. Zorch is a bit dizzy and bleeding over an eye, but he’ll be okay.

Yoler has the skill climb. Andrew forks in a wise, rolls fine and succedes. Andrew narrates his character climbing after Zorch. Yoler is halfway up when the castelleon’s goons arrive at the bottom of the well. One shoots a crossbow that plants itself in Yoler’s backpack (it nicks a gold statue in the bag)–the other goon starts climbing. Yoler slows his ascent, lets the goon get up a ways, then cuts the rope and the goon falls on his companion. Yoler pops out and the pair hop on their horses and ride off into the night.

The bucket fall has nothing to do with the skill climb–not really. It was goof the character made 'cuz he was in a rush. Also, Zorch successfully climbed out, which was not easy, even though he had no skill. The roll was about narrative control. At the table, they don’t dwell on this–they note the checks and go on. The GM’s choice, in a larger context, was appropriate because it made the game flow. Andrew also probably would narrate the escape better than I did. :slight_smile: Yoler’s antics had lots to do with stuff other than climb–but it was color and fine, especially since Andrew succeeded on a roll. There’s a disconnect there, but you roll with it.

26

Maybe this will sound weird to everybody else, but how I perceive your example isn’t about narrative control.

To me, the characters’ skills represent their ability to overcome narrative obstacles using that talent. So, Zorch’s B6 is a strength he has that will help him achieve his goals. Whereas Yoler’s B2 is more like a character detail we use to get him into trouble from time to time. (That’s reductive, of course – sometimes that G7 Sword skill can be a temptation and a burden instead; ditto sometimes the low skill turns into an awesome unexpected hail-mary, especially when you throw artha at it.)

When we play, success or failure has only a moderate impact on who gets to narrate. Certainly there’s a natural affinity there when success often represents my character accomplishing something whereas failure more often represents something being done to them, but there’s no reason I can’t describe my own failure or give the GM the bulk of authority over my own success. It’s just sort of “whoever is most excited to narrate narrates.” Usually that means both of us (my BW experience is all one-on-one) taking turns.

27

As a matter of playstyle, your example could not occur at my table. In part that’s because intent is determined by the player but narration is still done by the GM, but mostly because I range from disliking to loathing consequences of failure that aren’t actually related to failures of the skill. I’d much rather have Yoler’s failure be that he misses something important because he can’t actually read well. He could miss that the sewers are haunted, meaning he stumbles into danger blindly. Or he could miss the fact that the sewer passage leads into a guard post. Either way, it’s a failure of reading that makes life complicated, not just a narrative twist.

For Wises, similarly, failure should often mean getting critical details wrong. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, as the saying goes. Give just enough knowledge for the characters to hang themselves, if I may mix my metaphors.

The GM can tell the players what the characters got wrong up front or not, as the situation and the table’s tastes demand. And I’ll also note that having Yoler and Zorch both roll for the same intent and task is almost always a bad thing, even if they’re working separately in different places and can’t help each other. I try to avoid it!

28

I had them roll for the same thing just to illustrate the point–I absolutely agree with you on that part and wouldn’t do that at my table (or would avoid it or I’d have them meet up so they could help one another or something:)). In part, having them roll like that highlights the disconnect, which should be downplayed. I just wanted to give a concrete example that showed the issue–maybe I succeeded or maybe I didn’t. Dunno.

Follow up though: Would you allow Bob to come up with the idea for the alternate entrance? Or does the GM do all of that at your table?

29

As GM, would you narrate Zorch’s success, or defer to what he what the player wanted? As GM, would you narrate Yoler’s failure, or would you let Andrew do it, even if you favored his idea rather less than your idea? Do you let players determine both success and failure in a roll–absolutely, with no GM override, either with social pressure or fiat?

I can imagine back and forth, negotiating, but I think the tendency is for the call to go to the GM if failure, & player if success. Or that’s the default rule. Or–or maybe I’m utterly wrong.

30

Here’s how I would play it. First, its boring having two players with the same intent and task. So, BW has a neat little trick…the linked test. I would nail down intent, they’re looking for the location of a secret way into the castle. Cool. I turn to Yoler and say “there are some tantalizing clues in your volume that would help Zorch find information about the hidden passageway into the chamber. It’s an OB2 test to make out their meaning from the cryptic text to give Zorch a +1 to his test. Fail, and your clues are wild goose chases and dead ends that confuse Zorch and give him a -1.” Notice, I’ve admitted there’s a passageway.

