[TSOY] Some rules questions

[Eero Tuovinen]

Been playing the game a lot, lately. Like it very much. Some questions:

1) The book states that you cannot declare BDTP without a resisted roll (pg. 35). This means that if a character is in an unresisted situation, the player has no recourse if things go wrong. An actual play situation: "Stakes are, whether you succeed in swimming to the city or wash out to the sea." I know I'd like to be able to have some kind of safety net as a player; it's difficult to remember to restrain the stakes differently for resisted conflicts (wherein players have the very efficient BDTP option) and unresisted ones (where, apparently, you'll just have to suck it up). In the heat of play this seems to result in some rather severe situations. Is this as intented?

2) There's this thread, discussing inflicting Harm outside BDTP. It doesn't seem that the main disputants there know what they're talking about, so I'll lay out my understanding of the rules: it's only ever possible to cause Harm during BDTP, unless a Secret allows it. (While the rules don't explicitly say this, they don't ever bring up the possibility, either.) The effect of Three-corner Destruction is a specific exception of the rule, intentionally breaking the limits of what Abilities normally are able to do. (In effect, Destruction has an imbedded Secret attached to it, allowing it to both cause in-game destruction and Harm.) Right or wrong? Why?

3) Weapons and armor (pg. 51): the GM may issue a +1 weapon or armor "in a particular situation", based on the fictional details. Is this "particular situation" equivalent to the +1 bonus gained through the Secret of Imbuement? Specifically:
a) is the "particular situation" really situational, or based on objective standards? If the GM gives a player a +1 weapon bonus for attacking with a sword, is his resolution binding on all future "particular situations" of swordfighting as well, or can he change his mind later? Is the particular situation this here and now, or "the particular situation of attacking with a sword"?
b) if a) is objective, is the +1 bonus counted for the purposes of the limited number of bonuses an item can have? Presumably bonuses from the Secret of Imbuement are counted. The problem I see here is that the bonus from a) is not connected to the tool in question, but rather on the "particular situation", so it could be argued that this is not a bonus of the tool, but rather a bonus-like effect of GM veto.
This seems a little difficult to understand, so I'll give an example of what I mean: let's say I'm GMing, and I've stated that if you have a sword in a swordfight, you always get the +1, and likewise for armor. Then there's this weapon Excalibur, that has a +1 in "fighting situations", "ruling situations" and "questing situations", or something like that. The first question is, can I decide during any given fight that now swords aren't getting that +1. The second question is, does the Excalibur now have four +1 bonuses, if I'm giving swords an implied +1.

4) Again, weapons and armor: if you use several weapons/armor simultaneously, do the bonuses stack? Likewise, if a given tool has several bonuses that apply, do they stack? I imagine not. However, you can use both a weapon and armor simultaneously and benefit from both, I suppose. The rules do not seem to address these angles.

Unless you're Clinton, please reply with a reference to the rules or argumentation from design principles.

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Been playing the game a lot, lately. Like it very much. Some questions:

1) The book states that you cannot declare BDTP without a resisted roll (pg. 35). This means that if a character is in an unresisted situation, the player has no recourse if things go wrong. An actual play situation: "Stakes are, whether you succeed in swimming to the city or wash out to the sea." I know I'd like to be able to have some kind of safety net as a player; it's difficult to remember to restrain the stakes differently for resisted conflicts (wherein players have the very efficient BDTP option) and unresisted ones (where, apparently, you'll just have to suck it up). In the heat of play this seems to result in some rather severe situations. Is this as intented?

I can't see who your opposition would be in an unresisted roll. In practice, I minimize unresisted rolls, as I find them less than useful for the games I play in.

2) There's this thread, discussing inflicting Harm outside BDTP. It doesn't seem that the main disputants there know what they're talking about, so I'll lay out my understanding of the rules: it's only ever possible to cause Harm during BDTP, unless a Secret allows it. (While the rules don't explicitly say this, they don't ever bring up the possibility, either.) The effect of Three-corner Destruction is a specific exception of the rule, intentionally breaking the limits of what Abilities normally are able to do. (In effect, Destruction has an imbedded Secret attached to it, allowing it to both cause in-game destruction and Harm.) Right or wrong? Why?

