Hi all,
I've just bought Universalis and spent my weekend reading through it (instead of working) and I must say I'm really impressed by both its simplicity and it's depth of player involvement, especially when it comes to establishing tennets. What I was wondering was how well this could be adapted to Burning wheel's initial setting set up.

While I love BW's system, I do feel that the establishment of initial concept a weakness. As the BW MRB states, "...the GM and the players come to an agreement about what (the) story/scenario is going to be all about...they decide what type of game they want to play. Get all the players and GM on board with this concept." (Crane, revised edition BW, page 265) This (in my opinion) involves quite a freeform discussion and high level of agreement and negotiation between all participants towards a common imagined space and which can be hijacked to  a certain extent by the loudest members of the group. While Burning Empires resolves this to  a certain extent via a highly detailed world-building methodology, BW leaves everyone up to their own devices. This may be great for the more proactive players and GM, but in my experience can fall flat to some extent and is what has precipitated this thread.

I was wondering whether anyone has had the same experiences as I have with regard to establishing initial concepts within BW and whether anyone could see the benefits of utilising the Univeralis system to establish a common concept with everyone having an equal share in the creative agenda? I was wondering whether tokens could be used via determining a fixed ammount based on a simple formula such as (LP limit times maximum stat limit divided by participants - rounded up). As LP & max stat limit is predetermined by the GM this would give each partivcipant a set ammount of input into concept creation. For example, a 4LP limit with max stats of 6 and 3 players & GM would result in 6 tokens per participant and an equal share in the creative process.

Thoughts?

John

I've been directed here. Answers alot of questions and seems to work quite well. I'm hopefully GMing a BW game soon and will try it out. I'll let you know how it goes.
John

I love it! A chance to combine two games I own, but have yet to properly try.
In fact, just last week I was speaking to one co-worker about Universalis, and another about Burning Wheel.

I clearly have to talk to both of them again.

I can't recall a case of Universalis being used specifically for Burning Wheel set up, but it's certainly been used this way before for setting up situations in other games. Games that don't even speak to doing so as Burning Wheel does. And they've been successful.

So it should work great!

Note that if you like explicit rules for setting this stuff up, and like Burning Wheel, you're really going to like Burning Empires.

Mike

I've used Universalis to create Burning Wheel characters (at least conceptually), the world, and the backstory. It worked great with one drawback--it tends to lead to "playing before you play."

Jake
who's been lurking for a few weeks, and just finally found something to post about again.