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Anyways! I have purchased the Burning Wheel books (Gold Edition, Monster Burner and Magic Burner) and I'm enamored with the setting and how refreshingly different it is from D&D and Pathfinder.
Unfortunately, I find the rules themselves to be kind of...esoteric. It looks, at least on the surface, that it encourages player-driven, more seat-of-the-pants style story-telling, as opposed to things like Pathfinder's Adventure Paths, with the players being able to generate NPC contacts on the fly through Circles and stuff, and beliefs and instincts giving the GM guidelines to the kinds of story they want their characters to participate in.
Is there a sort of "Burning Wheel for Dummies" or a primer of some sort? A way to get a feel for how a game of Burning Wheel flows and guidelines for effective character building and dice rolling and stuff? Is there even an XP progression for this game? It doesn't look like you can add lifepaths to a character after character creation in the way you advance in levels in D&D. I really wanna enjoy this game more than just reading the books for the cool Tolkienesque stuff. Halp!
There's a few video demos of the game up on youtube, which give an idea on how all the mechanics fit together.
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My wife got all the Burning Wheel books a few months ago. She's REALLY looking forward to running it sometime soon. I'm excited, too -- especially to have someone else run something! :)
I agree with you about the rules, though; it's *not* a rules-light system, even though it's a narrative-driven system. I'm really enjoying studying the system, but it's going to take us quite a while to really get it down, I think.
Especially, the "Fight!" system seems like a really fun way to run duels -- but golly if I can get my head around it! :)
There is a wiki that has helped me quite a bit:
http://www.burningwheel.org/wiki/index.php?title=Http://www.burningwheel.or g/wiki/index.php%3Ftitle%3DMain_Page
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One thing that sort of confuses me about lifepaths. Can a character GAIN a lifepath due to in game events? Say a character starts as a commoner, but does a valorous act and earns a boon from his king, and he asks to be knighted. Do they gain a new lifepath for this event? Or is it once a miller always a miller, and if you want to become a prince or an Etharch at some point in the game, you have to HAVE those lifepaths before you start adventuring? How does the game handle a person becoming king by his own hand?
I don't think there are hard and fast rules for adding new lifepaths. The system handles improving existing skills (and stats) and learning new ones through use and handles character growth through the addition of traits as you accomplish your beliefs.
Since all of the LP add several years to your age I would rule that you could add a new LP if that many years of game time had passed and you had actually done the things that make up the LP. Alternatively, if we took a break for a long in-game period I'd let people add LPs with durations up to that time if they could justify it.
Pan's not wrong about letting go of the D&D mindset. Burning Wheel and its kin are wholly different animals. The system is really about exploring your characters beliefs and how those change him or her fundamentally as time goes by. Characterization is inherent in the system...as opposed to an optional overlay. You gain rewards for playing your beliefs, for instance.
I'd suggest checking out the Burning Wheel forums and reading about any questions you have, play examples, etc. over there. Maybe check out a couple of actual play podcasts. They've helped me understand Burning Empires (a related sci-fi game) much better.
Hope that helps.
M
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One thing that sort of confuses me about lifepaths. Can a character GAIN a lifepath due to in game events? Say a character starts as a commoner, but does a valorous act and earns a boon from his king, and he asks to be knighted. Do they gain a new lifepath for this event? Or is it once a miller always a miller, and if you want to become a prince or an Etharch at some point in the game, you have to HAVE those lifepaths before you start adventuring? How does the game handle a person becoming king by his own hand?
As I understand the system, lifepaths are purely used in character generation. Once you actually start playing the game, you gain all further skills and traits, etc. through tests and Artha (i.e. gaining experience). The idea is that lifepaths describe what happened to your character before the story; once the story starts, you decide what happens by playing it out.
I suppose you could conceivably add on additional lifepaths later on as a way of indicating "downtime", like for instance if there were a several-year gap between adventures, but that's not what they're designed to do.
