Burning Wheel

I don't have time to tell a story as our group is just starting but Burning Wheel enables stories through mentality, not necessarily through mechanics like some other systems. And I prefer that, we are here to role play, not to play board games.

What kind of campaigns or adventures do you have? Like are you just dirt farming or keeping a shop in a city? Do you go out to the forests to hunt bandits and beasts? Are you courtiers making political moves?

Make a thread about your adventures once you have some to share. I've heard they're great but need more examples before I trust it

Alright, here's the story of how my group obtained their most recent magic item
>one of the PCs had lost an argument to the party Wizard, but they had managed to get a concession, so they wanted an enchantment which would enable their arquebus to shoot ghosts (because why not)
>so the wizard had the ex-soldier PC find an old battlefield where there would likely be unsanctified dead bodies (since the wizard needed some ghostly essence and can't conjure the spirits of people who got a proper burial)
>they then called up the spirit of an orcish mercenary and struck a deal with it whereby they would pay some bards to write a song about his great prowess in battle and whatnot and he'd transfer some of his essences to a servant boy they'd brought
>with that done (although the bard thing wound up being pretty expensive) they brought the servant boy back to the wizard's workshop and removed his hand so that the wizard could extract the ectoplasm
>the wizard now had everything they needed to enchant the arquebus and did so, but there was a complication resulting in it being cursed (basically it's like the one ring, really hard to willingly get rid of)
>the other PC getting their arquebus back, as a result, required the ex-soldier PC beating the hell out of the wizard
so yeah, the wizard has a new ghostly friend they can conjure up, the leader has a magic gun, and there's a new source of tension in their relationship

Best roleplaying game system ever devised. D&D is a boomerang. Burning Wheel is a pewpew space laser gun. Which one will still be used in 500 years

> Burning Wheel enables stories through mentality, not necessarily through mechanics like some other systems. And I prefer that, we are here to role play, not to play board games.

This means literally nothing.

You're entitled to your opinion.

1. What is "mentality", how does BW enforce it, and what makes it diffenert from other games?
2. What makes you think that mechanics make something into a "boardgame" and not a "roleplaying game"?
3. How would you describe a strength of BW without the need to invalidate entire categories of games as "not true RPGs"?

You know, I really like playing Burning Wheel but every time Veeky Forums has a thread about it there's always a bunch of people praising it in such stilted terms that they sound like bait.

1. In this case, story driven mentality. There are mechanics (Beliefs, Instincts and Traits) that make you prioritize roleplaying your character according to these characteristics and rules.
2. Burning Wheel has social conflict for example called duel of wits.
3. This comes to my opinion, but I find D&D boring because it feels too combat heavy and D&D rules and mechanics prioritize it too much. BW has heavy combat mechanic option, but otherwise it has mechanics that demand actually investing into the character and story.

Saying you like something is easy. Articulating exactly why is really hard. And as long as one is not getting paid for it, I don't expect anyone to bend themselves over trying to write review on a Namibian doll crafting board.

One low key thing I really like in Burning Wheel is it's skill system.
I generally like large skill lists that allow player to craft very different characters and can encourage players to use more mundane skills to do interesting things.
But my main thing I like is that skill checks are not just "roll skill and done", the way help works and especially that player can cross skills getting bonuses from relevant secondary skills gives some extra meat on simple skill checks and I think that little bit of extra game in there makes the skill check feel bigger and more important, in my opinion.

Burning Wheel is a great system if you have a bunch of rollplayers that you want to get to roleplay. It encourages gaming the system, provides you with more of a background than "I'm a mysterious drifter with no family", and the classless/skill-based system mixed with backgrounds providing skills really works together to create fleshed-out characters.
However, the odds seem constantly stacked against you so I'm not really sure what kind of campaign it's good for-- I can tell you right away that you really want to avoid combat if there's any possible avenue around it so some sort of grim/dark fantasy?
Honestly, that's probably the biggest issue for this game. I have no idea what a Burning Wheel campaign is "supposed" to look like.

I think that the "brutality" is the system can be lessened by having failed skill rolls to be adjusted from "total failure" to "success with complications". Keeps things moving forward.

