[Burnign Wheel] - Arcanum

[Henri]

Yesterday I started a new campaign of Burning Wheel using the setting of the computer game Arcanum, an anachronistic fantasy steam punk game.  I've been interested in Burning Wheel for the past couple of years, but I never had a setting or situation that inspired me, and it doesn't come with it's own setting.  But after playing this game, I new I had exactly the setting I wanted.

Running this game for me is going to be very experimental as I'm doing some things I've never tried and it is also probably my most ambitious serious rpg experiment.  I've never done high fantasy, and I'm not accustomed to systems that are as crunchy as Burning Wheel.  In a way, BW is a more "traditional" game than what I am used to (by which I suppose I mean more like 2nd ed. D&D).  But my approach to the game will not be.

My first experiment is that there will be no "party of adventurers," and in fact only two of the characters know each other at all.  Instead, I had each player create whatever character they wanted and each will be the protagonist of their own story.  In some cases the stories may interact, but this is not necessary.  This allows me to tailor each player's story to the desires that they have for their character and make sure that everyone gets to feel like a protagonist.  The downside of this is that it reduces the opportunity for PC-PC interaction, which can be a lot of fun.  In order to deal with this problem, the other experimental technique that I'm using is that rather than playing all of the NPC's myself as the GM normally does, I'm allowing other players to play NPC's as long as their character is off-screen, and interpret those characters loosely and in some cases even add traits to them.  Thus the true distinction is not between PC's and NPC's but rather between protagonists and secondary characters.  

And now, to introduce the cast.  Two of the players have a more "traditional" D&D-style background and approach, which became clear in character creation as both made adventurer type characters.  Ted is playing a Dwarven Noble Adventurer who has been usurped from his lands by his brother and framed as an Oathbreaker, and is attempting to restore his honor and regain his lands.  Travelling with him is his ward, a young orphaned Dwarven noble who his brother would have killed.  James is playing a Dark Elven Necromancer (I allow elves to take the "Gifted" trait and cast Sorcery in this setting).  He is an agent for the poweful Dark Elf Sorceress Min Gorad, who is actively working for the subjugation of humanity to the rule of the Dark Elves over Arcanum.  

Two other players, Dev and Justin, created very political characters.  Dev's character is the orc equivalent of Martin Luther King or Ghandi.  In this setting, the orcs are the oppressed factory workers who work in slave-like conditions for crappy pay and have limitted legal rights.  His character is attempting to organize them to strike and demonstrate peacefully using passive resistance techniques.  Justin's character is an urban half-orc bastard, the offspring of a human noblewoman and an orc chieftain.  He believes their union was one of love, although everyone else called it rape.  Unfortunately, he soon dropped out of the court setting and became an outcast and a criminal.  Currently he owns a bar in the Boil, the orc ghetto of the major city and is the leader of a small orc gang.  

Last is Sami, who is playing an Elven clockmaker who was adopted at a young age by a gnome, and was raised in a well-to-do gnome family in the city.  Her approach to rpg-ing focuses most on the psychological exploration of her character.  While GM-ing her character's story will be the most challenging for me, she is an excellent role-player and I think she raises the bar for the group.  

Last week I had a character burning session, but we only got as far as filling out the character burner worksheets, not the actual character sheets.  So the first hour of this session was devoted to filling out character sheets and working on beliefs and instincts.  Although the character creation system of BW makes for great characters, it is a lot of work.  I felt really guilty making my players do more character creation after having an entire session devoted to it last week (if you are reading this, then thank you for bearing with me).  I was quite relieved when we were finally finished and moved on to actually starting the game.  Throughout the game I used frequent scene-cutting, but I'm not going to tell it that way here.  