What it took for me:
Now we have two active Burning Wheel campaigns. Pan is right, you really need to check a lot of your basic RPG assumptions at the door for BW to really shine.
The rules are very esoteric. They present the information and very little (helpful) editorial comment. There are a TON of seemingly innocuous statements in the book that are actually really important. If you are reading it and thinking "It's an RPG, I know how all this stuff works" then you are going to miss some important notes, mainly Intent and Task, or the general flow of play.
I feel like I have learned a lot about the system in the last few weeks, and I'm eager to share, but it's hard to know where to start. Do you have any questions?
As I understand the system, lifepaths are purely used in character generation. Once you actually start playing the game, you gain all further skills and traits, etc. through tests and Artha (i.e. gaining experience). The idea is that lifepaths describe what happened to your character before the story; once the story starts, you decide what happens by playing it out.
The lifepaths do crop up again during play when using the Circles ability, and they are also used by the GM for picking NPC skills quickly.
But yes, after character burning, no more lifepaths. You advance by making tests, pass or fail, so there's never any reason not to spring into action. Especially since failure is different/fun in BW.
A miller can become a knight via in-game events and a trait vote. Lifepaths are not like class levels. It's easy to imagine they are at first, but they're not. I made my first BW character thinking the end justified the means and that I would use any old LPs to get the skills and traits I wanted... just as I treat class levels in PF. I came to regret this.
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So...what kinds of lifepaths would one need to be a paladin?
Is maximizing one's Grief/Hatred/Greed inevitable at some point, as a limiter for non-Human characters? There doesn't seem to be a way to REDUCE these, only prevent them from increasing further. Does this mean that with enough bad luck, a character will inevitably gain enough to remove them from play?
How exactly does play in Burning Wheel flow? I watched that demo, which was informative, but it only covers one scenario. How would events play out through an entire campaign? Burning Wheel seems to move much slower than D&D. In one scenario of D&D, you can go through an entire dungeon, while in Burning Wheel's demo, the entire dungeon was introductory text for the treasure at the end and the fight over it.
So...what kinds of lifepaths would one need to be a paladin?
Well, I presume that "paladin" in this case means a supernatural holy knight, in which case, I would start at the knight lifepath and work my way back given a certain number of lifepaths.
You'd want to pick up the Faithful attribute to command holy miracles in your god's name. Bear in mind, the rules assume a certain amount of setting variation to how things like divine magic work (monotheism is the default in BW) but with the Magic Burner and the Adventure Burner, a GM should be well-equipped to handle any sort of setting assumptions.
Playing a knight with a Faith rating would be "close enough" for me... it might not duplicate every PF paladin spell, and it will certainly feel very different. Because of the Belief system, you can expect to have your beliefs challenged a lot, which has interesting implications for a paladin.
Is maximizing one's Grief/Hatred/Greed inevitable at some point, as a limiter for non-Human characters? There doesn't seem to be a way to REDUCE these, only prevent them from increasing further. Does this mean that with enough bad luck, a character will inevitably gain enough to remove them from play?
Those special attributes do create lines that you should avoid crossing, but the real point is to evoke certain behaviors and create specific problems for those characters. I find the elves in BW to be the most Tolkien of all elves, more than MERP even. In theory, a GM who didn't like that could change them, either starting from scratch or modifying things to be more "balanced" ... Monster Burner is the book that would guide that process.
Bad luck... is less of an issue. The GM doesn't really call for rolls in BW, he just sets the scene to challenge beliefs and the players pick their skills to react to the scene. So yeah, if the GM sets the scene to tempt your greed, then it's something you have to deal with. But Luck doesn't enter into it as much. If something happens, it's because the player or the GM made it happen. There's a roll, but you ONLY ever roll when beliefs are on the line.
How exactly does play in Burning Wheel flow? I watched that demo, which was informative, but it only covers one scenario. How would events play out through an entire campaign? Burning Wheel seems to move much slower than D&D. In one scenario of D&D, you can go through an entire dungeon, while in Burning Wheel's demo, the entire dungeon was introductory text for the treasure at the end and the fight over it.