Right, mainly. I really thought I talked in the rules about the possibility of the Story Guide calling a contest as "harmful" before the roll, stating that the loser will take harm. But, I just looked, and I don't see that. Hm. Anyway, harm only happens in BDTP unless stated otherwise by the rules, or by the Story Guide in a specific situation. (For example: you've got a field full of broken metal and glass that the characters are going to charge across. The Story Guide might say, "Make an Endure check. If you fail, you reach the other side with Harm 1.")

3) Weapons and armor (pg. 51): the GM may issue a +1 weapon or armor "in a particular situation", based on the fictional details. Is this "particular situation" equivalent to the +1 bonus gained through the Secret of Imbuement? Specifically:
a) is the "particular situation" really situational, or based on objective standards? If the GM gives a player a +1 weapon bonus for attacking with a sword, is his resolution binding on all future "particular situations" of swordfighting as well, or can he change his mind later? Is the particular situation this here and now, or "the particular situation of attacking with a sword"?
b) if a) is objective, is the +1 bonus counted for the purposes of the limited number of bonuses an item can have? Presumably bonuses from the Secret of Imbuement are counted. The problem I see here is that the bonus from a) is not connected to the tool in question, but rather on the "particular situation", so it could be argued that this is not a bonus of the tool, but rather a bonus-like effect of GM veto.
This seems a little difficult to understand, so I'll give an example of what I mean: let's say I'm GMing, and I've stated that if you have a sword in a swordfight, you always get the +1, and likewise for armor. Then there's this weapon Excalibur, that has a +1 in "fighting situations", "ruling situations" and "questing situations", or something like that. The first question is, can I decide during any given fight that now swords aren't getting that +1. The second question is, does the Excalibur now have four +1 bonuses, if I'm giving swords an implied +1.

4) Again, weapons and armor: if you use several weapons/armor simultaneously, do the bonuses stack? Likewise, if a given tool has several bonuses that apply, do they stack? I imagine not. However, you can use both a weapon and armor simultaneously and benefit from both, I suppose. The rules do not seem to address these angles.

The Story Guide's judgment here is completely situational. Again, from practice: I've never given out a situational bonus that I can remember. If one was given out, it's not counted against the limited number of bonuses. It never stacks - bonuses do not stack. If you've got 15 things that give you a +1 in combat, you get a +1 in combat.

[ubergeek2012]

Right, mainly. I really thought I talked in the rules about the possibility of the Story Guide calling a contest as "harmful" before the roll, stating that the loser will take harm. But, I just looked, and I don't see that. Hm. Anyway, harm only happens in BDTP unless stated otherwise by the rules, or by the Story Guide in a specific situation. (For example: you've got a field full of broken metal and glass that the characters are going to charge across. The Story Guide might say, "Make an Endure check. If you fail, you reach the other side with Harm 1.")

Would this also apply to resisted conflicts, like the sword duel example?  Incidentally, I based my assumption that harm could happen outside of BTDP on the paragraph on page 41 where it says that harm from before BTDP also shakes out at the end.

[Eero Tuovinen]

These are all rather interesting answers. I find it surprising how differently I GM the game.

I can't see who your opposition would be in an unresisted roll. In practice, I minimize unresisted rolls, as I find them less than useful for the games I play in.

Well, I don't know who the opposition would be either, unless I'd go with a generic "humanized nature" kind of opponent, as several games do. My question was really about how to deal with the dangerousness of unresisted rolls vs. resisted ones, with applying BDTP being one possibility. Not using unresisted rolls is another option, and one I find quite interesting, because it implies a significantly different parsing of a given situation.