Either success or failure, things happen, consequences set in, circumstances change and you are moving forward. When life is constantly on the line though, that style of play probably not going to get you far. I wonder did anyone play a long BW campaign where death was a feasible outcome of failure multiple time per session without burning though piles of character sheets?

How does that make use of the system at all? You could do that in D&D and Pathfinder if you wanted.

I don't like how greed, grief and hate bring a prebaked story arc into the game.

>the impetus for the situation was created by the result of a Duel of Wits from the previous session
>the need to summon a ghost and fact the weapon ended up cursed was direct consequence of the game's enchanting rules
>hiring the bards was a result of the game's summoning rules
very little there was GM improv, most of it was players using the rules of the game to achieve a simple goal (enchant a weapon)

I'm not sure what you meant about doing that in D&D since (assuming 3.5e) there that process would have been:
>leader asks the wizard to make him a magic weapon
>wizard spends gold and XP to make a magic weapon

>This is what 3aboos believe.

I think that guy is not quite correct.

Burning Wheel THROUGH its mechanics, encourages a certain mentality and playstyle.

Stats, skills, and attributes all advance by use, not only that, but to advance them, you have to seek out difficulties that are too hard for you. The system builds off the implications of this to help guide the group to make more player driven stories.

The book says to only roll the dice when stuff actually matters, now a lot of GMs will ignore advice like that, but when they do, characters start advancing way too fast, and most GMs dislike that, so the only solution is less rolls.

Players want to have their numbers go up, so that means they have to do things that are too hard/almost too hard for them. Now, since every roll matters, that means they probably don't want to fail these rolls (plus players dislike failing anyway). Now, they have an interesting choice, they can decide that the results of this roll is more important than advancing, and stack bonuses, which Burning Wheel makes it super easy to get if you know the system and have friends to help, or they can decide advancing is more important and try the hard roll without bonuses. If they want both, their only chance is artha.

And they can't get artha without actually roleplaying and giving a shit about stuff in game. To improve your character and to continue winning at the game, you have to actually have a character who cares about something.

I'm probably only scratching the surface, but basically the cool thing about Burning Wheel is that most of the system is built on this interconnected cycle of mechanics that all actually effectively reinforce its playstyle. Say what you like about Luke Crane, but he knows what he is doing when it comes to game design and the whole system is actually way more than the sum of its parts.

>3e causes brain damage: the post.

I don't like it much. It gives you mechanics for roleplaying and narrative, which, in my experience, gets in the way of roleplaying and narrative. You don't need intricate social-combat mechanics to talk to someone or feel a feeling. Just do it. Not everything has to be as mechanically rigorous as combat.

Honestly, there are practically no stories that you can tell in Burning Wheel that you COULDN'T tell in D&D/Pathfinder. And if you has an awesome group that can tell awesome stories in any system, there is no need to play Burning Wheel if you have another system lined up already. And if your group is full of shitters, no system is going to fix shitters.

Good systems, like (in my opinion) Burning Wheel, are for the rest of us in the middle. The fact is Burning Wheel encourages and supports stories and situations like that, while D&D doesn't. D&D relies entirely on the strength of the DM for things that aren't combat. If you are just an average GM, using the mechanics as a guidepost will do a lot to direct you in the proper manner, particularly when the guidance is mechanically enforced enough that the players can call you out for breaking it (like with Let it Ride).

>Honestly, there are practically no stories that you can tell in Burning Wheel that you COULDN'T tell in D&D/Pathfinder.
That's bullshit no-statement that's true for fucking anything. There is distinct difference between things told through freeform between players, which is part of most systems and things where game's mechanics is one of the storytellers, affecting the narrative that happens.

...and reading the second paragraph you already said similar thing with other words. Will post this anyways.

>You don't need intricate social-combat mechanics to talk to someone or feel a feeling. Just do it
and 99% of the time you don't, you just make a single skill roll, using the full Duel of Wits is very rare

See, that's exactly what I didn't like. It might be a good way to get a min-maxer invested in a character, but for me it just created a disconnect between player and character. The character wants to succeed, but the player decides to fail them in order to power them up? Frankly, I don't want to be dealing with character advancement during the game in anything but an in-character way.