That's quite telling, isn't it?
BW pays close attention to aspects of reality that are just not mechanical in PF. Moments of personal drama have the mechanical complexity of a fight with goblins. Of course that'll take more time! Last night, I witnessed a PC desperately petitioning his cousin to watch over his two young children. That same PC had left his cousin's husband for dead in an earlier scene. What would normally have been mentioned and maybe roleplayed got broken down into a line-by-line argument, tapping individual characters' strengths and weaknesses. It ended in a way nobody had anticipated (the PC collapsed fro exhaustion and starvation, since he had given his children all the food he foraged in an earlier scene)...
It's not that we as a group weren't capable of this kind of RP before. It's that BW was forcing us to break it down, and the characters have ratings that are meaningful for this kind of scene.
So yeah, something that would have taken less than a minute in normal PF play with this group ended up taking a half hour. But it was a damn quality half hour.
Anyway, how does play flow?
The GM sets the scene, including (hopefully) something that will challenge a character's listed beliefs.
Then the GM prompts the player for his intent.
The Player states his intent, and the player and GM work out what skill can be used to accomplish it.
The GM states the consequence of failure on that roll. It should not be a roadblock to progress, it should represent progress in a complicated or interesting direction. This is a big deal, and a crucial difference between PF and BW. Read that again and let it sink in, it's really easy to overlook the importance of this.
The player rolls, all of the various basic mechanics come into play. The player also looks at advancement and decides just how badly they want to pass the roll. They lobby for advantage, add extra dice from related skills, or from helping characters, as deemed necessary.
If the roll succeeded, the player gets what he intended. If the roll failed, the GM's stated consequences come into play.
At which point, the GM sets the scene again, and the whole cycle starts anew.
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If you'll ask me, I'd say the biggest difference is the role of failure in dice rolls. Also, the fact that the GM doesn't ask for rolls, he JUST sets the scene, and the player declares intent.
In PF, all the intents are implicit. An attack roll just IS... the intent is implicitly that you want to kill the enemy — if you want to subdue the enemy then that's a modified roll which is actually a different thing entirely. In BW, they're both intents for the same skill roll. It makes it a lot more open for different approaches.
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Well, I presume that "paladin" in this case means a supernatural holy knight, in which case, I would start at the knight lifepath and work my way back given a certain number of lifepaths.
You'd want to pick up the Faithful attribute to command holy miracles in your god's name. Bear in mind, the rules assume a certain amount of setting variation to how things like divine magic work (monotheism is the default in BW) but with the Magic Burner and the Adventure Burner, a GM should be well-equipped to handle any sort of setting assumptions.
Playing a knight with a Faith rating would be "close enough" for me... it might not duplicate every PF paladin spell, and it will certainly feel very different. Because of the Belief system, you can expect to have your beliefs challenged a lot, which has interesting implications for a paladin.
Isn't Faith human only? What if I wanna be some other race?
Those special attributes do create lines that you should avoid crossing, but the real point is to evoke certain behaviors and create specific problems for those characters. I find the elves in BW to be the most Tolkien of all elves, more than MERP even. In theory, a GM who didn't like that could change them, either starting from scratch or modifying things to be more "balanced" ... Monster Burner is the book that would guide that process.
The Tolkienesque nature of elves is what I like in this, but I've been concerned that I'd hit the top of the Grief bar and be forced to Go West before the story's over.
IS there really a sense of progression like levelling? What I'm getting from this is that it's kind of like an Elder Scrolls game where using your skills will cause them to improve, but there doesn't feel like there's any sort of "goal" or anything to strive for.
Faith and Stock: Faith is available to Roden (the ratmen from the Monster Burner) as well.
If you want to make an elf or a dwarf with faith, you just need your GM to sign off on it (and to understand what he's getting into). That's not a big deal because the Faith rules are heavily mediated by the GM anyway. Unlike PF, Faith doesn't really use spells, you petition the gods for miracles, and it is entirely the whim of the gods that grants them.
