Explain Burning Wheel to me

[jester47]

Everyone: Let it Ride ain't a style of narration and it ain't Take Ten. It is not talking about how to narrate a conflict, it's telling you when to roll and when not to and it encourages you to only roll for the important stuff.

Luke, obviously your rule lets groups determine what is important, but it seems to me that a gaming group should be the ones to decide when and when not to roll and how much they roll regardless of if it is important or not. So in my mind the system that does not try to control this is more retargetable from group to group and therefore the more dynamic and thus more useful. While burning wheel might be right for one groups style of play it might not be for anothers and this rule hampers its transition.

 

[Jim Hague]

You have the wrong impression of my argument or perhaps you're straw-manning my position. I do believe that D&D has plenty of rules that support tactical play. What I don't believe is that D&D doesn't have plenty of rules to support roleplay.

It's a long thread and maybe my message hasn't been consistent. But is it possible that the length of the thread has also confused you regarding my position?

Dave,

There's plenty of mechanics in just the corebooks at support roleplay - take skills like Diplomacy, Sense Motive, Bluff....while you can certainly use them and simply roll dice, the text is clear that such situations should be played out in character. There are Feats that support the skills. Hell, man, if there's nothing there supporting roleplay, why have a Charisma stat at all? So yes, D&D at its core supports tactical play - but I assert that 'tactical play' doesn't necessarily mean just battlemats and minis. It can also mean (implicitly, instead of explicitly like Burning Wheel) choosing your social conflicts and tactics as carefully as you do in a brawl, siege or swordfight.

XP rewards are hard mechnical goodies given out for defeating an obstacle - be it by brute force, sneaking past or smooth-talking. Where it breaks down (IMO) is the CR system, which makes each encounter (allegedly, never had it work) use up approximately 25% of the party's resources; too explicit for my tastes.

I think that at the core, the biggest difference between D&D and Burning Wheel is that one system has many things folded into its mechanical structure implicitly, while the other is more explicit. I see them as two sides of the same coin, and like any set of rules, would choose according what what'd be the most fun for my group's playstyle.

 

[lukzu]

Luke, obviously your rule lets groups determine what is important, but it seems to me that a gaming group should be the ones to decide when and when not to roll and how much they roll regardless of if it is important or not. So in my mind the system that does not try to control this is more retargetable from group to group and therefore the more dynamic and thus more useful. While burning wheel might be right for one groups style of play it might not be for anothers and this rule hampers its transition.

Hi Jester,

Sure, that might be the case. But lemme try something: So in my mind the system that does not try to control this is leaving much more to chance and opening the game up to abuse and possibly even curtailing player input by not providing a clear set of instructions which all players can rely on as a fair arbiter. Therefore, while DnD might be right for one groups style of play it might not be for another.


-Luke

 

[Wil]

It's a little late in the game for this kind of suggestion, but I'll make it nonetheless.

My mind is filled with acronyms and terms that are necessary for my professional existence. Many of these are gleaned from MSDN documentation (from Microsoft). I don't have much room to remember a lot of flowery terms and Terms That Every Word Is Capitalized.

So, for anyone who may be looking at the Burning Wheel and thinking of developing a game, maybe consider calling "Shades", I dunno, Complexity (because that's what they're called in SilCore) and "Exponents" call them Skill Level, and Obstacles...difficulty? Because at least from my perspective I'm only going to replace them with those terms anyway. It's not that I dislike evocative names for mechanics or game terms, it's just that I find them difficult to keep straight with everything else competing in my brain.

 

[lukzu]

Wil,

I get it. Burning Wheel's not to your taste. I get it. It's cool. Are you just going to keep saying it over and over again?

-L

 

[jester47]

For me, Rule 1 is not "extrapolate rules if we didn't specifically mention them", but rather "get rid of our rules and put your own in because our rules don't do what you want them to do". If people are throwing out portions of the rules and applying rules "fixes", then the game has failed those people. Rule 1 is of no practical use to them.

Another version of Rule 1 is "ignore the rules you don't like", which pretty amounts to "write your own rules to replace those that aren't working for you". If the rules of a game are affecting the fun of the players to the point where they have to abandon the RAW and make their own, then something is wrong with the rules.

One could argue that this is a feature, not a bug, of the "broad framework" rulesets, like d20 or GURPS. But if a game's rules/mechanics (I consider them synonymous) as written are interferring with the game to the point where they must be abandoned, then perhaps it's time to look for an alternative game with mechanics that you do like. A game that is played without its mechanics is failing on its own terms, I feel.

You will be looking for a long time because no one can write the perfect game. Rule zero (as it is called in d20) operates like the constitution of the united states. The writers understand that no human being can write the perfect system so they leave it open for the user to be able to change it as needed.

 

[Wil]

Wil,

I get it. Burning Wheel's not to your taste. I get it. It's cool. Are you just going to keep saying it over and over again?

