General Nomenclature

[Agamemnon]

My only hesitation with 'drives' is that it is such a common word. This isn't a problem from an aesthetic standpoint, so much as that once something becomes a game term you want to avoid using it in it's more general meaning. You don't know how many times I've written something like "works to the character's advantage" only to have to stop and rephrase it because I meant "is beneficial" not "bumps their TN." We use the phrase "drives the story forward" on more than one occasion. It's a small thing, ultimately, though, and drive is the best we've come up with thus far.

One thing I believe you absolutely should change is "Phrase." The word is almost identical in spelling Phase and used for exactly the sort of purpose something called Phase would be used for. I guarantee many people will read Phase instead of "Phrase" and call it that in actual gameplay. Additionally, if you were trying to play up the "conversation in steel" theme, you should theme all of your words around it, not just the single term "Phrase." Either you go all in or not at all, and in this case, I believe not at all is the right way to go.

Oddly enough, we didn't invent this one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_fencing — that seems to be the actual term for it.

Conversation
The back-and-forth play of the blades in a fencing bout, composed of phrases (phrases d'armes) punctuated by gaps of no blade action.

The only reason we don't have "conversation" as a game term is because we don't presently have a need for "A complete melee fight." This is a rare moment where one has to ask -- Should we ignore the real term for the thing in favor of something more gamey? That sounds weird to say out loud, given how much work we've done towards the opposite goal.

[nemedeus]

Less 'appeasing,' and more 'not intentionally annoying.' Honestly, I don't have any real belief that it would be a problem anyway, but if the thing can be fixed without much trouble, it might as well be. I don't follow the "design decisions" reference though. The name of a thing is a purely aesthetic issue, rather than a design issue. The mechanics don't care what the unit is called.

Dude, literally every point in both Proposal 1 and Proposal 2 looks almost completely like a carbon copy of Burning Wheel. If this is going to be a problem, changing a name won't prevent it.

I notice you didn't say anything in response. I hope i didn't hit a nerve there?


Anyway, I think we are starting to fuss over tiny details again.

Phrase is good and (imo) expresses the idea better than any other term could. Just make it clear in text that it's called Phrase because it happens multiple times in a combat round (and what a combat round is).

Drive is good, and makes sense: "Drives drive the story forward" may sound stupid, but it clicks. There's a german phrase, "je blöder desto merk", could be translated as "the stupider the memorize"... Trust me, people will get it.

I like Accuracy, but i'm not sure about precision. intuitively i would have thought precision as a result of accuracy.
Accuracy and Placement is okay. I guess Precision is also okay but it might sound weird. (German would be "Treffsicherheit" for Accuracy and "Präzision" for Precision, and "Platzierung" or "Ansetzen" for placement).

I stand by my point that you should keep Obstacle.

Since we are digging into the nomenclature can of worms... Why not pick at some old wounds?
Legerdemain > Sleight of Hand
Sword & Buckler > Fencing / Rapier / Cut and Thrust
Sword and Shield > Arming Sword / Shield Formation / War Sword

If you think Legerdemain is bad, so is Larceny (personally, i'm okay with either Legerdemain or Sleight of Hand, although the latter is more widely used).
However, i don't see why you'd want to change the proficiencies. Is it because of the "and"?

Also, how did you end up with no Riposte maneuver?

I did wonder that myself, although i have no idea how that would look. I guess it would have to be somehow "set up" by deliberately inviting an attack.

[dysjunct]

I like "Requirement" for the exact reasons thirtythree mentions. Maybe the first time it's called out, refer to it as "Success Requirement, or simply Requirement..." It's exactly what it is and abbreviates easily and uniquely into Req1, Req2, etc.

Re: Precision vs. Accuracy; I do not have the engineering background to know the difference and had to look it up. For that reason I'd say use one or the other, but not both. Unless you want to market your game only at engineers, but I think they're all playing GURPS.

[Korbel]

I'd vote to keep OBSTACLES, COMPLEXITY & PLACEMENT and STORY ASPECTS. For me they do the job, I got used to them, and I don't feel that new propositions add anything.
But when it comes to SWORD&SHIELD and SWORD&BUCKLER... I'll just say, for my personal use I have renamed them as follows: SHIELD WORK (yeah, stolen from the Emphasis name), and FENCING (just like 33). These terms are just way more intuitive, more suitable for new gamers and precise enough for more experienced ones... Yeah I know, many of the styles used with a single sword are quite far from "fencing".

[thirtythr33]

Should we ignore the real term for the thing in favor of something more gamey?

Exchange or Bout are only slightly less accurate but significantly better understood by the majority of people.

Don't get me wrong; I love the fighting = conversation metaphor, but I don't think it works if you half measure it. If it goes in, you really need to explain it or the strange terms are just going to confuse people. I think a lot of people would really enjoy learning about it though.

However, i don't see why you'd want to change the proficiencies. Is it because of the "and"?

It confuses what weapons can be used in what combination.

