[Burning Wheel] Hard Times in Tarshish

[rafial]

Our Burning Wheel campaign at UGX is now in its third session, of a planned eight.  The first session was joint setting and character creation, the second and third sessions have been actual play, which have so far covered about 24 hours of game time.

Our setting is the thriving port city of Tarshish, a major center of trade and shipping.  An independent city until about 30 years ago, it was conquered by the expanding Theban empire, who now rule it via a military governor.  The Thebans imported their state religion, the worship of the bull god Hama, and engage in sporadic suppression of the native animist religion.

As part of character creation, we made use of BW's system for buying contacts to have each player create a stable of NPCs, and then wove the nets together, either by holding some contacts in common, or establishing NPCs from different groups that would know each other.

I also had each player come up with a "Kicker" for their character that knocked them out of their comfortable rut.

The characters are:

Darius, born in the city, who joined the Theban military, and then later leveraged contacts gained into a career as a "fixer" for the Theban nobility and other powerful elements within the city.  Darius' father is a shady merchant who recent got in over his head in a deal on a religious artifact with the powerful Lord Khaldun, and now Darius has to deal with the fallout.

Cpt. Avram Jessup, an extremely successful merchant captain who bet it all on a shipment of rare vasha spice that wound up at the bottom of the ocean.  Now he spends his days in the poorhouse, dodging his investors and scheming to reestablish his reputation.

Kvardo, son of Kvordal, a dwarf of the Iron Quarter, who works in the office of his uncle, a prominent trader.  Kvardo strives for respectability and the love of the widow Snoovla, but has a dark past in which he fell in with a group of tomb robbers.  One of his old acquaintances, Arlevatticus has resurfaced and is blackmailing him into committing burglaries.

Our story so far:

It is rumored that the ancient animist statue desired by Lord Khaldun was being smuggled into the city on the Obol Heap Cpt. Jessup's ship.  Of course, it and all its cargo is at the bottom of the sea.  Meanwhile, news has arrived that the Hamedan pirates, a group of Orkin seafaring raiders long thought suppressed, have seized a fishing village up the coast from Tarshish.  Darius, investigating a lead that salvagers might have recovered the statue, encountered Arlevatticus, who claimed to have it.  In reality, Arlevatticus forced Kvardo to steal one of Lord Khaldun's other statues from his collection.  Meanwhile, Cpt Jessup stumbled across a cell of animists in the slums of Tarshish, at least one of whom was tattooed with the symbol of the Hamedan pirates.  Tipping off the city guard, he is attempting to interest the Theban military in the use of his services based on his prior experience with the pirates.

General assumptions of play:

Here are the principles I'm working with in running the game.  First, I'm taking the assumption that BWs natural mode is simulationist, and trying to stick to the philosophy of "lets see what happens next" in my gamemastering.  Secondly, I'm extending the idea of shared setting creation into play.  If there is some aspect of the background that we haven't touched on yet, the players are free to tell me about, subject to a GM veto.

Note that the characters have yet to come into direct contact, although both myself as GM and the players themselves are working to weave things together, and there is the assumption that they will eventually meet, for good or ill.  A rapid scene cutting style of play has been more difficult to manage while working with a system that I am not yet comfortable in, but my players have been remarkably patient.

Burning Wheel in Practice:

At least compared to the games of have been playing recently, this is one bookkeeping heavy game.  During the character creation session, we made jokes about playing "Accountants, the Gathering".  Part of that was simply sharing two sets of books among 4 people.  It did dredge up some old conflicted feelings in me as GM, as I looked at all the work people were putting into their characters, and immediately felt bad about the idea of putting them into situations where they might be killed by one bad roll...

So far we have not had any combat, so the scripting system has not yet come into play.  The characters have typically looked for other ways out when confronted by possible violence.  The only aggressive acts were an attempt by thug to throw a rock at Avram (which missed, and resulted in a foot chase), and Avram sucker punching another thug, for which I used the "Stunning Blow" rule (and he succeeded).

