Well, I was gonna provide a link to the Burning Wheel Gold "Hub and Spokes", but I seem to be having some trouble getting the site to work...
I guess I will just talk a bit about it. So, the Hub n Spokes is essentially the basic ruleset and guidance document for Burning Wheel, and it's available for free on their website. It's as close as they get to a "starter set". If you're not familiar with the basic tenets of BW, I think you'll get more out of the game if you read the HnS, but I'll also start going over some of the basics here.
First, BW has a pretty standard set of elements that make up your character: Stats, Attributes, SKills, Resources, Relationships/Reputation?Affiliation/Circles, Gear, and Magic. Nothing particularly scary here.
When you roll the dice, it will usually consist of a number of d6 equal to the rating of one of those elements, plus/minus modifiers.
Where BW starts becoming BW is with "B.I.T.s"; Beliefs, Instincts, Traits. 'Playing up" and "playing to" your BITs is essentially how your PC advances mechanically. That's not 100% of the progression picture, but it's the core. We can get into the other stuff later.
To "play up"/"play to" your BITs, it will often involve Tests (rolling the dice). And one of the most interesting and enjoyable (IMO) aspects of BW is the concept of "Task and Intent" when it comes time to Test an element of your PC. Task and Intent is basically the player driven philosophy behind the dice mechanic that says, "When the PC wants to accomplish something that requires a test, they must state their Task and Intent." now, the Task is usually a Skill - Brawling, Climbing, Interrogation, Sorcery - it's the means by which you want to accomplish your Intent. And your Intent is basically a narrative statement (OOC) of what you want to achieve. Brawling -"Well, I want to punch him in the eye, and wipe that crap-grin off his face." or Climbing -"I don't have any equipment, but I want to climb that stone and mortar wall up to the second story window, before any guard notices me." OR Interrogation -"I want to get the name of the informant out of him, without cutting or bruising him." orrr Sorcery -"I want to cast Witch Flight (a spell)."
Once the player has stated his Task and Intent, the GM will say, "OK, this is your Obstacle" (your Obstacle is the number of success you have to get in your dice pool, a success is a 4,5, or 6). At this point the player can say, "Woah, it's an Obs 5 to climb that wall? How about, no hurry, I'll take my chances with the Guard noticing me." Ok, says the GM, Obs 4.
You can renegotiate your Task and Intent before the roll is made.
There are various considerations that can go into modifying a roll (for or against you), Advantage/Disadvantage, Careful/Patient/Quick, whether or not you have Help from another, Fields of Related Knowledge (FoRKs), Tools, etc. But we can also get into that later, the important part to understand is Task and Intent and Negotiating the Stakes.
"Let it Ride" is a general philosophy in BW that (since your Skills advance based on how much they're used) is designed to prevent "spamming" skill usage. Basically it just says, once you roll the dice for a given Task, that result will "ride" throughout the entire scene for any similar Task. This meshes with BWs other philosophy of "Say Yes or roll the dice." in a fashion that allows large and important portions of a narrative to be dependent on just a few rolls. It sounds scary but, 1.) it goes both ways, you can gain alot just as much as you can lose alot, and 2.) you usually make progress on advancing a stat whether you Succeed or Fail at a Test.
So... does that make some sort of sense so far?
One of my most favorite things about BW is it's character creation system - "character burning". Basically, the GM sets a number of "Lifepaths" for character creation (4 or 5 is standard), and you go and lay out your characters life, literally from birth, based on these Lifepaths. Lifepaths determine your Age - which affects your Attributes, LPs determine the Skills easily available to you, and how many Skills you can have, LPs determine your Resources (wealth), your Circles, Traits, and various other elements of your character.
Here is a link to an online character generator, I would encourage you to play around with it so you can kind of maybe see what it does:
Charred (Char Ed, character editor, character burning, get it!?)
And I guess maybe after you've soaked all this in a bit, come back and lets chat about it. I've never tried to teach someone a system via forum posts before. And BW is a hard one to teach ppl in person, so... I'm not sure how much any of this is worth but... give it a look. And maybe google "BWHQ" and see if you can access their website (if you'd like to do some extra curricular reading)?
Last edited February 8, 2017 3:08 am
