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Submitted by mikeb on Sun, 02/28/2010 - 18:21
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Use this forum to discuss Burning Wheel.

Resources:
Wiki - http://www.burningwheel.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

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copy?

Submitted by cptbeefalo on Mon, 03/08/2010 - 23:41.

Does anyone in the Champaign area have a copy of these rules that I could skim for this? Mike, Matt?

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I do

Submitted by mikeb on Tue, 03/09/2010 - 07:49.

I'll try to remember to bring them to Rinn's birthday party on Saturday for you to borrow them.

I like Burning Wheel as a

Submitted by robosnake on Wed, 03/03/2010 - 19:30.

I like Burning Wheel as a system, but it also has it's problems, which would be carried over into use with ADGA - not the least of which is that it is not openly licensed, and I'm not sure Luke Crane is even open to having it used for something that he doesn't have a hand in.

I feel like creating Lifepaths for an entire new setting would be a nightmare of epic proportions, and the Lifepaths as written in BW Character Burner have a definite flavor all their own (i.e. Crane's take on Tolkien). BW is also created with Tolkien in mind at a lot of points, and as I read the setting description part of the intent is to get away from Tolkien.

If we used BW, I would like to drop as much as 2/3 of the RAW - BW is a game that is a combination of about a dozen distinct systems all working together. If you read Mouse Guard, you can see how many of those sub-systems can be just dropped while still having a fantastic game.

The advantages that BW has are it's grittiness and the Magic Burner, which details 13 types of magic systems for use with BW. We can pick one, or more than one, that fits with the vision of magic in this setting (which I'm still not clear on - is it ritual magic or occultic or D&D/Vancian or skill-based? Don't know yet).

The disadvantages it brings are it's incredible complexity, the fact that we may not be able to use it all pending Luke Crane's approval, and that it is a niche game - very popular in that niche, critically acclaimed, but only a few thousand copies have sold of Crane's games as far as I know, compared to tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands for the others.

Weeding out the rules.

Submitted by Satyr on Thu, 03/04/2010 - 04:09.

Dropping parts of the rules is a pretty good idea here- as I said, the sheer number of redundant skills made my eyes water, and I don't share Mr. Crane's assumption that every trait is a good trait. I would thin out the list of skills to sometzing like 20 to 30. It might help to use something like specialisations which then changes the color code of the skill at hand. For the traits, I'd probably suggest to either leave out things like "abnormally large tongue" and only include ones which actually matter in the game. Disadvantages or neutral traits could be left to the players to play them out.

I am not very familiar with Mouse Guard, but I own Burning Empires, and this includes one of the niftiest parts of a game I have seen in a while in the form of the planet burner. I'd really like it, and I am still brainstorming if it is fasible to include something like a "realm burner" in the game and let the players create a small hometown community by themselves.

Magic is mostly divided into two parts: Personal powers - like pyrokinetics, Second Sight, etc. which are innate and need a bit of training, and summoning / binding which is based on rituals to summon daimons (a collective term for "anything that could be summoned") and bind them temporarily or even permanently to do your bidding. The best paralells in other game is the spiritual magic in Gurps Thuamatology, Voodoo or Spirits on the one hand and adept powers from Shadowrun on the other one.

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Licensing

Submitted by mikeb on Wed, 03/03/2010 - 21:06.

While we don't have anything in writing per se, I talked to Luke at Gen Con last summer, and he said that he was definitely open to the idea of licensing. We didn't go into any details, but he was very much in favor of anything that might sell more of his books.

I have the same concern about lifepaths. While it could be fun for those into making them, it could be quite a burden to flesh them out.

Burning Wheel

Submitted by Satyr on Mon, 03/01/2010 - 04:46.

I think that Burning Wheel is probably the closest fit when it comes to the compability of the setting and the mechanics. I would like to see a few adjustments - tend to disagree vehemently to the assumption that traits are traits, no matter if they are good or bad are all equals, and I think the skill list is way, way too granular for my taste, but all in all, the system is neat, work well enough and should easily fit the setting.

And while I have no idea of the popularity of the system, the fact that two systems based on this won the Origins award in the last three years speaks for a strong critical acclaim which should not be underestimated when it comes to prestige and public awareness.