[BWr] Mostly Homogametic Rrole-playng

[Andrew Cooper]

I played Burning Wheel Revised this weekend and the result was a mixed bag.  That's not a bad thing or a good thing really.  It's just a thing.  My wife invited some young ladies over to the house on Friday.  They were going to stay the night there and then leave on Saturday afternoon.  This is a relatively common thing at my house actually.  My wife runs a dance studio and leads our church's dance team and thus has quite a few young ladies that hang around.  Well, they all wanted to play a role-playing game and I was down with that.

I'm going to take a minute to gloat here that I got to play a game with 4 nice-looking young women and I was the only guy at the table.  I may have just lived every male, gamer-geek's fantasy.  I haven't decided yet.  Being 16-19 years older than most of the girls and being married to the only one that approached my age sorta took the edge off the fantasy but I'm still going to gloat.  Especially since I don't ever think I've had more than 2 females at a gaming table with me before and I've never had more females than males. It was a different experience but I'll get to that when I get to the actual play portion of this report.
 
So, here are the players...

Me - The GM.  I'm 36. Been playing RPG's a long time.  Have played 1 session of BW and haven't ever run it.
Hazel - My wife.  She's 25 (for the 8th straight year).  She's played D&D a few times.
Lindsey - My pseudo-daughter.  17 years old.  She's played D&D, Legends of Alyria, Roach, PTA and Capes.
Melissa - 20 years old. She's played a few sessions of D&D.
Rachel - 20 years old.  She's never played any RPG's at all.

We knew we were going to have two play times available; Friday evening and Saturday during the day.  So, I made some homemade fried chicken, whipped taters, fried okra and other goodies for dinner and then around 8:30pm we sat down to do some character burning.

The Bad: I was the only person with the books.  This is really a killer with BW.  Character burning is very involved and there are a metric shit-ton of choices to make.  I did the best I could by reading out options and passing the book around.  Regardless, the process was slow.  Lifepath creation and stats and skills really started to drag and I think engagement in the activity waned some here.

Note:  I have a 3 year old.  Up until around 10pm he was running around.  This was distracting.  Not the game's fault but it was an issue.

The Good: When we hit Beliefs and Instincts things really came together and interest spiked again.  I was impressed and excited about all the nifty stuff people came up with.  The setting for our session on Saturday coalesced right there at the table without a lot of strain.  I nudged things a little from time to time with suggestions to make things fit a little tighter but I didn't push much.  If they found something cool, I generally went with it and made it fit somehow.

Here are the characters...

Riley (Melissa)
Stock: Man   Age: 22
Lifepaths: Village Born, Village Guard, Corrupt Sergeant, Outlaw
Stats: Will 4, Perception 4, Power 4, Forte 5, Agility 5, Speed 5
Attributes: Health 5, Steel 4, Reflexes 7, Mortal 10
Skills: Sword 4, Shield 4, Authority-wise 4, Intimidation 4, Armor 4, Bribe 4
Traits: Thug, Predatory, Outlaw
Relationships: Turpin, Village Judge (Enemy); Brandon, Village Mayor (Father-in-law, Enemy); Kyra (Wife)
Instincts: Always Inconspicuous. When confronted, run away.  Words before actions.
Beliefs: All elves are snobs for no reason, I will knock them off their high horse.  I was outlawed wrongfully, I will clear my name. Friends in high places are a good thing, I must get some.

Aslan Cadence (Rachel)
Stock: Elf   Age: 180
Lifepaths: Born Wilder, Clothier, Artist, Song Singer
Stats: Will 6, Perception 6, Power 4, Forte 5, Agility 4, Speed 4
Attributes: Health 8, Steel 6, Reflexes 4, Mortal 10, Grief 2
Skills: Tailor 5, Song of Form 3, Sing 4, Painting 3, Embroidery 3, Song of Soothing 4, Lamment of the Fallen 3
Traits: Elf Traits, Appreciation of Beauty, Charismatic
Relationships: Zera, Song Singer (Rival); Prince Galen (Romantic, Forbidden)
Instincts: Always the Song of Soothing at sunset. Always carry artist tools,  When Zera is around, compete.
Beliefs: I'm in love with Galen, I will be a Princess.  Pride is a vice, I will not indulge it.  Zera is my rival for Galen's affection, I will best her.

