[Burning Wheel] The Face-off

[Bret Gillan]

I ran my first Burning Wheel session, and it basically leapt right off the character sheets. I did no prep whatsoever, and it was one of the best first sessions I've ever had - anytime I needed inspiration for what to do next I just glanced at my cheatsheet of BITs I'd made before the game began. Burning Wheel is a hot little system, no doubt.

The concept was that a pseudo-Russian city was fairly recently surrounded by orcs. It's not a siege or any military invasion. It's just that a lot of orcs recently migrated to this area, and now it makes travel from the city to anywhere else extremely dangerous except by river. This has cut back on trade a lot, and the wealth of the city is sliding downhill. The peasants, of course, are the ones to suffer as the nobles raise taxes higher and higher so that they can keep up their way of life, and the guards spend more time beating down unhappy peasants than they do guarding against the occasional orc assault.

The players are a group of outcasts - a heretic priest, a rogue wizard, and a desperate killer - who've banded together to be the catalysts in a volatile situation and ride the chaos towards their own personal goals. The first game chronicled their early attempts at getting the revolution going - gathering support amidst some of the unhappy peasantry, discovering some information about the church looting and destroying the temples of the old gods under the city and suppressing the reemergence of the religion, and a violent encounter between the heretic priest's bodyguard and the desperate killer.

Players are:

Jere - The heretic priest. A friend since high school and someone I've been regularly gaming with for just as long. Jere is always one of the most enthusiastic and creative roleplayers at a table and it's always great to have him, but he can get easily frustrated if competition emerges.

Bob - I share an apartment with him, and we gamed together in college. We both appreciate the same kind of games, though he has some different priorities than me. This occasionally creates some friction, but rarely and definitely not in BW.

Jeff - Another college friend and current flatmate who I never really gamed with until now. He's enthusiastic about basically every game I pitch.

The meat of this post is a scene where Jere's character sent his bodyguard (Krieg) with Jeff's character (Nameless) to intimidate someone. In the course of the scene, Krieg struck a child sending him sprawling. Possibly dead? Jeff had written a Belief for Nameless regarding protecting children which I intentionally stepped on here. We ended the session with Krieg and Nameless facing off.

Now, Jere expressed some frustration that Krieg, an NPC relationship he had sunk points into, was about to possibly die thus depriving him of that in-game resource. This was also intended to be a cooperative sort of game with the player characters working together towards the same end. Now, my thought was that Belief-driven conflict of any stripe is good, but now I'm having my doubts. And while it's not too late to beg off of this and "go back in time" to remove the child-smacking and the follow-up conflict, I worry about treading on someone else's fun for the sake of our own.

So I'm having a hard time formulating my actual question here, but more or less I'm wondering if I made an error in judgment to hammer Nameless's Belief in that situation?

[coffeestain]

Bret,

I certainly don't think it was an error in judgment to hammer the character's Belief, but I've got two questions for you before I respond in any more depth:

1)  Why wasn't Jere playing Krieg at that time?  Was Krieg purchased as just a relationship, or was he purchased as an actual bodyguard?

2)  Did you and the players discuss the fact that this game was supposed to be completely cooperative, or did you all come into it with differing expectations?

Regards,
Daniel

[Bret Gillan]

Thanks for responding, Daniel.

1) Krieg was purchased as a relationship. I wasn't aware there was a specific way of purchasing a bodyguard, but we are, as a group, fairly unfamiliar with the rules. I don't know if I can back up my decision to play Krieg other than I really wanted to and thought it would be more satisfying for Jere to roleplay and develop the relationship in-game.

2) Yes, at the game's creation we discussed it as an "adventuring party" sort of game where the PCs worked together. In a previous Sorcerer game we had the sorcerers working independently one another, and we were all craving the inter-PC interaction.

Does that help?

[Iskander]

Bret,

You can buy a minion and retain control of that character ("I need a Bodyguard or Squire" p.25, ChaBu), which is not the same as a regular old relationship, which bodyguard Krieg sounds like. The relationship pulls in an NPC that the player wants to have to deal with. For my money, you did nothing wrong - actually, you did things explicitly right. The relationship is there to cause trouble. I would have the DoW between players, though, or between Krieg and his master, if it can be arranged.

Talk, as players, about what it means to have invested in a relationship - they're really only an investment in something at the start of play, they're by no means inviolate (otherwise, why bother?) and they are bound to change and cause trouble - and see if Nameless wants to back down from an actual Fight! with Krieg. Otherwise, let Jere play Krieg for the Fight! and make his own decisions as a player about when he wants to cut and run (or kill Nameless).

If Krieg was a Bodyguard[/b] bodyguard, then you robbed Jere - he should have been in control of Krieg. If it helps, in Burning Empires, minion-type relationships are the only way a player can continue after character death - as the minion - and are equivalent to playing two characters. (A lot of fun.)

- Alexander

[Jeremiah Lahnum]

Hey, I'm the Jere in question here and I just wanted to put my two cents in here.  I think there was a bit of a misunderstanding between me and Bret here.  I certainly did say something to the effect that it would kind of suck to lose Krieg.  

However, when I burnt him up as my character's bodyguard, I realized he was going to be a terrible and violent man.  I fully expected anyone who leads that kind of life to end up on the wrong end of a knife eventually.  To be fair I didn't expect it to be a PC, or for it to be so soon.  In the end though it's a cool fight with potentially awesome consequences to either side.  

As for me playing Krieg, I didn't realize that this is how bodyguards are intended to work.  I do know the book says you're in charge of burning him up and calling for him to use skills, etc.  However, I didn't realize that they were under my direct control.  

Anyway, I hope that clears this up a bit.  I'm eager to see the fight go through.  I just wonder if Jeff is eager for "Nameless" to get his face handed to him :)

[coffeestain]

Bret,

To no particular surprise, I agree with Alexander on almost all counts.  The only part I'm a little fuzzy about is that I can see how placing one character in a direct position to destroy the resources of another character, through a conflict could have been considered a violation of the "party mentality" agreement.  Even if Kreig weren't killed as a result of the conflict, the situation would most likely engender conflict between Jeff's character and Jere's.

Make sense?

Regards,
Daniel

[Luke]

Brett,
You did nothing wrong. It's worth noting that you initiated this conflict completely in control of the situation. The player responded, as you predicted he would, and now you still remain in control. The bodyguard's reactions to the player's threats are yours to determine. You can decide how to spin or how to push it. There not one definitely course, but there are certainly actions you can take to shove the game forward while keeping the group together and focused on unified action.

-L