From the half a dozen or so sessions I've played of the game it seems I do use unresisted rolls now and then. The main example that sticks to mind was the case of a character trying to swim into the city at night, in an effort to evade the guardsmen. In some other game I'd definitely have gone the way of "well, let's roll against the guards to see if you succeed in the undetected part", but in this case I quite naturally decided outright that the main (or the first, at least) issue is the success of the swim, as the rules make a point of allowing unresisted challenges and the possibility of washing out to the sea seemed interesting to me, drastic as it is. We were all rather bemused when it was pointed out that the failure in the roll would, quite inevitably, lead to the character suffering the stakes. It was a practical shock, because the safety of invoking BDTP is usually there to control the consequences. As a result, it seems to me that it's often more dangerous to try the relatively easy unresisted rolls, especially for unskilled characters.

Well, that's a peculiarity to be sure. I might just go with the idea of treating all rolls as resisted, from now on. Sometimes the resisting party is implied, like in the case of the sea currents resisting a swimmer or a cliff resisting a climber. Those cases could pretty much be dealt with the same way the game does surprise attacks: the cliff or sea isn't active by design, so it doesn't roll in the initial conflict roll. Only give it stats if BDTP is somehow invoked (most likely because of an initial failure).

Right, mainly. I really thought I talked in the rules about the possibility of the Story Guide calling a contest as "harmful" before the roll, stating that the loser will take harm. But, I just looked, and I don't see that. Hm. Anyway, harm only happens in BDTP unless stated otherwise by the rules, or by the Story Guide in a specific situation. (For example: you've got a field full of broken metal and glass that the characters are going to charge across. The Story Guide might say, "Make an Endure check. If you fail, you reach the other side with Harm 1.")

That's a quite interesting option, which I've not even considered. After playing Dust Devils for a long time it seemed quite natural to me that characters couldn't ever be hurt without a BDTP situation. The level of consequential harm is decided based on consideration of the fiction, I imagine. Hmm.. How about these questions: is a contest roll required for Harm to be assigned, or could the Story Guide just give it based on the situation? Also, why not determine the level of Harm based on the degree of success in the roll, like you do in BDTP?

The Story Guide's judgment here is completely situational. Again, from practice: I've never given out a situational bonus that I can remember. If one was given out, it's not counted against the limited number of bonuses. It never stacks - bonuses do not stack. If you've got 15 things that give you a +1 in combat, you get a +1 in combat.

No situational bonuses at all? Huh, that's major. Then again, I can well understand it. Players have asked me what the point of imbuing an item with a +1 is, if the GM is giving out +1 bonuses anyway in appropriate situations. In practice I've found it easy and fun to be generous with the situational bonus, as it allows us to differentiate between, say, having weapons or not; at the beginning of the game the players seem to have little interest in imbuing anything, so we'd be pretty much without weapons and armor without the situational bonuses.

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Well, that's a peculiarity to be sure. I might just go with the idea of treating all rolls as resisted, from now on. Sometimes the resisting party is implied, like in the case of the sea currents resisting a swimmer or a cliff resisting a climber. Those cases could pretty much be dealt with the same way the game does surprise attacks: the cliff or sea isn't active by design, so it doesn't roll in the initial conflict roll. Only give it stats if BDTP is somehow invoked (most likely because of an initial failure).

The one area I do use unresisted rolls in a lot is chaining rolls. Let's say you were trying to vault secretly over a wall in order to sneak up on guards. It'd be an unresisted Athletics check, and if successful, the SL is bonus dice for the Stealth check. If unsuccessful, no vault.

No situational bonuses at all? Huh, that's major. Then again, I can well understand it. Players have asked me what the point of imbuing an item with a +1 is, if the GM is giving out +1 bonuses anyway in appropriate situations. In practice I've found it easy and fun to be generous with the situational bonus, as it allows us to differentiate between, say, having weapons or not; at the beginning of the game the players seem to have little interest in imbuing anything, so we'd be pretty much without weapons and armor without the situational bonuses.

I usually give the unarmed person a penalty die in this situation, which is actually more painful, I think. It's legal by the rules, too.