Elves and Grief: The concern you've raised is meant to fuel roleplaying. If you are teetering on the brink of max grief, then you are going to start behaving differently.
Honestly, I've yet to plumb the depths of the special attributes like that, but I think the ending conditions are really just meant to be a sword of damocles hanging overhead — inspiring behavior appropriate to the race. Maybe there's more to it, I don't know quite yet.
Progression like leveling: Does it feel like leveling? Absolutely not. Advancement is gradual and organic. Pretty much every time you reach for the dice, you have to make decisions as a player regarding advancement in the relevant skill. You need to decide whether to include bonus dice that are available to you, because if you include them you may not earn the type of test you need to advance the skill. So which is more important to you, learning or success?
Four lifepath characters do feel a bit "first level", in that they really haven't mastered all of the things they need to be good at to be who they are. As time wears on, characters feel more competent. Part of this is that there is no Challenge Rating metric in BW, NPCs are generally made objectively, so the increase in PC competence is comparable to a static baseline... that makes it much more noticeable. In PF, by contrast, going up in level often feels like the whole world levels up with you.
As for "goals", traits can fill that roll. There are some traits that you can just earn through role-play that are kind of like feats. There are training skills you can open, which are also kind of like feats. But in general, the reward for raising a skill is that you have a large dice pool. The mechanics are such that an extra die in the pool is a useful, noticeable thing... I'd compare it to a +2 or even a +4 in Pathfinder.
But again, it's a different game. In fact, even though they are both nominally "role-playing games" I would say BW is as different from PF as PF is different from a more locked-down board game (Arkham Horror perhaps, or the PF card game.)
They're so different that not only did my attempt to use an Adventure Path plot for BW fail, I now know that it was doomed to fail no matter what. The GM simply does not drive the story as the singular engine of events. The GM sets the scene, the players drive the story, and the GM has to be a lot more responsive and a lot less "prepared".
Play Burning Wheel, but before you do, seriously examine your assumptions about how an RPG even works. This game makes crunch out of Role-Playing. In doing so, it leaves less room for abstract layers of combat crunch you find in other games. Combat's still crunchy, but it abides by all the same rules as the other aspects of reality.
I'm quite sure where you got that impression. It is possible to make a really impressive magic sword — something that would shame even the high caster level effects in PF — by using the shade mechanics. A grey shade sword, which I think exists in the Magic Burner but its existence is implicit in the main rulebook, would tend to obliterate all but the toughest characters.
There are balance dice, which simply add +1D to attack rolls, but that's more akin to Masterwork. Similar in rarity, I presume.
So no, I'd say that's not really an accurate statement. You can have a whole range of magic items in BW, same as PF. They do tend to feel a little bit more "fairy tale", because there is less of a need to constrain strange powers in the combat system.
Let me reiterate, I love PF and BW. It's the stark differences between the two that let me get two completely different needs addressed.
Pathfinder is like a great schlocky action movie, or a video game. Everyone knows that the setup is just there to establish the awesome action scenes. The game is about combat, and so you can afford to have many layers of abstraction surrounding the main event. Venture too far from the intended purpose (action! super powers! dungeons!) and things break down quickly. That's okay, it keeps you plugging away at the game's intended purpose.
Burning Wheel is a drama show with great action sequences. You can have an awesome fight scene, but that scene fits into a greater whole. Who is fighting and why is more important than their precise methods of attaining success. There's not a lot of abstraction — there's only one or two dimensions to "being good with a sword" as opposed to the 8 or so variables that you have in PF.
Interestingly, though, BW is not "less crunchy" than PF. While they may not hang as much abstraction on combat, and the character variables are fewer, the options available to all characters are more numerous and arguably more dynamic.
In Pathfinder, I actually encourage blank-slate characters (largely because I prefer to run adventure paths). Bring me someone you know almost nothing about, and let the crazy high-adventure story shape their personality into something memorable over the course of two-dozen sessions.
