Perspective

“The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.” ― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

Welcome back.  For those of you who have been anxiously holding your breath waiting for me to update this blog… I hope you woke up from the time you spent passed out with pleasant dreams.  Lots of non-gaming stuff going on my life that keep demanding more time.  But enough of excuses, let’s talk about perspective!

Breaking Out:

As Douglas Adams mentioned, it is pretty easy to be unaware of how skewed your perspective may be.  Like a ranger that fails a tracking roll, subtle shifts in your focus can lead you far from where you thought you would be. Humans can adapt to almost anything, and what has become your normal state of being (in gaming as well as life) maybe completely out of whack. You can require a sharp contrast to pull your perspective back into alignment.  For example:

The Numenera game I was running has come to a close.  It was not the game’s fault.  It ran smooth for the nine people that I was running it for.  The world was interesting and the system was a lot of fun, and very easy to GM.  But over the last couple of months, I have noticed from behind the screen that the group was starting to crack.  Focus was slipping on a routine basis, both mechanically and socially.  Personality conflicts were spiking, and while I would leave the table with a sense of loving Numenera, there was always some sort of sour note that tainted my thoughts.  I talked with other game members about issues they were having with the story, the pacing, and the distractions.  It got so bad that more than one of my players was looking to leave.  I was concerned but didn’t know how to fix it.  I looked to mechanics to step up the pacing and force the group to cut down on distractions.  I tried to tighten up the story.  All of these worked to some extent or another, but they were Band-Aids on a ruptured artery.

And then something strange happened.  My group got offered a playtest spot in a soon to be published adventure.  We had to get through our section (which I will talk more about when I am able to) in about two weeks, so we paused Numenera and dove right in.  And the first session went smoothly.  Everyone was engaged and had a blast.  They learned the mechanics quickly.  It was bizarre.  The second session was even better.  I was trying to figure out how this game, a d20 based game was solved so many of the issues we were having when it was a far more complicated game.  And then it hit me.  The first session only had seven people, as two of our players were snowed in.  The second had even less.  I had run a five player game for the first time since the too short stint with Mage.

I had been running 7+ people in games since October of 2012, longer than that if you count the store events where we had 10+ players.  That group size had become my mental model, even though my optimum group size is 4.  When the playtest changed my perspective, I was able to see that the problems at my table were not system based, but size based.  Every one that I had fretted over, or that had been brought to my attention could be traced back to group size.  The change in perspective allowed me to accurate look at the issues in my group and make steps to change them.

The Long Con:

But perspective also relates to the games you are playing, not just the group.  The game, either with setting or mechanics, imparts the designer’s perspective to the game.  This has been clearly evident in the Burning Wheel game.  Burning Wheel establishes a radically different perspective on gaming then more classic RPG’s.  In most traditional, you receive experience in short bursts and increase in power in a similar manner.  But it is very common to level in a very short span of in-game time.  But Burning Wheel’s perspective on time, both in and out of the game, is radically different.  It is focused on, and indeed shines brightest in, very long term games.  Healing can take weeks or even months of game play to fully recover.  The same goes for practicing your skills, which could take in-game months or years to earn required tests.  One of my players and I were discussing this this morning, which lead to this post.  It is not bad, just different and requires a cognitive shift in perspective by both the players and myself.

Lessons Learned:

What did all this talk of perception mean for me at the table?  Well first of all, good perspective requires reflection to help keep it healthy.  The ability to step back from a situation, sometimes in the form of a literal break from the routine, allows you to analyze where you are and where you want to be.  The fallout from this self-reflection can be very beneficial.

For me, it means my Tuesday game is getting smaller.  We discussed all of the issues and options and settled on playing DnD Next.  Another GM in the group and I are plotting out a game where, while the group is still one group as a whole, they split up on a monthly basis into groups of 4 to accomplish short term goals.  Two groups in one game, with the freedom to switch between groups.  It should accomplish the goals of having smaller groups, but still allowing everyone to interact with the whole of the group.  Time will tell on both counts, but I will be blogging our progress.