[ubergeek2012]

The main example that sticks to mind was the case of a character trying to swim into the city at night, in an effort to evade the guardsmen. In some other game I'd definitely have gone the way of "well, let's roll against the guards to see if you succeed in the undetected part", but in this case I quite naturally decided outright that the main (or the first, at least) issue is the success of the swim, as the rules make a point of allowing unresisted challenges and the possibility of washing out to the sea seemed interesting to me, drastic as it is.  We were all rather bemused when it was pointed out that the failure in the roll would, quite inevitably, lead to the character suffering the stakes. It was a practical shock, because the safety of invoking BDTP is usually there to control the consequences. As a result, it seems to me that it's often more dangerous to try the relatively easy unresisted rolls, especially for unskilled characters.

I've never really thought of BDTP as a safety net, but more of an escalation.  It was my understanding that invoking BDTP was more like a raise, making things more risky, not less.  I guess it's really linked to the initial stakes setting though, where the worst case scenario of BDTP is actually worse than the losing stakes of the conflict preceding it.  In your swimming example above, what was the group's understanding of "Washing out to sea"?

[Brian Newman]

These are all rather interesting answers. I find it surprising how differently I GM the game.

I can't see who your opposition would be in an unresisted roll. In practice, I minimize unresisted rolls, as I find them less than useful for the games I play in.

Well, I don't know who the opposition would be either, unless I'd go with a generic "humanized nature" kind of opponent, as several games do. My question was really about how to deal with the dangerousness of unresisted rolls vs. resisted ones, with applying BDTP being one possibility. Not using unresisted rolls is another option, and one I find quite interesting, because it implies a significantly different parsing of a given situation.

From the half a dozen or so sessions I've played of the game it seems I do use unresisted rolls now and then. The main example that sticks to mind was the case of a character trying to swim into the city at night, in an effort to evade the guardsmen. In some other game I'd definitely have gone the way of "well, let's roll against the guards to see if you succeed in the undetected part", but in this case I quite naturally decided outright that the main (or the first, at least) issue is the success of the swim, as the rules make a point of allowing unresisted challenges and the possibility of washing out to the sea seemed interesting to me, drastic as it is. We were all rather bemused when it was pointed out that the failure in the roll would, quite inevitably, lead to the character suffering the stakes.

Isn't that basically saying, "Roll to see if you die"?  It's like those Choose Your Own Adventure books:

If you decide to try to pick the lock, go to page 42.
If you decide to give up, go home, and retire from adventuring, go to page 91.

I haven't played TSOY yet, but it seems like, while you can play it that way, it may not be geared toward it.  I guess I would take advice from Dogs in the Vineyard here: if it doesn't matter how they get into the city, just let their plan work -- i.e., roll for whether the guards see them rather than whether they drown without ever making it.  If getting into the city is a major stress-point, then detail it even further; don't make their lives depend on just one roll, but go piece by piece.  If someone fails their Swim check, let someone try to save them, for instance.

Sorry I can't provide you a page cite for that until I write it down.  Okay.  It's on Page 1 of "Brian's Addendum to TSOY".

[ubergeek2012]

Isn't that basically saying, "Roll to see if you die"?  It's like those Choose Your Own Adventure books:

If you decide to try to pick the lock, go to page 42.
If you decide to give up, go home, and retire from adventuring, go to page 91.

That's what I was trying to ask Eero, whether that's how they're running it or not.  I think it falls under the category of never setting stakes where loss (or victory) is unacceptable to any of the players.

[Eero Tuovinen]

Hey, some credense here, if you please. Pg. 35 tells us that only a BDTP can get rid of important NPCs permanently. While the rules don't explicitly give player characters the same cover, I think it's pretty much a given in practical play, and should be a rule anyway. So no, "washing out to sea" was not equal to "kill your character". What happened was that the character washed in (as in, after being washed out) on a nearby island, which proved to be a) the royal graveyard of the said city and b) cursed such that no living man could ever return after setting foot on the isle. Effectively, "washing out to sea" meant just "I, the GM, will have full scene framing rights on the next scene, and your character will be wet." So it's business as usual in that regard; my bemusement over the perceived lack in the rules was because the player was nicely invested in the situation, and he was very willing to go to BDTP rather than wash out of what he perceived the storyline. (And before you ask, no, the character wasn't "permanently" stuck on the isle, regardless of curses or whatnot. He soon enough succered another player character to take his place, who on his turn started a career of graverobbing in his efforts to get out. We don't tyrannize players here.)