It took me ages to realize that what Sword & Buckler is trying to simulate is a "weapon and dominant foot forward stance" and that Sword & Shield is trying to be "weapon and dominant foot behind stance". It's funny, because this is the opposite side of Agamemnon's "Should we compromise accuracy for a gamey name" argument. The terms Fencing or Rapier are almost perfect for "Sword & Buckler", although they are quite misleading. Historically both those terms were used for an array of weapon combinations but were all for a civilian dueling style; where the weapon hand was presented forward because it usually had a large guard and they wore little to no armor.

I did wonder that myself, although i have no idea how that would look. I guess it would have to be somehow "set up" by deliberately inviting an attack.

I think it would be mechanically almost indistinguishable from Counter, and that it came down to which word you wanted to keep for "parry with a penalty now, to attack with a bonus next phrase".

[thirtythr33]

Precision vs. Accuracy; I do not have the engineering background to know the difference and had to look it up. For that reason I'd say use one or the other, but not both. Unless you want to market your game only at engineers, but I think they're all playing GURPS.

Here is the quickest way to understand the difference:

[nemedeus]

Here is the quickest way to understand the difference:

That almost looks like the precision part is dependent on the weapon?

Either way, if these terms end up being chosen, probably best to include a graphic like this. I mean, it shouldn't be too hard to make one, right?

[thirtythr33]

That almost looks like the precision part is dependent on the weapon?

The weapon or the marksman could be responsible for either bad Precision or bad Accuracy. That goes double for weapons like Bows, where the marksman is literally a part of the weapon.

A sniper rifle with a crooked sight would be Low Accuracy, High Precision.
A sniper rifle with a straight laser sight and firing over a huge distance would be High Accuracy, Low Precision.

A good marksman can compensate for low accuracy easier than for low precision.

For BoB weaponry such as Bows and Arquebus, the marksman is a part of the firing system. From a marksman's perspective, accuracy is a measure of how good he is at landing near the his target, on average. Precision is a measure of how consistent he fires; whether it is good or not.

When he is splitting his pool, he is balancing his attention between taking time and care to be on target against keeping good form and compensating for variables.

Precision is to Accuracy, what Standard Deviation is to Average.

[myanbar]

Oddly enough, we didn't invent this one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_fencing — that seems to be the actual term for it.

Conversation
The back-and-forth play of the blades in a fencing bout, composed of phrases (phrases d'armes) punctuated by gaps of no blade action.

The only reason we don't have "conversation" as a game term is because we don't presently have a need for "A complete melee fight." This is a rare moment where one has to ask -- Should we ignore the real term for the thing in favor of something more gamey? That sounds weird to say out loud, given how much work we've done towards the opposite goal.

So it's a sport fencing term? Not a real fencing term? I've got a few things to say on that. First, it doesn't matter if it's a sport fencing term or if you made it up - everything I've said is still true. "Phrase" is a bad word choice. You don't do anything else with the conversation in steel theme and so the word sticks sorely out of place. Phase is an almost identically spelled word with the same meaning for the game mechanic you're trying to describe with "Phrase." Second, by that same reasoning you should throw out "Initiative" and replace it with "Right of Way." You're not considering doing that because Initiative is a good word and Right of Way would sound dumb. You should replace "Phrase" with Phase because Phase is a good word and "Phrase" sounds dumb.

[higgins]

"Phrase" is a bad word choice.

Truth is, we used to have rounds and turns. One referred to the skirmish level things, and other to melee. I still can't remember which was which, so, we used a radically different term for the melee just to keep track of things. That's it.

If you have a better suggestion, shoot.

P.S.
Accuracy vs Precision looks like that exact same situation reincarnated.

[Agamemnon]

<suggestions for names of things>

Drives is the winner out of the story aspects so far.

M3 and R3 are probably the best out of the obstacle replacements. R might win out simply to avoid any possible mix-ups between M3 and MoS3.

I'm not sure about the accuracy v. precision thing. I get the technical argument, I'm just not sure if it's the most user-friendly. I looked at your graphic, understood it, moved on to write this.. and now without looking back I've already forgotten which is which. Worth thinking on, though.

I can agree with the notion that Phrase can be fiddly. A Phrase is two tempos. If we went with "Exchange" anyone from TROS will assume it's replacing the word 'tempo,' not the word 'phrase.' Should we be replacing them both? If so, we'll need new terms for both.

Legerdemain is there both because it's technically the right word and because at the time we didn't want Sleight of Hand to be the only skill that was multiple words.

Sword & Buckler is probably going to wind up Cut and Thrust in this draft because we're rearranging some stuff. As of now, Saber and Messer are going to wind up being different emphases of the Cut and Thrust proficiency. Their maneuver spread is basically identical, and even more so in this draft. I can see an argument for renaming sword and shield, but I have no idea what you'd do for it. Arming Sword is too weapon specific (a gladius and scutum would fall under this just as easily, and an Arming Sword could be used with a buckler in a cut and thrust style). Shield Formation could be as easily applicable to Mass Weapons or Spears, and my mental association for War Sword is actually with hand-and-a-half swords, though I couldn't tell you why.

