Burning Wheel: I have read this is a near perfect system. What

>>52100046
No.

There is no such thing as a perfect gaming system.

Every system has a specific focus to its design, things it is appropriate for. Every group has preferences and tastes that might align with one system and not another.

From what I've heard, Burning Wheel is an excellent system within its niche, but 'perfect' isn't a useful descriptor.

>>52100046

I find that with 99% of heartbreakers, one glance at the character sheet is all you need to spot overly-complicated autism simulators before you ever need to waste a precious moment of brain-power considering whether to play them. Burning Wheel is one such game that failed this screening process instantly.

>>52100046
I have never actually read it but I bought a hard copy pretty cheap at a Con. It looks nifty, I'll have to look at it now.

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Burning wheel is wonderful and worth exploration.
but having said that, I have found it is more useful as a piece of literature and reference material than something that hits the table. Torchbearer and Mouse Guard are much more digestible versions for players who haven't mastered narrative flow.

>>52100344
>99% of heartbreakers
>tfw the system you like is one of that 1%
>tfw it's lighter than AD&D, but has a fucking 11-page character sheet

>>52100668
Which one would that be?

>>52100046
I don't like that it ties predefined specific character arcs to races via greed, grief and hatred. And the doomsday clock those mechanics start.

I got into Torchbearer and Mouseguard since they seemed lighter than Burning Wheel.

The system looks freaking great but it is complicated so learn, especially without someone else to teach you (this is coming from someone who plays GURPs)

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>>52100758
SenZar. Ludicrous 11-page monstrosity attached, but there are also another three pages of combat organiser that are 15x35 for handling 34-character combat. Fuck knows when you'd need that.

It'd be much smaller if it wasn't made at like 16-point or something. Nova Eth apparently cannot into quality formatting.

>>52100046
No.

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>>52100814
That's odd, it changes the font to that weird parchment-y chicken scratch one when I open it in Chrome. Everything looks proper in Acrobat, where it uses TNR.

Let's see if it does the same to the org. sheets.

>>52100942
So it works fine in Firefox, but changes the font in Chrome. Fucking what.

>>52100758
It only does that because it's trying to mimic Tolkien.

>>52100046
I like the system a lot.
But it kinda works best when players invest enough to learn the rules, no need to read the book from cover to cover, but pay attention when things are told and taught.
It's also not a game of epic fantasy super heroes, and is much more suited for down to earth stories, where crossing a street leads to broken legs.

>>52100573
Haven't read Tochbearer, but do not like Mouse Guard at all. It's session structure just doesn't flow well with me. I like the basic old school GMing style. I define a scene, ask players what they do and then react, as the world to that and go naturally back and forth from there.
In Mouse Guard the GM could be replaced by a flowchart.

>>52101218
It also means that non human races come with something thematically interesting out of the gate and elves aren't just humans with long ears and +1 charisma.

>>52101230
>In Mouse Guard the GM could be replaced by a flowchart.
Which is essentially what you should do with a GM who wants to run Mouse Guard

>>52100792
The skill encyclopedia part of BW corebook actually reminds me of GURPS.

>>52100344
How do you get "fantasy heartbreaker" out of Burning Wheel?

>>52101896
But shitty

>>52100046
Has anybody ever actually played it?

>>52100046
Kinda boring to play.

>>52100046

Best approached like when starting GURPS; introducing a couple of systems at a time, starting with the basic rolling mechanics and Artha system.

I find that the book itself doesn't actually provide enough practical advice for running the game; try running The Sword rather than bringing a new group into character creation.

In fact, I'd recommend watching a Youtube video of a group running The Sword to get a feel for the system. See if it's suitable for your players or not.

I was planning on running a Burning Wheel campaign, but don't have a group of players who would do the homework required in making the characters mesh in a dramatic sense. Will be running LotFP instead.

>>52101930

It's the newest meme word and he want's to fit in.

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>>52100046
I haven't played the system yet. Although, having just read the 75 pg primer, I've decided to try and use some of the systems in future fantasy games I run. I'll probably introduce one system at a time, depending on the campaign, and see if they work as well as I think they will.
Everything in the free pdf looks really good, and I have high hopes.

>>52103986
>I find that the book itself doesn't actually provide enough practical advice for running the game
About half of the Adventure Burner supplement book is "how to use this stuff" advice for GM.
When BW Gold came out, I had hoped that some of that would have been made part of the main text, but I guess not.

>>52104150
wow, gary has been really wrong there

>>52104948
>???
I think it's a true quote. We're just playing make-believe, the rules are a safety net to make it easier for everyone to have fun. It creates character limitations, for both players and GM:s, so that they don't accidentally or intentionally break other people's fun.

Or that's how it usually should go.

