I get interested in Burning Wheel at times. But then no one can explain the game's mechanic to me, even by die-hard players, in a paragraph or two. They can't even tell what the gist of the game is after reading the entire book, which seems to be a mandatory thing before even playing the game.

So how have GMs convinced other players to read the entire book so that a game can be started?

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;1066662So how have GMs convinced other players to read the entire book so that a game can be started?

You don't: ). When starting with new BW players, I would (and I think the book recommends this) start with just character burning (which is involved as it it), the "Spokes", and simple tests (i.e., Bloody Vs.). Oh, and sticking to Mannish lifepaths will help a ton to if you can work that.  It may be just me, but our campaign (now 11 sessions in) very rarely goes into the big systems.  In fact, my players tend to avoid them unless there is a lot on the line.  And as long as you keep the dice rolling, Artha chugs along just fine without pulling out the scripting sheets.  At least this is how I like to run it...

Quote from: Tyndale;1066670You don't: ). When starting with new BW players, I would (and I think the book recommends this) start with just character burning (which is involved as it it), the "Spokes", and simple tests (i.e., Blood Vs.). Oh, and sticking to Mannish lifepaths will help a ton to if you can work that.  I may be just me, but our campaign (now 11 sessions in) very rarely goes into the big systems.  In fact, they tend to avoid them unless there is a lot on the line.  And as long as you keep the dice rolling, Artha chugs along just fine without pulling out the scripting sheets.  At least this is how I like to run it...

So "burning" is a mechanic? Spokes? Blood Vs? Scripting sheets? You've already lost me and proved the OP's point.

Sorry, was assuming the OP has some experience with the book. But to your point, yes, BW does use a unique nomenclature. But that is nothing compared to the uniqueness of the system philosophy as a whole . It really turns some folks off.  : )

If you're interested though:

"Burning" is the process of character creation which is a lifepath system.  "Spokes" is the chapter that lays out the core mechanics.  "Bloody vs." is a simplified form of combat.  And the sheets are commonly used when "Dual of Wits" or "Fight" (the big combat systems come into play) because the interactions of actions are complicated.

I fully understand that BW is an acquired taste. But it really works for my preferred style to play. YMMV.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1066671So "burning" is a mechanic? Spokes? Blood Vs? Scripting sheets? You've already lost me and proved the OP's point.

How about this:

The book literally says: To start off only use the first 74 pages
(The first 74 pages are available for free at Drivethru)

As for the basic mechanics:

Roll d6 dice pools to beat a target number. A 4-6 on a die is a success against the target number. A 1-3 does not count.

That is the basics. Hope it helps!

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;1066662I get interested in Burning Wheel at times. But then no one can explain the game's mechanic to me, even by die-hard players, in a paragraph or two. They can't even tell what the gist of the game is after reading the entire book, which seems to be a mandatory thing before even playing the game.

So how have GMs convinced other players to read the entire book so that a game can be started?

Oh god this game...

Okay, so I read every word of the burning wheel gold... Well, it's a bible, for lack of a better term. I also joined their forums and read the intro adventure "the sword". Additionally, I ran my wife and best friend through character gen and a single, ill-advised session of the thing, in addition to crating various lifepath builds to satiate my curiosity.

So I'm no expert, but I've tussled with it considerably.

Here's the game; imagine the most heart-breaking decision you've ever made in an RPG; choosing life or death between favorite NPCs, or giving up an irreplaceable treasure to save yourself from an unbeatable monster, or just losing one of your favorite characters in a last act of heroism and self-sacrifice. Okay, this game wants every goddamn role to be that, all the time.

That's the game. It's emotional thumbscrews the RPG.

It's the kind of game where you're not guaranteed two shoes (although you do get one.... Adventure for the other!) when you lifepath up a character. The player's job is to have very clear, very inflexible goals for their characters, and the GM's job is to make all of these come into conflict and get tested as much as humanly possible.

The system doesn't care about things like position, or movement; it doesn't have any time for measuring and counting, it's too busy making sure that you know that if you don't get this horse, you'll miss your window of opportunity to accomplish your heart's desire but that you have to surrender something you love and can't replace to get the horse in time.

