Burning Wheel Revised RPG
From: Luke Crane
Reviewed by: Ron McClung
The Burning Wheel Revised RPG is a new set of Role Playing Game Core Rulebooks from Luke Crane. It is a very economical and compact format of two core books 5 1/2″ X 8″ that presents a new and interesting mechanic for fantasy players tired of the d20 dominated realm of fantasy role playing. The two books are subtitled “Book 1: Fantasy Roleplaying System” and “Book 2: The Character Burner.” There is not a particular fantasy setting associated to The Burning Wheel, but it is inspired by years of experiences in other systems and the works of some great authors like J.R.R Tolkien and Stephen R. Donaldson (two of my favorite fantasy authors).
Over that past several years while I worked at MACE in High Point, NC (www.justusproductions.com), I have had the pleasure to meet and talk with Luke Crane, the author of The Burning Wheel RPG (BW). He has run his game multiple times at MACE and almost every time it has been full. This past year (2006) his games filled online prior to the con. The man runs games all day on Sat at our con and I know he is worn out by the end of the day. It is a phenomenon that I simply felt left out of. So I asked to review his game to see what all the craze is about. He was gracious enough to send me a copy of his core books.
From the back cover Book 1:“The Burning Wheel is an award-winning fantasy roleplaying game in which players take on the roles of vibrant, dynamic characters whose very beliefs propel the story forward.”
Contents: As I said, the books do not contain a setting of any kind but primarily focus on the system and character generation. Book 1 is primarily the system, and Book 2 is about character generation.
Book 1 Contents: The book takes you right into the meat of things, explaining the core mechanic and central concepts. The focus of The Burning Wheel is the character, so most of the mechanics revolve around a character and the character as well as player interactions. Of course it has combat and magic, but many of the core mechanics explained up front are character oriented. The book is divided into sections – The Hub, the Spokes and the Rim. At the Hub is the core mechanic (see below) and central concepts of the characters. The Spokes represent all the gaming concepts that bring the game to life – the task resolution system, character advancement, and other core concepts like Beliefs, Instincts, and Traits. The final chapters within the Spokes section deal with two primary areas of interest – BITs and Artha. These are two key areas among others that differentiate The Burning Wheel from other games (see below in system).
However, the majority of the book is taken up by the Rim section – where the “Wheel meets the Road.” This sections defines more focused and narrow areas of the game mechanics of The Burning Wheel (BW). This includes the abstract monetary system called resources, social conflicts, Relationships and Circles (key aspects of BW that allow players to interact with NPCs in-depth), rules on Steel (BW‘s fear or shock check), a detailed rundown of the facets of BW combat and injury, an equally detailed explanation of magic in BW, and ends with a few miscellaneous subjects like Movement, Materials (a section on objects and how to break them) and a chapter called Heroic and Supernatural (getting into what Shade really means).
Aside from the overview of the core mechanics, however, the author does take you through some basics in gaming theory, presenting ideas and concepts that really can be applied to any game, for example his discussion on failure of a task. He states what most people would think is obvious but do not always think about in-game, at the heat of the moment. Failure is not something that should halt the progress of the characters, it should be something that complicates things. Everything is approached from a point of view of moving the story along.
Book 2 Contents: This book details character generation for the generic fantasy setting. It provides material for dwarves, humans, elves and orcs. These are the class Tolkien-style examples of these races. Contained within each Character Stock (race) section are details on Lifepaths for each race, specialized skills, emotional attributes (each race has their own emotional attribute), and special magic. There is also a list of general skills and and traits at the end.
From the back page of Book 1: “In Every Heart, There is a Fire”
System: The BW system is primarily a dice pool system. Similar to games like West End Games’ d6 or Fanpro/FASA’s Shadowrun, the character’s score represents a total dice to be rolled and the number of successes are counted. The base mechanic allows for a variety of flexible options to determine success or failure like linked tests and methods of approaching a task (carefully, quickly, etc.). The author spends a lot of time detailing the test resolution system, explaining success and failure, determining how long a task would take, and defining ways to help in a task.
In any classless system, it is always hard to differentiate between characters after a long period of gaming. In many systems without some kind of class system, after a long period of campaigning, the characters tend to look the same from a skill perspective. Sure, they may have some advantages and disadvantages that make them different or some difference in powers but not in skills. In BW, this is handled in many different ways – advancement, Arthra system, Lifepaths and BITs.
