Campaign-burning

Place holder for discussion to take place on this topic.

Alright, so, thatguy, GreenDice, OMG_, (and anyone else that comes along) what are your experience levels with BW?

guy, seems like you have some.

OMG, you stated you have exactly zero, except for having heard things; what have you heard?

I have a little experience but eventually want to gm

All I've heard is people saying it's their favorite system to play. The book at my LGS is pretty cool, too, but I haven't really read any of it.

I've made a few characters but have no real experience playing. I've tried setting up games on a different website but they always seem to fall apart before anything got off the ground.

Alright, well we'll get the discussion started.

So, Burning Wheel is/was - as I understand and as far as I know - the first real "story game", or "fiction-first" rpg. Not only that, but it was also the first "true" worlbuilding RPG. The progenitor of Dogs in the Vineyard, Apocalypse World (and all of its spawn), Blades in the Dark, and so on...

What does that mean? Why am I talking about this?

Well, I'm talking about this first, because BW has a very (very very) different game design ethos than your traditional RPGs (D&D, Shadowrun, even the world of Darkness games, GURPS, Savage World's, etc.).

Which means that as a Player or as a GM, you cannot "approach" it like one of those traditional rpgs. And this is especially true with BW, moreso than those other story games I mentioned, because as the first of it's kind, it really didn't know what it was yet. And so it had all of the crunchy mechanical trappings of a traditional RPG (BW started out as a fantasy-hack of Shadowrun 1st edition), AND all of the high narrative concepts of a story game. This makes it a very finicky system. It's one of perhaps the very few RPGs out there where there really is an objectively "correct"way to play it (if you've read the core rulebook, you've probably gotten this message via Luke's commentary via the "Imp" icon throughout) - IF you are going to get out of the system what it does that no other system does. And it really does do some things that no other system does.

So, that's why I'm starting here. To start to try to get you in the "right" mindset.

Basically forget everything you've ever learned about rpgs thru those traditional RPGs, and prepare to learn about them anew.

Any questions so far; RE: terms like fiction-first gaming, or worlbuilding game, or traditional games, or anything I've mentioned here so far?

Assuming I'm not muddying any terms from my reading of FATE games, I'm tracking with you.

I'm ready to get started!

Alright, so, BW is a story-game. A true collaborative world-building game.

What makes it that?

Well, I'm first going to tell you - maybe counter intuitively - what does not make it a worlbuilding game.

Perhaps you're aware; one of the core tenants of BW is it's session 0: where everyone is supposed to sit down together and create the world/campaign (ie world/campaign-burning)?

This does not make it a collaborative worlbuilding game.

World/campaign-burning is just a lingo term that BWHQ uses to call out the fact that BW is designed - mechanically - to have a campaign that is built around the PCs.

Let's dive into this process, before we look at what makes the game a world building game (seeing as it comes in-play before playing).

World-burning doesn't mean you HAVE to create a new unique literal world/planet for every campaign, and there are no game mechanics attached to the creation of the world or campaign itself (which is why this element has nothing to do with it being a worlbuilding game - no mechanics, not a part of the "game").

That "world" that must be tailored to the PCs may just consist of a single village, or a Noble House, or whatever the minimum "level" of detail is that is necessary to "house" the premise of the beginning of the campaign.

Make sense?

Further more, campaign and world-burning are often (maybe always...) directly intertwined. The two will be created at the same time, I think every time - hand in glove.

So let's look at our world-building thread.
A Middle Earth-type setting has been suggested. Perfect. As you may or may not know, BW was designed around Tolkien's Middle Earth. We could use exactly Tolkien's M.E. for our setting if we wanted, BUT... we would still have some world-burning to do.

Did anyone want to throw out any other ideas for a world and/or campaign premise (please do throw something out there, if so, as it may illuminate or help illustrate some topics)?

I don't have any specific ideas, but something influenced by Crusader Kings/ court-intrigue based would be great

Court intrigue sounds like a great time, and Middle Earth is as good a place for it as any! Perhaps something smaller and more local would fit in well? My lore is starting to get pretty rusty, but I'm a fan of both Rohan and the elven kingdoms of the First Age.