Amarentha (Lindsey)
Stock: Elf   Age: 123
Lifepaths: Born Etharch, Attendant, Second, Sword Singer
Stats: Will 5, Perception 4, Power 5, Forte 5, Agility 4, Speed 4
Attributes: Health 7, Steel 6, Reflexes 4, Mortal 11, Grief 2
Skills: Elven Script 2, Sword 5, Song of Bonding 3, Song of the Sword 3, Etiquette 3, Knives 3, Armor 4, Shield 4, Bow 5, Sing 2, Lamment of the Fallen 6
Traits: Elf Traits, Ethereal, Calm Demeanor, Lesson of One, Fealty to the Fea, Aman
Relationships: Prince Galen, (Brother)
Instincts: When threatened, draw sword.  Always carry medical supplies. Always be cautious around Davram.
Beliefs: Elves are superior beings, I will behave accordingly.  Galen, not Davram, deserves to be king and I will assit him.  Peace between humans and elves is necessary, the negotiations must succeed.

Elera (Hazel)
Stock: Man   Age: 24
Lifepaths: Noble Born, Student, Arcane Devotee, Sorceress
Stats: Will 5, Perception 5, Power 5, Forte 4, Agility 4, Speed 4
Attributes: Health 6, Steel 6, Reflexes 6, Mortal 10
Skills: Read 5, Calligraphy 3, Enchanting 5, Write 4, Rule of Law 3, Sorcery 7, Doctrine 2, Etiquette 3, Symbology 2, Research 2, Sword 6
Traits: Mark of Privilege, Base Humility, Gifted, Your Eminence, Chronologue
Relationships: Prince Viktor (Husband)
Instincts: If threatened, Arcane Kindness. When attacked, Call of Iron.
Beliefs: Knowledge is power so I must obtain the Tome of Ages.  Viktor must prove himself, I will help the negotiations succeed.

During the process of making these PC, a situation and supporting NPC's evolved.  The situation was a The Village of Edglin that was located between the Kingdom of Caledonia and the Kingdom of the Elves.  Currently the humans and the elves were in dispute over teh Valley of Tessen.  They had agreed to negotiate over the valley and meet at Edglin to do so.

Prince Viktor - The human representative and husband to Elera (PC).  Viktor wants a peaceful solution to the negotiations but wants the Kingdom of Caledonia to get a fair deal.  The negotiations are important to his standing in the Court.

Branden - The Mayor of Edglin.  The negotiations are taking place in his manor house.  He wants no trouble while such august guest are in residence.  (Sucks to be him)

Kyra - Mayor's daughter and married to Riley (PC) the ex-Guard turned outlaw.  Kyra wants her husband's name cleared and for him to return to her.

Turpin - Local magistrate who framed Riley for murder to cover up his involvement in Riley's bribery schemes.  Turpin wants Riley dead.

Prince Davram - One of the twin elven princes and brother to Amarentha (PC).  He's the studious one.  He wants the negotiations to succeed and to avert war.  He also wants to advance his own claim to the elven throne.

Prince Galen - One of the twin elven princes and brother to Amarentha (PC).  He's the martial one.  He does not want the negotiations to succeed and would like to take the Valley of Tessen by force.  A military victory only strengthens his standing in the Elven Court.

Zera - Elven Song Singer and part of the entourage.  She wants to be a princess and is in love with Galen.  She wants whatever it seems like he wants.

The Assassin - Works for the King of Caledonia and is charged with killing someone important at the meetins in order to kick off a war.  The King believes that he can win the Valley by main force without concessions from the far-too-prideful elves.

***Note: The assassin was my own creation and I didn't tell the players about that person.  It was plot twist to spring on them and keep things tense.

This ended our character burning session.  Overall, I was pleased.  I'd have been happier if everyone had the text and it hadn't moved so slowly.  The actual play session follows this posting...

[Andrew Cooper]

Crap.  I misspelled Role-playing in my title and I can't edit it.  *sigh*

[Andrew Cooper]

The following morning after a late breakfast, we started playing.  I admit that though I was pretty psyched about some neat characters and a decent situation to work with, I had trouble thinking on my feet and keeping the story moving.  I knew I needed to get some rolls going so that everyone would get an idea for how the system worked, so I went with some stuff I figured would force some rolls.

The elves were riding into the village.  Not far outside its borders the group is attacked by a lone crossbowman who puts a bolt into Prince Davram.  Aslan jumps to his aid with The Song of Soothing while Amarentha chases after the assassin.  Two rolls.  One is to help Davram and heal his wound.  Aslan failed and Davram got worse, slipping into unconsciousness.  The second is to catch the assassin.  Amarentha doesn't have the skill so she's relying on Beginner's Luck.  She fails too.  She tumbles from her horse and injures herself.  This gives Aslan another opportunity with the Song of Soothing and she succeeds this time.  That's two tests for Aslan on the Song of Soothing.  She's halfway to learning something.