The BW character generation system reminds me of the classic Games Design Workshop (GDW) house system used in Traveller, Twilight:2000 and Dark Conspiracy. Instead of classes, the character is built along Lifepaths (LPs). (GDW used career paths.) Lifepath options are defined by the character’s stock or race and the “setting” the character is on within that culture. The game provides Lifepaths for dwarves, humans, elves and orcs. Half-elves are possible also through a special rule. This is the closest the game comes to providing a game setting, through each race and their culture. As said before, all races have a definite Tolkien feel to them. The Lifepath provides many things: skill points, traits, resource points, additional stat points, and leads (career exits).
This is the area I think I would struggle with this game. Tying the Lifepaths to race and culture makes it hard to introduce customized races into your game. It will require considerable work to add a halfling or other fey races. But as I read through, there are rules provided for customizing Lifepaths in another books – Monster Burner.
Advancement is handled in a very unique way. One way BW attempts to solve the differentiation problem I mention above is allowing the character only to advance the skills he uses and the advancement occurs immediately. I see just one problem with this approach, but it is a matter of how well the gaming group can adapt. In a world where in most games, character advancement occurs between sessions, BW simply adds on something else the character and GM have to keep up with. Adding more stuff to do is not always welcomed in some gaming circles. The character sheet does attempt to help with this, however. There are other ways for advancement as well as buying new skills, but all keep the focus of the character and make it costly to branch out too far from the central concept of the character. I like that.
A set of key aspects of a character is called BITs – Beliefs, Instincts and Traits. They are really hard to explain. They are key areas of a character that shape and mold the character. They are not static, however. They evolve within game with mechanics like the trait vote, where the group votes on additional traits for all characters and/or the removal of certain traits on a character. This is a very interactive aspect of the game, where it involves not only one player and his character but the other players in the party.
The Artha system is a reward system but not your normal experience system. It rewards in fixed and defined areas and not like a general experience pool. Much of the awards are handled in game, as they happen. Much of it is handled as a group nomination and vote. There are also end-of-the-session awards given out based on the “Workhorse” of the session and the MVP.
There are several other aspects to a character that I could get into, but it would make this review entirely too long. It is safe to say that the character is detailed on levels I have not seen in any other game. I made a character – an elven swordsman – based on a D&D character I played recently. With 3 LPs I was able to move an elf from the wild to the elven nobility as a Sword Singer in just 65+ years. The Character Burner walks you through each step in detail and makes character generation very easy as well as fun.
One area that was fairly scary going in was the Injury system. It involves a “wheel” diagram that is called the Physical Tolerances Grayscale (PTGS). Where your character’s values land on the PTGS depends on your Forte and calculated Mortal Wounds. This may be the one area that may intimidate people a little. Damage is measured like attributes with Shade and Exponent and match up to values on the PTGS wheel. Effects of damage are measured in penalty dice and apply to any check. There are three levels of possible hits and six possible levels of wounds. It gets fairly confusing on paper, but in game it is fairly easy to figure out quickly. It is suffice to say that BW combat is realistic and deadly.
The combat system, or more appropriately the interaction system, is one of the more confusing aspects on paper. Three primary areas are handled in this – Duels of Wits (social combat), Ranged, and Martial combat. Many of the standard aspects of combat that most RPGs are precise about are fairly abstract in BW – like range, positioning of the attacker with the target in ranged combat (positioning dice), turns, and actions taken in a round. When interacting either socially or physically, there is some pre-interaction tests to make (for body of argument for Duel of Wits or for positioning for Ranged combat) and then each involved in the interaction must make a script for the next three actions. There are specific sets of actions or maneuvers for each way to interact. This style of combat and interaction is like playing a card game and in fact it would probably be good if the GM customized up a set of cards with each action/maneuver.
Magic is handled a little different than the veteran D&D player is used to. Every school of magic (Sorcery, Natural, Emotional and more) is handled differently. There are additional magic styles in the Magic Burner sourcebook. Magic also comes in the form of racial abilities – such as the Elven Spell Songs or the Orc Rituals of Night and Blood. Man has access to Sorcery. Each are gained differently based on race. Elves are naturally magical. Humans gain magic if they pick the right LP and gain the Gifted trait. Orcs gain their own dark magic if they pick a certain setting and it uses their emotional trait – Hate.
