Quote from: SpikeIf I ever head to gaming cons again, I might keep my eye open for this, but as I pointed out in my review: My problems with the games conceits are deeper than this one thing, and possibly a matter of 'how I play' than anything else.

I bet that it's not so different as it appears in the text. I bet we'd have a good time.

Quote from: lukeI bet that it's not so different as it appears in the text. I bet we'd have a good time.

Well, Luke, if you ever make it out to the pacific northwest, let me know.  I'm game if you are.

Quote from: SpikeWell, Luke, if you ever make it out to the pacific northwest, let me know.  I'm game if you are.

He's game? I shoot the little electric varmint! :O

-clash

Quote from: flyingmiceHe's game? I shoot the little electric varmint! :O

-clash

Like living dangerously, do ya?

Quote from: Spike2: Dune was limited to one world, sure enough.

Not.  The action moved around quite a bit, the characters slightly less so. If you get into the actual series, the action was very mobile.  Nothing is wrong with hanging out on one single world, but BE all but removes the option to leave all together.

4: Not everyone wants to spend every session at a breakneck 'squeeze out the non-conflict scenes' sort of pace. I wouldn't have much trouble with it, but plenty of gamers I know enjoy the 'Color' and 'interstistal' scenes as much, if not more than the conflict scenes. Thus, the cheerleading drive to GOGOGOGO can mess up the groove of more laid back players.

2. I think "Sci-Fi" and starships/traveling the stars are so closely tide together in most people's minds that it's worth mentioning to someone thinking about laying down 45 bucks that this game takes place primarily on one world, like you mentioned. I know when I picked it up I was like, "WTF?! But there's a spaceship on the cover!"

I guess the point I was trying to make w/ Dune was that big, dramatic, interesting, fun sci-fi doesn't have to involve planet hopping.

Digging into the game I realized why it's probably limited to one planet:
1. Since everyone creates the planet together, everyone gets a chance to get their favorite ideas in.
2. The action involves someone taking over your home...there's lots of incentives to get out and freakin' DO something about it.

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Btw: Was your dislike of the Planet Burner based on the game being limited to one planet? Or was there something in the whole collaborative creation process of putting the world together that you objected to?

IMHO, getting everyone together to come up with a setting is a great idea, one I'd never see presented before (the people I play with (traditional gamers) think it would steal thunder from the DM (and a lot of DMs I know love world building so much they'd go crazy if they're not allowed to write 10 pages of backstory/history that everyone at the table thinks is crap anyway).

What I like about it is it gets everyone involved...everyone has a stake in the story/world and their characters get created with this in mind. No more, "I'm a loner off the last starship and why the hell should I care about these nimwits who so obviously need a hero to save them 'cause they don't have half a brain to carry water anyway..."  stuff that always makes me feel like getting involved in the game is a little conceited.


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#4. OK, I part of me wants to say, "But don't you get as many color and intersitial scenes as you need?" and I suppose a group that's happy with the flow of play is going to take as much time as they need...

...but....

...having heard Luke on a few podcasts, I know he's the kind of GM who hopping up and down, yelling for people to get off their duffs and DO SOMETHING, NOW....a lot of the mechanics of the game really encourage this...and a lot of gameplay posts relate how intense and draining each session was.

Nice comment about the silver inlaid saddle...it reminded me of sooo many long winded players who abused everyone's time at the table by hogging the gms attention, "OK, now I want to find a blacksmith...not just any, mind you, but an elven blacksmith..." and everyone's sitting around yelling, "WTF are you doing, smacktard!"

Also, I liked your comment about BE being more of a campaign than a game. I understand some people are looking for open ended systems that they could use for a variety of types of play. I certainly think BE has plenty of options in it to make it very, very interesting for a long time. It ain't no GURPS.

Hey Spike,
Cool review. I liked that even though Burning Empires isn't exactly your cup of tea, you were able to discuss it quite objectively and still recognize and give praise to the things you liked about it.

Regarding the World Burner, I too was at first a little sad that you couldn't include a lot of space travel and multiple worlds in the game. But I do think you could easily modify the 'world' concept to represent a planetary system as long as the distances & travel times aren't too large. (Especially if one planet is considered the main one that the campaign is about.) And there are some rules about undertaking space voyages during downtime.
One thing you didn't really mention is the major benefit of World-Burning: in a game where players are supposed to have authority to introduce new aspects of the setting, new tech etc., the collaborative World-Burning really gets all the players in the right mindset for this. A sense of ownership of the world, and a lot of buy-in to the situation and desire to save that world from the Vaylen.

