Ok so I sat down and Burned up my first BW character from scratch and wanted to run it it by some folks for tips and comments. I didn't do any of the BITs because, without a campaign to actually play in there isn't much point to that. If I ever do get a chance to play I reckon I'd want to tie those into the setting rather than invent them in a vaccume.

For my concept I envisioned a fairly grizzled forest ranger...not the lame Aragorn Ranger sillyness, rather an actual Game Warden rousting dead beat poachers out of the king's lands type.

For Life Paths I went Peasant Born and Hunter. Then I figured his hunting skills got him "recruited" as a Scout for a campaign in the area so I followed the Lead to the Solder setting. From there I picked Cavalryman and Bannerman representing a successful career in the army and then followed the Lead to Noble Court where I picked up Huntsman and Forester to get him to his current occupation.

This seemed to make alot of sense to me from a life progression standpoint...I could easily visualize this guy's career resume. However, this was a 7 Life Path character. Granted I wound up being 37 years old (actually not as old as my original concept), but 7 Life Paths seems like more than typical for a BW starting character.

So my first question is...how common is a 7 Life Path starting character. If I brought such a character to the table would it be rejected more often than not?

Also I wound up with 22 Skills in order to fill up my concept and I could have taken a few more without stretching my concept any, but 22 already seemed like an awful lot of skills. So my second question is how common is it to wind up with that many skills. The sheer number of them means that I only have a few 5 and 6s and a good number of 3s and 4s with a couple of 2s...with no gray shades. So even with 7 Life Paths he isn't really very tweaked out. Is it "foolish" from a character effectiveness standpoint to spread skill points out so thin?

My third question is a little more philosophical. Being the first time I really went through character creation in detail I realized for the first time just how narrowly Skills in BW are sliced and diced.

My forester concept winds up having Hunting, Trapping, Tracking, Foraging, Forest-Wise, and Survival all as seperate skills. Philosophically, if BW were my design...that would all be 1 skill...two tops. So I'm having trouble envisioning when and why these different skills would be used in play. I tried to read through the skill descriptions, but if I were GMing, I'd be hard put to know when to call for a Forest-Wise vs. Foraging vs. Survival (temperate) Test. All of those skills seem virtually synonomous to me, and if they're primary purpose is to be forked off of each other...wouldn't it simply be easier mechanically to simply have Forest-wise cover all of that and wind up with a higher level in a single skill?

I mean if I were a GM and the party was traveling through a forested region where they had to camp, and find clean water, and root around for berries and such and one character happened to have Forest-Wise, I'd probably let him roll that to do any of those things...which would really render the other skills completely pointless.

I guess I'm looking for a thoughts from experienced GMs on how this myriad of seperate but similiar skills winds up playing out in an actual game...because it sure makes my character sheet look pretty cluttered.


Lastly I had a question about Resources. Overall I find the Resource system pretty tremendous (I already mentioned to Luke how similiar it is to the system I came up with for Robots & Rapiers). But it seems very very difficult to get any kind of Resource level greater than 1 or maybe 2.

I took 7 life paths...none of which were extraordinarily lucrative, granted...but there were a couple of double diget life paths in there, and after taking a modest amount of gear and some medium armor and giving myself a cottage and a local affiliation I wound up with a Resources level of 1 (and that was with giving myself a couple of free points using the generous rule). Is that typical? Dividing by 15 seems to make it almost impossible to get Resources much higher. I guess I was envisioning Resources working on the same scale as skills with 10 being King Midas, 6-9 being wealthy noble types and poor peasant serfs being down around 1-2. I had kind of figured my non noble, but professional-in-the-service-of-the-king type to come in around 3 maybe 4. Barely qualifying for 1 through me a bit. What do starting character resources, typically look like?


I rounded this guy out by taking some Life Path traits from Bannerman (surprisingly the only path that provided any particular Traits) and bought Nose of the Blood Hound and Alert to round out my forester / scout concept

All in all character creation in BW is hella fun and the book is right when it refers to it as a game in and of itself. Made me immediately curious to see what kind of character I could get in 7 Life Paths using the Black Barbarian setting on the web site...

Hey Ralph,

Sounds like a pretty cool character!

1. We generally pick a lifepath limit ahead of time. Four or five lifepaths is he norm, but I've played in a campaign where six was the limit. Really, it comes down to what your group is comfortable with.

2. 22 different skills is an awful lot. Did you take every skill available to you? Or did you pick and choose? Also a "handful" of 5s and 6s is actually tremendous. Generally our characters have one to three 5s (one being the most common), with a handful of 4s and the rest 3s and 2s. An exponent of 6 is actually intended to represent someone who is incredibly skilled -- likely the best in his nation. Exponent 3 is someone who is trained: a skilled apprentice. Exponent 4 is competent: a journeyman. Exponent 5 is expert: a master of his craft. We also very rarely see Gray skills in our games.

