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infinitypanda
2009-11-17, 01:07 AM
Anyone played it? What did you think?

link. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_Wheel)

erikun
2009-11-17, 01:29 AM
Yes, and I typed up a big long post. But the forums ate it. :smallfurious:

I haven't played it myself, and trying to teach a new system to people online is rather difficult. What do you know about it? What would you like to know?

infinitypanda
2009-11-17, 01:31 AM
Well, I've flipped through the books, and read a few online reviews. I'm just kind of wondering what you like, what you don't like, and how play differs from other RPGs. Thanks.

Xefas
2009-11-17, 01:54 AM
I've never played it, but I've read the books and spoken with people who've played it about how it goes. Its been a while, so if I get some stuff wrong, I apologize.

Basically, the concept of mechanical 'balance' between characters isn't taken into consideration at all. If your character is a 15 year old peasant, you're expected to be vastly inferior in every way to a 30 year old noble in the same party. The noble has had an education, formal training in whatever he wants to do, life experience, sizable wealth he can call on, and plenty of political connections.

The idea of 200 year old Elves being the same level as 20 year old Humans is also out the window. A 200 year old Elf is going to beat the pants off of any Human at pretty much everything. He has 10x the life experience.

Not to mention, people who can use magic are just more powerful than your dude with a sword. Because they can tear apart reality, and you have a sword. This is intended.

This could be amazing for you if you like this kind of realism. It could also be terrible if this isn't the kind of thing you want.

Second, the idea of pass/fail checks are gone. You always progress, but either favorably or unfavorably to what your character is after. As an example, if a Rogue in D&D gets a 15 on his Open Lock checks against a DC 20 Lock, he doesn't open it. In Burning Wheel, if a character with lock picking skills gets 3 successes on a lock he needs 4 successes on, he still opens the lock, but maybe a nearby guard heard the particularly noisy picking and is coming to investigate, or maybe the lockpick got jammed and now you've got to acquire another one if you plan on picking any more locks.

Third, combat is deadly, and the game has a very nice system for detailing it, but it is not the main focus of the system. Using your words to accomplish things has its own system (called Duel of Wits) and it is much less likely to get you killed. That said, if you're failing a Duel of Wits, there's always the good ol' sword to fall back on.

Fourth, roleplaying is part of the system. This may be very different for someone who has only played D&D before. Your character has beliefs and instincts that, when roleplayed in such a way as to create the most badassly dramatic turn of events possible in the situation, give you mechanical bonuses. For instance, if your character has an instinct like "I always draw my sword when I feel threatened", and the King makes a remark about being able to murder you and your entire family with a single word to his guards, and you decide to act on your instinct and draw your sword on him, then that creates drama, and you might get stuff for it (I forget exactly what, its been a while since I read the books).

Fifth, no classes. You have lifepaths, which are kind of like classes, but not really. Basically, whatever your character was doing during a particular part of his life is what lifepath he has (for instance, if he was conscripted into service at the age of 16, and completes his tour of duty at the age of 20, then he has four years of the Soldier lifepath, and skills to match). The advancement in the game involves using your skills in progressively more difficult tasks to upgrade them (so, using your 4 die Baking skill to bake a 1 difficulty tray of cookies wouldn't get you any points, but baking a 6 difficulty extravagant wedding cake would get you some points to upgrading to 5 dice).

I can't think of anything more at this point. Once again, I'm sorry if I got anything wrong.

infinitypanda
2009-11-17, 02:05 AM
Second, the idea of pass/fail checks are gone. You always progress, but either favorably or unfavorably to what your character is after. As an example, if a Rogue in D&D gets a 15 on his Open Lock checks against a DC 20 Lock, he doesn't open it. In Burning Wheel, if a character with lock picking skills gets 3 successes on a lock he needs 4 successes on, he still opens the lock, but maybe a nearby guard heard the particularly noisy picking and is coming to investigate, or maybe the lockpick got jammed and now you've got to acquire another one if you plan on picking any more locks.

This intrigues me. I hadn't heard that about the system before. It sounds kind of cool.

erikun
2009-11-17, 02:09 AM
Things I like? I'll try to start with what I like the best, and work my way downward from there.