We opened with the Dwarf, waking up in the rain a morning's walk from the small town of Stillwater with his ward.  To warm things up, I told a short story of his memory of visiting the town when he was a lad and really enjoying it.  Then he gets to the town and his memories are contrasted to the sorry economic state of the town, which is obvious in the abandoned buildings and poor upkeep.  In the town center is a cluster of signs pointing to the town businesses, a very useful device if perhaps not that realistic.  Remembering his encounter with the town blacksmith as a youth, he went first to the blacksmith shop.  Sami took over the roll of the ward, a young and eager Dwarf, and we had some very amusing roll-playing of the two Dwarves and the burly human blacksmith (the son of the previous smith).  They then went to the tavern and talked to some miners there about an Ogre by the name of Drogg Blacktooth who has recently returned to the area (Ogres are Trolls from the Monster Burner, I just call them Ogres instead).  They then headed to talk to old Cyrus the healer because the blacksmith had mentioned he might be helpful, only to discover that he is missing and there are signs of violence.  So they go to Drog's cave and find Cyrus in a cage.  They let him out, and as they are leaving, the silhouette of the Ogre fills the cave mouth, and we end.

Ted's story was a lot of fun.  He created an atmosphere of fun and joviality.  His character is someone who enjoys adventuring and drinking beer in taverns, and there was a lot of light-hearted playing of Dwarven stereotypes and making fun of the human beer and other stuff.  I think his character's tag line should be "If it's not Dwarven, it's crap."  I was afraid of the ward being a useless tag-along, as a lot of NPC's often are, since with so much else on his mind, it is often hard for the GM to keep track of playing them all and doing it well.  I feel like Sami was able to bring the ward to life in a way that I would not have done.

The Dark Elf arrived in Stillwater shortly after the Dwarf, although he is just here to restock supplies on his way to the nearby Stonewall Mountains.  He has the traits "spooky" and "aura of fear" and is very misanthropic.  James makes it very clear that he hates being in this human town and wants to get his supplies and get out as quick as possible.  He goes into the general goods store and scares the poor store owner, but just buys his stuff and leaves quickly.  He makes a quick stop at the shop of Jongle Dunne, a gnome illusionist and circus magicion/clown.  Sami took the roll of Jongle.  Jongle was supposed to provide James with a "side quest," but James's character wasn't interested.  Sami did a great job playing a very flustered and intimidated gnome, and pressed James just the right amount for the side quest before giving up.  But the necromancer basically was very rude and blew him off, which was fine, because his character is supposed to be evil and a misanthropic asshole.  So he headed off for the mountains, arriving at evening, and then sleeping in a tree.  The next morning he entered the mine that he is supposed to be exploring.  I hadn't expect to get that far, since I had expected to spend more time in Stillwater, so I didn't handle the mines quite so well, and next session I think I will rewind his story back to the mine entrance, because I want to redo that bit.  I had him encounter three zombies and ended there, but I realized afterwards that having him fight a lot of zombies is going to be really boring, because while zombies aren't very offensive, they can take a lot of damage, which is going to make for really long and slow combat, and that isn't much fun.  I think I'll have him fight just one zombie for practice with the combat system, and if he fights any more, we'll just narrate them free-from, or maybe roll a single Die of Fate to see if anything bad happens to him.

While we didn't get very far with James's character, I think it will be a lot of fun, since he is very evil, and while you often get PC's that are dark, you rarely get outright evil PC's because they don't play well with the other PC's.  But in this case, it isn't an issue, since he doesn't have to.

For Sami's character, most of the game was roll-playing between her and her father and her father's old friend Edward, who is visitting from another city.  Dev played her father, while I took the roll of Edward, and James played the laconic half-ogre bodyguard.  There wasn't much conflict and no dice rolling, but at the end of the evening, Edward asks her father, Allawishus, to come back to his home city, Tarant, to develop a market for his luxury clocks and watches, tempting him with the possibilities of making a lot of money.  Sami's character is not sure yet how she feels about this, and neither is her father.  Thus the conflict for the next session is initiated.  