3. Luke is in the best position to give you a proper answer to this question.

On the upside, you can FoRK many of those skills together to make your character really good at food gathering. I wouldn't allow someone to actually find food with Forest-wise. He knows about the forest and how to navigate it. He can certainly FoRK it into the other skills though. I would call for Forest-wise if you're trying to identify whether a sound is native to the forest or if you're trying to find your way through it. I would call for Foraging if you're trying to find enough food to feed yourself or your mount. I would call for Survival if it's important to find water or find/create shelter in order to mitigate environmental penalties.

Valamir wrote: So my first question is...how common is a 7 Life Path starting character. If I brought such a character to the table would it be rejected more often than not?

Valamir wrote: Also I wound up with 22 Skills in order to fill up my concept and I could have taken a few more without stretching my concept any, but 22 already seemed like an awful lot of skills. So my second question is how common is it to wind up with that many skills. The sheer number of them means that I only have a few 5 and 6s and a good number of 3s and 4s with a couple of 2s...with no gray shades. So even with 7 Life Paths he isn't really very tweaked out. Is it "foolish" from a character effectiveness standpoint to spread skill points out so thin?

Valamir wrote: My third question is a little more philosophical. Being the first time I really went through character creation in detail I realized for the first time just how narrowly Skills in BW are sliced and diced.

My forester concept winds up having Hunting, Trapping, Tracking, Foraging, Forest-Wise, and Survival all as seperate skills. Philosophically, if BW were my design...that would all be 1 skill...two tops. So I'm having trouble envisioning when and why these different skills would be used in play. I tried to read through the skill descriptions, but if I were GMing, I'd be hard put to know when to call for a Forest-Wise vs. Foraging vs. Survival (temperate) Test. All of those skills seem virtually synonomous to me, and if they're primary purpose is to be forked off of each other...wouldn't it simply be easier mechanically to simply have Forest-wise cover all of that and wind up with a higher level in a single skill?

I mean if I were a GM and the party was traveling through a forested region where they had to camp, and find clean water, and root around for berries and such and one character happened to have Forest-Wise, I'd probably let him roll that to do any of those things...which would really render the other skills completely pointless.

I guess I'm looking for a thoughts from experienced GMs on how this myriad of seperate but similiar skills winds up playing out in an actual game...because it sure makes my character sheet look pretty cluttered.

Valamir wrote: Lastly I had a question about Resources. Overall I find the Resource system pretty tremendous (I already mentioned to Luke how similiar it is to the system I came up with for Robots & Rapiers). But it seems very very difficult to get any kind of Resource level greater than 1 or maybe 2.

I took 7 life paths...none of which were extraordinarily lucrative, granted...but there were a couple of double diget life paths in there, and after taking a modest amount of gear and some medium armor and giving myself a cottage and a local affiliation I wound up with a Resources level of 1 (and that was with giving myself a couple of free points using the generous rule). Is that typical? Dividing by 15 seems to make it almost impossible to get Resources much higher. I guess I was envisioning Resources working on the same scale as skills with 10 being King Midas, 6-9 being wealthy noble types and poor peasant serfs being down around 1-2. I had kind of figured my non noble, but professional-in-the-service-of-the-king type to come in around 3 maybe 4. Barely qualifying for 1 through me a bit. What do starting character resources, typically look like?

Thor Olavsrud wrote: Hey Ralph,

2. 22 different skills is an awful lot. Did you take every skill available to you? Or did you pick and choose?

Also a "handful" of 5s and 6s is actually tremendous. Generally our characters have one to three 5s (one being the most common), with a handful of 4s and the rest 3s and 2s. An exponent of 6 is actually intended to represent someone who is incredibly skilled -- likely the best in his nation. Exponent 3 is someone who is trained: a skilled apprentice. Exponent 4 is competent: a journeyman. Exponent 5 is expert: a master of his craft. We also very rarely see Gray skills in our games.

On the upside, you can FoRK many of those skills together to make your character really good at food gathering. I wouldn't allow someone to actually find food with Forest-wise. He knows about the forest and how to navigate it. He can certainly FoRK it into the other skills though. I would call for Forest-wise if you're trying to identify whether a sound is native to the forest or if you're trying to find your way through it. I would call for Foraging if you're trying to find enough food to feed yourself or your mount. I would call for Survival if it's important to find water or find/create shelter in order to mitigate environmental penalties.