Secondly, keep in mind the game’s perspectives when you start.  Whether it’s the builtoin perceptions of time, morality, or focus, working with those perspectives will enable you and your players to get the most out of your time around the table.   As for the Burning Wheel game, the game is still too new (both in terms of story and mechanics) for me to analyze the time structure.  But in realizing that I need to keep the game’s perspective in mind, there are a couple of things I can do.  I need to not skip over the length of time associated with travel and healing. I need to point my players to the practice rules and say “how are you spending this time?”  The game also needs planned downtime.  Resource cycles, healing and training all need breaks from the action to accomplish.  While this is not my normal style, I tend to leap from adventure to adventure, I feel like I have a good handle on this cycle and how to put down time into the adventure to allow this system to hit its stride.  I think I will have a good idea on how I and my players are handling the long term perspective in three to six months.

In the pipeline:

I got some great advice on blogging and how to run one.  I am going to start prepping articles and ideas in advance to create a backlog of posts so I won’t be scrambling to get them out on time.  I have blog post in the works for tips and tricks for dealing with larger groups that I hope will be helpful.  Numenera Bestiary and Glimmer reviews and previews of the novel and world I am working on are all in the works.  This includes updates on the Next game set in my world and the maps and mechanics that I will be creating for it.  As one final update, I will be posting a regional map I am working on for the Next game later today.

Burning Gold – The Resource Cycle

Burning Wheel is a game filled with grand concepts and impressive names for mechanics that sometimes obfuscate their importance to the game.  Where other games have alignments, BW has beliefs.  Where some games use class and race combinations for character creation, BW takes you on a journey through your character’s past with lifepaths.  And where some games use the gold piece, BW uses Resources.  It doesn’t have a coinage system, it has an economy. 

Like many of the moving parts of BW, the resource system doesn’t come into focus until one takes a step back and looks at it over the course of a long term game.  The core of the system uses the same mechanics as the rest of BWG: find what you want to buy (state intent), gather your funds (collect the die pool), establish value (set Ob), and see if you can afford it (roll).  But BWG is less about managing petty cash, whether that cash is measured in copper, silver, or stacks of gold, and more about managing assets.  Each character has a Resource stat, determined by how you spend your character’s starting resource points. If you outfit yourself like an adventurer, with all the gear you can carry on your person, your starting resource stat will be 1, or even 0, thereby making you live like an adventurer.  Most of my previous player’s resources were at 0 due to this and I ignorantly bumped them to 1, which I now believe was a mistake (more on that later).  But, if you buy land, reputations, and affiliations with organizations, the character will see a larger starting Resource stat.

As previously stated, I often bumped starting characters in my game to Resources 1, even if they were nowhere close to this.  I felt like with a 0 in resources, they would have been ridiculously hampered.  In all honesty, Resources was the least used mechanic in my previous Zemlya game.  I didn’t get it.  It seemed too hard for players to generate enough dice for even the simplest roll, and if they failed they lost what resources they had.

After reading through BWG and the Adventure Burner, I see how this is intentional by design.  Being poor in this game (Resources 2 or less) is brutal.  It is designed to drive the players to try and break the cycle of poverty that is implied by BWG’s setting, that of a Middle Ages Europe.  Players need to scheme and adventure to get the cash dice (one shot die bumps to Resources) to succeed at early Resource checks and earn the upward mobility needed to gain more funds from titles and affiliations.  It all strongly encourages (perhaps even forces) the players to work together to buy what they need.  Remember if a character gives a helping die to a check, they earn a test for that check as well.  With Resources increasing through tests, loaning cash to other players can help boost your Resources.  Like the man says, you have to spend money to make money.