As for the deal about micro-scale affecting macro-scale, you and Luke have already hashed it out a lot, so I'll try to keep it short...  Personally, I think this is the most subtle and brilliant aspect of the game. The main ways the scene-level action affects the maneuver roll are: the presence of teamwork (to allow Help dice), the focus of the action (to decide who makes the maneuver roll, and what skill), advancing in Infection-applicable skills, and the gaining of Artha which can be spent on the maneuver roll. This means, if you play to your Beliefs and Instincts, and generally do an awesome job of role-playing your character, you can have terrible, awful, wickedly-cool things happen to your character and have it help - via Artha - the maneuver roll.

This focuses the game on what was mentioned in The Face of Collapse introduction. It means that the choices & sacrifices you make to fight the enemy are real because a maneuver-roll advantage isn't influencing the player's choice between say, saving his sister or stopping the Vaylen from getting a foothold in the government. (Or trying to do both, knowing that he might fail completely.)

Quote from: The Face of Collapse, Burning EmpiresIs there hope left? It is up to you. What will you choose? Will you sacrifice your duty, your obligations, your loves, your entanglements, your concerns, your children, your very life to fight this shadow war? Or will you fail to recognize that the end times have come, and succumb to the worm—tragically remaining true to what you believe, what you think is important, until it is too late.

Cheers,
Mike

Z-Dog:

The planet burner is actually not that bad. I'd almost go so far as to say it rocks on toast but for two things: One, it's incredibly tied to the campaign structure as written, which limits its utility for game masters looking to get out of the 'infection' campaign rut, or to 'explore' as it is slower.

Two, it's utilized to penalize players options in character building in unclear ways, also linked to that 'single planet per campaign' mentality. It's not all that useful as outside these things.  I CAN be used without either, but it's not designed for it so it's cumbersome... notice that the first game session consists of burning your planet for the campaign.

The purpose of the game design isn't, or rather shouldn't be focused on preventing fuckwits from gaming with you.  I don't think any rules can prevent fuckwittery anyway.


I could guess that Luke is very much a 'Gogogogogogo' sort of GM. Guess what though?

He's not playing at my table.  So why the fuck should I care what his gaming tempo is? Unless he is designing games for just his little gaming circle, rather than for a commerical audience... he should leave his favorite speed out of the book.  I don't mind a fast paced game... now and then. But I do resent a BOOK telling me that is the only way to play.


Mike: Sorry to put you down here at the end, you posted while I was still typing. I try not to take sides, especially when reviewing.  The fact is, there is a lot of good stuff out there, not all of it will I like. I'll even admit my tastes are actually sort of 'out there' in that I hate D&Disms like classes and levels.  I didn't totally reject the world burner. I agree, it does make for good collaborative settings, which can be richer than the work of a single guy.  I just don't like how it affects the rest of game play.... as written.   Ideally, the GM and any interested parties (players, etc) should get together before the campaign starts to quickly hash out world ideas, which the GM could use where he felt appropriate in a campaign that isn't focused on the vaylen.

Spike, I'd like to see you do a playtest review. Any chance of that?

Quote from: droogSpike, I'd like to see you do a playtest review. Any chance of that?

Not much for the immedeate future.  Unlike most people I don't have a long standing pool of gamers to draw upon to play. Right now I game about once every three weeks, and will be GMing, hopefully, in January.  I'd love to do playtests, I just don't have the time.

Quote from: SpikeZ-Dog:

The planet burner is actually not that bad. I'd almost go so far as to say it rocks on toast but for two things: One, it's incredibly tied to the campaign structure as written, which limits its utility for game masters looking to get out of the 'infection' campaign rut, or to 'explore' as it is slower.

Two, it's utilized to penalize players options in character building in unclear ways, also linked to that 'single planet per campaign' mentality. It's not all that useful as outside these things.  I CAN be used without either, but it's not designed for it so it's cumbersome... notice that the first game session consists of burning your planet for the campaign.

The purpose of the game design isn't, or rather shouldn't be focused on preventing fuckwits from gaming with you.  I don't think any rules can prevent fuckwittery anyway.


