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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9328752" data-attributes="member: 42582">I think in our first Torchbearer session we had some discussion of how it comes about that all the PCs converge on the same ruined tower at the same time - as the rulebook instructs - but I don't now recall what it was. The game bakes party play into the rules, both implicitly (helping is crucial to success in action resolution) and expressly (all the PCs move from adventure to camp to town phase together). The introduction will have been a fig leaf at the time, and having done its job it has now faded from memory!Given that the game does not have a "bonds"-type mechanic, but does have relationships (to NPCs) and Beliefs and Creeds, it is these latter elements that are the focus of my GMing. And this is where the PCs find their lives interwoven in ways that manifest in play - eg Golin's enemy Golin is a member of the Void Kult, and thus has some sort of (as-yet unrevealed) connection to Lareth's Fiery Eye Kult. And Lareth is Fea-bella's half-brother, the daughter of her mother and of a NPC mage who was the (now-deceased) occupant of the ruined tower and, before that (although I don't think the players have yet joined the dots) the owner of Megloss's house (Megloss having been Fea-bella's enemy).The tone of my Burning Wheel games is more serious than Torchbearer. In my most recent game, the two initial PCs were Aedhros and Alicia. They had both disembarked from the same ship, both dirt poor, and both somewhat sinister types, and this prompted them to work together. Alicia has since been badly injured (by overtax from spell casting) and my friend is playing a different character, Thoth the necromancer. Thoth was introduced into play as a result of a failed Circles test by me - when Alicia collapsed, Aedhros hoped (beyond hope, as it turned out) that a helpful necromancer who knew how to heal here would come by at just that moment. But it turned out to be Thoth instead.We know that there is some unhappy backstory between Thoth and Aedhros, but there has been no need yet to establish what it is. It's sufficient for me, in playing Aedhros, to have the Belief that I will free Alicia and myself from the curse of Thoth! (This is quite a way from Aedhros's original Alicia-related Belief: Only because Alicia seems poor and broken can I endure her company. This is one illustration of how PCs in Burning Wheel change.)I guess my point is that there are many ways to approach the issue of establishing, and using, connections between PCs. But I prefer ways that drive play.</blockquote>

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