Rules

I write up my own quicksheets, photocopy important pages, and I put the whole thing in order of what I think I’m going to reference the most. I usually grab a little presentation folder and organize the whole thing.

“Reference the most” usually means either something I have to look at for every single case of resolution (such as Burning Wheel’s Advancement Table) or else a resolution bit that I’m likely to use all the time but have a hard time remembering (such as L5R’s hairy social skills).

This handy little booklet option saves my books from endless paging and makes my life simple. It usually takes 10-30 minutes work, but it’s so much worth it.

Unbalanced Investment

I find that the unbalanced investement is usually higher at the beginning of a story arc, and cuts down as things continue. At first I tend to have to create a good conflict, and stat up LOTS of NPCs, as things continue, I have less and less to add. I also tend to write down a lot of Bangs (or trigger events) to give momentum to play, as things go on, it becomes easier and quicker to write these.

Though, the biggest thing I hate is having to stat NPCs. Right now L5R is earning a lot of my ire for that alone.

Not fun

I have to admit, most of the gaming experience has been a pile of not fun by way of convincing people that there has to be long boring parts in order to get to the good parts… Instead of prepping lots of delaying actions, we need to prep things that drive the conflict towards a finish, and with a bang!

Instead of giving people lame half clues, we need real info, real events that put power and decisions into the player’s hands- no more 10 sessions to find out the King is a vampire- he’s a vampire, and the King, and what are you going to do about it?

Of course, this also means the players can’t be deers in the headlights either, but that pretty much entirely links into my Jedi/Chicken Little rant

Chris

This is a cool idea, Chris! I’d probably switch the order to alphabetical for my own use, but that’s just me.

Photocopying stuff is a good tool in general — I photocopy monsters for D&D games so that I can scribble on them, and so that the players can’t tell what letter I’m looking at in the book. Same goes for frequently-used articles — I don’t know why doing it for rules had never ocurred to me!

Of course, this also means the players can’t be deers in the headlights either, but that pretty much entirely links into my Jedi/Chicken Little rant

I’m still thinking that rant over, which is why I haven’t responded to it. You make a lot of good points, though.

Nailed it. This is gonna be the topic of a rant of mine soon. Too many actual play experiences (of mine, but I bet you’re the same) involve delaying “the story” for as long as possible so things aren’t “too easy.”

But for some players, the fun is in the choices that they make (as players, and as actors of their characters) and choice comes from information and the power to affect change.

So, instead of spending 10 sessions slowly and carefully playing out every second of the attempted coup of the government (which yes, can be handled in a fun way) — another option is to have out the conflict in one session. Spend the whole session on it, and play through the six weeks it takes to either seize power or be assassinated or jailed or whatever. Then, bam! Things are different. What do you do now? Bet you can’t wait for next session.

Fun can come from getting things done, as in “resolved.” More of that, please!

Imagine a session with all of the tactics and intricacy of a typical D&D combat, but instead of determining that a monster is dead, you determine who now runs the Thieves guild. At this pace, 10 sessions is A LOT of “story.” A whole lot more than you get by painstakingly jumping over every possible hurdle, hour by hour, to feel like you “earned” it.

This sounds like an absolutely fascinating way to play a game. I’ve only played Burning Wheel once — with Luke GMing, at last year’s GenCon — and this sounds like a perfect fit for the style of that session.

I can’t say for sure if it’d be a perfect fit for Burning Wheel, or just for Burning Wheel the way Luke ran it that one time — my guess is the former, though.

Dang, but that’s given me something to chew on! Constructing a model for how to handle this with a game that’s not specifically built for it (D&D, WoD, whatever) could be a really neat exercise.

Constructing a model for how to handle this with a game that’s not specifically built for it (D&D, WoD, whatever) could be a really neat exercise.

Actually, when you look at BW, it’s pretty old school in a lot of ways, it just happens to nail conflict resolution and introducing conflict in a very good way. You could literally lift a lot of the ideas over to D&D and not “change the mechanics”(though in reality, you’re completely porting over scene framing and resolution ideas). Likewise with Primetime Adventures, Trollbabe, or Dogs in the Vineyard’s advice on scenes & establishing conflict.

What is a challenge, though, is trying to figure out how to get this idea across to players in a different game and getting them to use it on a regular basis, especially if they’re conditioned otherwise. Especially in-game responses and “meta-talk”, like, “This part is boring, let’s skip it”, “That was really cool”, etc.

I look forward to any ideas you come up with.

Guess what I’ll be checking out at GenCon this year (among other things)? Some of my recent reading on blogs and elsewhere was already leading me towards PTA and Dogs in the Vineyard, but this pretty much clinches it.

What is a challenge, though, is trying to figure out how to get this idea across to players in a different game and getting them to use it on a regular basis, especially if they’re conditioned otherwise.

Apart from just waiting for a moment that I’d like to skip, or that could benefit from a quick meta-discussion, I’m not sure how to approach this. It’ll certainly be on my back burners during play, and I’ll see what comes out of it.

I was with two friends, and none of us had played BW before (two of us had read most of it, though). We all agreed that it was hands-down the best event we played at the con — Luke is an amazing GM, and we had a table full of great players (including Judd from The Forge, who is probably the best player I’ve ever met).

Needless to say, we made getting into the BW events at this year’s con our first priority.