After Yoler rolls I turn to Zorch, “Awesome, the exact location of the secret passage way is revealed in your text. You got that. No problem. Its a bitch to piece it together, but you’ve found it…where is it?” Notice, narrating is my GM power, but why not let the player tell me about the secret passage? Who does it hurt? Notice too, he hasn’t rolled shit yet. “Cool, Yoler that’s all true. There’s a passageway in the faux fireplace. Awesome. What I want to know is do you notice the bit about the pit trap now or when you hear the mechanism click underneath your feet?” Roll!

31

Typically, I’ll specify a Consequence of Failure before the roll is made, although if a player (not neccesarily the one who made the roll) has a suggestion that I like, I’ll use that. As for Zorch’s success, well, that depends. Since he made his roll, I am obligated to give him what he asked for in his Intent. If his Intent specifically asked for a Goonies style faux fire place connected to a cave network, including a well in a nearby village, then I would be obligated to give him that; but if his intent merely asked for a safe way in, then what that safe way in actually is is up to me (provided that it is indeed safe, and a way in). Again, if someone at the table had a cool idea that I liked, I might decide to just roll with that. As a general rule, both the player and GM should try to be as specific as possible about what they actually want, and what the possible consequences of failure are, before the roll is made.

32

The problem with too many lifepaths is less that it makes the characters too powerful or too old, and more just that it lets them get pretty much whatever they want. They can fill up a whole shopping list with traits and skills. You lose the element of “Dang, if I want to be a Knight, I can’t also take this Conner lifepath… what’s more important to my character? Should I keep the Conner and start as a squire, or just newly-knighted with none of the important skills? Or should I get the benefits of the Knight lifepath and miss out on being able to drink anyone else under the table? Drinking is still important to my character concept, but now he’ll have a much harder time with those Drinking tests, and will probably tend to be more of a drunken fool… Not what I originally envisioned, but it could lead to some interesting trouble. On the other hand, it might be fun to play out my character striving for knighthood. That way, when I earn it, I’ll have actually earned it though play, and it’ll be a lot more satisfying.” But if they can have as many lifepaths as they want, there’s no decision to make. The character will just take Conner and Knight and maybe a couple others that looked good, and end up with a character who’s much less interesting as a result.

Read page 77. It’s very much the intent of this system that players have to make these choices. The descriptions of different lifepath limitations are a few pages past that, under the “Choose Lifepaths” heading.
And note that on page 105, when discussing power caps, capping skills at 3 or 4 is “recommended for five or fewer lifepaths.” More lifepaths will mean more skill points, and a lower skill cap will require those points to be spread more broadly, meaning that characters will start out with a greater range of skills, but less variety in ability level between those skills. They’ll be able to do everything, and they’ll be able to do it all reasonably well - not great, not terrible, just mediocre. That sounds to me like a recipe for bland characters.

If you ask me, the recommended default of capping at 6 and starting with 4 lifepaths is a good way to go. I’ve seen good results from them in my own play experience. Those numbers lead to characters with enough power to have a character-defining skill or two that they’re really good at, but also lots of room to grow. They’ll still miss a lot of rolls, don’t worry.

33

What Seawyrm said :slight_smile:

I picked “4” because Luke suggests it in BWG for a gritty feel, which this game is intended to be.

His actual words are “the feel of a more mundane world” and if that’s what you’re after, fine.

BWG is also less concerned about a cap on lifepaths than a cap on exponents–I was going with the book’s suggestion.

While an exponent cap might be “a more potent tool”, I think you’d be misreading the book if you thought it said anything other than “the GM will set a lifepath limit”.

34

What says on 105 is pretty clear. The default exponent cap is 6. The group can decide on something else.

I wouldn’t mess with it before I had a bunch of experience with the game, but the rules are pretty clear.

35

On the other hand, it does say “grittier” for capping at 5.
5 is sort of a turning point for skills. Skills at 5 grant one more helping die, but it’s the lowest exponent to require a mix of challenging and difficult tests to advance instead of a mix of routine and not routine. So that’s a particularly significant number.

36

The GM does all narration after dice hit the table. Sometimes that’s none at all—if the player describes in detail what he wants to have happen as an intent there’s no need to restate it. But for something long but simple, like, “I want to use Stealthy to sneak through the enemy camp, past their pickets, and back to friendly territory” (and if that’s a reasonable scope of intent) the narration is likely to be more detailed and flavorful.

