Wises... again?

[Berandor]

From here: http://burningwheel.org/forum/showthread.php?t=8037


This probably ought to be broken out into a separate post. Wises act differently than most skills. Wises are used by the player to create fiction, not to discover something from the GM.

Separate post coming up :)

Um, no. I mean, I realize this is one use of Wises, and possibly even the one most often used, and certainly the one I like best. But Wises can also be used to discover things from the GM, especially if the GM has prepared what the player's looking for.

For example, in our current game the players have run afoul of an assassin. They found a clue as to who hired the killer, but it's just a (so far) meaningless symbol to them. Now, as a GM, I know who hired the assassin, and why. And while I wouldn't be totally against changing that fact if the player had a great idea and tested "Symbol-Wise" or something, I would also accept him testing that Wise with the intent of deciphering the symbol's "owner" without him filling in the blank.

So Wises can work differently (though you can probably also use other skills to have them work in a manner similar to wises), but they don't need to.

[Rafe]

Very true! I didn't mean to say there's only one way to use wises (though I think that's pretty much what I said for that instance -- d'oh). I meant that wises work differently than most other skills and also allow players to create fiction (so long as it doesn't counter what the GM has already established or has yet to unveil).

I should probably fix my post in that other thread...