Fat man is denied to ride Harry Potter ride at amusement park, his reaction? Puts up a blog telling his story, accepting that the blame is on him, and decides to lose the weight so he can ride at the end of the year.
1) Douchebag sucker punches woman from behind, knocking her out. 2) Douchebag is confronted by Roger Huerta, former UFC lightweight contender. 3) Huerta chases douchebag off camera. 4) ??? 5) Profit! Er, I mean, massive head stomp which may or may not have been delivered by Huerta, tough to tell. 6) Being that this happened in Texas, Huerta hasn't even been arrested.
I don't generally condone street fighting, but man -- fuck that guy.
1)I found a local gaming group, and went along to an impromptu meeting. One of them brought along Burning Wheel, So I agreed - to the shock of many of you, I'm sure - to GM the game for them. The unanimous opinion is that it's the best game they've every played - Not bad for a jam session campaign I came up with off the top of my head, leafing through the books quite often for rules.
2)As a reward, They nipped over to Dan Murphy's(local liquor store) And grabbed me a bottle of Monty Python's Holy Grail.
3)I discovered that in Australian Sign language, the shorthand for "I love you" is essentially throwing up the horns, but instead of putting your middle fingers into your palm, you hold them about an inch away from your palm.
1)I found a local gaming group, and went along to an impromptu meeting. One of them brought along Burning Wheel, So I agreed - to the shock of many of you, I'm sure - to GM the game for them. The unanimous opinion is that it's the best game they've every played - Not bad for a jam session campaign I came up with off the top of my head, leafing through the books quite often for rules.
You want me to tell you? I'll tell you right now. I just made shit up off the top of my head, and took every cue from the players. The secret wasn't in knowing the game, or having any prep, or anything like that, the only trick is that I watched them carefully, and played them like a fucking fiddle. The entire setting was ripped outta some dollar store fantasy novel with the names changed, and the plot was irrelevant, I just let them take it where it wanted to go, they were just walking on a treadmill, and I painted a fantasy scene on the moving scrim behind them, and occasionally chucked an nice, fat obstacle on the path to make them feel like they were doing something. They start to get distracted by moving forward too fast, throw something at them to distract them, they think something's going too slow, make them earn a plot device or a shiny new toy.
I just made shit up off the top of my head, and took every cue from the players.
Yeah, that's how you do Burning Wheel. Your job as the GM is to encourage the players to write strong Beliefs. Really, the Beliefs are just there for the GM and the other players. If a player has an explicit Belief, you just design a challenge to fuck with that Belief.
Burning Wheel makes the life of the GM much easier, as long as everyone uses the game the way it's supposed to be used.
Yeah, that's how you do Burning Wheel. Your job as the GM is to encourage the players to write strong Beliefs. Really, the Beliefs are just there for the GM and the other players. If a player has an explicit Belief, you just design a challenge to fuck with that Belief.
That's how I do most RPGs. I keep notes of rules and maybe some obstacles to throw, but mostly notes of shit I've said so I don't fuck that up if it's essential that I don't screw it up till I want to. I didn't even look at their character sheets, I just threw whatever shit I thought of at them. I don't know if I challenged their beliefs or not, I just watched the way they played their roles, and fucked with them. Sometimes I'd throw a bonding experience to them, a shared goal, sometimes I'd divide them and get them fighting, sometimes I'd reward one character as I fucked another, or fucked them all then dropped the hint of a reward if they got out of it, just to make them dance. At one point, we had to take a recess, because one of my players was choked up and about to lose it.
Funny thing to think about, isn't it? Aggressive, Angry, cursing, crass and unacceptable to high society me, choking someone up with emotion while running a game. Don't worry, fucks with my head, too.
Burning Wheel makes the life of the GM much easier, as long as everyone uses the game the way it's supposed to be used.
Hell if I know if I did, I only used it for reference when I needed to, because I've hardly a head for numbers without something concrete to attach it to. I'll tell you everything you could ever want to know about some things, like the SR-98 rifle, or the Titanic, but something simple as remembering my own phone number took me three and a half years.
Well, the actual mechanics you need to use are pretty light. Dice pools, artha, and versus tests will get you 90% of what you need. Easy enough.
The big difference with Burning Wheel is that you need to do a bit of meta. Sit down before you play and openly discuss what everyone wants the game to be. Write Beliefs as a group, because Beliefs are your way of telling the other players, "This is what I want to bring to the table; please mess with this." You also need to stay focused. Burning Wheel forces you to pick the things that are most important to you and focus on them.
The net result is that everyone tells everyone else what they want to do, and they stay focused on it. When Beliefs change, everyone will know and be able to react. The story will be focused and move, and everyone will be on the same page about it the whole way.