Resources, like practice or the advancement mechanic is long term focused.  It advances through use, and as you make tests, subsequent tests become easier.  Making money is not the only component to this in-game economic system.  The second piece is the Maintenance Cycle.  If the Resource pool is the character’s personal economy, the Maintenance Cycle represents the natural periods of economic resolution in your game world.  It may seem like a complicated concept, but like most of BWG they have created an elegant mechanic for handling this. 

Maintenance Cycle works as follows.  At the start of the game the GM sets the time frame for the cycle.  Fast paced urban lifestyle has a cycle of about a month, whereas a more traditional medieval game would have a cycle set for six to twelve months.  This cycle represents when lifestyle maintenance comes to plague the characters.  When the Maintenance Cycle ends, the players must make Resource rolls to maintain their current lifestyle, basically paying for any amenities they have been enjoying for the last cycle.  The brilliance of this system is twofold.  It removes the penny pinching and accounting necessary to track lifestyle expenses inherent to most fantasy rpgs (which in my experience are usually ignored) while still making the lifestyle choices a vital part of the game. And, like most things in BWG, it drives story.  Has your character been living far beyond his Resource 3 means?  You better go raid a tomb or rob a baron to get some cash dice to make that looming maintenance check.  Roll poorly on said maintenance check?  Now he has to go out and adventure to gain new resources. 

As mentioned above, when you fail a Resources check you lose a die from the pool.  This Tax represents that your resources are hampered for the time being.  Recovering these dice requires getting a job.  Not an adventuring job either.  It needs something stable, something mundane.  And it takes a whole Maintenance Cycle.  At first blush this seemed brutal to me.  Pulling my characters out of the story for anywhere from a month to a year?  Why would I do that?  Again, it helped me to take a step back and view the game as a whole and with a long term view.

The system creates natural breaks in the story by forcing some down time.  And while active time is at a premium in BWG, downtime is very important.  It allows players the time to heal from wounds, to practices abilities, and to recover resources.   BWG handles each of these situations with time based mechanics that are very different from more traditional d20 mechanics.  But they are vital to the system.  Enforcing downtime enables players to recover and improve, all so you can throw them back into the fires of challenged beliefs.  It also allows their antagonists the realistic time needed to recover and adapt behind the scenes.

So what does this mean for the Outlands?  Well first I means I want to start uses Resources as written.  If the players start with a Resources of 0, so be it.  It means that many of our knights will be poor mendicants that rely on the strength of their arms and wits to maintain their armor and lives.  It also means the group will have to pull tighter together right off the bat.  If most things the group wants is outside the purview of one character, it is time to gang up.

Also, I have been debating on what to set my Maintenance Cycle to.  I want the pace to be somewhat more intense than a half-year cycle, but slower than a monthly rotation.  So I am going to set it at a seasonal cycle, every three months Maintenance will show up.  My hope is that this will be long enough to allow substantial story to happen, but still short enough for the downtime actions not to take characters out of the story for a year.

 

New Burning Wheel Question

Burning up characters for BWG is a fairly involved process.  For those of you who don’t know how it works, Burning Wheel is a lifepath system.  Which is basically gamer jargon for picking snapshots of your characters background.  It is not a class system, but an organic development of periods of time in your character’s life before the start of the game.  For example, your character might have been born in a village, moved to a city as a street rat, became a second story man, and then was conscripted into the army.  Each of these stages is a lifepath.  Each lifepath gives the player building blocks to create their character in the form of skills, attributes, traits and even the resources you use to buy your character’s equipment.  In addition to all of the lifepaths, each player also need to create and select three beliefs, three instincts, and equipment.  There is really too much to do in one evening.

So as I stated before, I want to get the bulk of the conceptual design done before we come to the table.  My questions over the next couple of weeks are going to be a group discussion about their character concepts and beliefs.  If I can get the group to get these nailed down, we will have plenty of time to get through burning all of the characters that first evening.

So here is this week’s question for my group:

In an attempt to keep the momentum for the Outlands up and prepare for our start in January, I want to start a discussion about character concepts.  I say discussion, because I would like to see everyone over the course of the next two weeks talk about what they want to play.  It would be great to see ties between characters start to develop here.  Squires to Knights of Shining Intellects, thieves who are part of an Inquisitor of the Light of Law’s retinue.  

