TheRPGSite

I picked up a copy Sunday from the Hairy Tarantula here in Toronto, and I'm nearly done it. Anyone else here ever read it, or better yet, played it? How does it handle?

Reading through a review copy right now.

At half way my opinion is "one of the best games out there."  In particular, some incredibly good player and GM advice.

Only for those that like crunchy games :)

I think it was one of the best games to come out last year.

I really like the world burner, Alien & tech burners and the setting.

The base mechanics are ok.

Beautiful book.  It was sort of hard to wrap my head around at first until I read the graphic novels.  I think having your players read the graphic novels is a great way to prime them for world building.

I've played a short campaign (one infection phase) in it.  I love the world, and I certainly adore the intent of the system.  My group had a blast.  We ran some hard, nasty, vicious, terrible family dynamics around a Norse-esque feudal house being threatened by (a) the Vaylen, (b) planetary political rivals and (c) their own fucked up and divisive family relationships, and it rocked.

I did have a hard time really feeling the Disposition mechanic (which tracks roughly what each session's personal-level decisions mean to the global-level conflict) ... but I think that's largely because my group was interested in driving things home fairly quickly (we were originally looking at doing all three phases of Infection, and that made us think we'd better hurry with phase 1!)  The Disposition system seems geared more toward an indefinite campaign, where nobody gets upset if three or four sessions go by without any substantial change in the global situation, because that has nothing to do with the kind of journey they're paying attention to.  I had a hard time getting into that mindset, and so I felt like the disposition mechanic often wasn't paying off for the time and energy we'd invested in a session.

So, executive summary:  The games playstyle looks solid, fun and well-supported by the rules ... there are just some bits I don't have an easy time with personally :deflated:

How similar is it to Burning Wheel?  I had some fairly severe issues with BW...specifically their implementation of lifepaths and scripted combat.

I've read it, never played it.

I like the idea of communal world building and player buy in, scene economy, lifepath chargen, and many other aspects of the system.

After sitting on the fence on the issue for a while (and yes, this has already been debated here ad naseum), I think I've come down on the side that "let it ride" rule is a bust. Even assuming the more adversarial role the norm for GMs assumed in this book, it still doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to me in a lot of situations; more concrete timelines on just how long the roll is good for seems like it would be more sensible.

Quote from: Tom BHow similar is it to Burning Wheel?  I had some fairly severe issues with BW...specifically their implementation of lifepaths and scripted combat.

Well, those are some of the areas where they've kept pretty close to BW.

There are some under-the-hood differences from BW which I (for one) appreciated.  For instance, the removal of dice-shades was welcome.  Not that black, grey and white dice weren't a cool and evocative idea, but simplifying is nice.

I also bought my copy from the Hairy T, about 6 months ago.  It should have been a no-brainer for me, because I'm an absolute goober for Chris Moeller's work in general and Iron Empires in particular, but I hadn't been interested in what I'd heard about BW.  I've read it (but not played it yet), loved it, and on the strength of what I found in BE I went and bought all 3 books for BW.

I adore chargen and the character scale stuff but that said, I'm still somewhat iffy on the Infection mechanics.  Maybe that'll change with AP, maybe not...

KoOS

I've only played a demo game and saw just a few of the mechanics.  There was no lifepath/character generation at all.  But I did like what I saw enough to buy my own copy.  The world building is fantastic though, I can probably have fun just doing that every session.  I have some concerns about Let It Slide as well, nothing I can put into words but there's something nagging at me about it.

I can't help but feel that it is going to require unrealistic levels of player buy in - everyone at the table is going to have to broadly grok 300 pages of rules, which I don't see happening very often.

600+ pages of rules, actually. Player buy-in is a concern I've been thinking about since I own the only copy of it amongst my friends and am the only person who's even heard of it.

I'm starting a PbP over in the PbP forum. Anyone interested in BE but unable to put together a group IRL, head on over there and let's see if we can get something going to scratch the itch.

Not having read the book, could somebody alleviate my uninformed hunch that the setting is those parts of Dune I dislike (family rivalries, religion) plus Starship Troopers plus mindworms?