This part, though, could be problematic:
I didn't even look at their character sheets, I just threw whatever shit I thought of at them.
I have no doubt that you're a good enough GM, but this is the antithesis of Burning Wheel. It's in the rule book, plain as day. Players put things on their character sheets because those things are important to them. They're telling you, "This is what I want from this game." The GM needs to use those things on that sheet. Now, you don't have to just go along with them, but just ignoring Beliefs, Instincts, and Traits is not collaborative storytelling.
That's what I was saying previously about getting Burning Wheel wrong. The Brown Book expressly tells you how to play the game, and it's to be extremely open and direct with everything. The GM in Burning Wheel does not own the story. It's actually the players who own the story, and the GM helps them to tell it and provides his own interesting plot twists. The goal is to tell a truly collaborative story.
There's nothing wrong with the game you ran, but it wasn't Burning Wheel. It's sort of how when you put $500 on Free Parking in Monopoly, you're no longer playing Monopoly.
tl;dr: The Burning Wheel philosophy is a part of the rules as much as anything else. If you ignore that part of the rules, you're not really playing the game the way you're supposed to.
I have no doubt that you're a good enough GM, but this is the antithesis of Burning Wheel. It's in the rule book, plain as day. Players put things on their character sheets because those things are important to them. They're telling you, "This is what I want from this game." The GM needs to use those things on that sheet. Now, you don't have to just go along with them, but just ignoring Beliefs, Instincts, and Traits is not collaborative storytelling.
That's what I was saying previously about getting Burning Wheel wrong. The Brown Book expressly tells you how to play the game, and it's to be extremely open and direct with everything. The GM in Burning Wheel does not own the story. It's actually the players who own the story, and the GM helps them to tell it and provides his own interesting plot twists. The goal is to tell a truly collaborative story.
There's nothing wrong with the game you ran, but it wasn't Burning Wheel. It's sort of how when you put $500 on Free Parking in Monopoly, you're no longer playing Monopoly.
I can tell you what their beliefs were, I'm reasonably sure, just from the way they played, and spoke while in-character. I've got them written down around here somewhere. I didn't want to know their beliefs at the start, since I knew if I was scratching for an idea, I'd immediately fall back on them - I'm good, but I'm fallible as fuck, ask any of my ex-girlfriends, and I didn't want to go taking the cheap way out, unlike with my ex-girlfriends. I didn't ignore them, I simply found them out, as best I could know via play. I'll probably look at them next game, now that I've a little bit more confidence in my ability, and I'm pretty sure I've figured them out anyway. I warned them beforehand that these things can change, too.
As for owning the story? I didn't. I kept myself from a cheap little cheat, so that I'd do a better job, as the player's deserved. I took every cue from them, and just gave them a world to do what they wanted with. If I thought that they wanted more story advancement than they were figuring out themselves, I'd throw them a key, but it was their job to find the lock it opened, or I'd drop a lock on them, and let them try to open it - or to use your words, threw in some interesting plot twists - to give them something to keep going. They knew all their characters - I let them discuss them beforehand, get to know each other's characters as they were, so on, and I just forced myself to pick it up along the way.
TL:DR - I didn't want to know their characters, because if I did, I knew I'd eventually end up taking over the story, and building one where they were cogs in the machine, rather than being the guys pulling the handles and hitting the buttons. I'm a fuckup, but I'm a fuckup who knows how to work around himself.
tl;dr: The Burning Wheel philosophy is a part of the rules as much as anything else. If you ignore that part of the rules, you're not really playing the game the way you're supposed to.
And I ain't concerned in the slightest. Or rather,
If you're the one bringing the story to the table, and you're bringing it well, D&D; isn't helping you: it's just there.
And in this case, my players brought an excellent story to the table, I gave them a world to have it in. Burning wheel wasn't helping - It was just there. My players had, quote, The best fucking game I've ever played in my life, endquote, and that's all that matters to me. Tell Luke Crane I just sent him four more devotees, and he can fuckin' thank me later, all major credit cards accepted. No anger or bother in this statement, once again, just the way I speak. Stupid loss of intonation in text.
Comments
(from the website)
My kind of woman.
I should really get back into writing slam poetry. I'm pretty damn good at it.
"Comics I Like."
I almost forgot about how AWESOME (and Metal) some of the old video game box art was. If only we still did this.
2) Douchebag is confronted by Roger Huerta, former UFC lightweight contender.
3) Huerta chases douchebag off camera.
4) ???
5) Profit! Er, I mean, massive head stomp which may or may not have been delivered by Huerta, tough to tell.