This short scene worked out pretty well.  There was action and it got things moving.  It also showed how to perform a few Tests and keep track of experience.  After that, I didn't have to explain that stuff anymore.

The elves arrive at the manor and Davram is taken care of and at least seems well enough to sit up in bed and read (The Tome of Ages from Elera's Beliefs) even if he doesn't seem able to get up and move around much.  Plans are made for a dinner party the following evening.

Kyra meets with Riley at an abandoned farmstead outside the village.  Riley wants her to get him a servant's uniform and assigned to the Prince and Elera.  Melissa is playing to Riley's desire to make friends in high places.  As a player, she also knows that Elera wants that Tome and she's putting Riley in a position to be asked to get said Tome for the Countess.  Kyra is worried but agrees.

Riley sneaks into the kitchen of the manor house and has a servants livery waiting on him.  He changes.  The assassin approaches him, also dressed as a servant, and reveals that he knows that Riley is an outlaw.  He offers an official pardon is Riley will do away with Prince Davram during the dinner that night.  Riley agrees.

At the dinner, Aslan and Zera get into a discussion about the princes.  They agree to both perform for the audience.  The one who gets the best response gets to attempt to win Galen's heart without the other horning in on the deal.  In fact, the loser agrees to go after Davram instead of Galen.  They both perform and Aslan wins the contest handily.  Zera retreats gracefully, conceding defeat.  I screwed up here.  This resolved Aslan's Belief about Zera and I totally forgot to award Persona Artha for that.  Duh.  Still, I'm going to be a little easy on myself since it was my first time running the game.

Riley sneaks into Davram's room and tells the Prince that someone hired him to kill the prince.  Riley puts forth the plan to have Davram disappear for a while and see if the plot against him boils to the surface and reveals who is behind everything.  Riley rolls Beginner's Luck on Suasion and succeeds.  Davram agrees to disappear and gives Riley his signet ring as proof the outlaw killed the prince.

There was only 1 fight the whole session.  It came when Riley took the signet ring to the assassin to get his pardon.  The assassin considered Riley a loose end and tried to kill him.  Riley wanted to capture the assassin.  There was a fight and Riley won, taking the assassin back to the manor.

Lots happened that I'm not going into detail here about.

Elera gets framed for taking the Tome of Ages.
Amarentha catches Riley trying to stash the assassin in the stables while he goes to talk to Elera.
The assassin disappears.
Davram kills his brother and the assassin and makes it look like his brother was trying to kill him instead.
Riley ends up with is pardon.
Elera ends up with the opportunity to at least look over the Tome.

The Good: Three out of four of the players were well engaged in the scenario.  My wife didn't seem as interested as the others but I'll speak on that in a moment.  The others were fairly excited about what was going on.

I had a couple of good Bangs that seemed to work well.  This is a testament to Beliefs and Instincts doing their job more than my own genius as a GM.  I actually was off my GMing game during the session and didn't think nearly as quickly as I felt I should.  The R-map that the relationships and Beliefs created really helped me out.

Melissa was pretty stoked when her character got better at Song of Soothing due to all the tests she was doing with it.

An all female group has a totally different feel than an all male or male-dominant group.  I'm trying to figure out and analyze exactly what was different but I'm having some trouble.  The game felt more like a soap opera and less like a James Bond movie.  Who was married to whom and who was in love with whom and all that was far more important to the scenario than who shot whom.  We only had 1 fight and it was over in 1 roll.  That's a significant decrease in violence compared to my typical sessions.  I'm not sure whether to contribute that to the lack of testosterone or not but it was something I noticed.  We'll see if the trend continues.

Everyone wants to play again.  This is awesome.  Even my wife wants to play again and she was the least engaged of all the players.

The Bad: As I mentioned before, my wife didn't engage very well.  I put some of this down to my 3 year old running around and her feeling like she had to keep and eye on him.  That's a real downer.  I need to find something to do with the boy next time.  She also had two things to say that really highlighted some of the reason she didn't care for BW.  When I showed her that it only used d6's she said, "That's boring.  I want to use all my dice."  There's something about the use of the different dice that she likes and that's cool by me.  The other thing she said was, "I like quest games."  She basically wanted a game where she knew what the objective was and she could pursue it.  She likes solve the mystery and delve the dungeon games.  This game left too many options on the table for her taste.