Oh, and please don't pull an Exalted on me and say: Well yes Pierce, but it can be ANYTHING YOU WANT.

I said over on my PbP posting that it seems more like WH40K run with the Traveler mechanics for character creation and Nobilis-like world creation.

Quote from: Pierce InverarityOh, and please don't pull an Exalted on me and say: Well yes Pierce, but it can be ANYTHING YOU WANT.

Burning Empires is the opposite of Exalted; that is, Burning Empires is designed to be played in a concrete way.

Basicly, the players and the GM create a world, the world the campaign will be about. The players play important characters in that world. The Vaylen try to infiltrate and invade the world. Eventually the campaign will have one of these two ends: or the invasion is thwarted, or the Vaylen succeed and invade that world. And that's it.

Could you use Burning Empires to do ANYTHING YOU WANT? Well, maybe, if you try, but it wasn't designed with that objective. You could use D&D to run a sci-fi game if you try hard enough, but D&D is not designed to do so. I hope I made myself clear.

Huh.  I need to go look for some more detailed reviews, because that doesn't sound very appealing at all...:(

Quote from: Tom BHow similar is it to Burning Wheel?  I had some fairly severe issues with BW...specifically their implementation of lifepaths and scripted combat.

I understand the problem with scripted combat (I was a ruffian in my youth), but the lifepaths? Can you possibly explain that?

Quote from: TonyLBThere are some under-the-hood differences from BW which I (for one) appreciated.  For instance, the removal of dice-shades was welcome.  Not that black, grey and white dice weren't a cool and evocative idea, but simplifying is nice.

I removed shades from my BW game while I was running it. I didn't need more stuff to look out for.

Quote from: ClaudiusBurning Empires is the opposite of Exalted; that is, Burning Empires is designed to be played in a concrete way.

Basicly, the players and the GM create a world, the world the campaign will be about. The players play important characters in that world. The Vaylen try to infiltrate and invade the world. Eventually the campaign will have one of these two ends: or the invasion is thwarted, or the Vaylen succeed and invade that world. And that's it.

So, in other words, the setting, worms and all, is totally integral to the rules, and only a major rewrite could change that? Sigh.

It's not integral to the rules, but every instantiation of the rule is designed with that basic idea in mind. So, many of the lifepaths are setting specific frex. You could take the basic Infection mechanics and use them to deal with any conflict between two sides, though you'd have to change some parts of the world burner I think.

Quote from: Tom BHuh.  I need to go look for some more detailed reviews, because that doesn't sound very appealing at all...:(

Spike put up one in the reviews section here:
http://www.therpgsite.com/node/531?PHPSESSID=165906b24c3583557a18a9c8d5eae9f0

I considered writing one myself, but felt I had been beaten to the punch and had other things to do.

I still have other things to do, but I still might be able put one up if people are interested in seeing a different angle.

I think, despite the points I am skeptical about, there is a lot good to be said about the game, and aspects I intend to scavenge for other games (some of which you might already be familiar with if you are a BW fan.) For instance, I am a big fan of defining character aspects in a concrete manner that matters to the play of the game, and instincts are an excellent take on this.

Quote from: Tom BHow similar is it to Burning Wheel?  I had some fairly severe issues with BW...specifically their implementation of lifepaths and scripted combat.

Yeah, I hate scripted combat and it is in BE.

I have found that the book has some really great ideas, like a the world burner and such, but the overly complicated rules and focused play style really ended up sinking it for me. Not to mention that in order to get a proper feel for the setting (if you haven't read the Graphic Novels) you have to read 600 pages of mostly rules to pick little pieces of it.

Quote from: Jason CoplenI understand the problem with scripted combat (I was a ruffian in my youth), but the lifepaths? Can you possibly explain that?

I sat down with BW and tried to design several PCs from other systems that I had run in the past and really enjoyed.  Nothing outrageous.  I couldn't come close to the concepts in BW.  The terminology is escaping me...it's been a year or so...  But I had real problems with which Lifepaths you were allowed to change to.  Certain LP changes made perfect sense but were not allowed.

It's easy enough to modify, but it made a bad impression.  Personally, as GM, I would allow a change to any Lifepath if the player provided a good, in-game reason for the switch.  I was trying to see what I could accomplish strictly by the rules, though.