I guess I can understand some people liking it, but I really prefer handling out-of-character stuff like skill leveling before or after the game, not as a constant thing.

Why is characters evolving and getting stronger out-of-character thing for you?

I tried to read it once and it seemed Timecube-tier incomprehensible to me despite me playing RPGs for 25 years. I'll have to conclude it's not very good.

You don't understand how stories work, clearly.

Yeah, I remember in LotR how Frodo spent like a hundred pages setting up his advancement.

Ah, so Frodo was the author of the story?

That’s because it would spend 300 at a time. LotR is character advancement: the novel.

>I like edition wars and cry about D&D frequently: THE POST

Players are not authors of anything and should not be. Players are supposed to be immersed in their character, not manipulate it as an outsider.

Character: "I want to do the thing!"
Player: "I haven't gotten a check on that skill yet this session, I'll take a fail."

It takes you out of the moment, out of the character's head. I don't want to be managing my character, I want to be playing them.

I was curious about the system. I read the (pretty badly put-together) books, I grouped up with some people who loved the system, I gave it a fair try. I hated it. I've had good sessions and bad sessions before, but Burning Wheel was the first time I really felt like the game system was what ruined the afternoon. There are other systems I like or don't like, but Burning Wheel is probably the only one I flat out would not be willing to play again. If you like it, I'm glad you're happy, but I ain't gonna recommend it to anyone.

Also, reading the book made me dislike the game designer. He kept reinventing the wheel and just being in awe of his own brilliance.

That's a viewpoint difference.
Personally, as a GM, I'm equally, if not more, interested in the stories players tell to me about their characters, than I am about telling the story of the world to players.

Exactly. I don't want to be assistant director, or agent, or personal trainer to the actor. I want to be the character.

>burning wheel tells a story
>this book doesn’t tell a story like that
>the players would be closer to an author
>don’t compare player characters to books fag
Stellar logic

I have literally no idea what you're even trying to say. Are you some kind of a neural net -based shitposting bot that Google let loose?

Says who?

I bought and read Burning Wheel, and while I like what I see and it has informed some of my own designs and philosophy (the concept of intent was an epiphany), I doubt I'll ever play it because it isn't the kind of game I'd want to start cold. It strikes me as the kind of game that can only be passed on by osmosis.

Well this is going to get ugly quickly.
Burning Wheel is not a full immersion system. Full stop.
Some people go for full immersion games. That is fine, I've yet to find one that actually felt like a GAME to me instead of just improve acting hour that relies entirely on the charisma of the GM, but if they enjoy that, it's fine for them.
If you like Burning Wheel, you probably value other things besides full immersion gaming. If you go for full immersion games, you probably will not like Burning Wheel. It is a difference in what people want out of an RPG, and trying to argue if it is good or bad is just bad wrong fun shit flinging.

If your goal from a system is to have it get as far out of your way as possible as a player, Burning Wheel is not for you. That does not make it a bad system, just that it appeals to a different group.

This.

"I don't like the way this game plays" ≠ "bad game" (or worse yet, "not a REAL game")

What? You can just decide to take a fail without rolling?

Not by rules. You can chose to not optimize your roll, avoid getting bonus dice to make the roll harder.

Oh and also, in Burning Wheel, there would be no reason to just take a failure. In BW skills increase when you make difficult tests, not by failing.

So when using Art Magic do you just get to acquire spells for free? And resources that you would spend on learning spells in the default magic system you can spend on whatever?

Veeky Forums truly is a random opinion generator

>Players are not authors of anything and should not be. Players are supposed to be immersed in their character, not manipulate it as an outsider.
This is wrong as it is statement of mentality. In Burning Wheel players are authors of their characters. Not every role play needs to be character immersion / personal fantasy / power trip. It can be a story telling session shared with your entire group.

story gets overfetishized by some

as I understand, player is encouraged to make effort in making test artificially difficult where character would like to make a number of other preparations that would render the test easy so no skill advancement would be made.

pretty much, it can result in mages being weirdly rich if you're using Art Magic, my suggestion is to also use Summoning or Spirit Binding in a game with Art Magic, to give mages something else to spend resource points on.