Less 'appeasing,' and more 'not intentionally annoying.' Honestly, I don't have any real belief that it would be a problem anyway, but if the thing can be fixed without much trouble, it might as well be. I don't follow the "design decisions" reference though. The name of a thing is a purely aesthetic issue, rather than a design issue. The mechanics don't care what the unit is called.

Dude, literally every point in both Proposal 1 and Proposal 2 looks almost completely like a carbon copy of Burning Wheel. If this is going to be a problem, changing a name won't prevent it.

I notice you didn't say anything in response. I hope i didn't hit a nerve there?

I think I actually missed this when I skimmed through the thread the night before. I've been trying to force myself to do less forum'ing and more drafting since only one of those actually counts as being productive.

As it stands, I'd have to contest the notion. What is actually presented?

• The specific attributes used
• That attributes and skills are separate sets of things
• The numeric range of attributes and skills
• How attribute and skills interact
• How to deal with skills you don't have

To the first - we aren't using the same attribute spread, and I don't think BW has anything approaching "derived attributes" anyway.

To the second - this is the default in most games.

To the third - A 1-10 range in a culture that uses a base 10 counting scale isn't really unique. We rate most things on a 1-10 scale even colloquially. For a die pool system, it's about as many dice as you can comfortably roll, for most people. I don't know if BW caps at 10, but I know TROS did and I think Sorcerer may have as well. Of course, the reason we capped at 10 was because we were already on a 1-5 scale in X+Y. I was just keeping the die pool on the same scale. To get our range values, I just added +1 and then stretched out the top end as that's where we needed the room.

To the fourth - Proposal 1 has attributes form the basis of skills, which is in BW but also in a bunch of different games. Runequest immediately comes to mind. Proposal 2 doesn't have attributes and skills tied at all, which is far more unusual and notably not how BW does it. The closest one could argue this would be to point at Proposal 2's mix-and-match setup as being similar to FoRKing, but if anything you'd have to argue the present use was a weird hybrid of that idea and the default mechanic of something like VtM. Now that we've actually worked out the details on our end, it will wind up being more expansive and flexible than either. Despite my misgivings, I'm actually quite pleased with how it came out.

And finally, to the fifth - Both are running "use the relevant attribute instead," but this is again hardly unique. TROS does this by default because of how it's skill system is set up, as do a few other games. We're also penalizing them in a different way to Burning Wheel.

The only things either proposal have directly in common with Burning Wheel are the things that are either common to most RPGs in general or dice-pool RPGs in particular.

I like "Requirement" for the exact reasons thirtythree mentions. Maybe the first time it's called out, refer to it as "Success Requirement, or simply Requirement..." It's exactly what it is and abbreviates easily and uniquely into Req1, Req2, etc.

Req (rehk) has a good mouth-feel to it. I'm not sure if it should be written as R1, r1, Rq1, rq1, Req1, or req1, though.

[higgins]

Req (rehk) has a good mouth-feel to it.

#rekt

[taelor]

As a veteran Burning Wheel GM, BoB (or whatever it ends up being called), is still a very different game in my mind, even if some of the proposed revisions are superficially similar to BW (but as Agamemnon correctly points out, they are hardly unique to BW).

In my mind, the three things that set Burning Wheel apart from other games are it's use of lifepaths for character generation, its test-based advancement system, and its belief/artha system. Nothing like any of these things is present anywhere in BoB. Probably the closest are Story Aspects, but those have a number of very major differences that set them apart from BW beliefs in a very fundamental way.

Ultimately, both BW and BoB start with the same goal: telling interesting stories about characters making difficult choices, but the way the two games go about achieving that are quite different. This is probably most evident in the implicit pacing. BoB seems designed to cut straight to the action, whereas Burning Wheel is much more slowburn. Comparing them to some of my favorite Shakespeare plays, BoB seems like the perfect system to play Macbeth (a masterpiece of a blood opera if there ever was one), whereas BW would be more suited to Hamlet or the Prince Hal Trillogy (Henry IV Part I and II, and Henry V).

[thirtythr33]

Shield Formation could be as easily applicable to Mass Weapons or Spears

Isn't that a good thing?

Complexity & Placement:

Here's a take from another angel. (I think I'm going full circle...)

What's the first thing a marksman has to do? Look at his context. He has to take into account how the wind is blowing, distance to target, speed of movement, time for missile to travel, bystanders and all the other things. He has to perceive everything that is going on, consider it and then accurately and quickly create a mental model for him to use; all before he even lines up his target. If he gets that wrong, the missile won't even go near his target, no matter how straight a shot he is.

For that reason, we can replace Complexity with one of:
Perception
Reaction
Attention
Awareness
Judgement
Prediction
Response

And then the second pool is when he actually drawing the bow string and lining up his target. Placement is replaced by Accuracy.

By making the first roll a purely perceptual or mental one, it doesn't seem like we are just rolling accuracy twice. We also dodge the weird "I hit him but I didn't hit him?" thing.

[Marras]

Just a quick note. In case you are thinking about using accuracy and precision, that would not sound well up here. Both would be translated as tarkkuus