Finally, we have the story of the orcs.  We open with the orcs gathered for a secular meeting in the temple that Dev's character runs.  The leader of the orc workers has asked Dev and Justin's characters to speak to the orcs about how they might enact change.  A debate ensues, using the Duel of Wits mechanics.  This worked reasonably well, although I think it would have been better if people had been less tired.  Perhaps I should have saved it for the next session.  It was the last scene of the night, and some of the players seemed to be falling asleep.  Dev seemed to be doomed at first, but made a surprise come-back in the end.  So now the orcs are committed to a peaceful strike, at least for now.  Afterwards, even Justin admitted that he had been hoping to lose since this way will make for a more interesting story, so it's a good thing the dice worked out that way.

While it was a short session, from what we've done I think the game is going to work out well.  I was thrilled with how well the "outsourcing" of the NPC's worked.  In the past I have used the technique of having other friends who are interested in the game but not playing PC's cameo as NPC's, a technique that I think is commonly used in larping.  I found that this really helped to bring the NPC's to life and give them a feeling of autonomy.  After playing GM-less games like Universalis and Polaris, I had the idea that rather than having outsiders come in and play NPC's we could just have other players play them.  The way Universalis and Polaris deconstruct the dichotomy between PC's and NPC's was very eye-opening for me, and using this technique meshes perfectly with the idea of having seperate stories for each of the protagonists, rather than the often awkward forcing of them together.  I'm looking foward to seeing how this continues to work out as the game develops.

[Tobias]

Interesting! I've played arcanum and really liked it's setting (too bad the story's so linear, though), and I'm just now getting in BW as well.

If you need any creative help, feel free to holler/PM.

I'm curious about the 'encountered 3 zombies' - did you have a 3-on-1 fight in BW, or three 1-on-1 in sequence (or, from what you wrote, just 1 1-on1)? Because multi-on-1 is supposedly very tough on the single fighter.

Now I'm getting fond flashbacks to my Half-Ogre Summoner.... lol.

[Luke]

Hi Henri,

Neat stuff.

Watch out for Elven Sorcerers. They are the munchkin's delight in BW. Other players might find themselves quite bored as Mr Elfy deftly handles every situation.

Anyway, there are other BW players in Boston.
If you're interested in playing or running with other folks, check the thread here:
http://burningwheel.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1571

[Bill Cook]

Juggling multiple storylines is quite a change from troupe style play. I think you've hit it right, outsourcing NPC control to out-of-scene players. Another multiplier is to pay Artha for referencing or (even better) crossing other storylines.

My group hit that same wall after filling out the worksheets. Most refused to then fill out the character sheets, and we just went with what they had. It worked out alright.

It's an interesting choice to eschew Elf song in favor of human magic. I think the pricing is broken, but if you adjust, they deliver a strong dose of alien culture. My group really enjoyed it.

And your Arcanum blend is really getting D&D-ish! But it's an intentional choice, so I won't pick on you:) The main thing is to seek inspiration, and it sounds like you've got it.

[Henri]

Tobias:  Well, we haven't played out the combat against the three zombies yet, and looking at the numbers I realized that was a mistake, so in the next session I'm going to scale it back down to one zombie.  

Bill and Abzu: As for the elven sorcerer, I definately get your point as elves are already really powerful as are sorcerers.  It makes a lot of sense to me that in BW only humans can be gifted, and I think the spell song system is really great.  However, this particular setting really calls for elves to have sorcery.  Otherwise I would not allow it.  While he is a powerful character though, it's not clear that he is actually more powerful than the Dwarf.  Because I'm not using a troupe style of play, balance isn't really that important.  I can just up the level of the antagonists for the Elf and the Dwarf and it won't really effect the other characters.  

Bill, I agree that it is getting a bit more D&D-ish, but again that is due to the setting.  Arcanum is more of a high-magic setting and less gritty and realistic than Burning Wheel.  This actually depends a lot on the part of the setting that people want to explore.  None of my players chose to make human characters, which will definately up the fantasy element.  But the situation for the two half-orcs is much less high-fantasy than for the other characters, so that will help balance the game out.  

Thanks for the comments!