-L

Actually, I like what I see for the most part in terms of the mechanics. The choice in terms are descriptive (I think the Shades thing might grow on me) - and I'm certainly in no position to say if they are bad choices or not, if only because I'm likely to abandom them for something that is more memorable to me.

EDIT: I may just buy it and see if I can work something up for a Tribe 8 game, because while I like the Silhouette system it is not always a perfect match for Tribe 8's atmosphere - not so much as to actual interfere with play, but enough to be noticeable.

 

[Wil]

Also, is there anywhere that has an example of the scripted combat, because I may have some questions (and reservations) about it.

 

[jester47]

Hi Jester,

Sure, that might be the case. But lemme try something: So in my mind the system that does not try to control this is leaving much more to chance and opening the game up to abuse and possibly even curtailing player input by not providing a clear set of instructions which all players can rely on as a fair arbiter. Therefore, while DnD might be right for one groups style of play it might not be for another.


-Luke

So basicly its a difference in the philosphy of design. I think that rule sets should be retargetable by genre and gaming group which necessitates not writing anything on how the rules get used because I think the group playing should have that freedom. Your philosophy seems to be that restrictions should be intigated into the ruleset based on a belief that a game played a certain way will be more fair and less abusive. So I think the differences you are running into at the Forge and here on this thread come out of philisophical differences about how games should be written and used.

Just to add a little bit of input, I have found getting player input to be as hard as pulling teeth.

 

[Dave Turner]

Jim,

I sincerely appreciate your mention of specific D&D mechanics in support of the game. I think we can have some good discussion about them.

There's plenty of mechanics in just the corebooks at support roleplay - take skills like Diplomacy, Sense Motive, Bluff....while you can certainly use them and simply roll dice, the text is clear that such situations should be played out in character. There are Feats that support the skills. Hell, man, if there's nothing there supporting roleplay, why have a Charisma stat at all?

I worry that my comments here and through the rest of the thread will come off as needlessly semantic or maybe pedantic. Please don't think I'm out to trap you or win the thread.

I see the skills and feats you're mentioning as mechanics for resolving social conflict, not as mechanics for roleplaying (that's the part I hope you don't think is needless hair-splitting!). Burning Wheel has social skills and rules for adjudicating social conflicts too; it's called the Duel of Wits. How do you think the Charisma stat does support roleplaying? I would suggest that the mere presence of Charisma isn't enough without more mechanics backing it up. Otherwise, it's a "paper tiger".

The Bluff or Diplomacy skills don't require me to define my character's personality. Maybe I can highlight the difference by suggesting that social skills and feats tell me the "how" of a character, but not the why. Don't hold me to that analogy.

There are no mechanics in D&D (again, that I'm immediately aware of) that encourage players to adopt a personality for their character and reward players for acting according to that personality. The DMG (on page 41) states that XP awards for roleplaying are purely ad hoc.

Burning Wheel has the Artha system, which explicitly tells players and GMs how to reward players for roleplaying. It describes how much Artha should be awarded for particular actions, how Artha can be spent, and even talks about how GMs can tailor Artha rewards to particular styles of play. There is an element of subjectivity in when Artha is awarded, but the discussion of these rules for reinforcing and supporting roleplaying are lightyears ahead of D&D.

I assert that 'tactical play' doesn't necessarily mean just battlemats and minis. It can also mean (implicitly, instead of explicitly like Burning Wheel) choosing your social conflicts and tactics as carefully as you do in a brawl, siege or swordfight.

This, sadly, is where D&D’s legacy of rich tactical combat comes back to haunt it. I think it’s fair to say that D&D provides no mechanical support for “social tactics” of any kind. Where is the “social AC”, the “social hit points”, the “social trip attack”, etc.? D&D’s social conflict resolution system consists of the following: pick a skill, find some modifiers, roll once and narrate. Where’s the tactical decision-making? It certainly doesn’t rise to the level of D&D’s tactical combat decision-making!

I know what you’re thinking. You can just decide to break a particular social conflict into several smaller pieces. You make it an extended skill check that the PCs have to achieve through multiple roles. Nothing really tactical there, is there? You can suck up to the DM for a variety of circumstance bonuses, but that’s not tactical.

Burning Wheel, on the other hand, features a social conflict resolution system that closely mirrors the combat system. Players have “social hit points” and attack each other with maneuvers like Incite, Point, Avoid The Topic, and Rebuttal. Every turn in Burning Wheel is called an exchange. In each turn/exchange, there are three volleys. A player must script in advance each maneuver he will use throughout the three volleys. Some Wits maneuvers counter other Wits maneuvers and some maneuvers provide an advantage against other maneuvers.

For example, I script in advance that in volley 2 I will make a Point. My opponent has scripted a Rebuttal for volley 2. Unfortunately for me, a Rebuttal counters a Point. My opponent can use some of the dice in his pool to directly reduce mine. If he can reduce my successes to zero and nullify my attack, while he uses the remainder of his dice in the pool to attack my undefended “social hit points”.

But why am I spelling it out when you can download the section of the game for free: http://www.burningwheel.org/pdf/dow_95_108.pdf