Challenging Beliefs

[Hirram]

I hope this isn't too redundant--I know threads on how to challenge players' Beliefs are rife on the forum. Nonetheless, I've been thinking about it lately and my thoughts have kind of gelled. I thought I'd share in case they're useful to anyone else--or if anyone would like to take exception to them!

I find that I think of it in terms of degrees--how hard you're pushing a Belief. I'm not sure whether I have them in order of increasing challenge, and I think it will vary by situation anyway.

First Degree: make a test or two. Want that cool sword? Great, Circle up the guy that has it, engage him in a DoW to convince him to sell it, and make a Resources test to buy it. First-degree tests don't really cost a player anything, unless they fail a test (and those failure consequences ought to make a player hesitate before going for it).

Second Degree: put the Belief in conflict with another player's Belief. Maybe that guy is willing to reward you with that sword or with a rare tome another player has been looking for. You still have the challenges of the First Degree, but a new source of conflict as well. It's important to be careful about how much intra-party conflict the group can handle, of course. And they can always escape between the horns and find a way to get both, if they're clever.

Third Degree: what are they willing to sacrifice? A well-written Belief ought to be something that's important to the character, so make it hurt. See how badly they really want it. You want this sword? Well, I want your sister's hand in marriage (whom you have a Relationship with and she despises him, of course). Or, do this despicable deed for me (because you earned the Honorable trait in play and are proud of it). Make them remember the cost whenever they think about the sword.

Fourth Degree: put it in conflict with another of their own Beliefs. Lots of great TV shows and movies hinge on the premise that two of a character's Beliefs are in conflict (or the same Belief is hit twice). Which of your Relationships do you save? Do you pursue the sword, or uphold the King's Justice? For it to work, it has to be at least very difficult to pursue both Beliefs. There shouldn't be any obvious path here.

[noofy]

I like Hirram!
So now you've distinguished by degree, what sort of uses to you apply to the distinction? Should players have at least one of each of the first three degrees? Maybe encourage evolution? So that Beliefs have their own 'advancement'. First degree becomes sceond degree becomes third and so on? In hindsight, your sword Belief example does just this.

I was also thinking that the 'call to action component' of a belief signifies its Degree (according to your scale). So a first degree beleif involves aquisition of material / skill tests etc. A second degree belief involves conflict (social or physical) as an action. A third degree belief's call to action is a reliquishment of options, it 'narrows' the available dramatic choices. Finally, a fourth degree belief requires the most severe choice, almost the lesser of two 'evils' for the character.

So as players become more proficient at writing beliefs and evolving them through play, the degrees can become 'signposts' to completing story arcs. Every session or two should revolve around a first or second degree belief, whereas you should be aiming for a fourth degree belief as a culmination of a major story arc.

Are we just complicating something inherantly quite simple for no other reason than to be categorical?

[Rafe]

Are we just complicating something inherantly quite simple for no other reason than to be categorical?
Call me a jerk but, to be honest, that's kind of what I'm seeing. Then again, while I enjoy theorycrafting, I'm not a fan of concept categorization. So bear that in mind!

There's a line up there that kind of irks me: "A well-written Belief ought to be something that's important to the character, so make it hurt." I have no real problem with the wording or whatever, but why is that the province of a "Third Degree" Belief or higher? Every Belief should warrant full use of a GM's toolkit to make it fun, interesting and to challenge it in play. Common sense dictates how much pressure a GM applies given the particulars of a situation, the nature of the Belief, and how hard a player is pushing.

"First-degree tests don't really cost a player anything, unless they fail a test. . ." Then you aren't challenging a Belief, you're simply setting test Obstacles. Just say yes and get to the part where you really are challenging them. Also, a lot of what you have written above falls outside the ability of a GM to do anything about. What if a player doesn't have competing or related Beliefs? You can't cross those wires, then. Does that mean the player can never have the penultimate in Belief challenging? I don't think so.

I'm not saying this to be facetous. I applaud the effort. I went through something similar a summer or two back when I was first digesting the idea of being an opposition to the wants of the players. That said, I think common sense (and practice!) is the only guide needed. You and the player(s) know when a Belief needs to be hit and how. I don't think a scale will really help, mostly because it's impossible to say if one form of challenging is "higher" than another. It's all based on context.

[Hirram]

My post was meant to be descriptive rather than prescriptive. That is to say, I was trying to get out my ideas on how a Belief could be challenged, rather than create instructions for doing so.

Noofy: I don't think players need to do anything about this at all (although creating Beliefs that are easily played off each other both makes for interesting play and an easier job for a GM). It's more of a guide of what I think would be useful to look for when trying to challenge a player's Beliefs.