Are we setting this in Middle-earth? Or a world of our creation that is inspired by Middle-earth? I'm cool with either, I just want to be clear.

My knowledge of Middle-earth is not very deep.

I'm not super proficient in Middle Earth detail knowledge either, unless you need Aragorn's poem recited. Maybe just akin to Middle Earth in styling/themes - i.e., the grandest empires have since fallen, magic is lessening, magic is rare. Stuff like that.

Court intrigue ala CK sounds nice.

And, I know practically nothing about Burning Wheel. Working on that.

I was thinking an original setting influenced by Middle Earth/Rohan

Looks like I jumped the gun a little bit there. Inspired by Middle Earth sounds great, as well. Civilization is waning, malice is growing in the shadows, magic is real but rare and is a much less surface-level thing than traditional D&D spellcasting. If we're willing to commit to the Rohan inspiration I'm still into the concept of court intrigue in the horse clans.

That definitely sounds fun, yeah.

Cool, sounds like everybody is in on M.E. inspired court intrigue... I've always wanted to do a Court setting, so I'm diggin' where you guys are going with this.

And yeah, I mostly just called out M.E. specifically to bring attention to 2 things:

1. BW doesn't handle much "higher" fantasy than that. Lower fantasy, all the way down to "historical fiction", is good-to-go. And the further you stray from the "medieval western society" vibe, the less-well the system (Lifepaths) will handle things also, with the exception of a few supplements out there ...

AND

2. Even if, as you move on in your BW careers, your table decides to play in an established IP world (I've played games in the Westeros setting, and historical Medieval Earth), your work is not done. You still MUST do world-building beyond that.

So to speak to GreenDice's concern a few comments up;
This is generally not an issue (being intimately familiar with a chosen IP), because as mentuined you still must tailor the story and setting - you must world-build - to a pretty specific level, for your characters, AND for the BW system to function as intended.

And what you must worldbuild beyond that broad setting concept is what we in the Burning community generally, commonly call:

1. The Big Picture, AND

2. The Starting Scenario

Heres where we start getting into some really important BW theory-craft. The Big Picture is an overarching concern, or conflict, for the "world" (meaning; the PCs immediate sphere of influence), that is maybe just a little bit outside of the PCs control. A Village based campaigns world might be the village and a few surrounding farms and forests (and it's B.P. might be an occupying army is consuming their resources), a Court based campaign's world is more like the Kingdom and a few of it's closest rivals and allies (and it's B.P. might be the King is dying and the Eldest Son/Obvious Heir has refused to take the throne to marry a Commoner), a Pirate campaign's world is perhaps an island chain (and the B.P. is that a seemingly permanent hurricane has settled over the main port), and so on... Point is world does not necessarily (or ever really) mean "an entire globe" when it is used in these gaming terms - it is "the PCs world" ie whatever setting constitutes 90% of the PCs day-to-day reality, and the Big Picture is something currently beyond the PCs control that is fucking with their world.

Make sense? Let's talk about this some before we move to Starting Scenario.

I like the "Civilization is waning, malice is growing in the shadows" angle that OMG_Gypsy mentioned. I was thinking of either the world is teetering on the edge of a war or a war has just concluded and we are living in the aftermath. Since we want to focus on courtly intrigue, maybe we are part of a kingdom/realm/nation-state that chooses to pretend the world around us is not falling apart and so we are focused inward instead of keeping our eye on external threats.

Also, I always liked the idea of some sort of noble order of knights that is highly regarded and respected but is truly evil and corrupt at its core.

I am just throwing things at the wall to see what sticks and what doesn't. What do you all think?

As a GM, starting at this (the Big Picture) stage, and all the way down through character creation (Starting Situation>Character Creation/Beliefs), you need to look for what we call "grist in the mill". Establishing world realities that either are directly, or will necessitate very soon, conflict - social, political, physical, whatever. BW thrives on conflict. Doesn't have to be extreme, in fact it's perhaps best at times when the conflict is slight, but we'll get into that more later...

For now, while this is all an excellent exploration and elaboration on the state of the world; none of it really works for your Big Picture.

The Big Picture needs to be a pretty specific ongoing event or conflict.