I was slow.  I didn't push things fast enough and thus things dragged at times.  I was somewhat wary of pushing my own agenda too hard since I was playing with mostly young, new players and didn't want to dominate the game.  However, with a new system and new players I probably should have taken some of that burden from them.  In my own defense, the system was still pretty new to me too.

Discussion:  I'm mostly posting this to describe my experience with BW.  I'm also interested in any comments and/or advice for playing with an all female group since it seems like it will be something I'll be doing more of in the future.  Any advice on my mistakes with BW are also welcome.  As always, questions are great and I'll answer any that I can.

[Noclue]

Doesn't sound like you did badly at all. I know from experience, having a kid running around will divert my attention from a game and I'm a father, we're good at being oblivious to external stimuli.

Some thoughts on reading the setup:

Hard to tell, because I wasn't there, but I might have tossed Riley a Fate Point for speaking to Davram rather than killing him (words before violence).

I'd start the next session with Prince Viktor front and center to draw Hazel in to play. Put Viktor's need to prove himself and her belief about helping the negotiations succeed under stress.

Two of the players are clearly with Galen, who wants the negotiations to fail, so your primed for some awesome conflict between Elera who sides with Viktor and Amarentha/Aslan. Riley seems to have been drawn into Davram's confidence, so the need for friends in high places should work to align him with Elera. Let's the sparks fly! Zera just went over to Davram's side as well, so the conflict with Aslan could just keep going with new stakes--the negotiations.

There's just oodles of conflict brewing here, don't hold back.

[Vulpinoid]

I'll tend to agree with you that GMing female groups is very different to GMing male groups.

This becomes particularly apparent at conventions where you GM the same scenario a half dozen times over the weekend, transforming the core plotlines based on the styles of play apparent in the group you're dealing with.

It looks like you've got the makings of a good group with great potential. Keep us informed of how the story progresses.

V

[Andrew Cooper]

No, I didn't think it had gone badly.  In fact, I've since talked to everyone who played and they all had a good time and want to play again definitely.  That's success in my book.

You're right.  I should have given Riley a Fate point.  This is the part I have a hard time keeping up with.  I think it's because I've never actually had to keep up with stuff like it before.  I get involved with what's going on and totally forget about a character's Beliefs during play.  I may have to come up with a process to help me remember.  Anyone else have this problem?  How did you solve it?

Thanks for the replies!

[GreatWolf]

You're right.  I should have given Riley a Fate point.  This is the part I have a hard time keeping up with.  I think it's because I've never actually had to keep up with stuff like it before.  I get involved with what's going on and totally forget about a character's Beliefs during play.  I may have to come up with a process to help me remember.  Anyone else have this problem?  How did you solve it?

Enlist your players' assistance.  Just have them be looking for when they think they should earn Artha.  I'm not saying that you should do it like TSOY, where players claim their own experience.  Rather, just have your players say something like, "That feels like a Persona point" or something like that.  Then you make the judgment call.  You should still be looking out for it yourself, but since your players have less information to track and process, their help can be invaluable.

[rekyl]

Vulpinoid:
I dont agree with the male/female thing concerning roleplaying. In my experience, both groups behave exactly the same with the only difference tht when gender becomes an issue, something talked about, it has an efect on the gaming. I played mostly with a group of women a few years back (Im a guy btw) as they where in majority in the "rpg-scene" where I lived ("rpg-scene" hahaha wie4rd thing to say). Anyway after a while ome other guys talked to me about putting together an "all men" group - and there the attitude went towards big guns, fast cars and being the coolest bad ass around... After that the women made an "all-women" group that played girly games... Before that gender wasn't much of a thing when it came to gaming.

(We went back to mixed groups rather quickly btw, since both alternatives of gender-gaming was kinda boring)

I think that as long as the objective of the game and the theme is consistent anything flies. Also that there is a huge risk involved if a guy is trying to make a "woman-game" out of a campaign or session. Chances are that it will be kinda corny or a fruitless endeavor. Ive had the soap thing going with an all guy group, also the romance thing... even though there where some squirming and arm-punching involved when two of the characters got involved in each other
Plus, being a gay man, playing out romantic (or even emotional) scenes with heterosexual male players, no matter how much friends we are and how cool they might be with my personal romantic interests IRL, kinda makes me nervous and uncomfortable.

The coolest thing though is when a female player is trying to play a convincing guy in a hrd real life setting or a man trying to play a female character in a convincing realistic fashion... you get to see all teh problems men and women have trying to relate to each other.

/rekyl