I could guess that Luke is very much a 'Gogogogogogo' sort of GM. Guess what though?

He's not playing at my table.  So why the fuck should I care what his gaming tempo is? Unless he is designing games for just his little gaming circle, rather than for a commerical audience... he should leave his favorite speed out of the book.  I don't mind a fast paced game... now and then. But I do resent a BOOK telling me that is the only way to play.

1. I guess you've already got a clear idea about what a sci-fi game should offer its GM/players, and planetary exploration and a setting which is open ended (players can roll up just about anything) is high on that list. I don't think it's a failing of BE that it doesn't do either of these things. The game's got a definite scope/focus. You're very right in saying it's less than a game/setting than a sci-fi campaign with a def. begin/middle/end.

So, I guess I'm saying I, personally, don't think it's a BAD THING BE has that limited scope. It encompasses what the game's trying to create: desperate struggle, love one's on the line, deadline's, etc. I think it's a GOOD THING you pointed this out in your review, 'cause some people might go in expecting something else (and like I said, laying down 45 bucks for something you've probably never seen is asking a lot of people).

2. I wasn't trying to say that because Luke plays games a certain way, you should too. I do think he's built A LOT of what he thinks is wrong and right with games today into the mechanics of his game. Again, personally, I've got no problem w/ a developer offering advice/suggestions on gameplay...I find it interesting and I take it with a grain of salt.

Quote from: From the ReviewIt starts with an unusual proclamation: the GM is an adversarial player out to win, and goes downhill from there.

I'd like to know more about this.  The BE site and other reviews weren't helpful.

In most RPGs this wouldn't be possible.  If the DM wants to kill all the players -- it's not much challenge for them to do so...

How does BE allow the GM to play against the players, and play to *win*, while making it a fair competition?

Quote from: StuartI'd like to know more about this.  The BE site and other reviews weren't helpful.

In most RPGs this wouldn't be possible.  If the DM wants to kill all the players -- it's not much challenge for them to do so...

How does BE allow the GM to play against the players, and play to *win*, while making it a fair competition?

Burning Empires is structured vaguely like a board game, and it pits the players against the GM... then occasionally against eachother.  The rules are written to give collaborative control over the setting to the players, via the world builder, and the GM is supposed to have certain limits to his power.

For example, when scripting combat, the GM goes before the player, and the 'body' of his invasion is well established during the world builder phase, he can't just add to it.

Thanks!  I'm not sure about "collaborative control of the setting" but the rest sounds good.  I'm going to need to read some play reports and if they look good, I might just buy this game!

I think it's hard to wrap your head around Burning Empires until you've read the Iron Empires graphic novels.  Not that the graphic novels are required to play, it just helps you to understand what the rules are attempting to emulate.  Burning Empires is a game that explores Iron Empires specific stories.  Burning Empires actually provides more detail about the setting than the graphic novels but gives the players the ability to expand the setting.  So if you bought Burning Empires to play insert your SF game here it will require some work on your part to do that because the game is about the nature of the Iron Empires setting.  

So if you don't like your systems intimately linked with a theme, Burning Empires probably isn't the game for you.  Given the rigid system structure, there are still plenty of places for the players to explore within the system.

As an interesting side note, when I first picked this up, I had some vague notion that it was 'Burning Sands' the 'Dune rip off' rpg I'd read about. I didn't keep that notion long, but it was a factor in my mind when I was making the purchase.

Silly me, I have the Burning Sands PDF from somewhere, i just hadn't looked at it yet.

Obviously Burning Empires was built on the same pattern, burning sands has the 'three tier' campaign structure, the inbuilt conflict, and world building... only not nearly as well developed. Obviously, this was something the BW people were interested in doing in their game prior to BE... or perhaps Burning sands was a testbed for the ideas they were using in BE.

As for burning sands:

Gah.  Legally, I suppose, they couldn't call it dune, but a more direct rip off I could not imagine. Change the names and you erase some of the magic.

And I see a running theme in their game design: Names for lifepaths that get NO explanation.  I am reasonably certain that if I picked up BW and looked for elf setting lifepaths, I'd find options named in elvish with no elaboration of what the fuck it is...  BE does it, and so does burning sands...


C'mon guys is it that fucking hard to tell us what a Coeptir does?