So take those general overtones, GreenDice (et al), and create something specific out of them. Create people, create places, create grist for the mill, around them.

Is this "Big Picture" affecting our characters? Or this this affecting the setting?

Which of these would be an appropriate "Big Picture":

Example 1: My father has recently passed and I know his treasure is hidden in his manor. I must rush home to claim my inheritance before my foolish siblings find the gold before me. Afterall, as the elder sibling, that gold is mine! (This is very specific to a character and sets up conflict between the character and his siblings and makes some major assumptions, i.e. my character doesnt live close, I have siblings, etc)

Example 2: As the Great War rages, the death-toll rises and many families are torn apart. The war has bankrupted nations and those on the home-front are left to squabble over what little remains behind or starve. (This is something that would have influence on the overall tone of the entire game and everyone's character)

Or am I missing the mark completely?

As I mentioned above...
So Example 1 is too "zoomed in" on a single PC. This is a potential Belief.

And Example 2 doesn't have any actual specific event or conflict. For it to be a good BP, we need who are the families (identify them - the King, his 2 brothers, and 3 merchant families?), what exactly are they squabbling over (name the resource(s)), and how are they squabbling (what is the nature of the conflict - political, legal, militant, etc.).

Well, there's a number of ways we could approach a big picture. Most aren't even mutually exclusive.

1) We could have a human conflict. Maybe a conqueror's path is turning toward our homeland. Maybe a king's relative is rallying support for a civil war. Maybe a number of lords are on the brink of conflicting, and it's the efforts of one old, ailing lord who's been keeping the hard-kept peace.

2) We could have some naturey/magical conflict. Maybe a plague is killing off horses, which are a major component of our land's military and lifestyle. That strain on resources is going to cause issues.

Stuff like that. We set up a half-dozen specific dominos, or even less, and we'll quickly have a whole big picture that spills out from that. A conqueror's path is turning toward our homeland. Some of our lords hope to lessen the blow by siding with the conqueror. Some of our lords are looking for other allies. Some people are seeking hope in magic and the powers of old. One aspect, at least three different generalities that spill out of that.

I like the idea of the human conflict with the conqueror, as well as the plague

So the conqueror is a person, relation of the king, and there's obviously the king himself. I don't know, but would it be wise to have another dimension to this? Maybe a third party or a wild card? Maybe an outside threat, maybe Dwarves or an Orc army, which the Civil War proves a distraction from?

That feels a little familiar though, so I have to wonder if it might be useful to have the other side of the civil war somehow profiting from ignoring the outside army, rather than being short-sighted.

Maybe, for example, to build on the idea from earlier of a secretly-corrupt order of knights, what if the rebel was the commander of that order, and sees an opportunity to win more support from the masses by delaying his reaction in order to sweep in and rescue the peasants in dramatic fashion?

But then how would the PCs find this out and is there an npc we can put there?

(Am I totally off track here?)

Okay, so it sounds like we're drifting away from the initial court-intrigue place where we started? Moving toward conqueror? Maybe we can split the difference...

A Conqueror coming for everyone is a very straightforward type of conflict, which isn't necessarily a good thing when you're trying to make grist for the mill.

If all of the PCs are Nobility of the same Kingdom, there aren't perhaps very many circumstances for you all to come into conflict with each other. You all would have one definite and obvious foe that everyone would have pretty straightforward need to work together to keep the Conqueror out. That's a little too obvious. It's a more traditional rpg big picture. We want complexity, and many possible angles, to the same conflict. In Burning Wheel, while we want the PCs to ultimately work together, we want them to have subtle conflicts within that as well. We want that grist for the mill.

Let's look at maybe combining the Conqueror-angle with the Civil War/intrigue-angle?

