I got my Burning Wheel books: *Fantasy Roleplaying System* (the revised rules), *Character Burner* (the revised details on how to create character background), and *The Blossoms Are Falling* (the new Heian era Japan setting book) in the mail today. I was pleasantly surprised to see that each book is a small A5 book with close to 300 pages. That seems manageable enough! Unfortunately I discovered that I will probably need the *Monster Burner* for monsters if I want to run a campaign involving lots of standard fantasy monsters.
I started to read the first few pages of the rules, and I read the extended example given at the end.
These rules are *crunchy*.
Yikes. I don’t like crunchy!
Well, in some ways it’s interesting: Luke Crane’s rules provide *combat full of tactical options without the use of miniatures and battlemaps*. This is done by *scripting your actions*: Write down what you’re going to do: Withdraw, Close, Maintain, Strike, Cast, Grapple, and so on. Each exchange is divided into three volleys. You distribute the number of actions you have per exchange. If you have four actions, one of the three volleys will have two of your actions, the other two volleys will have one action each.
In a way that reminds me of the combat sequence in AD&D 2nd ed. – 1. DM decides what NPCs and monsters do. 2. Players indicate what their characters will do. 3. Initiative is rolled. 4. Attacks are made in order of initiative. The result is a completely different set of tactical choices.
But back the Burning Wheel. Here’s an example exchange:
||*Volley 1*||*Volley 2*||*Volley 3*|| ||:--:||:--:||:--:|| ||Action 1: Strike||Action 1: Avoid||Action 1: Strike|| ||—||Action 2: Push||—||
The actions at your disposal are described in the book. The description will tell you which actions oppose each other and call for tests. The net effect seems to be that you get an advantage for outguessing your opponent. There are interesting choices to be made, but they don’t require a battlemap.
There are 12 pages on ranged combat, 31 pages on melee combat, 11 pages on weapons, 10 pages on armor and shields, and 15 pages on injury. That’s a lot of combat rules!
To be fair, there’s also the option of just doing opposed rolls. Most of my players would cry out for the detailed rules as soon as they’re on the loosing end, however. 😉
So, this is the game with the many awards and reviews. What should I make of it? I’m interested in reading up on Luke’s magic system, and on his *cooperative campaign design*. The *Character Burner* is also interesting: You characters begin the game with lots of past experience. I guess it’s similar to the Traveller RPG. Check out Traveller for the confusion that is called Traveller. Anyway. I heard it was one of the games where you character could die or be mutilated during character generation. It seems as if the players and the game master get together, decide upon a campaign, create interesting and complex characters, and spend quite some time setting the stage for the game itself. This is what I liked, this is why I ordered the books.
the game with the many awards and reviews
#RPG #thoughts #Burning Wheel