As you are thinking of what you want to play keep a couple things in mind. The game is going to be focused on the Free Cities to start, as well as the Knights of Shining Intellect and the Light of Law.  Look over those sections in the Gazetteer and try to narrow your concepts to fit within these frameworks.

As the player’s concepts come in I will compile them and post them here to share.  

Handsome Heads on Tentacles

Last Dark is finally finished, and I sit writing this post in a delicious melancholy that only Donaldson can deliver.  Seriously, if you have not read the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, you are missing out on great literature.  Not fiction, literature.  Anyway, back to blogging about games.

My 13^th Age read through was a little rough.  I am writing my review, but due to the layout of the text, I am finding myself having to do another read through.  It is not poorly written or uninviting, but it is cryptic in the way information is delivered.  The second read through is going much smoother, now that I understand the terminology better, but still I need more time to process and prep.  But my 13^th Age group is set up, and we have a place to play and the first game date set.  I am working on setting up my own Icons for the game, and setting it in my home brewed world of Ta’nar. 

The Tuesday night Numenera game is settling into a nice rhythm.  I gave the group a choice of heading back into the Steadfast for more civilized environs or delving deeper into the Beyond.  The choice was unanimously to head out into the Beyond.  They are headed towards the second of the back of the main book adventures, but I threw the first Glimmer: Vortex in their path.  They were immediately intrigued by the disappearing “submarine” (they sent one person ahead to scout, so I showed them the picture and had them describe it) that they came across in the woods.  Little do they know what they actually seek. 

At the start of the session, I explained my house rule and opened the floor to feedback.  After some discussion, the group decided that the house rule I wrote up was too complicated.  They liked parts of it, but no one could agree on what parts they liked.  But, I think it was a successful discussion in the fact that it was a reminder of good table etiquette.  The talk alone seemed to clear up most of the issues I was trying to solve through rulings. 

Handsome heads on tentacles refers to a beast in Numenera that my group discovered but will not get to fight till next week.  The village they are staying in is plagued by a Mesomeme.   Full of Ninth World bizarreness, it is a crab-like predator that keeps the heads of those it slays.  It then mounts these heads on tendrils that extend from its back, and uses the skull puppets to lure new victims to their deaths.  The group was sent to discover what happen to the Dreavish brothers, a duo of handsome men whose return the whole town pined over.  Lured to the end of the dock, the session ended with the Mesomeme rising out of the water.  The looks on the player’s faces was fantastic.

After I post this, I am working on the start of the last series of questions for the Outlands game.  My goal with this series is to get the players ready to make their characters.  I am hoping over the next two months to get concepts, beliefs and instincts nailed down.

Finally, in a strange development, I am running Dungeon Crawl Classics this week.  I ran a 0 level funnel game last week, while our SR GM was out of town.  It was such a big hit with the group, and with our GM being out of town again next week, and having to catch up on work this week, I am continuing the adventure this week and next.  My group loved the old school feel of DCC and did their best not to fall in love with any of their poor 0 level commoners.  They failed, but most of their beloved characters survived.  Sixteen peasants entered the dungeon, and 6 level one PC’s emerged.  Tonight we are going to play the People of the Pit.  I will be sure to let you know how it goes.

The Struggle

The Struggle

One of my design goals in creating the Outlands setting was to involve the players in every aspect of the world and plot creation.  While I have crafted the fluff, it was attached to the framework that the players built. Recently the group has moved out of the world creation portion of the preparation, with the gazetteer mailed out earlier this week for review, and we are about done with the plot creation section as well.  Next month my weekly emails will delve into character concepts and belief crafting.

