Burning Wheel: Difference between revisions

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The system's main agenda is focus on generating conflict and eschewing minor dice rolls in favor of advancement of the story—and ''major'' dice rolls. It is stated by the author that events in-game should involve as much personal stake as possible for the characters. If there is no conflict, no dice are rolled. Complimentary to this is the advancement system: rolling anything related to a character that can improve, in most cases even if the roll fails, advances your skill if there is something at stake involved in rolling. The result is that redundant dice checks are eliminated and all rolls should be tied to story advancement.

Combat in the system is designed for multiple levels of complexity: trivial combat can be resolved with two rolls, and high-stakes combat can be detailed to the point of scripting stages of combat and individual maneuvers that trump, avoid or negate one another.

 

 

Dice rolls are done with a number of d6 equal to the skill or stat needed and successes are based on whether the skill/stat is normal level (black denoted with a B and succeeding on 4-6), Heroic (Grey/G 3-6), or Godly (White/W 2-6). One of the differences to many other role-playing games is that characters have 3 Beliefs (which they gain experience for following) and instincts which state something about your character's actions that must be assumed even if it is unstated ("Always alert" means that the GM must allow you to roll to see an ambush, even if you did not say you were looking for one).

Two other full games use adaptations of the Burning Wheels rules but require no additional books: [[Burning Empires]], which uses the [[Iron Empires]] science fiction setting and [[Mouse Guard]], which adapts the graphic novels of the same name to RPG form.

 

* [[Annoying Arrows]]: Averted. A bow or crossbow can incapacitate your average conscript with a single shot from just the pain alone.

* [[Armor Is Useless]]: Averted, especially with shields. One can get around this by moving to the closest combat range where armor bonuses are nullified and, as the book puts it, "stab them through their visors."

** Even at closest range armor still counts. You have to actually have someone incapacitated to bypass armor. You can do that by getting close, wrestling them to the ground, and immobilizing them, but not just by being close.

* [[Ax Crazy]]: There's loads of rules for just ''how'' [[Ax Crazy]] the Orcs can get. Examples: an Orc-only trait known as "Flights of Murderous Fancy" can be invoked after suffering a humiliating social defeat. The Orc is given massive dice bonuses, the higher his Hatred the bigger the bonus, in the course of viciously and descriptively obliterating whatever humiliated him.

** Dwarfs with high Greed can be driven to murder each other if there's a dispute over something incredibly valuable.

* [[Big Badass Wolf]] Great Wolves are horse-sized wolves of human intelligence. Some are born into, or captured and enslaved by, the 'forces of darkness' to act as mounts for Orcs. Some become shaman-like spirit speakers or use ancient magic. Most just live like wolves and avoid contact with any bipeds save the occasional Elf.

* [[Boring but Practical]]: Recipe for success in Burning Wheel's Fight! subsystem: reduce your opponent to zero dice using locks; slit his throat at your leisure.

* [[Critical Existence Failure]]: Played with, but ultimately averted. Injury mechanics log every wound received and each wound penalizes all dice rolls by a certain amount depending on severity. If your penalties exceed any of your stats you are rendered unconscious or incapacitated with pain but do not die unless your wounds worsen due to bleeding. The closest thing in-game to a CEF is receiving a Mortal Wound which instantly puts your character into a state where if they do not receive medical treatment immediately they will die.

** There's no playing, just aversion, although it should be noted that it's possible, albeit very, very difficult, to kill someone in a single blow. That blow just has to be through the heart or similarly lethal.

* [[Driven to Suicide]]: what happens to Orcs or Dark Elves who let their Hatred or Spite get too high.

* [[Easy Exp]]: Subverted with skill advancement and inverted with Fate Points. Advancing skills through use seems easily exploitable but you can only advance skills by advancing the plot. As the book puts it, "No testing your magic skill by sitting around the tower setting your couch on fire." As for the inversion one way of earning Fate Points is to invoke a flaw or trait of your character in order to generate further conflict or make your, or everyone's, life harder.

* [[Our Orcs Are Different]] Orcs are Tolkien style for the most part, and like Tolkien's orcs are mutated elves. Like the elves they only get more powerful with age, although thanks to their violent culture their lives tend to be 'nasty brutish and short'. In fact, of the playable races, the orcs are the only one where it is recommended that instead of giving players a set number of 'lifepaths' they can have the GM should let them take as many as they want to, in the knowledge that too many is likely to see them maimed with the possible wound getting progressively worse the more 'ambitious' they get. They also have 'Hatred' as a racial trait and it is made clear it is only the fact that they hate everyone else more than themselves that allows them to function.

** Just ''walking through a pretty forest'' forces Orcs to increase their Hatred.

** It's often not possible: A lethal blow will almost always require five successes, which requires five dice. Not all combatants, or even most combatants, have that much skill with their armaments. Interestingly, this also means that a duel between two highly skilled, heavily armored warriors is much more likely to begin and end with a single lucky blow than a brawl between two unarmored conscripts with swords. The latter just aren't good enough to land mortal blows.

* [[Weak but Skilled]]: A low stat can easily be compensated for with a high skill.

* [[Wolverine Publicity]]: If you read through the Trait list, there's one at the end called Wolverine, which, unsurprisingly, helps you to recover from injuries faster. See? Wolverine's ''everywhere''!

 

[[Category:Tabletop Games]]

[[Category:Burning Wheel]]