Getting yourself a wizard castle tho (and failing to maintain it), or a wizard boat, or national major rep / affiliation, mmm

It's more like effort is the thing that makes rolls easier. Things like not accepting help or not taking time to do things patiently can be driven by character's nature. Ultimately those two should mix. Player is the one who makes the decisions, but character should also make sense in the world. So when help is denied, it's the character saying "nah, I don't need help, I got this".

I can point you to dozens of RPGs that give some measure of narrative control (thus authorship) to the players.

true, that can work if you think it makes sense for just about every mage to be a regional power in some fashion

I can point to multiple RPGs without characters that have no resolution or really much of a story so much as a lore.

It’s a huge field of games, but some people will always shit on anything but their comfort zone.

It hardly happens in my experience desu. More often than not it's a mundane tests that are hard to come by, and difficult are plentiful. Moreover consequences of failing a difficult task aren't usual exactly very appealing in fiction.

>that feel when every other wizard is recluse wank with spirits and familiars instead of friends and you are the most popular person in the kingdom, beloved yellow sorcerer of the party castle.

Burning Wheel is a game where I played a Princess that was really only good at a few things:
>Knowing People (Great Circles and reputations)
>Talking/Making Speeches
>Etiquette
>Having Money

I didn't start out with a combat skill to my name (although I opened Sword by the time we ended), but I was still arguably the most useful character in the game, even more so than the wizard and the miracle wielding knight.

It was a fun game, we killed a Kraken, stopped a civil war, and the knight got married to his sweetheart.

>Are you sure it's ABSOLUTELY necessary that there be fountains of urine all over the castle?
>Yes, yes, the magical properties of ammonia are essential for maintaining the enchantments. Can't explain it, wizard stuff.

you'd need a very lenient GM but; theoretically, you could use urine as the material for an alchemy test to extract an enchanting antecedent. I don't know what traits you could extract via the urine, but it might be usable for something.

I wasn't the one here telling you how games *should* be played.

I was agreeing with the user I replied to. Pretty explicitly.

My bad. It's late here and I'm drunk.

>How does that make use of the system at all? You could do that in D&D and Pathfinder if you wanted.

Here's how it would work in D&D/Pathfinder.

>>>one of the PCs had lost an argument to the party Wizard, but they had managed to get a concession, so they wanted an enchantment which would enable their arquebus to shoot ghosts (because why not)

>Wizard says no because he doesn't have to give a concession.

Or, assuming the Wizard di, for some reason, decide to give a concession...

>"I'm sorry, I don't have that feat."

Or if he does have the feat....

>"I spend 1 day for each 1k worth of gp needed to give it the ghost touch property."

That's it.

Storytime?

I'm kinda discontent with alchemy desu, i'd like it to be more chemistry-ish, more about creating properties from arcane alteration of rare substances, rather than boiling elf ears into elixir of ages or something like that. More about search for rare inanimate materials than monster hunting.
I mean, it's a nice system to have, but i'd rather it would be called something different.

I mean, that's only its use as far as enchanting goes. It's more general use from the rulebook is given as:
>Alchemy is the distillation of materials in order to divine their essence. Also, alchemists can create mixtures of arcane substances to generate a specific effect.

Any intent to which that task is appropriate can be achieved using the alchemy skill.

Boomerang because it always comes back.

There was kind of a lot going on and I don't really want to story time the whole game (If you go to the Burning Wheel Forums and check out the bhws tag there was an AP thread put up for basically every session)

I could probably do some parts of it though.

>Princess accidentally talks a guy into suicide by cop
>Killing the Kraken
>Defending the peasant village
>The Knight's Romance
>Preventing the Civil War

Would you say then that given the appropriate material it is possible to extract antecedent for enchanting from it using alchemy? Correlating distilling Obs with Identifying traits from organic samples Obs for purpure of enchanting modifiers. Do you even need to use enchanting in that case or
>alchemists can create mixtures of arcane substances to generate a specific effect.
covers all you potion brewing needs by adapting enchantment procedure but swapping skill for alchemy? Even though book speaks about making potion under rules for enchanting?
I'm confused here, kinda common theme with specifics of how burning wheel works desu.

Though, there is probably a thread for that exact question on the burning wheel forums, like for, it seems, every other possible question about the game.