Combat is a skill check. Until the players actually get creative, then it's a slightly more sophisticated version of rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock. It's not agony, but it is both really clunky and really deadly.

There are a lot of neat ideas floating around in it (like flotsam...); you level up skills by testing them doing extremely hard things, and you need a certain number of failures to level. Combine that with the "every roll is life or death" mentality and you've got a system that's built to enmesh you into a deep web of your own shortcomings. Granted, it's literally not possible to avoid this, so it loses some impact.

Your character will never be good at things. If they get good at something, the game gets dull fast, so it twists itself into noodles to keep that from happening. There's a set of emotion mechanics that essentially forces you to retire a character before they reach that point.

Uhm... You don't track gold or encumbrance or anything that involves math. The game operates on pure emotional logic, so if you don't run in the exact way it expects (but never explains) you won't be able to figure out what about 90% of the mechanics do.

Oh I forgot that wounding is on a grid, which complicates it for absolutely no discernible reason. Seriously, it's like, almost entirely just a health tract and should be linear. But it's not; you plot wounds. Enjoy that.

Yeah it's... Okay, so I like clear, direct, and specific communication. This game is "Insinuation: the Expectation-Cloudening". The game insinuates it's goals to you. The players insinuate what they want their characters to be doing (but don't tell you). Every mechanic insinuates it's purpose, but never, ever explains it's actual function, leaving you scratching your head at the needless evasiveness of it all.

And this wouldn't be intolerable, but the community of people (including the creator) that boasts about this game online communicate elusively in this indirect, insinuation-laden, condescending "Oh, youuuuu'll get it, someday! *wink*!" kind of way, making the sole clear and unambiguous truth of the game that [strike]it's a total waste of your time and energy.[/strike] EDIT: Okay no, plenty of enjoyment can be had. I'm just cranky.

Quote from: Azraele;1066681Oh god this game...

Okay, so I read every word of the burning wheel gold... Well, it's a bible, for lack of a better term. I also joined their forums and read the intro adventure "the sword". Additionally, I ran my wife and best friend through character gen and a single, ill-advised session of the thing, in addition to crating various lifepath builds to satiate my curiosity.

So I'm no expert, but I've tussled with it considerably.

Here's the game; imagine the most heart-breaking decision you've ever made in an RPG; choosing life or death between favorite NPCs, or giving up an irreplaceable treasure to save yourself from an unbeatable monster, or just losing one of your favorite characters in a last act of heroism and self-sacrifice. Okay, this game wants every goddamn role to be that, all the time.

That's the game. It's emotional thumbscrews the RPG.

It's the kind of game where you're not guaranteed two shoes (although you do get one.... Adventure for the other!) when you lifepath up a character. The player's job is to have very clear, very inflexible goals for their characters, and the GM's job is to make all of these come into conflict and get tested as much as humanly possible.

The system doesn't care about things like position, or movement; it doesn't have any time for measuring and counting, it's too busy making sure that you know that if you don't get this horse, you'll miss your window of opportunity to accomplish your heart's desire but that you have to surrender something you love and can't replace to get the horse in time.

Combat is a skill check. Until the players actually get creative, then it's a slightly more sophisticated version of rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock. It's not agony, but it is both really clunky and really deadly.

There are a lot of neat ideas floating around in it (like flotsam...); you level up skills by testing them doing extremely hard things, and you need a certain number of failures to level. Combine that with the "every roll is life or death" mentality and you've got a system that's built to enmesh you into a deep web of your own shortcomings. Granted, it's literally not possible to avoid this, so it loses some impact.

Your character will never be good at things. If they get good at something, the game gets dull fast, so it twists itself into noodles to keep that from happening. There's a set of emotion mechanics that essentially forces you to retire a character before they reach that point.

Uhm... You don't track gold or encumbrance or anything that involves math. The game operates on pure emotional logic, so if you don't run in the exact way it expects (but never explains) you won't be able to figure out what about 90% of the mechanics do.