Maybe for a long time - several generations, the "Horse Lords" (or whatever) have been divided, each sovereign over their own Domain. But recently a figurehead has emerged who claims that they want to re-unify the Lords, they want to become King of the "Horse Folk" like there was in the days of old, in the Glory Days of the Horse Folk, when Domain of the People as a whole was much further reaching, held over many foreign lands? Which would also mean a single sovereign... Most of the Noble Houses might understandably want to cling to their sovereignty, but many people - even many in high positions in the Houses maybe - could also yearn for the Glory Days, and would welcome a return to the Old Ways, to the One King? Whether for the greater glory of the People, or whatever. So there is a conqueror but there is also room for intrigue.
I like the idea of the wild card, but I think for the Big Picture, it is a looming thing in the background. And I think the plague idea mentioned already would fill this role. Maybe it's a true natural plague? Maybe its magical? Maybe some people believe its a curse, brought on by the disfavor of your Ancestors, for forgetting the Old Ways? Maybe it's only the first manifestation of something greater going on? We don't know, and that we don't state that in the Big Picture, it's the part that's out of the PCs control. For now.

So how about the Big Picture is something like (and we can come up with good names and terms later if we want):

"Civilization is waning, a plague has stricken the Fleets of the Horse Lords, and malice is growing in the shadows. A woman has emerged, claiming to be the rightful heir to the Unbridled Throne. The Queen of the Horse Folk, as she is called, is now riding on each of the Domains of the Horse Lords with her Thousand-Fold army, one-by-one, to either receive their fealty or take the heads of the Lord. And now she rides on Our Home."

Is that interesting to people?

It does seem like that but I didn't want to pull things away from the direction people were going in, on account of having just shown up!

The reason I differentiated the plague and the "3rd element" in my head was, the plague is an ongoing issue, whereas I figured something looming on the horizon might be nice. But of course, I was only spit-balling; I usually wouldn't even go around making suggestions beyond saying maybe it would be a good idea to think of something, but then I thought that seemed unhelpful.

I feel like the pitch you've got could certainly work for court intrigue if you kept that in mind, or you could get away from it (like we've been doing lol) if you're not careful.

In closing, interesting to me!

That's an appealing concept to me, especially if we play up the politics more than the warfare.

This would really be determined likely by how the Beliefs play out, but certainly with the setup we're looking at it seems like things should start with the politics.

An idea I had had was that the king had recently died and left no obvious heir. Now the horse lords are squabbling about who should be on the thrown while the self proclaimed Queen of the horse folk is making her way toward the capital.

As a side thought, does the Queen of the Horse Folk have to be a "person"? Could her followers claim (rightly or wrongly) that she's a Goddess, or a Faerie Queen, or whatever? Or, I suppose of course she doesn't, but is that a direction people would like to go in?

I think this would be something awesome to develop through Beliefs. And/or possibly the Starting Situation. Could be a portion of a sentence in the Big Picture, but certainly not stated conclusively one way or the other.

If everyone is okay with moving forward with the above B.P., let's start looking at a Starting Situation, AND Beliefs.

The Starting Situation is where we will be "zooming in" on the PCs and game world, in-character, for the first time. It needs to be an active conflict (physical, social, political, etc.) so that we ensure we all hit the ground running, AND it needs to point in the direction of some aspect of the Big Picture. It will likely be the first place where you should really start considering character concepts, and their Beliefs and Instincts. At least one Belief per PC should emerge through the development of the Starting Situation.

Does anyone, have anything they'd like to suggest? For characters and situations.

So as far as situation, if we want court intrigue, we need to be at court, am I right?

So am I right in thinking that we should also have something to create immediate forward momentum? A conflict or situation or something at court that kind of needs resolving?

Would it be smart to have that tension also play into the situation with the Queen? For example, a succession crisis in our clan, and one of the heirs is against her or says he's going to fight, with the other being more conciliatory?

Or... we could be at a hot-springs used by the Nobility, as certain members gather in conspiracy. Or... we could be at the first social gathering before official Court is held. Or... depending on who the PCs are to each other, it could be within the private chambers of a single House.

Plenty of Court politics goes on outside of Court. What sounds interesting to people?
Eh... so here is what I said about the point/goal of developing a Starting Situation immediately above your post...
Curious where you think the difference is between what I said and what you said? :P
I think this is an excellent idea, if people think it's most interesting to be acting from within the same House.

Any other thoughts out there?

Acting from within the same house sounds good. This also sets up all the other houses to try and gain as much influence as possible by meddling with succession.