As for your general advice, geek, Brian: I think you're quite right in a general way, but that has little to do with the rules of the game. As I perceive it, the BDTP rules are a distinctive part of the game's structure, and players are quick to tailor their expectations accordingly. I can and could run the game without BDTP, certainly, but having it for some situations and not for others is just confusing. Stakes that are acceptable to everybody in a resisted conflict (wherein you're guaranteed the chance to put your life on the line) are hardly that in an unresisted one, if you just have to suck it up should you lose. So the BDTP is a safety valve in various directions, including emphasis ("I want this to be important!") and player rights ("I want to try that again!"). I find it supremely confusing that it's only available in some conflicts.

Specifically for Brian: I think that your suggested technical fixes, while common enough, are not what I'm looking for in my GMing. Giving second chances after a failure in a conflict is antithetical to most of what I understand of conflict resolution. Stakes stand and that's that, anything else would cause distrust in the currency of stakes. And as I wrote, I personally found the "wash out to sea" turn of events interesting, so "say yes" wasn't an option.

I should perhaps clarify the situation further, just to make sure nobody thinks I'm a neanderthal: the swim check was the first part of a support chain, the latter check would have been about whether the character got to the city undetected or not. So, while I'd have foregone the swim check in some other games (like DiV, which subsumes these kinds of strings into one conflict resolution), I found it a matter of course to do it this way here. That's something I learned from Sorcerer: if you have a victory currency, it makes a powerful tool of the game's landscape. Use it without hesitation. The storyline we ended up with was a surprise to everybody, all thanks to me asking for a swimming roll.

--

But that's that. I think Clinton's practical GMing is fascinating to hear about. Perhaps you'd like to write more extensively on the subject? For instance, giving penalty dice for being unarmed, that's something I didn't grok on for some reason, even if it seems supremely sensible. Of course, that implies the existence of the Secret of Unarmed Fighting that negates those penalties... Then again, I can't remember offhand any characters ending up in a fight without weapons, so perhaps the situation just hasn't come up yet.

Which reminds me of another question from my recent play:

5) How extensive are the GM rights concerning available options in BDTP? Can the GM limit use of abilities based on the narrated situation? If so, when? My practical example comes from the last time I played, which included a rather elaborate fight. Two situations, especially:
a) one fighter throws another down a well (a narration of success in using Brawling), which has been established as existing pre-BDTP. The one in the well has the goal of killing the other, the other one wants to humiliate the one in the well. I as the GM rule that the one in the well has to make a climbing roll (unrelated action) if he wants to continue without changing intention, while the other has to go into the well (jumping in, automatic) if he wants to continue fighting. I want to emphasize that the original throwing of the character into the well was not an unrelated action, but a normal effort of injuring the other with Brawling.
b) The character climbs out of the well and continues the fight (the other does a pr routine on the crowd meanwhile as an unrelated action), but gets knocked through a window. His primary fighting ability is spear-fighting (remember, he wants to kill). As the GM, could I have ruled that he dropped his spear either before dropping into the well, or when thrown through the window? Would it have been possible to call for a reactive ability roll or something, to find out? Would this have prevented him from using his ability? Considering that this is almost the same as using the Secret of Disarming, is it right that a player might get the benefit without having the Secret, just by narrating his opponent into situations where he'd likely drop his weapon? Is it right if he cannot drop the weapon, even when the narrated events would imply that?
My issue here, as can be seen from above, is that the normal-apparent GM adjucation rights used outside BDTP become crucial tactical considerations in BDTP. Is there any advice about how to adjucate? Is it assumed that any and all "realistic" considerations stemming from the milieu are ignored, or should they be available for players to use? If it's possible to, say, throw somebody into a well in a fight and have it mean something mechanically, can this be done as narration of a system-effective action, or does it have to be an unrelated action? If the former, it's important that the GM makes good calls, while with the latter it's important to differentiate between throwing somebody into a well as "just narration" or "for systemic effect", with only the latter causing limitations in his ability to attack on his next action.

