Explain Burning Wheel to me

[Dave Turner]

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

Here's a thread to get you going: http://www.burningwheel.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1060

Really, though, that whole forum is nothing but combat examples!

 

[Sleepy Voiced]

Dave and Luke, thanks for dropping in to share some insight into what Burning Wheel is all about. I have been kinda curious about it, having read about it here and there online, but haven't had the opportunity to peruse a hard-copy. You have piqued my interest sufficiently that I will be asking my FLGS to order a copy for me this week.
I don't know if it will be my new "regular Saturday night thing" or anything like that, but it looks like it provides some very interesting approaches to role-playing. I look forward to reading it, and less so to the almost certain rebuff from my gaming group when I suggest trying something new. Sadly that has more to do with cheapness than anything else. My players got 3.0 PHBs, and refuse to spend another cent on the hobby.
Anyway, thanks again for stopping by the D20 Lion's Den to chat with us.

 

[Dave Turner]

Glad to hear it, Sleepy! Don't forget to visit the Burning Wheel forums (through www.burningwheel.com) to have any questions answered. It's a great game.

 

[Henry]

Here are some links, Henry.

My thanks for the links - I missed them when getting caught up this morning.

 

[Henry]

As for other business:

I've been catching some rather snarky comments coming in towards some posters, especially towards Lukzu, both from last night and occasionally recently; let's please remember the rules and try to be polite, even if you don't agree with someone. I don't necessarily agree with the design philosophies of this game, nor with some of the comments made from RPG.net, but I'd rather be civil and learn something rather than start fires.

Thanks for listening.

 

[ThoughtBubble]

Am I the only one that thinks it's weird that all the alternatives to D&D mentioned are games based on the OGL?

That was on purpose. I figured that OGL games would be more accessable for comparison. This is a D20 site after all. People who've played games that venture further from D&D probably already know what I'm trying to get at about mechanics supporting a specific type of feel.

I've read through the thread and am glad this particular point came back around. We always inject deep background and motivations in our long-term D&D 3.5 games and any person can choose to do so in theirs. Our story hour consists of characters that all had to start in a certain village and have ties to the village. Each character had a detailed background in which the player and DM worked through to set up the relationship to the village, character alignment, motivations and current goals for the character. The DM took these backgrounds and weaved them deftly into the campaign world and also gave role-play XP awards associated with the backgrounds and how the character reacted. We were able to do this with the D&D 3.5 rules set because we chose to. Why did you feel you needed a mechanic for this?

The majority of DMs I've played with recently are intelligent people who fail at just that task. They're very adept with what's in the rules. However when trying to use things outside of the rules (from personal expierence: character background and motivation, political situations, large orginizations, and mysteries), they tend to falter and stumble. However, I think that if they had mechanics for running those sorts of situations they'd be able to deal with them in better ways.

There are some people out here that could really use that mechanic.

So, what about explicit (Burning Wheel's Beliefs or SC 2's semi-concrete result-based rewards) versus implicit (D&D's method of handling character goals and to an extent alignment)? Obviously, it's not 'this is good, this is bad'...but what's a good balance? Should this vary by play group (based on the assumption each play group has its own social contract and play goals), or be set at some happy medium?

Just thinking out loud here.

I think that really ends up depending on the people playing, the people running the game and what all everyone expects to get out of it. Hm... I think I managed to say exactly nothing there. It's all about the strengths of the people playing. If the group has players who are good at running with what comes up in game, or a DM who is good at hooking the players, you don't need mechanics for it. If you've got characters with good background and a DM who can use it, you don't need mechanics for it. On the other hand, if you've got harder to hook players, or a DM who just doesn't get how to grab them, explicit goals are a wonderful thing.

My current group is difficult to get information out of. Sometimes the information exsists, but they don't know how to get it to me. Sometimes they just havn't thought about it very much. But, the funny thing is that if it goes on the character sheet, it will usually get filled out. Unfortunately, I was only able to fool one person by attaching a character questionaire.

What I've found is that in games where they're required to specify a bit of the character's personality to get into the game, they specifiy the personality and then use it. For my group of players, more explicit definitions are good.

 

[mythusmage]

Sorry if I didn't get to your question, you kids are crazy.

The ENWorld community is more like the RPGnet community than most think. The difference between the two is that the RPGnet community is like a gaggle of crazy kids meeting in a clubhouse away from grown-ups, while the ENWorld community is like a gaggle of crazy kids meeting at a friend's house, and his grandmother lives there.

 

[Henry]

...while the ENWorld community is like a gaggle of crazy kids meeting at a friend's house, and his grandmother lives there.

And on Fridays she brings us lemonade!

(pass the Mike's Lemonade, would ya, Alan? Thanks.)

 

[Wil]

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!

Easy, that's all in Tribe 8 second edition - which while it is a different system, has OGL stats and conversions. There's a complete social conflict system there. Tribe 8 also features a spiritual combat system that closely mirrors the physical and social combat systems.

 

[pogre]

Luke,

Thank you for coming here and talking about your game. I appreciated your contributions.

I would love to play your game - it sounds like a lot of fun and very different from D&D. Over the years I have to come to believe that system does matter at some level.

I do not fault anyone who comes out with a new game saying, 'This is a radical new way of doing things that can accomplish and lead to styles of gameplay that no other game has!' Frankly, if an author does not believe that, why publish?

On to my question -
My gaming group is like a lot of others out there in this respect - most of the players are lazy*. I fear asking them to build motivating backgrounds into their characters at the beginning of the campaign might be too much. As the campaign progresses and they buy into the campaign world and the storylines their PCs usually do develop independent agendas, but sometimes not.

My players usually want to show up on game night and go through the adventure - they're are often not interested in creating a part of the adventure. Would it be a waste of time to try your game with such a group?

*By lazy I mean when a new D&D game starts they are more than willing to play, but they do not want to devote outside energies to the game generally. Many of them are running their own games and want to use their energies towards their GMing. Fortunately, now that our campaign has gone for long enough most of the players have developed deeper agendas and modules and such are much less useful to me as they usually come to the table with a direction they want to go.