For the last plot based question, I presented my players with a trio of options.  The question revolved around the initial situation that would start the game: would their characters be sent on a quest, fight in a struggle or be embodied in intrigue.  The response came back very strongly in favor of a struggle based storyline.   One of the players commented that a struggle felt most in line with the game they were crafting, and the other seemed to agree.  I feel that as we play through this initial arc, with Burning Wheel designed as it is, new arcs will present themselves though gameplay. 

A struggle story revolves around the character opposing the antagonist in a contest of force.  They are the only ones who can stop the antagonist from achieving his goal, whatever that maybe.  So looking through the Outlands notes, and keeping in mind the fact that most of the players want to play characters tied either to the Law of Truth or the Blade of the Shining Intellect, I set about crafting the story pitch.  It seemed that the Free Cities would be the best place to start this first adventure.  We have set the Blades up as the ranger-like protectors of the Free Cities, which make up the western edge of human civilization in the Outlands.  And the Law acts as an inquisition, seeking to protect the souls of Mankind from Chaos and the Cult of the Lost.  Beyond the Free Cities lies the domains of the Lizard-men, tribes Chaos worshiping beastmen, lost temples of the Syvari, and the hidden refuges of the Cult of the Lost.  If this was not enough, the nearest human kingdom, New Sardonia, has started a campaign of expansion.  The young heir, Galleffer, possessed of a boundless ambition has turned his eyes and military might of his kingdom west towards the Free Cities.

All of this gives players plenty of story options no matter which organization they ally with.  For the Knights we have protecting the Free Cities and exploring the wilderness, while the Inquisition can attack beastmen and search for whispers of the Cult.  However, the situation is more than just the setting elements.  Stirring all those ingredients and applying some heat here is the pitch I sent to my players:

At the western edge of the domains of men lie the Free Cities.  This alliance of independent city states survived the Dark Night on the fringe due to their own stubborn resilience and the vigilance of the Law of Truth and the Blade of Shining Intellect.  The greatest threat to the existence of the Free Cities now descends.  Armies align to assault them, and end their legacy of freedom.  But this threat comes not from the west, although the tribes of beastmen are restless and the Law hears rumors of their ancient foes moving once again through the Outlands.  In the east, in the heart of the rule of Man, the kingdom of New Sardonia has sent its armies to annex Baymeet, the eastern most Free City.  If the Gateway to the West falls, the rest of the Free Cities will be claimed in a matter of months.  In the city of Baymeet, the future will be decided, both yours and that of the Outlands.

I will start the game with the Siege of Baymeet in the eminent future.  The plan is to give the players some breathing room to learn the game, and the thrust them into the crux of the first conflict.  I can see a number of subsequent adventures spinning off but don’t want to plan too much into the future.  If the group likes this idea, I will sketch out the city of Baymeet, and seek to add more story threads in the form of NPC’s, quests, and plots within the city.  While the struggle will be the focus, I want to give them enough options that they will forge their own path through this sandbox.

Ah Burning Wheel – Part 4 – Beliefs

“Fight for what you believe in” pretty much sums up the goal of BWG.  Whether it is with words, maneuvers, fighting, spells, or faith, the system gives players the tools to fight for what they feel their characters would dying for.  It also gives the players a way to voice what is important to their characters; though beliefs.  Each character has three (possibly four) driving beliefs that define who he is and what his goals are.

In past games, this has been one of the toughest aspects of BWG for players to grasp.  I will be honest, before this commentary, I don’t think I grasped how to explain it very well.  The commentary gave a couple of insights on how to make beliefs more accessible to players which I plan on implementing immediately.

The first was to break up big beliefs into shorter term ones or goals.   The grander and longer term the goal, the less likely it is to evolve or be rewarded for completion.   Instead “My Enemy shall suffer for all eternity” (which was a fantastic one that my wife’s used in the last game), perhaps start down that path with a more immediate belief tied to the situation.  As our first game started in court, she could have used “My Enemy shall be disgraced in front of the King at court.”  Shorter term beliefs allow them to run their course, evolve, be played against or be replaced more frequently, and the player gets rewarded when this happens.

