Burning Wheel vs. Revised

[Lxndr]

So, I own the non-revised Burning Wheel.  And I ordered the revised version from IPR a while back, but they're on backorder or something, so have yet to arrive.

In the meanwhile, I'm starting up another BW game, it seems.  We did character creation using the BW rules from the basic book, stopping at Resources.

What can you tell me to do, that will make the transition to BW:Revised as smooth as possible, since I would like to use the revised rules (and would have, by now, had they come with the rest of my IPR order).

[Luke]

Hi Alexander!

Welcome back to the fire.

It's a new game. I'm not going to lie to you. It's not even backwards compatible. I went through some pretty low points as this realization dawned on me. If I pulled one thread, the whole thing had to be dismantled. I didn't want a hacked together piece of shit. I wanted a tight, streamlined racehorse. So I rewrote the whole damn thing. You might find a few paragraphs in there from the first version, but they only survived the cutting because they hinted at the future.

So, as the expression goes: Burning Wheel is dead, long live Burning Wheel.

The core mechanics are the same -- dice pools, fixed target numbers, number of successes. Character creation is the same -- an intricate point-buy system.

But the systems radiating out from those two core elements have all been substantially refined and refocused. So, take your original Burning Wheel set, put it on your shelf and smile at all the good memories surrounding it. Forget you ever played it. Pick up the revision with fresh eyes and enjoy it for what it is.

[Keith Senkowski]

Hey Alexander,

We made the shift in the middle of our campaign and the transition was pretty smooth.  You have to reburn characters, but the changes are so natural that it was easy to continue play.  And, I would have to say that the Duel of Wits made play even better in the long run...

Keith

[Lxndr]

Believe me, guys, if the Revised edition were here, I'd be playing it.  But it's still on its way (apparently, problems mailing to my house, which is annoying, but I can work with), and I want to play with fire NOW, not later. 

Re-burning characters is no big deal, at least not for me, and since all the decisions are basically made, I can do 90% of that work for my players, I think.  Hopefully, IPR will get the revised books to me soon.

Keith, since you made the transition mid-campaign, and you re-burned characters, how'd you handle advanced skills/attributes? Just from memory?

Thanks, everyone!

[Luke]

We made the shift in the middle of our campaign and the transition was pretty smooth.  You have to reburn characters, but the changes are so natural that it was easy to continue play. 

I never understood this. I felt reburning the characters was kind of excessive. But if it worked, that's cool.
We just added Circles and Resources, coverted Observation to a full skill and took off running.

-L

[Keith Senkowski]

Keith, since you made the transition mid-campaign, and you re-burned characters, how'd you handle advanced skills/attributes? Just from memory?

Well, we had our original characters online plus the sheets that had changed over time.  Mix that shit together and we had all the information we needed.  From there we burned up the new guys, compared them to the advances over the course of the game and adjusted them accordingly.  It made a pretty big difference in the characters.

The reason we did it was cause we originally wanted to see what they would be like.  It turned out they were a bit more bad ass in some respects compared to their earlier incarnation, so we made the switch.  There were also some skill changes and the like.  You have no idea how important it was to have that extra die in Oratory...

Keith

[Lxndr]

The Revised Burning Wheel arrived last night (yay) and I was flipping through the character burner first (as I am wont to do) and noticed quite a few changes.  I can't quite agree with Men no longer being at the front of the book, but I'm sure there was a good reason for that... anyway!

Having now reburned one of the three characters we made last week, I totally understand Keith's decision to reburn them.  Our friend got several additional skill points, and his LP traits changed.  Additionally, while numerous Traits were increased in cost (in his particular case, he couldn't have Aura of Holiness anymore, but I noticed more generally that tons of costs had increased), in the end he turned out to be a more badass character, in part thanks to the three free cultural traits (which ignore cost).

(In particular, there's now a culture in this budding world that has the following three traits:  Stubborn, Weather Sense and Eldritch Sink.  Yes, there's an entire people that simply cannot be touched by magic - although my ruling is that they can still be touched by miracles, not sure what the "official" stance is.  I love that.)

So I'll definitely be re-burning the other two characters also, now, 'cause they need all the help they can get.  I'm probably doing something unwise by having a party composed of:  A 3 LP character, a 4 LP character, and an eight LP character, but I'll make a separate post asking for suggestions about that.

Anyway.  The big thing is that my character burner is missing pages 257 - 272.  Page 256 is on one side, and it faces Page 273 on the other.  So I'm missing all of the skills from R-Z with the exception of Read, and all of the Traits before Claustrophobic.  This was somewhat of an inconvenience last night.  I did a search on both the forums here and at burningwheel.org and was unable to find anyone with similar issues.  Has anyone else encountered this?  (I also plan on PMing Luke).

Also:  Where is the Enchantment Wheel that was promised under the Enchantment skill?  I went to the website and haven't found it anywhere.

[Thor Olavsrud]

Anyway.  The big thing is that my character burner is missing pages 257 - 272.  Page 256 is on one side, and it faces Page 273 on the other.  So I'm missing all of the skills from R-Z with the exception of Read, and all of the Traits before Claustrophobic.  This was somewhat of an inconvenience last night.  I did a search on both the forums here and at burningwheel.org and was unable to find anyone with similar issues.  Has anyone else encountered this?  (I also plan on PMing Luke).

Also:  Where is the Enchantment Wheel that was promised under the Enchantment skill?  I went to the website and haven't found it anywhere.

Hi Alexander,

That one's bizarre! I haven't heard of anyone else with a similar issue. I'll make sure to check with Luke.

No Enchanment Wheel yet. Luke revised Abstractions, and then we did Dark Elves and Burning Sand: Jihad, and then he revised Under A Serpent Sun. And created a bunch of new scenarios (The Heist and The Sword are posted in PDF, Inheritance isn't). Anyway, it'll come at some point, but no idea when.