The above question might at first glance seem like nit-picking or applying wrongful (read: traditional) standards on the system, but I think they're pretty fundamental, and that's based on some experience with similar rules systems. Instead of a fight the situation could be anything else, and the question stays the same: obviously situation-based considerations have some effect (the ability used has to make some sense), but how much, that's the question. Outside BDTP the FitM conflict resolution does the trick (because we have to only know that there's at least one possible course of events wherein the ability use makes sense), but in BDTP task resolution it's not that simple.

[Brian Newman]

[...]
Specifically for Brian: I think that your suggested technical fixes, while common enough, are not what I'm looking for in my GMing. Giving second chances after a failure in a conflict is antithetical to most of what I understand of conflict resolution. Stakes stand and that's that, anything else would cause distrust in the currency of stakes. And as I wrote, I personally found the "wash out to sea" turn of events interesting, so "say yes" wasn't an option.

I should perhaps clarify the situation further, just to make sure nobody thinks I'm a neanderthal: the swim check was the first part of a support chain, the latter check would have been about whether the character got to the city undetected or not. So, while I'd have foregone the swim check in some other games (like DiV, which subsumes these kinds of strings into one conflict resolution), I found it a matter of course to do it this way here. That's something I learned from Sorcerer: if you have a victory currency, it makes a powerful tool of the game's landscape. Use it without hesitation. The storyline we ended up with was a surprise to everybody, all thanks to me asking for a swimming roll.
[...]

We're talking about the same things here, just emphasized differently.

[Clinton R. Nixon]

5) How extensive are the GM rights concerning available options in BDTP? Can the GM limit use of abilities based on the narrated situation? If so, when? My practical example comes from the last time I played, which included a rather elaborate fight. Two situations, especially:
a) one fighter throws another down a well (a narration of success in using Brawling), which has been established as existing pre-BDTP. The one in the well has the goal of killing the other, the other one wants to humiliate the one in the well. I as the GM rule that the one in the well has to make a climbing roll (unrelated action) if he wants to continue without changing intention, while the other has to go into the well (jumping in, automatic) if he wants to continue fighting. I want to emphasize that the original throwing of the character into the well was not an unrelated action, but a normal effort of injuring the other with Brawling.
b) The character climbs out of the well and continues the fight (the other does a pr routine on the crowd meanwhile as an unrelated action), but gets knocked through a window. His primary fighting ability is spear-fighting (remember, he wants to kill). As the GM, could I have ruled that he dropped his spear either before dropping into the well, or when thrown through the window? Would it have been possible to call for a reactive ability roll or something, to find out? Would this have prevented him from using his ability? Considering that this is almost the same as using the Secret of Disarming, is it right that a player might get the benefit without having the Secret, just by narrating his opponent into situations where he'd likely drop his weapon? Is it right if he cannot drop the weapon, even when the narrated events would imply that?
My issue here, as can be seen from above, is that the normal-apparent GM adjucation rights used outside BDTP become crucial tactical considerations in BDTP. Is there any advice about how to adjucate? Is it assumed that any and all "realistic" considerations stemming from the milieu are ignored, or should they be available for players to use? If it's possible to, say, throw somebody into a well in a fight and have it mean something mechanically, can this be done as narration of a system-effective action, or does it have to be an unrelated action? If the former, it's important that the GM makes good calls, while with the latter it's important to differentiate between throwing somebody into a well as "just narration" or "for systemic effect", with only the latter causing limitations in his ability to attack on his next action.

The above question might at first glance seem like nit-picking or applying wrongful (read: traditional) standards on the system, but I think they're pretty fundamental, and that's based on some experience with similar rules systems. Instead of a fight the situation could be anything else, and the question stays the same: obviously situation-based considerations have some effect (the ability used has to make some sense), but how much, that's the question. Outside BDTP the FitM conflict resolution does the trick (because we have to only know that there's at least one possible course of events wherein the ability use makes sense), but in BDTP task resolution it's not that simple.

Eero,

Without saying I was smart or right to do so, I'll say that I wrote the rules to be flexible for group play style. I have this habit of doing that, making them deliberately interpretable, and then paying for it later when people think they're not clear. They're not clear on purpose. Again, this might be a mistake.

