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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8936265" data-attributes="member: 42582">I personally think this significantly overstates the difficulty of the task.Yesterday, while waiting for a friend to arrive, I was talking with another friend about the differences between Torchbearer and Burning Wheel. We made a few cogent observations - eg about the way characters can and can't develop, about the way artha can be earned in the different systems, in my case about the way BW supports a type of intense and almost intimate play that TB doesn't, based on the different approaches the two systems adopt towards PC build, framing and resolution.For instance, one of my favourite moments in BW play is when my PC Thurgon persuaded his sidekick Aramina to mend his armour. This was resolved as a Duel of Wits. For this to really carry weight in a RPG, there have to be a number of system features:*The system has to track and care about damage to armour; *The system has to have a meaningful system for repairing that damage, where ability matters (in BW this is the Mending skill on the PC sheet); *The system has to have a satisfactory way to resolve the argument about whether or not to mend the armour (in BW this is Duel of Wits); *The whole discussion has to matter, in a thematic or emotional sense, so that it is meaningful rather than just indulgent or piddling around to spend time on it (in BW this heft is provided by the relevant Beliefs, which in this case weren't about armour or mending but each character's Belief about their relationship to the other).We can then see that Torchbearer has the first two, but downplays the prospect of PvP arguments by giving these a high cost in the game's action economy, and also doesn't have the fourth feature - TB doesn't encourage character-to-character relationship as the content of Beliefs, where as these are the bread and butter of BW.Reflecting now on my conversation of yesterday, the only other RPG I can think of at the moment that would support the argument about armour repair is MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic, which can handle damage to gear (this is s stepped down trait), and has a system for repairing that damage (ie restoring a stepped down trait), and can resolve PvP easily enough (complications or emotional stress will do the job), and can make it matter in terms of character milestones.The point of this post is to show that critical analysis of RPGs seems to me to be not that hard.</blockquote>

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