Rafe: in regards to every Belief warranting a GM's efforts to make it count--I agree wholeheartedly. And common sense and a GM's experience should be the final arbiter of how best to challenge those Beliefs. That doesn't mean there shouldn't be discussion on how best to challenge them. I would also say that what I labeled "first-degree" tests don't really challenge a Belief. I think it's about the simplest thing a GM can do to challenge a Belief, and not a particularly fulfilling one.

I'm aware that not every Belief can be put into conflict with another one--it's just something that the game would benefit from if the GM looked for those opportunities. I'm not saying that "X needs to be done in Y situation", I'm saying "watch out for X situation, because it's a neat way to challenge a Belief".

[Paul B]

Perhaps instead of, or in addition to, grading Belief challenges we can brainstorm typical methods and just sort of list them in a value-free way. Some stuff off the top of my head that I regularly use:

* Put a powerful NPC in direct opposition to a Belief. This is the BE way and it works just fine in BW and MG as well.

* Engineer moldbreaking moments, i.e. pit Beliefs against other BITs. My personal favorite, both as GM and as player. It pays the best and it lets you say something about TWO things on your sheet.

* Arrange for players to have conflicting BITs with each other. When the players collaborate on this, outside the investment of actual play, this totally opens the game up. I have never had players complain about cockblocking or bad "my guy" play when they first go through this process.

* Duel of Wits stakes/compromises are my favorite in-play method for immediately challenging Beliefs. It's a challenge before you even go into the DOW, and if you lose you've got who-knows-how-long of grinding conflict 'til it's resolved.

* If-you-fail consequences are my next-favorite in-play Belief challenge opportunities. When I'm trying to come up with good consequences, the first place I look is Beliefs, then Instincts, then Traits. I still use my consequence-arising-from-Traits trick, and in a perfect world I come up with a trait-driven consequence that in turn becomes a Moldbreaker moment. My players hate it and love love love it.

That was a lot-of-hyphens.

Challenging Beliefs is IMO not hard but it IS a GMing skill that needs to be developed, on par with improvising good NPCs and ensuring fictional continuity.

p.

[Dwight]

I don't follow exactly what a "if-you-fail consequences" is describing. Do you have an AP example? Maybe in that Orc & Troll campaign?

[Paul B]

I mean regular plain-old BW failure consequences. I probably shouldn't have included the dicta.

[Dwight]

Ok, so I have a Belief "I'm the fastest runner this side of the Mississipi." I fail my stealthy roll and what do know, the result is that I'm noticed and being chased by a juiced up Great Spider (they are fast!), like that?

So slight tangent, do you hand out Fate for that, where you the GM initiated?

[Paul B]

Kind of hard to say if that's cool or not. I'd probably go with "not" since the circumstances leading up to that stealthy roll probably would have referenced the thing you were trying to sneak past in the first place. I think I tend to introduce new circumstances about known facts more often than new facts, if you know what I'm saying.

So...why is the fastest runner this side of the Mississippi making a stealthy roll?

[Dwight]

Why? Because this is a hypothetical situation and thus expected to be flawed. ;) But a fair point. For me I do try set up consequences where the playEr has an out if they want to chicken out, otherwise it feels ham handed on my part. So instead let's say it is some Wise of other info gathering roll that was failed. So they screw up and put them and others in danger with this fast spider in the way of whatever other goal they were headed towards. Now more obstacle, which this player can come at on one of the spider's stronger terms by say trying to train the spider out of the way and then lose it. Or they can chicken out and sneak by or let another PC deal with it another way.

[Paul B]

On your edit: I'd give you artha if you chose to act on that Belief and it complicated the story. Yeah. But again it's a funky example because that's how hypotheticals are. AS YOU WELL KNOW.

[Dwight]

More edit. iPhoning it is hard on this board.

[Paul B]

It would be enormously helpful to me if you could just post new stuff instead of going back and altering old posts. Please?

[Dwight]

Mistaps. Plus I then forgot I was trying to fix a mistake and was in edit mode. :( Apologies.

[Aramis]

Dwight, I'd say the "if-you-fail" mode is more like, Guy making stealth roll has a "Must protect innocents" belief or trait.... fails his roll, give a "Yes, But".... "Ok, well, you've gotten out of those guards view, but by hiding in a group, and they have this girl up against the wall, about to be forcibly deflowered..." Sure, you can give in to the situation, and hide, or call the guards, or try to tackle them yourself.... but either way, the failure involves both not being hidden, and directly puts that belief into play, one way or another. And either way, someone has noticed you...

[Dwight]

I'm not sure how that is different than my second example? Complication is created due to failure but the complication also provides a new opportunity for the player to also pursue a different BIT than was in play, if the player chooses to pursue the BIT.

[Paul B]

Well...if you're doing the BW convention and I do my promised BE sprint, you can see how I do it in person ;-)

[noofy]

Paul,
I applaud your suggestion to brainstorm typical methods used to challenge Beliefs. Its very helpful! Perhaps we could collate them and submit to the wiki?