An aside on combat actions in BW -- one thing I'm still getting used to is the idea while that in many games, a character in combat is assumed to be acting sensibly and to the best of his ability, in BW due to the fine grain of the system, a lot of sensibility of the characters actions is left up to the player.  For example, the rock throwing thug wound up with what I thought was an awful high Ob (3), and I later realized as GM since he wasn't under any time pressure, I should have allowed him the maximum aim bonus to his throw.

The bulk of play has been a lot of actor stance character-NPC interaction, with quick side trips to author stance to hammer out issues of "what your character would know" or "what's my motivation here?".  So as a result, we haven't been picking up the dice an awful lot.  Some use of social skills to decide the outcome of various persuasion or intimidation attempts.  Best FORK so far was Administration forked to support Intimidation, when Darius threatened to unleash a red tape nightmare on a clerk in the Harbormaster's office if he wasn't shown a copy of the Obol Heap's manifest.

One issue I've had as GM is with the BW experience system versus my natural tendency in interpreting rolls in task resolution systems.  I often work backwards, having the player roll, and then "setting the challenge" based on the outcome.  If you want to pick a lock, and you completely blow your roll, its not because your character screwed up, its because this happens to be a very tough lock.  Thing is, in BW, that lock really needed to have an Ob set for it up front, so the player can determine if that was a routine, difficult, or challenging test for experience purposes.

BTW, as GM I'm not expending any effort in keeping track of tests, I've put that responsibility onto the players.

Another challenge for us in using the BW system has been the fine grained skill system.  There are quite a few skills, so figuring out which skill applies to a particular situation has sometimes bogged down play for a minute or two.  This is something I'm sure would become less of an issue with familiarity.  I do note however that a character needs two skills to be fully literate...

In summary, so far our play has been enjoyable, and as to system, BW has neither particularly hindered nor helped the type of play we are trying to achieve.  One thing I will try to do in future sessions is to put more emphasis on BITs.  I've been meaning to all along, it's just one of those things that slips out of your head in the heat of play.  I will say though that I think future editions of BW might give a little more guidance on the selections of Beliefs and Instincts.  I think now that everybody's characters are better established in their minds, we may go back and review these and possibly make changes.

[johnzo]

Johnzo here, Avram's player, with some quick spokes on the Wheel:

Character creation was pretty cool.  I like the instincts and the  beliefs and the traits--those struck me as really innovative.   I like  paying points for any kind of trait, even cheesy ones like Impulsive.  I like how connections are mandatory, or at least, are treated with the same prominence as every other character creation topic.  I like how having a lot of family members who hate you is cheap.  The lifepaths thing was an interesting exercise and  suggested some stuff to me about my guy.  They're certainly a lot better than the R. Talsorian version of the same, detailing broad strokes rather than goofy minutia (you had a girlfriend, you had a broken leg, you had a class trip to the cheese farm.)

Lifepath data is specific to each race, so there's big sets of tables for Men, for Elves, for Dwarves and for Orcs.  Presumaby, if one wanted to play another race, one could hack together a new set of lifepath tables, but given the amount of data there, I'd be worried about throwing off the game balance.  Plus, it'd be a lot of work.

I think BW Lifepaths have the same strengths and weaknesses as the HeroQuest keywords, I think--they really lock you into the setting, which is, in this case, Tolkienish fantasy.  This isn't a problem if you're dealing with the intended setting, but if you're doing something more collaborative or freeform, it makes for a lot of extra work.  If James had said "I want to play a half-bird, half-turtle, half-man glassblower" we'd have been in for some pain.

It did dredge up some old conflicted feelings in me as GM, as I looked at all the work people were putting into their characters, and immediately felt bad about the idea of putting them into situations where they might be killed by one bad roll... An aside on combat actions in BW -- one thing I'm still getting used to is the idea while that in many games, a character in combat is assumed to be acting sensibly and to the best of his ability, in BW due to the fine grain of the system, a lot of sensibility of the characters actions is left up to the player.