Your example: “They both intend to find in the a way to circumvent the guards and gain entry. The task for each is to read a book.” Bob can come up with the idea for an alternate entrance; his intent would be different. “I want to find a way to circumvent the guards by going through an alternate entrance.” If he doesn’t state that intent, he may get the more general intent of getting around guards any way the GM likes. Or the GM can shrug and say they can’t see how that intent can come to pass unless the player provides a reasonable means (like an alternate passage).

The rule of the game is that the player declares intent, which will come to pass if the task succeeds. The GM determines the task and failure and states them before the roll. It’s fine to argue and hash it out before rolling. Many people don’t state failure consequences before rolling, but you should.

37

If I’m reading you right, the examples you’re describing are allowed by a literal interpretation of the rules: Page 30 says that when a test is successful, the success happens in a manner described by the player. While that’s true, I’ve only ever seen descriptions that were fairly modest in terms of their scope. The rule isn’t intended to give players an opportunity to narrate whatever they like when they roll a success.

There are a few principles that I think would modify this example.

Firstly, if players want to create game facts, they have to propose them before the dice hit the table. This holds for the existence of NPCs (circles) or other, more general facts (wises). If the players are in a library researching a castle, and I was out of ideas as to what they might find, I might poll them for suggestions, but I’d vet them before establishing the obstacle.

Secondly, when narrating success, I generally encourage players to stick to a fairly limited scope that styles or colors the success, but doesn’t presume too much in terms of the actions (and certainly the intentions) of NPCs, the state of the world, etc.

Thirdly, when resolving an intent, you have to decide on the granularity you want to resolve it at. I wouldn’t normally let players sneak into a castle using Read skill, because I think sneaking into a castle is very interesting. I would let them Read their way to an advantage (literally +1D, or perhaps just the narrative pretext for not having to fight guards).

Even if you have decided that the castle now poses to little challenge that you’re going to Say Yes when they try to get in, I’d still make it a separate action. As a result, the player would be narrating his success at research, not his successful entry.

So, in summary, I think skills are best thought of as aspects of the character. While successful rolls do allow players to narrate, the scope is generally limited enough that it’s not really worth fighting over. The idea that a success gives a player “narrative control” certainly seems misleading to me.

38

In the example with Yoler and Zorch, you’re ignoring an important step, where the GM interprets the intent and decides whether the task is appropriate. It’s perfectly legitimate for the GM to decide there is no secret entrance.
The GM might respond: Sorry, there’s nothing about that in the book. You read it fruitlessly for a few hours before giving up.

Or: Great. It’s going to take a Linked test. It’s an Ob 4 Read test linked to an Architecture test.

Or: Great. Ob 4 Read test.

And as others have described, the GM gets to describe how success manifests. The GM can certainly take ideas from the players if he doesn’t already have something in mind, but the players don’t get to solipsistically change the world around them with a skill just because they want it to be so.

39

You’re right–I was off in the wording some. I didn’t have the text in front of me at the time. We did want a mundane feeling. This is a very low fantasy world.

Given the opportunity to do anything, players picked 3 and 4 lifepaths naturally, by choice. People seem more than satisfied and they understand the dynamics of the system from the demo. We started with the “end” for all but one character, who had a great concept but wasn’t really sure what “job” best matched.

I feel good about having given the players the freedom to have chosen to play something with lots of life paths. The concern we discussed was with overlapping characters, and that we discussed openly about one possible problem, and the players resolved it very well between themselves

40

This seems to be a disconnect for me. The player chose the intent from the getgo and defined what success means–within the bounds of GM approval, yes of course, but the player, not the GM, chose what success would “mean.” The GM has a veto, but didn’t define what happens in the game on success.

The player won the roll. The GM then narrates the whole thing? Okay–but obviously within the narrow confines of the player-defined success. I can see how that works at the table. Sure. I think it’s somewhat wonky, and I’m not sure that this is how many people play–not from what I’ve seen, anyhow. I have seen more things like: [GM says to Player] “You tell me what the weather is.” But I may be wrong–obviously my set is limited–and I appreciate your response.

Although I have that quibble–thanks for your answer, which was actually on point. Some other responses diverted to things that do not pertain, to questions I did not ask or that are not relevant to the thread, and that I had little or no interest in discussing. I appreciate sincerely your direct response.