The other piece of advice that really hit home for me was their definition of types of beliefs.  I think I might make this a little more mandatory at my table.  Seeing as most of my players are new to BWG, I think it will help them get more explosive beliefs right from the start.  One of their three beliefs must tie them to the situation at the start of the game, one must tie them to another party member, and the third is wide open.  Maybe a philosophical belief, maybe a goal that has no chance of being completed, it is wide open.  And with two solid beliefs under their belts, I feel like this third one will be easier for them to define.  When paired with two beliefs that have a lot of traction in the story, this last belief provides some great character development opportunities.  

Beliefs are at the heart of the BWG system.  Now that the setting is established, and with this week’s question about the initial situation, we are close to starting character creation.  My goal is to get everyone’s concepts and beliefs done before we sit down to burn up characters.  With all the work the players have put into the Outlands, I am excited to see their beliefs develop and cannot wait to challenge them..

 

Addendum:  While reading the commentary in Adventure Burner, they brought something up that contradicts my previous thoughts on setting obstacles.  It seems, that as the GM I should wait to set the obstacle till the player is committed.  They must test once the Ob is declared, meaning they have to decide to roll before knowing the difficulty.  Once the Ob is declared, they can maneuver FORK’s, helping dice and advantage dice, but they must roll.  This is how I plan to run tests in my game going forward.  I feel like it plays to the system better.  It forces the players to accept failure of actions before they know what their chances are, and puts them in the mindset to jokey for the best possible test for advancement.

 

Updates and Changes

The last few days have been a whirl of game prep.  My Tuesday night group has been going through a rough patch, with a lot of life changes happening for the majority of the group at the same time.  This includes, but is not limited to, the GM of the One Ring game being transferred to Denver temporarily and two of my four Mage players taking a new baby break.  We instituted some stopgap measures to buy some time for the group to settle back down into a familiar rhythm.  The One Ring game became an Edge of the Empire game, and my group played Pathfinder the Adventure Card Game. 

This week however, all of our stopgap measures ran their course, and it came to my attention that most of the group lamented the fact that we were not gaming a large group anymore.  They missed the social interaction that came with everyone being in the same group.  The fact that we were in two groups made sure that you bonded with your group, but saw very little of the other.  That coupled with the fact that the Edge group varied from 2 to 5 people on a week to week basis, making it difficult for the other GM to plan, caused me to reach out first to the Edge GM and then to the group as a whole. After talking with everyone, it became clear that for the health of the group something had to change. 

This week, instead of writing up blog posts I wrote emails and texts to my group, getting feedback from everyone.  We reached the decision that the best course was joining the groups back into one large group.  People could gather and get the social interaction that had been missing, and hopefully the game could continue despite the number of people that showed up.

If you have been following this blog for a while, you might remember the “never again” post I made here.  I knew even as I realized that this was best for the group, I needed a better game for a large group than 4^th edition Dungeons and Dragons or I would risk burnout again.  I established some basic criteria for this new game.  It needed to be a simple game, so that if people missed sessions the mechanics were still easy to pick up and use.  It needed to be rules light so that adjudicating the game took far less time and effort than it did in DnD.  And finally, it need to be able to quickly bring players who missed up to speed mechanically: i.e. leveling. 

Briefly I considered Pathfinder, as I want to get back into my personal world of Ta’nar.  But as I looked at my criteria, Pathfinder violated all three rules.  I needed something simpler, although running a Ta’nar game would be easiest story wise.  I took a long look at my game shelf and narrowed it down to two games: Adventurer, Conqueror, King and Numenera.  Both are very rules light, with simple mechanics, and players could update their characters very quickly even if they missed a couple of weeks.  Most people did not care which game we played, but my wife came down firmly on the “I don’t enjoy ACKS” side of things.  She enjoyed the story of the last game I ran in ACKS, but she did not like the gritty feel of the game.  She said she did not enjoy the impotent feeling of level 1 characters, compared to other games, nor the dread of “who would die this week.”  Although many well-reasoned responses, discussions on the nature of OSR games and explanations on how only 3 people died in the last game lay within my reach, I wisely said nothing and chose to run Numenera.