Oh I forgot that wounding is on a grid, which complicates it for absolutely no discernible reason. Seriously, it's like, almost entirely just a health tract and should be linear. But it's not; you plot wounds. Enjoy that.

Yeah it's... Okay, so I like clear, direct, and specific communication. This game is "Insinuation: the Expectation-Cloudening". The game insinuates it's goals to you. The players insinuate what they want their characters to be doing (but don't tell you). Every mechanic insinuates it's purpose, but never, ever explains it's actual function, leaving you scratching your head at the needless evasiveness of it all.

And this wouldn't be intolerable, but the community of people (including the creator) that boasts about this game online communicate elusively in this indirect, insinuation-laden, condescending "Oh, youuuuu'll get it, someday! *wink*!" kind of way, making the sole clear and unambiguous truth of the game that it's a total waste of your time and energy.

For what it is worth (and it might not be worth much) I did not experience the game this way at all.

Or, to be more accurate, much of the description from the quote above does sum up the game (for example, the game does focus more on the emotional life of the character over tactical elements), but it caused me no gnashing of teeth.

If you do not want something like that do not play it! But if you are interested in such a game, it does it in spades.

As a comparison, I might say similar things about Pendragon or original Dungeons & Dragons... the games are designed to provide specific kinds of play experiences. If you do not want those experiences you will be frustrated.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;1066662I get interested in Burning Wheel at times. But then no one can explain the game's mechanic to me, even by die-hard players, in a paragraph or two. They can't even tell what the gist of the game is after reading the entire book, which seems to be a mandatory thing before even playing the game.

So how have GMs convinced other players to read the entire book so that a game can be started?

The easy answer is don't start with BW.  Start with Mouse Guard instead.  It's a much more streamlined, cleaner, shorter, organized, and accessible version of what is essentially the same engine.  The subject matter is anthropomorphised mice instead of Tolkien-ish characters, but you can't have everything.  If you enjoy the flow of MG, BW might be worth your time.  Otherwise, it probably isn't.  

The gist of the engine is it's "reward cycle".  To advance much at all, you must push yourself and risk serious failure.  Almost every roll is consequential.  If you try something easy, the GM gives it to you, so you get no advancement.  To get the tougher successes, you need special points, and there are only a few ways to get them in game.  It's defined for 2-5 people to go all out with their characters.  Everything else in BW, MG, Torchbearer, etc. is commentary on a particular style of game built around that engine.  

Finally, almost all of the "modification" levers in the BW engine(s) are in a few odd places.  It's not that you can't hack the game.  Changing the setting and conceits of the setting is simply changing the window dressing (life paths, particular skills, creatures, etc.)  What you can't really change much is the engine itself.  The engine isn't brittle, but it is very narrow and specialized.  There's no good way, for example, to scale it to 7 or 8 players.  There is no good way to tweak with the combat system.  That "every roll is important" is really embedded deep into every assumption in the engine.  If you are gonna fight that, might as well play something else instead.

Quote from: ChristopherKubasik;1066691For what it is worth (and it might not be worth much) I did not experience the game this way at all.

Or, to be more accurate, much of the description from the quote above does sum up the game (for example, the game does focus more on the emotional life of the character over tactical elements), but it caused me no gnashing of teeth.

If you do not want something like that do not play it! But if you are interested in such a game, it does it in spades.

As a comparison, I might say similar things about Prndragon or original Dungeons & Dragons... the games or designed to provide specific kinds of play experiences. If you do not want those experiences you will be frustrated.

Got to say, you're the single best representative of Burning Wheel I've ever encountered online. It takes some stern stuff to take that depth of lambasting about your favorite game and then compliment the asshole that did it.

Quote from: Azraele;1066699Got to say, you're the single best representative of Burning Wheel I've ever encountered online. It takes some stern stuff to take that depth of lambasting about your favorite game and then compliment the asshole that did it.

To be clear:My favorite games is King Arthur Pendragon. (It is the game I want to run next for my Monday Night Group.)

I like Burning Wheel.