Angaros wrote:

Valamir wrote: Lastly I had a question about Resources. Overall I find the Resource system pretty tremendous (I already mentioned to Luke how similiar it is to the system I came up with for Robots & Rapiers). But it seems very very difficult to get any kind of Resource level greater than 1 or maybe 2.

I took 7 life paths...none of which were extraordinarily lucrative, granted...but there were a couple of double diget life paths in there, and after taking a modest amount of gear and some medium armor and giving myself a cottage and a local affiliation I wound up with a Resources level of 1 (and that was with giving myself a couple of free points using the generous rule). Is that typical? Dividing by 15 seems to make it almost impossible to get Resources much higher. I guess I was envisioning Resources working on the same scale as skills with 10 being King Midas, 6-9 being wealthy noble types and poor peasant serfs being down around 1-2. I had kind of figured my non noble, but professional-in-the-service-of-the-king type to come in around 3 maybe 4. Barely qualifying for 1 through me a bit. What do starting character resources, typically look like?

I'll let the BWHQ guys sort this one out since I've not played with Resources at all myself. Yet.

Hi Ralph,

Cool character. I've let players take characters like that for a spin in my games. In BW, those numbers give you something very comfortable and easy to play. Like you said, you've got all your bases covered, lacking in no area within your concept. That's how it's supposed to be. He's not going to advance very quickly, and there wouldn't be any sense in having another woodsman type character in the game since he's got everything under control in that department.

However, your instincts are right, you could probably get by without having all of those bits and pieces.

But in my own defense, I feel like I should offer some explanation:
Hunting would be used when you want to impress the lord and land some game or hoof for his table.

Tracking would be used when you're actually tailing a gang of poachers -- when the character is literally following sign. Blame my research, but from what I've read it is a very different skill from Hunting.

Survival is for getting by in bad conditions or bad weather. I make players test it when they are out in the winter, or when they've lost all their gear and living off the land is crucial to the game.

Foraging is used to feed mr Forester in the absence of game. We use this skill a lot to feed armies on the march -- to negate pesky obstacle penalties. A skilled tracker/hunter like your character might not need this skill (but I think it's required somewhere, isn't it?).

And Forest-wise, lovely Forest-wise... Wises are pure nichey knowledge skills. Forest-wise really isn't meant to be a skill representing all forests everywhere. It's meant to represent how well you know the bits and pieces of your forest. "Are there any hill nearby where I could get a vantage point of the river?" Roll Forest-wise. It also acts as a great FoRK: "You get up to the hill notice that some other folks have been up here recently."
"Really? I'd like to Track them, can I use my Forest-wise as a FoRK? I know all the likely trails around here, right?"

Philosophically, BW does love granular skills. But I also made sure that, using FoRKs and Wises, there were ways to overlap them and blend the edges of the granularity together.

As far as Resources goes, I'll admit that I was pretty unforgiving. People were fucking poor in the middle ages. And the gap between rich and poor must have been even worse than it is now (especially in the absence of a middle class). So yeah, this guy lives on the scraps from his noble betters.

But look at your choices. First, if you were really concerned with Resources, you wouldn't have wasted your time with poor professions like Bannerman or Cavalryman. Perhaps Master of Hounds would be more to you're liking? It nets more rps than Cavalryman and Bannerman combined. (But I confess, I like your path progression and choices).

You also decided to buy weapons and armor over increasing your material state. You automatically envisioned this character for wilderness adventureeeerringgggg. Sure, he might have had that stuff from the war, but what use is it now? If he's about to quit this place and head off on his own, then some personal protection is prolly more valuable in game than a die of Resources. But if you're planning on playing out the drama surrounding the Duke's forest, a hunting bow, clothes, shoes and travelling gear would probably be plenty. Everything else goes into the good stuff, reputations, affiliations and property.

does that help?
-L

And Forest-wise, lovely Forest-wise... Wises are pure nichey knowledge skills. Forest-wise really isn't meant to be a skill representing all forests everywhere. It's meant to represent how well you know the bits and pieces of your forest.

As far as Resources goes, I'll admit that I was pretty unforgiving. People were fucking poor in the middle ages. And the gap between rich and poor must have been even worse than it is now (especially in the absence of a middle class). So yeah, this guy lives on the scraps from his noble betters.

But look at your choices. First, if you were really concerned with Resources, you wouldn't have wasted your time with poor professions like Bannerman or Cavalryman. Perhaps Master of Hounds would be more to you're liking? It nets more rps than Cavalryman and Bannerman combined. (But I confess, I like your path progression and choices).

You also decided to buy weapons and armor over increasing your material state. You automatically envisioned this character for wilderness adventureeeerringgggg.

chainmail and a warhorse!

Uh, yeah. I think you went a little gear heavy.