My suggestions from my fledgling GM experience is to look at the Belief and imagine the primary emotion that drives the belief. Then I predict the converse of that emotion: Anger with calm, happiness with maudlin, excitement with trepidation, aggression with passivity...... Be inventive. I then use that converse emotion to drive the conflict that opposes the Belief. In its most simple terms, it is the 'frame of mind' of the NPC in opposition, the counterpoint of the player's other BITs, the colour of the scripted responses in a DoW.

I really like your age-old wisdom on 'if you fail' consequences. I would tentatively add the idea of using 'setting' as complication - similar to the environment as adversary in MG - to give a sense of immediacy of failure related to the players BITs, and tie in to the situation at hand.

Anyways, cool thread gentlemen. Any help with coming to grips with the Beliefs Mechanic (either as player or GM) is invaluable to unlocking the joy to be had from playing BW.

[Rafe]

My suggestions from my fledgling GM experience is to look at the Belief and imagine the primary emotion that drives the belief. Then I predict the converse of that emotion: Anger with calm, happiness with maudlin, excitement with trepidation, aggression with passivity...... Be inventive. I then use that converse emotion to drive the conflict that opposes the Belief. In its most simple terms, it is the 'frame of mind' of the NPC in opposition, the counterpoint of the player's other BITs, the colour of the scripted responses in a DoW.

Huh. I always look at how the player is approaching the Belief and challenge it based on that. Emotion is an interesting approach, but not one that I think would work well with my players. That said, I'll have to give it a whirl.

I usually don't picture opposition as being so holistic (by that I mean having everything be the opposite of the player), but it's hard to say. I operate pretty on-the-fly, and usually go with what makes most sense, given how the player is treating BITs and what they want to do. Opposition can sometimes be quite simple but very effective: The place you're looking for has burned down; the person you need to speak to is being threatened and/or in hiding; the book containing the information you want is in another language; etc. Emotion never factors into it for me, unless it's specifically an emotion-driven BIT.

[noofy]

Patrick, that's very encouraging. Sorry if I came across as conflictory in my 'approach' to challenging BITs. Paraphrasing over the interweb often doesn't correlate to actual practice! But yes, I do like your considered approach, utilising direct player input and use of their belief in play to guide your challenges. The concept I was trying to translate was that identifying the loose term of 'emotion' (non-tangible descriptor) as colour to the action of a Belief - the 'adverb', if you will - can give an extra layer to the challenge.

In terms of your examples (which are very evocative by the way!): the Place identified in their belief was being searched for due to curiosity, thus the fire that burned it down was lit by a secretive / withdrawn NPC. The Person you need to speak to Urgently, has been hiding and will continue to hide for a Paranoid amount of time. The information you seek is guided by Fear (for your safety / sanctity / security), so not only is the book written in another language, but the available translator is a Bully, fully aware of your predicament and ready to take advantage.

I guess there is a certain glee to be had in adpating on the fly, rather than carefully scripted Bangs. I was only attempting to brainstorm further 'written' ideas (based on my practice) from the OP, as Paul suggested. So if they sound terribly convoluted or unnecessarily 'procedural', its only because my writing this sort of advice is rather ephemeral. In fact my whole experience with BW has highlighted the whole right/left brain dichotomy. I wish I could be as practical as you Pat! I'd love to play in one of your games, if only to 'poach' your ideas for play!

I agree wholeheartedly in your push for simplicity, which is why I concluded my first response to the OP with rhetoric. I hope this thread continues with other's input to add to the 'Challenging Beliefs' database on the wiki. In my mind its the most important skill for a GM to develop, and the counterpoint to the effort players make in crafting good Beliefs in the first place. Combine the two and you are almost guaranteed a fantastic session.

[Rafe]

Conflict all you want! That's why we're here. If I didn't want to read/talk about opposing views, I'd just write a blog or something with comments turned off. :)

In terms of me being practical and hitting all the right spots, it's easy to be clever on a forum, but harder at the table. For all the great (mebe) ideas I write here, I sometimes screw the pooch at the gaming table, I'm afraid to say. I haven't gotten to the point where I really feel I'm responding and challenging players as well as I ought to be, as often as I ought to be. But hey... BW is all about practice and slowly getting better. (That's my excuse!)

I like your examples. That makes more sense to me. I guess I was missing the context of what you meant by emotional challenges. In other words, let what NPCs might come into the realm of "here to challenge Player X" take on emotional dispositions that even further point to the need to drive and push BITs. I'm down wit' dat, yo.

[Hirram]

I agree. And I find it helps me at the table to have these discussions on the forums; hence why I started the thread. I wanted to bounce my ideas about how to challenge a Belief off more experienced players and see what they thought. This has been a great learning experience for me.