2012-08-16 Simple Burning Wheel

Burning Wheel Dice

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I wrote this a while ago in a comment to a Google+ post by Harald.

I think Burning Wheel character creation takes way too long. The fiddly bits it generates are not important enough, I feel. You will get some skills you don’t want and you will miss some skills you do want. Cool, it adds in-game goals and role-play opportunities. I’m not convinced that the Mental and Physical pool points, the questions to arrive at the Steel points and all that are really necessary. Especially since the time spent has to compete against a simple alternative like this one:

Burning Wheel

allow players to pick four skills from a list and roll for four extra random skills
assign 5, 4, 3, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2 to those eight skills
if your top skill is a combat skill *Steel* is 5
if it is a knowledge skill, *Steel* is 3
otherwise *Steel* is 4
pick four appropriate traits: two character traits, one die trait and one call-on trait
write beliefs and instincts
get starting artha as always

There might be some additional steps you might have to add. I have never tested this procedure. Let me know if you use it.

Given all that you could create characters *in five minutes or less*. How much less interesting would these characters be compared to ordinary Burning Wheel character creation?

#RPG #Burning Wheel

Comments

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Using this right now and making it 2 Character Traits, one Die Trait and one Call-On Trait seems to be a reasonable split.

– Harald 2012-08-23 20:00 UTC

Harald

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Excellent!

– Alex Schroeder 2012-08-23 23:48 UTC

Alex Schroeder

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And incorporated into the list above.

– Alex Schroeder 2016-09-25 19:40 UTC