>>52100046
I've both played and run Burning Wheel. It's one of my favourite systems and has a lot of really good ideas.

It's a lot of work though, for the players and the GM. It's very important that the players pick juicy beliefs and engage with them to move the game forward. The whole game is predicated on the idea of nothing ventured, nothing gained; and without that the two main trackers of character advancement (skills and artha) will stall.

The GM also needs to be fairly on the ball. It can be a lot of work to make sure the beliefs of all the characters tie into the plot and are regularly challenged. One of the great things about the system is that even failure on rolls should drive the plot forward (no standing around rerolling until you succeed as that's the only way to continue the game), but again it does take effort.

If you have proactive players who like the idea of some collaborative worldbuilding and character-driven storytelling then BW can be heaps of fun. Groups that tend to be more passive and require railroading to stay on track probably won't enjoy it much.

In other news: when will the damn Codex be available? Scans would be peachy to tide me over if anyone has them, but I'd happily give Luke money if he could get the bleeding thing printed.

>>52105424
>Scans
>of a book that's not out
I'm going to guess that you mean scans of the previous editions.

>>52105458
The Codex was available for 2 months until gremlins attacked the printers. While unlikely it's possible that some anon snapped it up (or recieved it from the KS) and felt like making scans.

>>52105574
There was a guy who told he'd scan the codex but also complained about the size and stuff (understandably). Sadly nothing came out of it. I'm still waiting for a scan.

And yeah book is out since december iirc, and currently out of print.

>>52105027
The quote is just straight fucked anon, doubly so coming from Gygax, who developed his adventure game from a purely adversarial hack and slash simulator. At its heart, D&D is and always has been a war game modified for skirmish combat with which you can also tell ongoing stories and RPGs by and large work off of that basic premise.

If there are no rules and you just want to tell stories then write a book. If you want it to be collaborative you can invite your friends to help you write the book. With an RPG you are clearly doing something different and the basic heart of the combat is attempting to be adversarial. To support that end, you need rules.

>>52100046
It's a beautiful monument to autism, but shitty to play. Read it for inspiration or amusement, but in actual play it's a chore and not very fun.

>>52100046

Original Burning Wheel, uses a ternary advancement system "Routine / Difficult / Challenging" in which the player needs to look up the result on a table. This takes time and sucks the fun out of play.

The binary (pass/fail) advancement system found in Mouse Guard and Torchbearer fixes the players always needing to look up a table to mark off advancements, fun is restored, and we no longer need the advancement reference table.

>>52106523
When gold came out I had hoped that it would have been changed more and that was one of the biggest things I wished for.
I do appreciate Luke Cranes work, but I think he might be little bit too much in love with his own stuff.

Torchbearer is the superior product.
I suggest you give BW a pass.

Weird. I don't think test marks ever stopped the game more than 2 secs.

It is really easy to calculate of the top of your head. If the obstacle is greater than dice, its challenging. If dice in pool is equal or more than ob by 1-3, its difficult. Everything else is routine.

Difficult test range gets smaller by 1 at ob 3-4 and by 2 at ob 1-2 range.

After one or two sessions you can easily call what kinda test it is and tell your players to "mark routine/difficult/challenging test".

>>52103042
I don't think so, I think this thread is full of people who played one session of BW with a shitty campaign/GM or didn't understand how to play BW so they hate it now.

>>52108569

So just a normal Friday on /tg/, eh?

>>52103042
I played a bit, and found it to be enjoyable. Granted, it was everyone in the group's (GM included) first time, so it crawled to a halt when we accidentally broke something horribly. Which happened a fair bit, especially coming off of playing Dark Heresy and Only War. That said, we did like how things ran, but it was a lot of work, just like most anons here have said.

>>52104948

gary was wrong about a lot of things

Whether or not you end up actually playing BW I think its a fantastic book to read through. It has lots of interesting ideas that I would love to see integrated into other systems.

I have both played and ran BW games and IF you can get your players invested into it then it provides one of the most satisfying gaming experiences I ever had. If the players are NOT into it then its one of the worst.

>>52106523
>Original Burning Wheel, uses a ternary advancement system "Routine / Difficult / Challenging" in which the player needs to look up the result on a table
it's pretty simple, half the skill or less is routine, higher than the skill is challenging, in-between is difficult.

>>52108639
out of curiosity what did you break horribly?

>>52100046
RIFTS is pretty much the only perfect system...

>>52112222
I wonder if someone got access to grey damage weapon.
That could cause shit go seriously wrong in wrong hands.

>>52112349
you can make a character with a grey mortal wound at character creation. You literally can't be killed by mundane weapons

>>52112388
At that point you probably have multiple stats at 1, so one proper lock takes you out of action anyways.

It's something you can do, but it isn't actually that useful.

