The GM's Jobs

[Judd]

I was just IMing with Rich about GMing Burning Wheel and just wanted to see if I could distill down to a few sentences or bullet-points:

Poke at Beliefs, Instincts and Traits: Scenes should be primarily set up to poke at players' beliefs, instincts and traits in fun ways that leave the players making fun decisions while adding to the overall fiction.

NPC and World Reactions: Players' actions need to have consequences in the fiction. Hopefully, these reactions will either prod their Beliefs, Instincts and Traits or provide the material for new Beliefs and Instincts.

Provide Fun Consequences for Failure: Everything from falling into a head trauma induced coma for a month to an old friendly buddy turning out to be a betrayer to getting lost in the mountains and running into a group of orc torturing an elven prince.

Is that it?

[luke]

I'm sure folks will pile more on, that's a good set of three to get you started.

[stormsweeper]

Get your players to tell you what they want, not what they think they can get.

[Aramis]

Veto &/or discourage Time Wasting Moron Behaviors
as in, when everyone agrees to build samurai, and one guy insists on a ninja... veto!
Or one guy decides that he's simply going to nuke the planet rather than fight the valen... because he's not engaged with the group.

[Judd]

Get your players to tell you what they want, not what they think they can get.

Veto &/or discourage Time Wasting Moron Behaviors
as in, when everyone agrees to build samurai, and one guy insists on a ninja... veto!
Or one guy decides that he's simply going to nuke the planet rather than fight the valen... because he's not engaged with the group.

Both of these are things I see as the table's job.

The first one, actually feels like the players' job:

State your intent before you roll the dice.

Ooh, I might add Say. "Yes," or roll the dice to the GM's list.

[Thor]

These are are intimately related:

1. Pacing. The GM is responsible for setting the pace by introducing new obstacles or by saying yes. The GM also gets to decide which scenes get resolved in which order if there is a question.

2. Scope. The GM is responsible for determining the scope of a proposed task. The GM can decide that multiple tasks are actually necessary to fulfill an intent (i.e., Stealth alone isn't enough to sneak into the tower; you need Stealthy to go unseen and Climbing to scale it), or that one test is sufficient to cover a broad swathe of story. The GM can also determine that a proposed task is not appropriate to a given intent.

[Paul B]

I find GMing BW my most-used role is that of intent driller-downer. I think this is closely related to Stormy's thing. Actually I'm gonna quibble with you on that one, Judd: While it's not explicitly in the purview of the GM's authority to get the players to be clear about their intents, it's the GM's extracharacter perspective that makes it possible to facilitate that.

Like, every session there's some moment where a player is so wrapped up in the right-fucking-now moment that he can't really see his own intent, or more importantly how his intent intersects with other intents in the scene. I'm sure Luke will jump in and slap me around and that's fine, but I think it's very much a phenomenon some players experience: They cannot easily move from first-person to third-person advocacy.

But as GM, I'm always outside, right? So I'm sort of playing the audience, in a very important way. This gets back to the Say Yes role -- since it's often very hard for players to really figure out what a scene is "about," by my Saying Yes to stuff I feel is irrelelvant to the core conflict, we can drill down to what everyone actually wants out of the scene.

p.

[Z-Dog]

This gets back to the Say Yes role -- since it's often very hard for players to really figure out what a scene is "about," by my Saying Yes to stuff I feel is irrelelvant to the core conflict, we can drill down to what everyone actually wants out of the scene.

p.

By saying "Yes" you're defining what the conflicts NOT about, right? So players and GM are dancing about, offering out ideas/suggestions/negotiating until you both hit the "core" conflict that your both interesting in, right?

[Paul B]

Sssssort of. Here's an AP example from the Jihad game:

Player 1 is playing a high-powered noble. He's got a Belief: "Learn what (player 2's character) deeply cares about so I can forge an alliance with him." Player 2 has a Belief: "I love (NPC) with all my heart; I'll do anything she asks of me."

So Player 1 and Player 2 decide they want a scene together. Player 2 is carrying out his character's Belief, and is going to ask P1's character for some fairly substantial military aid. So they're about to jump into a DOW, right? And P2 is all "my body of argument is, I want P1 to hand over broad discretion over his army to me."

So P1 is thinking about it a bit and he's all..."Hm. I think my character would be okay with that actually." Because his character is already looking for an excuse to wage war with the same guys P2's character is going after.

But they don't proceed. There's a hiccup in the pace at the table, and everyone agrees there is, in fact, a conflict. But they can't put their finger on it. Something just feels...wrong about saying yes to the request. So as GM, I ask P1 about his own Beliefs: How can you turn this into an opportunity?

P1 comes back with something different: "I want to know what your motivation is for taking control of those troops." This gets to his big Belief, right?

P2 really doesn't want to reveal his "I love her" Belief to P1's character. Ah! So P1 has a good BOA for his DOW. But now P2 doesn't really have anything on his side. Does it just come down to a Versus against P2's Will?

So I go back to P2: Since you've already got the troops committed, what else can you get out of this guy? He thinks for a bit and decides that what he really wants is the political backing of P1's character, not just access to his troops.

I don't know if P1 and P2 would have been able to figure out that the conversation they were about to have came down to keeping secrets vs. securing support.

This gets to Judd's #1 role: provoke BITs. It gets to Stormy's thing, facilitating honest intent discussion and not just "how do I win this next contest?" thinking. It definitely has to do with Thor's pacing and scope elements.

p.

[Soloswolf]

For my part, I feel the critical element in all of this is conversation between the players, not conversation between the characters. I play with Judd and there are never any 'secrets' at the table. In fact, some of the most fun I've had has come when everyone had a bit of input into the stakes of a given conflict. Everyone contributing helps create a story everyone can dig, keeps the whole table engaged and makes for some rocking sessions!

The 'rules' you all have laid out so far are all great advice. I am going to be running Blossoms for our group in the coming weeks and I will be glad to have all the help I can get!