For those of you who either haven't played with me before, or didn't bother to check my posting history; I have an unfortunately erratic history with PbP in general, , and a really bad one with running PbP campaigns.
Mostly I am putting that out that so you know what you could well be getting into if you sign on for this little experiment.
That said, I wanna try running a PbP Burning Wheel campaign. As this is Paizo's Website & not the Burning Wheel forums, that may be seen as whimsical to the point of absurdity, but for those of you who know me this should come as no surprise...
"" You might ask. Well I'm glad you did. Burning Wheel is a skill-focused FRPG, which means instead of 'levelling-up' with the accrual of XP, you improve your character by improving individual skills at their own pace depending upon personal choice & focused effort.
Character Creation is also much more 'concept-based', rather than 'Class-based'. While your character concept may fall into a particular Archetypical niche , this has less to do with what Class you chose & more with the choices you make in the course of play, in the game I am intending to run.
Here is the second half of my pitch, You will all be playing Kids to start.
Alrighty then. Here is the rule to start: Only post here if this interests you & you think you can handle a game with an erratic Chronicler & a system with which you may or may not be comfortable. Characters are children who have survived the death of their parents & the effective destruction of their village(s)/homes. Racial Stock available are Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Roden , Orcs, Trolls, and Great Wolves .
As a further note, while Humans, Roden & Wolves can work out their differences with the other Stock; Elves & Dwarves have severe difficulties dealing with Orcs & Trolls, and vice versa . So the odds are good, if somebody comes to me with an Orc concept & somebody else comes to me with an Elf, I'm likely to chose one or the other, not both.
How old can you be? Early adolescents, just hitting puberty, for the most part. For Humans, that means early teens at the latest. For Orcs, much the same. For Great Wolves, this means you have only experienced one Winter . Roden age a bit faster than Humans so you are definitely less than ten years old. Elves & Dwarves will be in their early twenties.
First, they are cowards. Ninety percent of the Orcs created in these lifepaths are going to have an incredibly high hesitation, which means they flinch from pain and run from danger. They may strike quickly, but they flee even more swiftly.
Second, these Orcs have a culture firmly embedded in their lifepaths. Every time you make an Orc, you are birthing the product of a brutal, callous society, prone to hatred and focused on unreasoning revenge. It’s important for an Orc player to be vaguely aware of this (primarily when dealing with other Orcs). Because when that whip cracks, he may find himself brought to heel, and in a whole lot of trouble.
Personally, I don’t advocate incorporating Orcs into a mixed party of Elves, Dwarves and Men. These Orcs have a bad attitude and often don’t get along well with others. However, it can be done. I’ve seen some inspiring examples where Orcs are part of a tapestry of civilized cultures in a game world, no better or worse off than any of their brethren. If that’s your desire, simply shake the Tolkien out of your head and think, “wiry, green-skinned, smart, tough bastards” and you should be fine. Keep the Hatred, though. It’s too fun not to.