>>52112416
yeah but it's fun for bragging purposes, you're still not good at fighting, but it's virtually impossible for you to die in one, you could do some interesting stuff there

>>52112440
Even with mortal wound at grey, your normal would tolerances would go to black scale, so it probably wouldn't be that hard to get you some of those stat minuses, so while you would't die in fight easily, you could still be taken out.

It's not like you need to do something special stupid shit to be useless in BW, just make a normal 4 lifepath human and you will taste fuckups and failure from dawn to noon to dusk.

>>52112499
bump

>>52103042
I have, did like an 18 session campaign with my current group, which we plan on getting back to after our current game is over. I've also done several one-shots/short games. Ask me anything.

The thing I want most about the Codex is the commentary. If anyone has it, I'd love to see just some random bits where they address why the rules are how they are.

Does anybody have a PDF for Torchbearer? I'd really like to have a look at it.

>>52118888
If you have any of the old PDFs a bulk of the commentary sections are from the adventure burner and the magic burner

anything specific you want to see?

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>Be in an RPG club
>New campaing
>It's BW
>Other player makes a captain with a mysterious map that he intends to fill out and possibly find treasure
>Game starts in medias res
>Captain: "I'll fill the map as we move the coastline."
>GM: "Okay roll cartography."
>C: "Umm, I don't have it."
>GM: "So you can't draw maps."
>C: "Well shit. Uh, I'll just try to figure out where we are."
>GM: "Roll pathfinding."
>C: "Fuck I don't have that ether."
>GM: "What DO you have?"
>C: "I have map-wise."
>GM: "That helps you know OF maps, not read or write them."
>My face even though I wasn't that player.
The GM was a newbie so he didn't want to streamline the rules at all but god damn it.

>>52120225
didn't he know that you can use skills untrained?

>>52120490
Shit that might have been it.

SHIT SUCKS RETARD

>>52101844
This just sold me on mouse guard. Thank you.

But on topic, burning wheel looks pretty nice but I don't have anyone to run it, nor am I creative to do it myself.

>>52121228
No it didn't and nobody else likes it either. Your game is terrible and you are a failure.

>>52120091
Anything. I just like hearing explanations for game design.

>>52100297
/thread

>>52104006
>It's the newest meme word and he want's to fit in.

You must be some kind of dumbshit, hm? I'll guess I'll have to explain.

A "fantasy heartbreaker" is a game that wants to be D&D but better. Usually this takes one a few forms:
• Muh realism
• Muh story
• Muh spell points
• Would Ron Edwards/therpgpundit/ZacS/Raggi/whoeverthefuck like this game and metaphorically blow me in a blog post reviewing it?

Burning Wheel falls into the "muh story" and "Ron Edwards" categories. But it still has the Standard Fantasy Races™ as playable, so you know that, yes, it really is trying to be D&D-but-Better.

(Incidentally, since Edwards is the very guy who coined "heartbreaker" in '02, years and years before "memes" became a thing on the internet, I'd consider learning what words mean before trying to use them in front of other people if I were you. Just a friendly tip.)

>>52122809
I did hear/read once that Burning Wheel started as Luke Crane's "D&D but better project", so by that definition it fits.

Also ' internet memes' have been a thing pretty much as long as Internet has been a thing.

>>52122809
That definition seems overly broad and useless, like, basically any game that includes Elves and Dwarves falls into that definition. To be clear, I am not even suggesting that definition is WRONG, just it is not very helpful, which, coming from the Forge, is not very surprising.
Not to mention, BWHQ actually DID make a game that was explicitly trying to be "D&D but better", which was Torchbearer.

Besides which, even if Burning Wheel DOES fall into that category, that doesn't make it a bad game. It really wants a very specific play/GM style, which isn't for everyone, but the rules are pretty tightly put together around that concept and generally promote good play rather than get in the way.

>>52122809
You might want to re-read the fantasy heartbreaker article, anon. Edwards does not define heartbreakers as anything stemming from D&D. Heartbreaker are just one creative step removed from old D&D and that step is buried underneath all the things that make it essentially the same as D&D. Other than fantasy races, there is almost *nothing* in BW that is the same as old D&D.

>>52123667

This. Heartbreakers are games, usually from the 90s, that look like throwbacks to the 80s. Their "innovations" are few and far between, and usually stuff that had already been seen in other games 10 or 20 years before.
The Heartbreaker author is seemingly a guy who played AD&D and never touched another game, and probably doesn't know other games exist. He just went into his garage to "fix" D&D and a couple of years later came out with a bloated monstrosity that would never sell, and all the copies he paid to print wind up stored in boxes in that same garage.