In Burning Wheel, the characters ARE the campaign. There's a space on the the character sheet for the player to express exactly what they want to tackle while RPing the PC, and the GM is obligated by the game mechanics to service that statement! This is why you can't run an AP in Burning Wheel. You just can't predict what a burning wheel campaign is going to do that far ahead!
I do need to sit down with my Burning Wheel Gold and read through it.
No, you need to play it.
I love a lot of things about the game, but the way the important information is presented is NOT one of those.
That's something it has in common with Pathfinder.
I don't normally even consider play by post, but now I'm thinking I might have to run it for you.
I don't normally even consider play by post, but now I'm thinking I might have to run it for you.
If you're taking applications, then this is the most exciting thing I've read all day. I'd love to try out some BW, but the fact that Role-Playing is crunch in that system intimidates a lot of players I know.
What's holding me back: I don't ever do play by post, and BW is really built for face-to-face play. Also, I'm involved in a lot of games right now. That doesn't rule it out, I just need to think it over for a while.
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Gonna necro this thread to mention that my wife is going to run Burning Wheel for the first time ever tomorrow. The players will be me (I'm excited to play, since I normally only get to GM stuff), two members of our longstanding Pathfinder group, and two new players. I'm looking forward to it, and if I remember I'll post here to let everybody know how it goes!
Gonna necro this thread to mention that my wife is going to run Burning Wheel for the first time ever tomorrow. The players will be me (I'm excited to play, since I normally only get to GM stuff), two members of our longstanding Pathfinder group, and two new players. I'm looking forward to it, and if I remember I'll post here to let everybody know how it goes!
Please do! I've had the burning wheel books since university, but never found more than one other person willing to actually even attempt to learn the rules. I've now moved countries, and they're sitting back in England, far out of reach - and I never even got to see the damn thing played!
Would love to hear how it works out, and good luck!
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It went pretty great! Though we ran things pretty rules-lite, so it's a little hard for me to say how well exactly the rules helped us roleplay. But we had a great time roleplaying our various characters' personalities and motivations, which is the purpose of the system.
The intro adventure was simple: we're a group of adventurers who just found a legendary sword in the bottom of a dungeon. We all want it for various reasons, and we have to work out among ourselves who gets it.
It's a very un-D&D/Pathfinder situation, since there's no outside threat or challenge, just the interpersonal conflict. That made things very interesting. However, that did make it rather difficult to resolve the plot and move the story along. The rules also seemed to make it pretty difficult to overcome other characters' opposition; defenders seemed to have a heavy advantage in opposed tests (though we could have been running that wrong).
In the end, most of the party members agreed to share the sword, and use it to fulfill their various quests in turn (as the Elf reasoned, "I'm immortal; what difference does it make to me if I have to wait another 10 years to get my father's sword back?"). The Rat-Man cultist had a crisis of faith and decided to abandon his evil cult. My greedy Dwarven adventurer convinced him to help me to raid their stronghold for treasure, since I figured they must have way more than one measly magic sword.
It was a really fun session, and I'm looking forward to playing again the next time!
If rules-lite Burning Wheel appeals to you, I highly recommend Mouse Guard or Torchbearer. In many ways, they are just better games.
But Burning Wheel (and Burning Empires) have a lot more depth to them. If you're not making use of the depth, I'd look at the other two.
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If rules-lite Burning Wheel appeals to you, I highly recommend Mouse Guard or Torchbearer. In many ways, they are just better games.
But Burning Wheel (and Burning Empires) have a lot more depth to them. If you're not making use of the depth, I'd look at the other two.
We don't intend to always run rules-lite; this was the intro session for everybody (GM included), so were were just working out the basics.
The complicated stuff, like "Fight!" and "Duel of Wits" look really fun to me -- but I still haven't quite gotten my head around how wounds work.
EDIT: I have heard Mouseguard is great, though.