Instead of prepping more Outlands, which doesn’t start till January, I re-read the rules of Numenera.  I prepped cheat sheets for character creation and for game play, which helped remind me of the rules.  And I read the first adventure in the back of the core book: The Beale of Boregal.  Wednesdays, as they are my one day without scheduled play by post posts, will probably turn into a recap of the previous night’s adventures and my thoughts on the game and on Numenera.  I am looking forward to playing this game, and although I must put my beloved Mage back on the shelf, I am excited to get to play Numenera sooner rather than later.

On the Burning Wheel front, I finished my reading of the Spokes, wrapping up the Artha chapter yesterday.  Artha might be my favorite part of the BWG system.  Handed out for a variety of reasons and in a variety of ways, they work like fate points or hero points in other systems, but also combine mechanical manipulation with a type of advancement.  The more artha you spend on a skill or stat, the closer you come to a shade shift, which increases the chance that each die in your pool comes up a hit.  It complements the advancement system quite well, also rewarding the players where they use the system.

The turning of the BWG mechanics revolves around (and I might be paraphrasing to the point of plagiarizing.  If I do, my apologized to Luke Crane) the interaction between a characters Beliefs, Instincts and Traits (BITs) as the players expression what he or she wants from the game, and the GM’s rewards of Artha in response to the use of those BITs to drive the story.

The BITs of the characters enable the GM to enjoy a unique level of narrative freedom in the story. The players tell you what is important to them and they want to have happen to them over the course of the story through their Beliefs, Instincts and Traits.  This lets you challenge them in those areas, and the story practically drives itself forward.  Although you might never know where the game will go, you never need to worry about it going somewhere.  And if momentum starts to fail, just light a fire under your players BITs.

In addition to reading through BWG, I am also going to be reading the Adventure Burner.  It contains a series of commentaries that the Authors wrote about the theory behind the rules as written.  I will continue to post my distilled thoughts from the Adventure Burner as well as NWG, in hopes that together I gain a deep insight into the system.

Ah Burning Wheel – Part 3 – Advancement

Welcome back!  Since last week, I have finished the spokes section of the BWG rule book.  I had forgotten the grain but not the feel of this game.  I can’t help but get excited about running this game when I read this book.  BWHQ does a great job of imparting implied setting without forcing you into a specific world.  Anyway.

Today’s blog post is on advancement.  When I ran my last BW game, we had two GM’s and two parties that both met on the same night (it was a large group & game).  It quickly became clear that that the otherr group was not advancing as much as my group was, and after the first joint session we found out why.  The other group did not know how!  They horded their artha (more on that tomorrow) and they were not keeping track of their tests. 

BW is not like other RPGs where the GM awards you experience points and after a set amount of time you level up.  In BW you advance through testing your abilities.   The more you use an ability the better you become with it.  It is simple, but does require some extra bookkeeping.

As a GM you need to be aware of the Ob’s you are setting, as in most cases, succeed or fail your players generate tests.  You need to remind players to remember to log their tests after a roll.  And you need to factor in all the other mechanical processes that revolve around the tests. It can be a lot to manage in the heat of the moment, when the dice are flying.  The writers recommend building in a five minute recap at the end of the session for logging test.  I don’t remember if we did this during the last game but I am going to put into practice for the Outlands.

The other thing I am going to do is educate my players on the advancement system.  Part of their handout will have the advancement tables reprinted for them.  I want them to have this knowledge in front of them, as a reminder of how the system works.  Tests have different degrees of difficulty based of the number of dice you roll, and your skills need a tests of a number of different difficulties to advance. With those numbers in front of them, they can better manipulate the system.  Taking helping dice from players, advantages, and other skills makes tests easier but can downshift the difficulty from one category to another.  I want the players to see that and weigh each extra die they generate.