6) Being that this happened in Texas, Huerta hasn't even been arrested.
I don't generally condone street fighting, but man -- fuck that guy.
1)I found a local gaming group, and went along to an impromptu meeting. One of them brought along Burning Wheel, So I agreed - to the shock of many of you, I'm sure - to GM the game for them. The unanimous opinion is that it's the best game they've every played - Not bad for a jam session campaign I came up with off the top of my head, leafing through the books quite often for rules.
2)As a reward, They nipped over to Dan Murphy's(local liquor store) And grabbed me a bottle of Monty Python's Holy Grail.
3)I discovered that in Australian Sign language, the shorthand for "I love you" is essentially throwing up the horns, but instead of putting your middle fingers into your palm, you hold them about an inch away from your palm.
The entire setting was ripped outta some dollar store fantasy novel with the names changed, and the plot was irrelevant, I just let them take it where it wanted to go, they were just walking on a treadmill, and I painted a fantasy scene on the moving scrim behind them, and occasionally chucked an nice, fat obstacle on the path to make them feel like they were doing something. They start to get distracted by moving forward too fast, throw something at them to distract them, they think something's going too slow, make them earn a plot device or a shiny new toy.
Burning Wheel makes the life of the GM much easier, as long as everyone uses the game the way it's supposed to be used.
At one point, we had to take a recess, because one of my players was choked up and about to lose it.
Funny thing to think about, isn't it? Aggressive, Angry, cursing, crass and unacceptable to high society me, choking someone up with emotion while running a game. Don't worry, fucks with my head, too. Hell if I know if I did, I only used it for reference when I needed to, because I've hardly a head for numbers without something concrete to attach it to. I'll tell you everything you could ever want to know about some things, like the SR-98 rifle, or the Titanic, but something simple as remembering my own phone number took me three and a half years.
The big difference with Burning Wheel is that you need to do a bit of meta. Sit down before you play and openly discuss what everyone wants the game to be. Write Beliefs as a group, because Beliefs are your way of telling the other players, "This is what I want to bring to the table; please mess with this." You also need to stay focused. Burning Wheel forces you to pick the things that are most important to you and focus on them.
The net result is that everyone tells everyone else what they want to do, and they stay focused on it. When Beliefs change, everyone will know and be able to react. The story will be focused and move, and everyone will be on the same page about it the whole way.
This part, though, could be problematic: I have no doubt that you're a good enough GM, but this is the antithesis of Burning Wheel. It's in the rule book, plain as day. Players put things on their character sheets because those things are important to them. They're telling you, "This is what I want from this game." The GM needs to use those things on that sheet. Now, you don't have to just go along with them, but just ignoring Beliefs, Instincts, and Traits is not collaborative storytelling.
That's what I was saying previously about getting Burning Wheel wrong. The Brown Book expressly tells you how to play the game, and it's to be extremely open and direct with everything. The GM in Burning Wheel does not own the story. It's actually the players who own the story, and the GM helps them to tell it and provides his own interesting plot twists. The goal is to tell a truly collaborative story.
There's nothing wrong with the game you ran, but it wasn't Burning Wheel. It's sort of how when you put $500 on Free Parking in Monopoly, you're no longer playing Monopoly.
tl;dr: The Burning Wheel philosophy is a part of the rules as much as anything else. If you ignore that part of the rules, you're not really playing the game the way you're supposed to.
I warned them beforehand that these things can change, too.
As for owning the story? I didn't. I kept myself from a cheap little cheat, so that I'd do a better job, as the player's deserved. I took every cue from them, and just gave them a world to do what they wanted with. If I thought that they wanted more story advancement than they were figuring out themselves, I'd throw them a key, but it was their job to find the lock it opened, or I'd drop a lock on them, and let them try to open it - or to use your words, threw in some interesting plot twists - to give them something to keep going. They knew all their characters - I let them discuss them beforehand, get to know each other's characters as they were, so on, and I just forced myself to pick it up along the way.
TL:DR - I didn't want to know their characters, because if I did, I knew I'd eventually end up taking over the story, and building one where they were cogs in the machine, rather than being the guys pulling the handles and hitting the buttons. I'm a fuckup, but I'm a fuckup who knows how to work around himself. And I ain't concerned in the slightest.
Or rather, And in this case, my players brought an excellent story to the table, I gave them a world to have it in. Burning wheel wasn't helping - It was just there.
My players had, quote, The best fucking game I've ever played in my life, endquote, and that's all that matters to me. Tell Luke Crane I just sent him four more devotees, and he can fuckin' thank me later, all major credit cards accepted.
No anger or bother in this statement, once again, just the way I speak. Stupid loss of intonation in text.