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>>52120225

Oh man he missed one of the major features of the game then. You can attempt untrained skills (and must since there are like 200 skills, sure won't start with them all) where you test using the related attribute instead of the skill and the obstacle is doubled. Then after a certain amount of successes/failures based on how high your attribute is you then learn the skill.

>>52101930
Because it looked at dnd and went "Meh. I could do better." and then proceeded to not.

>>52100668
>light
>character sheet longer than one page

Pick one.

My issues is that it lines the game up into a very specific tone. I think that the ideas behind it otherwise are good though. It is a broad point buy system that encourages playing fluffily, as opposed to D&D and its obsession with "builds" and the like.

>>52128977
>My issues is that it lines the game up into a very specific tone.
I think that's positive for a game. Tight design that knows what it is going for and what it is doing is better than vague openness.

>>52129000
Yeah, that isn't a bad thing. It doesn't fit the silly games that I usually run (Hence it being a personal gripe), but for emulating Le Guin and Tolkein style adventures as it advertises it is great.

Burning wheel can be fun if you go with a more political game, but the magic system is complete dogshit and faith is kind of stupid
Everything else is fucking great

>>52129063
>magic system is complete dogshit
There is full extra book for alternative magics.

>>52129021
Mouse guard would be a good choice for goofy games

>>52129074
Really?
Never heard of it

>>52128546
>doesn't understand the difference between 'lighter than AD&D' and 'light'

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>>52129088

The Magic Burner
The Burning Wheel Codex

These books contain alternative and additional magic systems.

>>52128529
You could say the same about literally every single system that is somewhat fantasy related and it'd be just as valid as conjecture

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>>52122570

>>52100046
I had the same impression when I bought it some years ago. Found it overtly complicated and really counter-intuitive, having tons of little subsystems and poorly explained concepts (I still have no idea what "He's a Jonah that one" is supposed to mean").

The game preach that the best way to roleplay is to not use the system at all, yet at the same time provides a really heavy ruleset where actions are tied to narrowly defined numbers on the character sheet that does not allow for much play without engaging heavily into the rules.

Some people say BW just requires a different approach than most games. I can respect that, but neither I nor my players found that approach.

>>52135367
>The game preach that the best way to roleplay is to not use the system at all
where does i say this?

>>52135325
Is there an Adventure Burner scan about? All I've seen is the transcript.

>>52135410
http://www.mediafire.com/file/whikivb33go663o/The+Adventure+Burner.pdf

Think that one should work

If not try da archive

>>52135705
Thanks.

>>52135374
In the section Designer's Notes, in the section labelled Don't Use This System.

>>52137423
And book which has this elusive section is?

>>52137481
Not him, but I believe it is only in classic edition.

I don't own classic, and have only read the transcript of that section once or twice, but my understanding is that it was meant to be sarcastic, but Poe's Law being what it is it didn't get the point across, and people who did get it didn't really appreciate the snark, so it was removed in future editions.

Burning Wheel isn't a fantasy heartbreaker, it's just a boring system with nothing that interesting to offer. Dice pool bullshit and forced-roleplay mechanics, based off of a system meant for Redwall bullshit.

>>52122809
>a fantasy heartbreaker is any fantasy game that isn't D&D
That is the dumbest definition I have heard anyone give for this. This definition would make Pathfinder a fantasy heartbreaker.

A heartbreaker would be Fantasy Craft which is D&D but better because it shares many of the same mechanics, always was super unpopular, and is dead.

>>52135367
>I still have no idea what "He's a Jonah that one" is supposed to mean"

Jo`nah•esque′, adj.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Jonah
>n.
>1. a Minor Prophet who, for his impiety, was thrown overboard from his ship and swallowed by a large fish, remaining in its belly for three days before being cast up onto the shore unharmed.
>2. a book of the Bible bearing his name.
>3. a person or thing regarded as bringing bad luck.


Also, the general rule with BW that "Don't Use this System" was getting at (poorly, which is why it was removed) is that you should only use the parts you need, rather than try to use everything all the time.

IE, most fights should be resolved with simple tests of brawling or sword or whatever, and finished in a roll or perhaps two.
The Fight! subsystem is intended to be used in the case where a fight isn't just a minor engagement with some mook, but is a centrally important battle where the stakes are high, and your beliefs are on the line. Like when your campaign is about to end and you have a duel with the evil prince over the fate of the kingdom, that's the kind of thing Fight! is for.

>>52137773
>based off of a system meant for Redwall bullshit.
>Burning Wheel Classic 2002
>Burning Wheel Revised 2005
>Mouse Guard 2008

Here's your (you)

>>52129646
>doesn't understand that 11 fucking pages of character sheet isn't light.

never heard of it before this thread, but I'm completely fascinated by RPGs, the book looks extremely nicely bound and it's literally only £16.99 on Amazon prime

thanks lads

>>52139188
>still doesn't understand the post