thread: 2005-06-07 : Periodic Refresher
On 2005-06-07, anon. wrote:
Vincent said: "Primetime Adventures is a fun game! Violently wrenching our play style over to match the procedures in the book is totally worth it."
Again, not disagreeing. With the caveat: if that matches up with a way that you WANT to play—whether you realized it before or not. :)
We've actually been seeing this quite a bit on the Burning Wheel boards of late. A few of our newcomers have been playing D&D and nothing else for 25+ years, and picked up Burning Wheel for one reason or another. They are eager and excited and scared about what playing Burning Wheel is going to do to their gaming experiences. The idea of conflict resolution is revolutionary to them. A system that hands author power to mere players if they choose to risk it is incredible. And a system that not only handles dynamic social conflict but makes it exciting and dramatic is completely alien.
They didn't realize those things were missing, although they now see those missing bits as the source of the dissatisfaction they've been having with gaming.
kaomera wrote: "So, the point of all this is: Burning Wheel has made me want to change the way I play (& GM). There is just so much stuff in here that I had always wanted, but never seemed to have the tools to reach. And all I have to do is let go (damnit!!!) of my preconceived notions of how a game should be run."
THAT I can totally support. So I see where you're coming from with your example re: Primetime Adventures.
On the other end of the spectrum is my experience with Exalted. I'm a big fan of wuxia stuff. I dig epic. I'm naturally inclined to allow players to have a potent and dynamic effect on the setting and the story. But I found running Exalted supremely dissatisfying. I love dynamic social conflict. And Exalted's text supports and encourages players to create characters that are tremendously potent in the social arena. You can make a character totally focused on that with magical powers to aid it. Cool!
But when you actually play social conflict, you realize that the system is almost illusory. It's still GM fiat.
hypothetical Exalted situation:
Player: "I convince the entire village to worship me as a god!"
Me: "Cool! Roll for it!"
Player: "I'm using my skill and activating my "Convince Entire Village to Worship Me as a God Charm." I've got 20 gajillion dice. 18 successes! How many do I need?"
Me: "Uh...15 I guess. You...uh...convince 3/4 of them that you're a god. They start eyeing the ones that won't come over and fingering their knives. What do you do?"
In this case, I totally tried to play/run the game as dictated by the text. But it was still unsatisfying.
If I had been using Dogs in the Vineyard instead, the very act of resolution would have made it into a tense dramatic scene. The dice would have dictated the result, but it would have been cool regardless. With Exalted, the resolution wouldn't really matter, I'd just have to eyeball the result and try to come up with a suitable bang that "felt right."