Games I love are Classic Traveller (Books 1-3), Lamentations of the Flame Princess, Sorcerer & Sword, RuneQuest: Roleplayimg in Glorantha (though I wish the text was better written).

I'm thinking about using the OD&D rules ro run Barrowmaze against the backdrop of Dolmenwood at some point. And I'd also like to run some Fate of the Norns as well.

So, just so you know, BW isn't really near the top of my RPG list. But it is on the list!:)

Quote from: Tyndale;1066670You don't: ). When starting with new BW players, I would (and I think the book recommends this) start with just character burning (which is involved as it it), the "Spokes", and simple tests (i.e., Bloody Vs.). Oh, and sticking to Mannish lifepaths will help a ton to if you can work that.  It may be just me, but our campaign (now 11 sessions in) very rarely goes into the big systems.  In fact, my players tend to avoid them unless there is a lot on the line.  And as long as you keep the dice rolling, Artha chugs along just fine without pulling out the scripting sheets.  At least this is how I like to run it...

You mean using just the first 75 pages, or so, of the rules? Your players would only need to care about them to get a game going?

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;1066707You mean using just the first 75 pages, or so, of the rules? Your players would only need to care about them to get a game going?

In terms of mechanics, yes.

You would need the chapters for the life paths to create characters. Or use pregenerated characters. But in terms of playing the game, the first 75 pages is all you need.

And, again, these pages are available at Drivethru for free.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;1066707You mean using just the first 75 pages, or so, of the rules? Your players would only need to care about them to get a game going?

The biggest thing missing from that first 75 pages that matters during play is a tutorial on how to write Beliefs, Instincts, and Goals that work inside the game.  Get those wrong, and the game will be very flat.  The players are supposed to both roleplay the "BITs" AND game the hell out of them.  Thus, they are also the hardest thing to get right with pre-gens.  

You could, with players that took it in the spirit intended, have a trial period where the players got to monkey with their "BITs" until they were working properly.  They are allowed, and even expected to change, but not usually during a session.  But better to tweak them than having a session that frustrated everyone because the players didn't have the hang of it when they put in the first attempt at the "BITs".

Quote from: Tyndale;1066675Sorry, was assuming the OP has some experience with the book. But to your point, yes, BW does use a unique nomenclature. But that is nothing compared to the uniqueness of the system philosophy as a whole . It really turns some folks off.  : )

If you're interested though:

"Burning" is the process of character creation which is a lifepath system.  "Spokes" is the chapter that lays out the core mechanics.  "Bloody vs." is a simplified form of combat.  And the sheets are commonly used when "Dual of Wits" or "Fight" (the big combat systems come into play) because the interactions of actions are complicated.

I fully understand that BW is an acquired taste. But it really works for my preferred style to play. YMMV.

I'm sorry, but you know what this reminds me of? A tech manual for a piece of equipment that was written by a guy with an engineering degree who has never and will never actually work on the piece of equipment that the tech manual is for, but who does have a publisher who also has never and never will work on the same piece of equipment that the tech manual is for yet needs to be impressed by the language with which the tech manual was written in order for it to get published. Language (the nomenclature) gets used to create more of a barrier than a bridge to allow this game to be played. It is a form of tribalism.

Quote from: jeff37923;1066750I'm sorry, but you know what this reminds me of? A tech manual for a piece of equipment that was written by a guy with an engineering degree who has never and will never actually work on the piece of equipment that the tech manual is for, but who does have a publisher who also has never and never will work on the same piece of equipment that the tech manual is for yet needs to be impressed by the language with which the tech manual was written in order for it to get published. Language (the nomenclature) gets used to create more of a barrier than a bridge to allow this game to be played. It is a form of tribalism.

Not quite.  More like the engineer had his own private vocabulary when he tested the tool, and didn't bother to translate that into even normal engineer lingo, let alone something more useful to a regular user.

One of the reasons that Mouse Guard is a much more accessible game is that this kind of thing is much reduced in MG compared to BW.  There is still some of that--and almost has to be given the odd nature of the system--but they at least put a lot of effort into cutting out most of it.