You know what they say about assuming? Well I'm extra good at making one of myself so I didn't want to go too far afield

Apologies if it seemed like I was pushing a warfare angle with my thought splatterings. I was more putting forth example ideas wih how I usually organize my thoughts in worldbuilding - that being, it's easy to pull a million possible consequences from propping up two or three would-be tropes into play. Though I do like the Queen of the Horse Lords line coming out of brainstorming - it's cool.

Being from one house having its own internal issues seems like a good way to narrow in.

I somehow missed this post but I like it. But does that mean we should have characters (NPCs, presumably, but not necessarily) who act as kinda front-men for other, further-afield factions? Maybe envoys from other clans, and possibly an envoy from the Queen herself?

The only thing about acting as envoys is that we'd even more definitely need some form of incitement to act as something like allies, or at least some reasons to keep company.

This is what Beliefs are for/can do.

I mean at the same time Burning Wheel doesn't seem to shy that much away from adversarial play. I mean, The Sword is their demo adventure.

Perhaps we should look at this a little.

Indeed, BW thrives when the players are working at odds in some regards, but you don't want PCs to be 100% diametrically opposed.

Ideally, some PCs want the same thing from the Big Picture, a different set of PCs want the same thing out of the Starting Situation, and a different still set of PCs have Beliefs that align for Personal reasons.

This is a good guideline for where you should have Players create there first 3 Beliefs around:

1. The Big Picture Belief

2. The Starting Situation Belief

3. The Personal Belief (aka sometimes as "The Fate Mine")

You want a tangled web of agreement and disagreement throughout the 3 Beliefs across all of your players.

No single player should be "fully aligned" with any other single player. Nor should any single player be full aligned against any single other player.

Make sense?

These singular disagreements we spread across everyone whom are otherwise well aligned is that grist for the mill.

So that being said, I didn't necessarily want to push the game in a distinctly adversarial direction, so I would think that we would be advisers, lieutenants, and things like that, under the local chief. Except, of course, that we've got the succession crisis.

Maybe the ideal thing to do would be to start it, boom, at the moment of the old Chief's death. First thing we learn is that he's dead.

From there we're trying to scramble to make sure that things stay under control, we try to get things to move forward with succession, but at the same time we've got envoys from other clans to deal with and keep under control.

So what kind of advisers would you have in a clan like this?

Religious leader(s), Military commander(s). Steward(s) to deal with social issues, Banker(s). What am I missing?

I wasn't trying to imply you were. Just wanted to use the opportunity to explore that aspect of BW.

Trying to bare in mind that this is all meant to be instructional on how to run a BW game. Sometimes it's been unclear to me if everyone else is remembering that :P
I think this could be a really interesting starting point. Good idea, Linsolv.

Any other thoughts?

That sounds great to me.

Is there anything we're missing, emsquared?

Let's just put a little finer point on the Starting Situation.

You touched on this with your earlier question, Linsolv.
But the goal of that question is: What can we do to ensure everyone has "action items", right off the bat?

This should really start dipping into Character Burning (character concepts, potential Beliefs) too, but what are the issues at hand with he death of the Chief?

1. Contentious Succession
2. Pro/Anti-Queen Factions
3. The Horse Fleet Plague

Other angles? How (who) can we come at these angles? Do we want the vary top-players (those in line to ascend to the Chiefdom) as PCs, or do we want to be just a step or two below that? For that matter, we wouldn't all have to be Advisors/Court Members, you could play Personal
Servant or Personal Guard or Mistress type PC in a campaign like this and have a lot of fun, I think. You don't necessarily have to be in a position of power, just power-adjacent. Able to touch that power...

What do you all got?

Now that I'm thinking about it, this makes a lot of sense to do. People who are already at the top, or as top as it gets, are going to be trying to stabilize things, sure. But is stability necessarily what we want as players, or what you want as a GM?

Whereas sorta second-tier guys, what they would want out of this situation is change, because change means opportunity; opportunity can only be bad for top guys, but for middle guys, it's a roll of the dice, worst case.

I don't really want to keep posting whenever I have an idea, guys. I'm not looking to run the whole thread myself lol.

Well, I think we're pretty much there, for Campaign Burning.

Let's move over to the Character Burning thread, start focusing in that.