The system is (or seems to be) built around the idea of spending less time rolling and more time roleplaying. For example, extended checks in D&D? They're handled with a single check at the beginning of the scene, and the check holds throughout the scene. If you rolled poorly on a stealth check (and know it), you can take the time to move silently and stick to the shadows. Heck, you might do so anyways, because you don't necessarily know how difficult the check was. Then again, if time is a problem, you could decide to "rush" the check - at a greater risk of failure.

Burning Wheel makes a point that "failure" doesn't necessarily mean you've failed at the task. The GM is free to say that you've suceeded, but throw in a complication. Complications are like curveballs - they don't stop you from succeeding, but they do make life more difficult. Using the stealth example above, failing it could result in a guard spotting you, as in D&D. Or it could result in something completely independant happening, putting the guard on high alert. Perhaps a procession is passing by the hallway you were in, forcing you to waste time hidding in a closet. Or perhaps you succeeded, only to find the room you were headed towards is barred and locked - need to find a way inside before a guard wanders by. The complication system looks fun, because it's a way for the GM to throw some new problems at the PCs beyond just "you fail, roll initiative."


Skills are based off a d6 dice pool, with characters needing to get enough successes to beat the difficulty. There isn't any experience in Burning Wheel - rather, using skills gives "experience" in that skill, and using it enough increases the rank of the skill. At higher ranks, more difficult challanges need to be faces to increase further ranks. Picking a lock with a difficulty 2 doesn't mean anything to someone with a Lockpicking 4 skill.

The plus side? It looks more organic. The minus? Bookkeeping, although the character sheets make it easy to keep track of things. It also means the GM need to be aware of what they throw at the players, as it influences their progress - players can't choose to "level up" miscellaneous skills, at least not very quickly. A GM who sends his PCs into monster-killing dungeon crawls will end up with a bunch of combat-oriented PCs, but the characters won't be any better at anything else.


Character creation is build around the idea of "lifepaths." Lifepaths are chosen to represent what a character has done with their life before joining the group, and the choices of lifepaths determine the skills, abilities, and faults each character can (or does) have. Someone who has lived as a soldier and a bandit will have a lot of different pros and cons than someone who was a herbalist and priest.

There are four races in the Character Burner - Human, Elf, Dwarf, Orc - and each has their own unique skills and lifepaths to follow. While all four have a bunch of interesting and unique choices, this does bring up one of my biggest problem with the system: it looks hostile to homebrewing new content. While having one race use another's lifepaths shouldn't be a problem (such as an orc living with humans), trying to create new lifepaths, or even new races, would be a LOT of work. Making a new race would involve a new magic system, new magic skills, and new (or modified) lifepaths. Trying to make new lifepaths - say, because you want it to be a modern day setting - would involve rewritting nearly half the Character Burner.


If you're planning a standard fantasy game though, or don't care much for the setting details, then it shouldn't be much of a bother. Burning Wheel also has several campaign settings, which I assume would expand on the rather limited fantasy-oriented lifepaths.

The biggest complain I've heard from players was with the complication system - apparently, they disliked encountering obstacle after upon failed rolls. I can certainly understand that, as getting past one problem only to encounter another (due to a failed roll) and another after that (failed roll) would be frustrating. I can also see advancing to higher levels in skills to become amazingly difficult - for the highest levels, you would need to overcome difficulties higher than your dice pool, which requires using your race-specific abilites to overcome them (like Willpower in WoD), which would just bring your character one step closer to retirement... but that's probably speculation on my part. It does look like an impedement to someone who wants to reach "epic" levels quickly, though.

Ask me more if you're still curious, or if any of that didn't make sense.

infinitypanda
2009-11-17, 02:16 AM
How much have you played? Did it feel conducive to longer campaigns, shorter ones, or does that not really matter at all?

It's about $25-$30 for the core rules and the character burner. Would you consider that a fair deal?

erikun
2009-11-17, 02:37 AM
I mentioned that I hadn't played myself (in the first post), although I did make a few characters and see how they turned out. Overall, character creation went well - they were good at some things, terrible at other things, and their abilities and faults were mostly in line with the character concepts.

I will point out one thing Xefas mentioned. Characters of largely different ages will have largely different skill levels. However, most characters starting out will have the same number of lifepaths, and thus will be starting out at around the same skill level. You aren't likely to have a 30 year old noble in the same starting party as a 15 year old peasant. (The peasant will probably be older, and have a number of practical skills.)