Just looking at Sorcery, spells are hard. Some take a long time. Spells’ casting times are measured in terms of actions points. Your character’s Reflex defines how many points of action he can spend a round and many spells take at least two rounds to cast. Spells are not plentiful but the book promises more in the Magic Burner book. There are enough to start with. There are some spells that are straight effects and others that increase in effect with more successes. There are no “levels” for spells or anything like that. Gaining spells is a long and arduous process (in game) and not easy to come by.
The one thing I like about this system and Luke’s approach is that it is elegantly uncompromising. This is to say that there are certain aspects that Luke could have taken the easy way out on they way he does thing, but instead he found a way to elegantly make it work and actually have it make more sense and be more realistic. The elegance really comes in where he avoids many of the complexities of realistic gaming while keeping it easy to remember and intuitive.
From the back cover Book 2:
“There are consequences to every decision, ramifications to every action.”
Layout: It’s important to note Luke’s writing style. He is funny and personable, but some may not like it. It does not read like a text book. In my opinion, he keeps you entertained while you read, with quips and little jokes along the way. It is well written and edited. The book’s layout kind of reminds me of a ..for Dummies book, with a lot of side notes, examples, and explanations throughout. It is not to say that it is condescending in anyway. No, it is not at all. It reads like one gamer to another, explaining an elegant and easy to play system, step by step.
It is also important to note that there is very little art throughout the books, so there is a lot of information contained in each of the 300+ page books. A very nice touch is the chapter briefs at the end, covering all the main concepts detailed in the previous chapter.
Another good aspect of the layout is the summary at the end of each chapter. You could take each summary and make a GM screen out of it. This is very handy.
In conclusion, overall I liked this game system. It is meaty and full of good interactive mechanics that encourage a unique gaming experience. I feel that if you play this game, no game after it will be played the same (assuming you go back to playing something else). You will learn a lot of interesting techniques that can easily influence how you play games from that point on. I can not help but think that it was part of Luke’s plan to really show the world not only his rules system and game mechanics, but his gaming philosophy. This way, if they do not play his game on a regular basis, his game may at least influence the way they play their regular games.
One moderate concern I have, however, is the number of different subtle mechanics and nuances in the BW. This is not a game for the light casual gamer. It is an in-depth system for a gamer who is serious about role playing games. Many of the mechanics make sense. There are a number of them to keep up with. The nice thing is that many can be handled at the end of a session. There are, however, other concepts that are not traditionally handled in game but are in BW, which would take some adapting too. The mechanics are not hard or complicated at all, which goes back to that elegantly uncompromising thing. They are just subtle and different from your regular old d20 fantasy game.
The reason the above concerns me is that I only covered a few aspects of BW in the above review. There are several subtle mechanics that surround everything mentioned. I could only really scratch the surface in this review. There are some very innovative and imaginative ideas in this game. There are also several ( … what-I-call …) “hippie” ideas as well. The game all-but-forces the GM and the players to truly interact with each other, which is an absolute refreshing idea. I try to incorporate those ideas into my game and I can tell my players are not comfortable with it.
BW is a system that is not only a ROLE playing game but a role playing GAME. It includes the best parts of the role playing as well as playing a game at the same time. I am a big fan of a game like that. Many games tend to focus on one or the other, but this focuses on both.
For more details on Luke Crane and their new Role Playing Game Core Rulebooks “The Burning Wheel Revised RPG” check them out at their website http://www.burningwheel.org, and at all of your local game stores.
Burning Wheel Revised RPG
From: Luke Crane
Type of Game: Role Playing Game Core Rulebooks
Written by: Luke Crane
Game Design by: Luke Crane, Dan Abram
Developed by: Luke Crane, Chris Allingham, Don Cocoran, Radek Drozdalski, Ian Marchall, Thor Olavsrud, Rich Soto, Peter Tierny.
Cover Art by: Ken Sather
Additional Art by: Jim Kwan, Eric henderson, Dan Schenstrom, Dan Licht
Number of Pages: Book 1: 303; Book 2: 303
Game Components Included: Two core books
Retail Price: $ 25.00 (US)
b>Email: abzu@burningwheel.org
Website: www.burningwheel.org