Though I must admit, I really wrestled with the idea that the warhorse is property. but I wanted to encourage players to look at the other aspects of resources, rather than the: "My warhorse gives me a B3 Res and I'm off to battle in my superior quality plated mail!" type. So expendadbles weren't allowed to count toward Resources.

Ditching the warhorse and downgrading the armor gets you at least enough points of another 1D of Resources if you want it.

-L

I have to say, good answers all around, Luke.

With regards to resources - do they represent income? Or property? If they simply represent wealth on hand, then it completely makes sense. If, OTOH, resources are supposed to also represent disposable income, well, it's hard to imagine how previous expenditures really reduce the income of a current job.

But, yeah, having to buy a warhorse from your cavalry outfit should cost you enough to leave you a pauper over time, unless you started very rich. That's quite an investment. It's just that there's a difference between being broke, but having prospects or a good job, and having a few bucks, but no source of income.

Mike

They way I've interpreted Resources is that they represent a character's potential liquidity. With this I don't necessarily mean the immediate assets a character has avaliable for a transaction but rather the sum of everything and everyone he can use as credit or safety when aquiring something. I see Resources as a medieval equivalent of a modern day credit rating. Having a large house, a spotless credit history and dependable associates that can be used as creditors is what counts. An income will of course boost the rating. Buying stuff in a medieval economy probably involves favors, credit based on your reputation as a dependable customer and connections more than it does pouches of silver. If you buy stuff you use your reputation and call in favors to get what you want.

A test for Resources involves more than opening your pouch and handing over some silver coins -- there is bound to be negotiations, persuasion and favors involved. Being taxed means you might have pushed your luck too far when trying to scrounge up money for payment or when calling in favors. I see reputation (not necessarily Reputation) as being vital in a medieval economy where payments might have to wait to be settled until harvest or slaughter when avaliable assets are at their max. If you're not trusted or haven't got anyone that is trusted to vouch for you, why would anyone sell stuff to you now since you probably won't be able to pay for them later, or offer anything reliable in return?

Well, I thought maybe as much, too. Luke?

But then I share Ralph's concern. How does having purchased a warhorse fifteen years ago impact the character's current credit rating? In fact, isn't the horse a source of credit? Or is it that the horse would have had to be repurchased during that time given that it would die from old age?

Or is it just metagame? That is, you can choose to have stuff, or a good liquidity at the time of start? I may just be looking at it in too simmy a way.

Mike

yeah, whoa there tiger.

The warhorse you bought fifteen years ago isn't part of the resource points process. The decisions that you the player are making right now about how you want your character to behave in play are what's important.

I've noticed this disconnect coming up in some of the more insightful minds round these parts. Resource points are PLAYER purchasing power: If I make these choices, I get X. If I make these other choices, I get Y. The Resources ability -- which devolves somewhat from those choices -- is conflict resolution situated around the character's financial and material capabilities. Driven, of course, by player choice.

And please note that Resources is not a task resolution system. It functions very badly as such! You'll note that the more you spend, the more buying potential you gain! Where in a coin-counting task resolution system, the more you spent, the less money you'd have.

But those advancements tie into ye olde warhorse condundrum. In character burning, starting with a warhorse is a significant decision that quite likely will dramatically affect play. Though it reduces your starting buying potential. However, buying a warhorse in play (via the Intent/risk/task system) actually does contribute to the character's overall wealth -- you get a test toward advancement.

I hope that's clear; hope I haven't stuck my foot in my mouth here.
Mmm, shoe leather.
-L

edited because I don't know my rules

But those advancements tie into ye olde warhorse condundrum. In character burning, starting with a warhorse is a significant decision that quite likely will dramatically affect play. Though it reduces your starting buying potential. However, buying a warhorse in play (via the Intent/risk/task system) actually does contribute to the character's overall wealth -- you get a test toward advancement.

Valamir wrote:
That way the player gets the Resources and has the Gear at the official "start of play", but all of the nice chewy goodness that the resource system brings to acquiring that gear actually gets built into the character.

abzu wrote: So, in short, no prelude scene unless something's actually at risk and we are going to build from that scene in some way. (Failing to collect your debts, you turn an old friend to an enemy, for example.)

<offtopic>Dangit, dangit, dangit... I didn't want another fantasy system, but Luke's talk about Conflict Resolution goodness finally convinced me to order the game.</offtopic>

I really like the explanation on how starting resources are based on player's choice, and how the resource mechanic in-game is made to resolve conflicts. Very nice, and looking forward to reading the game myself.

TTFN,

Yoki

So, in short, no prelude scene unless something's actually at risk and we are going to build from that scene in some way. (Failing to collect your debts, you turn an old friend to an enemy, for example.)