$30 for the core rules is a good deal, as far as RPGs are concerned. Everything you need is in the core book and character burner, and there's a lot in there, despite the size. Most other RPGs run $30-$50 also, and some require multiple books to start up.

The other thing to consider is additional books. Most other Burning Wheel books are also $25-$30 each, so your initial investment would start to add up if you wanted to pick the others up. Of course, they aren't necessary (I haven't really tried using them yet) as the core rules give plenty of options.

The Monster Burner has stats for a bunch of monsters (obviously), along with tips for using them and suggested ways of the party encountering them. Magic Burner might as well be a Character Burner 2, as it has a half-dozen new ways to cast magic, along with independant lifepaths for character.

infinitypanda
2009-11-17, 02:39 AM
Is the Monster Burner required? Or does the core rulebook come with a few sample monsters for you to use?

erikun
2009-11-17, 02:50 AM
The core book does have a few NPCs in the back, and you can always make more from the character burner. So no, you do not need the monster burner. In fact, as the challange for an "encounter" depends on the characters' skill levels, you could simply make a monster based off whatever would be challanging to your players.

Taking a quick look through the Monster Burner, it looks like it has tips for building monsters, along with guidelines on how high you should set the obstacles for it. It then has several lifepaths for various monsterous creatures - ratmen, giant spiders, trolls, and intelligent wolves. The last 1/3rd is full of specific monsters, complete with stats, plothooks, attacks, and even instincts (much the same way characters have them).

Hopefully, that will tell you if it's something you need or not.

infinitypanda
2009-11-17, 02:53 AM
Sounds like something fun, but non-essential. Thanks for the replies. If I have a bit of money lying around, I'll definitely give Burning Wheel a try.

elliott20
2009-11-17, 03:18 AM
I feel that BW has a very YMMV kind of feel to it.
A lot of it has to do with system mastery. The book keeping in this game, like others have said, is pretty immense. And figuring out how to do conflicts can be very intimidating.

the game in general, is a VERY intimidating game for new comers. I think it took me maybe 4-5 games to start having things fall into place, even before the optimizing can happen.

As for the different levels of character creation, I don't remember if BW has this but in Burning Empires (the BW sci-fi variant) characters with less lifepaths will usually start with more Artha. Artha, in this case, being the rewards you get for roleplaying to your beliefs and instincts. Artha is split into 3 classes: fate, deeds, and one other that escapes me at the moment.

you get these based on your accomplishments in game that echo to your beliefs.

What this means is that while weaker characters are not as effective, they have far more potential to alter their rolls with the extra Artha they have.

Totally Guy
2009-11-17, 03:35 AM
There is a decent Wiki available for you to check out content.

Here (http://www.burningwheel.org/wiki/index.php?title=Http://www.burningwheel.org/wiki/index.php%3Ftitle%3DMain_Page%26action%3Dpurge)

The download page gives some content from the books, like the DM screen with the weapon tables. There are a few monsters and lifepaths there too.

I'm going to run a demo of this game this weekend for my group. Then we'll do some campaign concept planning and make characters so the campaign can start for real the week after. I have high expectations but also worries I'll totally mess it up. Wish me luck.

The system is rather heavy and if you think it might be a problem then perhaps you should check out Mouse Guard. It's a simplified system, very pretty and completely self contained.

Edit: There is a trick for making older human characters. For an X number lifepath character you can pick a lifepath twice. Then subject to group approval you can keep taking that same lifepath until you reach your desired age. It's roughly balanced with the rest of the X LP party due to the diminishing returns. This wouldn't work so wellwith Elves as they just keep getting better stat pools as they age... same with orcs but that perhaps balances in a slightly crueler way... lose a leg during character creation?:smalleek::smalltongue:


The system is (or seems to be) built around the idea of spending less time rolling and more time roleplaying.

That's not the interpretation I've got. I think it's to allow the roleplaying to act as a vehicle to get to the next conflict. I mean advancement comes from rolling the dice and Artha (and the legendary "shade shift") comes from driving the game forward. I believe that constant dice rolling is encouraged so long as it's meaningful.

The results holding is to make results meaningful.

If you used intimidation to stop me romantically persuing a girl and the test was failed then that's it. I'd have protection from being intimidated again until the situation is somehow different. It's not just a matter of trying until you succeed.