I can only tell you what I'd do in these situations. For the spear-dropping problem, I'd say, sure, narrate what you like here, including dropping the spear. Because there's no secret to explicitly remove it from play, the spear-using player has every right to narrate himself, for example, flipping through the window, grabbing the spear in one hand, and launching at the other character with it. If the character who threw the guy down a well had the Secret of Disarm, then I'd not allow the weapon to be grabbed in narration. Does that make sense?

The narration is logically disconnected from the stakes in TSOY. That is - I can narrate all sorts of stuff, but without the secrets to back it up, it's just fluff and color. Cool fluff and color, sure! But still, fluff and color.

[Eero Tuovinen]

Without saying I was smart or right to do so, I'll say that I wrote the rules to be flexible for group play style. I have this habit of doing that, making them deliberately interpretable, and then paying for it later when people think they're not clear. They're not clear on purpose. Again, this might be a mistake.

Quite reasonable, of course. I'm just asking in case there is some defensible reasons for playing these issues one way or another.

I can only tell you what I'd do in these situations. For the spear-dropping problem, I'd say, sure, narrate what you like here, including dropping the spear. Because there's no secret to explicitly remove it from play, the spear-using player has every right to narrate himself, for example, flipping through the window, grabbing the spear in one hand, and launching at the other character with it. If the character who threw the guy down a well had the Secret of Disarm, then I'd not allow the weapon to be grabbed in narration. Does that make sense?

So the only way narration of the particulars of the fiction affects the BDTP process is if all affected parties agree to it? What this means in practice is that we should avoid narrating things that cause cognitive dissonance, like that throwing-somebody-into-a-well example. One would reasonably expect being in a well to make it impossible to pursue a brawl-type BDTP, but as the mechanics do not explicitly support it, the well is ignored in practical terms insofar as the player in question is willing to narrate his character just flying right out. Thus it's better to not narrate anything like that at all and make players choose between "sensible" and "efficient" play..

I'm not saying that this is better either way; I'll have to think on it in terms of my own GMing. I find it interesting to compare to The Mountain Witch, which uses it's fact mechanics to consolate the need for mechanical effect and bounds of narration. In that game it's rather reasonable to throw somebody into a well to end or delay the conflict, as the player foregoes the opportunity for damage at the same time.

Oh, of course, here's an useful Secret if you want to throw brawlers into wells:

Secret of the Well
The character using the Secret of the Well in BDTP may throw his opponent into a well, utter a confusing statement or otherwise delay the conflict. If he succeeds in a perpendicular action this round, neither side may attack the other again before one makes a successful appropriate unrelated action to regain leverage.
Cost: 1 from an appropriate pool

[Clinton R. Nixon]

So the only way narration of the particulars of the fiction affects the BDTP process is if all affected parties agree to it? What this means in practice is that we should avoid narrating things that cause cognitive dissonance, like that throwing-somebody-into-a-well example. One would reasonably expect being in a well to make it impossible to pursue a brawl-type BDTP, but as the mechanics do not explicitly support it, the well is ignored in practical terms insofar as the player in question is willing to narrate his character just flying right out. Thus it's better to not narrate anything like that at all and make players choose between "sensible" and "efficient" play..

Hmm. I'm not sure I completely agree with you here. TSOY characters are larger-than-life. Your character throwing mine down a well in BDTP is great, because it makes you look awesome, and makes me look awesome leaping up and flipping out of it. I think this is a great thing to do in BDTP.

Also, we're talking here in a sort of black box environment - what would we do if X, as imagined on an internet forum. This is good, because it clears up ambiguities. But in a real game, if I narrated throwing a character down a well, I'd imagine that character's player might well go ahead and make a roll to get out of the well or give up or spend some time describing how that affects her character. And those are all good, awesome responses, and the ambiguity on how to respond to it is not that different from the ambiguity in any game that involves different people with different authorities over the same fiction; there is implicit agreement over what happens between those players, usually because of out-of-game social hierarchy. which is also great, and the intended way to play.