BWG seems like a system you can get good at.  Not in a Hero System “I can Min/Max the crap out of it” sort of way, but in an “I can make the system purr” sort of way.  My goal is to provide the tools so that my players not only enjoy BWG but can excel at it.  It is a beautiful system whose return on investment is very high and is designed to shine in a long term game like this one.  With a little bit of effort, I think that players will come to love this type of experience system.

Ah Burning Wheel – Part 2

Today, I am currently in the task resolution section of BWG.  The system breaks every roll down to: intent, task, and test.

Intent is the outcome the players want from the roll.  Intent needs to be a clear as possible, because the game system states that if the PC succeeds at his test, he gets his intent.  As the GM it is my responsibility to make sure that I and the PC understands their intent so that the resolution and outcome of the intent can be established.

Task is the mechanical necessities of the test, what needs to happen to make the intent a reality.  What stat or skill will be used in for this roll.  I believe this step includes figuring out if the intent is this even possible.  In my mind, this is also where, as the GM, I call for advantages, assign the task Ob and assign any disadvantages.

The Test is the player’s attempt to make his intent a reality.  They always have the chance to walk away before the dice hit the table, but once they roll they are committed to the test.

There are a variety of other rules in this chapter but what stands out is the need to take my time at the table.  For each test, ie: a situation that requires a die roll, intent & task must be established along with the type of test, obstacles must be set, modifiers can be applied to the die pool or the Ob, and that is just before the roll.  While a lot of this will become second nature, at the start of the game this system is radically different from looking at a DC and requiring a d20+bonus roll. 

I want my players, and myself, to get used to the BWG system.  While the basics of the system are simple and fast, there are some nuances that I would like to see people use.  This is going to require some slower pacing when it comes to task resolution.  I want to make sure over the first couple of sessions that people are really clicking with the system and understand every tool that is available to them.

On a side note: I will be putting up an Obsidian Portal site for the Outlands, after I upgrade my account and get the Gazetteer finished.  So if this setting interests you, you can follow along with the game as it develops.

Ah Burning Wheel – Part 1

So let me begin this series with a moment of creepy honesty.  I am a Burning Wheel fan boy.  No just a normal fan boy, but a tattoo-having might have scared Luke Crane by cornering him at Gencon with my rabid fandom crazy fan boy.  So you might want to keep that in mind as we go through this re-read series.  It has established itself as my favorite RPG system since my first read through, when I bought a copy of revised.  I am unashamed of my love of this game, and I hope that it comes through loud and clear in these posts.

So that being said, let’s dig into Burning Wheel.  My hope is that through this series of posts, I can collect my thoughts on Burning Wheel Gold (BWG) and distill the rules into a 2-4 page rules cheat sheet for my players.  I am 20 pages in to my dissection at this point, and just reading over the main mechanics of the system.

BWG’s core mechanic is simple.  It is a die pool system, where 4, 5, and 6’s are hits.  You are rolling against an absolute difficulty, which is the number of hits you need to succeed at the task.  Absolute difficulty means that a task, once its difficulty is established never changes.  A lock that is obstacle (Ob) 3 to unlock it, is always Ob 3.  Whether your lock picking skill is 1 or 10, you always need 3 success to overcome it.  Granted, the situation might change benefiting or hampering your character, but the root Ob is static.

Two things stand out to me after reading this section.  The first is the need to engrain in my head and the heads of my players to ask the Ob before they roll.  Ob’s are absolute, so they need to be established, as does the intent of the player/cost of failure, before dice hit the table.  Up until that point, the player has the ability to back away from the test and examine a different approach. 

The second thing that caught my attention is a rules change from Revised to BWG.  Perception tests are no longer open-ended.  Open-ended rolls are rolls where each 6 on the die generates a new die for the test.  It made perception tests very strange to adjudicate in previous games.  I will have to point that out to my players who played in my last game.

Well, I off to read more BWG and write up a bit more for the Outland’s Gazetteer.