I'm kind of afraid of the combat system.  I'm worried that me-the-player will let me-the-character down with poor combat choices, and I don't have the gaming chops to dissect BW and see what kind of tactical behavior it rewards.  I think Jessup is going to be quick to run away from scraps (damn, should've bought up his Speed rather than his power) and will probably only engage is he's got no choice or if he's got some overwhelming advantage, like surprise or numbers or something.

I do note however that a character needs two skills to be fully literate...

This is one of my beefs with simmy systems like GURPS or Hero or Wheel.  In order to create a character, you have to have some expertise in implementation, so you don't have the "sorry, you can't foo because you don't have skill bar and advantage bat" situation while in play.  Also, looking at the character sheet, I have no idea if my character's as capable as I envisioned him; I think his Speed might be a lethal disadvantage when it comes to combat, which might not make a lot of sense for a guy who's seen some action like Jessup has.

In summary, so far our play has been enjoyable, and as to system, BW has neither particularly hindered nor helped the type of play we are trying to achieve.

A fair appraisal, and mine as well.

zo.

[Yasha]

I do note however that a character needs two skills to be fully literate...

I'm assuming, perhaps incorrectly, that Dwarven Rune-Script is a combined read-write skill.  At least, there is no Read skill on any of the Dwarf life paths.

-- James Cunningham

[Luke]

this isn't the thread for this question, it should likely be moved into the BW forum itself. But I'll answer it nonetheless and hope it magically floats to where it belongs.

Dwarves and Elves have a higher order of literacy in their culture than do Men. So they actually have a essentially Literacy skills, which are all but obligitory in their cultures.

Read and Write for Men represents that one can be functionally literate in a language and be unable to write in a language. I have a friend like this, he can speak and read spanish, but writes it badly. Seperating the two skills, essentially doubling the cost, is also meant to represent the monumental effort and expense of literacy. We take literacy for granted with our massive state-sponsored institutions and supporting laws of obligatory attendance of said institutions.

-L

[rafial]

Lifepath data is specific to each race, so there's big sets of tables for Men, for Elves, for Dwarves and for Orcs.  Presumaby, if one wanted to play another race, one could hack together a new set of lifepath tables,

Even specific cultures call out for lifepaths.  For example, the our animist priests don't fit well into any of the existing lifepaths, because they aren't really priests, they are summoners who approach what they are doing through a big cloud of doctrinal mumbo-jumbo.  So for long term play I'd definitely need to write lifepaths for them.  And Luke has provided some pretty decent guidelines for how to do this on the BW website.

[/quote]but given the amount of data there, I'd be worried about throwing off the game balance.[/quote]

I just don't think this is as much of an issue with BW as it might be in GURPS or Hero, where characters generated with the same number of points are supposedly "equal" in game effectiveness.

In BW, you can generate a character who is master wizard at the top of his game, and another that is an uneducated house slave.  They are just not going to be comparable in effectiveness.  Even if you restrict characters to the same number of lifepaths, some are just way more effective than others.

This is both good and bad.  If the master wizard and the slave are in the same story, each can have an enjoyable and critical a role, as they should each be facing challenges appropriate to their station.  To take a LOTR example, Merry & Pippin are nowhere near in the same league as Aragorn or Legolas, but all the characters are vital to the story.  In BW, there is no game mechanic to accomplish this, rather it is up to the players and the GM to decide what is fun for them.

Of course, this aspect of the game can also be expressed disfunctionally, as in the "frickin' Elven Princes" thread Luke posted previously.  It all boils down to social contract.  I've noticed in Luke's play examples, he seems to be using a "troupe" style of play, which is not discussed at all in the actual books.  I'd like to hear more about it, because it sounds like it allows players to trade off the spotlight, and enjoy trying out characters of all different levels of effectiveness.