Maybe they've made it easier in Revised BW, I don't know.  I wasn't willing to shell out the bucks again just to see.  Especially since I knew the scripted combat was still there.  Finally, it was just a crunchier system than I was interested in.

I believe in Revised BW you can change to any other lifepath so long as you take a "year out". I could be imagining that, though.

Quote from: WarthurI believe in Revised BW you can change to any other lifepath so long as you take a "year out". I could be imagining that, though.

Still not a solution I'd be happy with, but as before, easy enough to ignore.

Quote from: Pierce InveraritySo, in other words, the setting, worms and all, is totally integral to the rules, and only a major rewrite could change that? Sigh.

Yes.

BE is more of a campaign game than a vanilla system you can cut and paste from.

Kinda like cutting elements from InSpecters to use in your Dnd game...just isn't going to be anything anyone recognizes.

Quote from: Erik BoielleI can't help but feel that it is going to require unrealistic levels of player buy in - everyone at the table is going to have to broadly grok 300 pages of rules, which I don't see happening very often.

The player buy-in is substantial. Having more than one copy of the book is essential, in my opinion. The .pdf is great for searching, but I needed a copy in my hand to really grok stuff. Being familiar w/ Chris M.'s work is nice, but not essential. And as someone said above, it's actually 600 pages of stuff.

Buy-in is one thing, commitment to the campaign is muy importante. It's really hard, when the entire campaign focuses on the six Figures of Note (3 PC, 3 NPCs) to have people drop in and out of the game. Not game-breaking...but it's pretty tough to have someone "fill in" (our entire group spend 30 minutes filling in a new guy on our backstory / previous events).

Kinda like coming into the middle of the 1st season of Battlestar....the premise is easy to get, but who what when where why how by that time in the game is a lot to learn.

Quote from: Z-DogBuy-in is one thing, commitment to the campaign is muy importante. It's really hard, when the entire campaign focuses on the six Figures of Note (3 PC, 3 NPCs) to have people drop in and out of the game.

Actually I think the playtest example given in the rule book makes it clear that not all of the figures of note need by PCs, or indeed any of them. I think you could easily do a game where the PC's are one very small part of the wider battle and are controlling the infection mechanics as players but not as characters. It would be a different game to one where all the FoN's were PC's but still fall well within the rules without any adjustment (other than 3 more NPCs)

I would agree it does seem to have a high commitment in terms of player effort but even then the set up around building vs conflict scenes means its handalable as the characters aren't necessarily meant to be hanging out together, so if you have an infrequent player they should make their character someone who is often out of touch, and just get them to roll as catch for building scenes as needed.

The game we came up with took the idea that our characters and their conflicts were the most important issues in the game. Stopping the infection was the big background picture. I suppose you could do non-FON features (kind of like one off shows in a TV series).

What I'm saying is our PCs and their issues were the focus of the action. Switching out players / having people do pick up characters kinda killed the action.

Not sayin' it's a game ending issue, just commenting that its a game that demands lots of player buy-in and commitment (not that ANY game isn't better w/ that!).

I finished a short campaign (1 phase, usurpation).  It was fun.

I think player buy-in is nicely established by the worldbuilding session.

Quote from: Tom BI sat down with BW and tried to design several PCs from other systems that I had run in the past and really enjoyed.  Nothing outrageous.  I couldn't come close to the concepts in BW.  The terminology is escaping me...it's been a year or so...  But I had real problems with which Lifepaths you were allowed to change to.  Certain LP changes made perfect sense but were not allowed.

Ok. Gotcha. I haven't tried that, and I'd rather not. I can see where you're coming from though.

Quote from: Z-DogThe player buy-in is substantial. Having more than one copy of the book is essential, in my opinion. The .pdf is great for searching, but I needed a copy in my hand to really grok stuff. Being familiar w/ Chris M.'s work is nice, but not essential. And as someone said above, it's actually 600 pages of stuff.

Which is a stunning piece of marketing when you think about it! Two, or three games texts for each group playing. Genius. In leiu of a heap of supplements, that's potentially a corking bit of marketing.