Tag: Burning Wheel

We had to shift last week’s Burning Wheel session to yesterday evening because last week Thursday just didn’t really work for everybody’s schedule. For me, it’s important that every player can attend the session because we’re running such a tightly-focused campaign. This time, I was extremely pleased that everybody was in, as our session really tied everybody together in an interesting manner. Last time, we’d set up our new story arc of our troupe returning to the city of Sompteux and discovering that Gerard, the de facto leader of their former insurrectionist group had started regular executions in the public square. Our team just managed to save Bernard, Benoit’s cousin, from the chopping block and escaped towards Bertrand’s villa outside the city walls.

The Story

As our trio settles down in PC Bertrand’s villa, they call Bernard & Cousin Bertrand, twin cousins of Benoit (minor relationship, other family) into the parlor to try to make some sense of things and find out what they’ve missed this past half year.

“I need to keep my head attached to my body, so I need to find out why Bernard was executed.”

Benoit’s Belief

Bernard proceeds to tell the team all about what’s been happening: after they left, the people of the city took to repairs and for a while everything seemed fine. It didn’t take too long, however, for factions to divide everybody once more, as arguments started about who should be in charge: the Collectivists favoring democratic state control, the Loyalists seeking to instate a royal heir to the throne, the Moderates seeking to establish parliamentary elections or, as the Anarchists would have it, for there to be no state power at all? Bernard started working for coin for one of these groups. Later on, Gerard started rising to power and prominence, and what started slowly with a person disappearing here or there slowly devolved into regular public executions where Gerard argued they kept the peace and fought the rot within. Bernard believes that is why he was grabbed and sentenced to death.

Geoffrey suspects there is more to this story, and digs in. Bernard avoid the topic with B0 Falsehood (BL B4 Will) as Geoffrey presses him to tell the whole truth with B2 Persuasion +1 help but sadly deflects the conversation to his cousin Benoit (3s vs 1s +1s fate reroll). He admits to Benoit that the reason he didn’t tell everything is that he feels ashamed to be working as a common thug for a local magistrate, Michel. The name sparks some memories for our group, as Geoffrey remembers he has dirt on the man (minor relationship, hateful/rival): Michel got a venereal disease from poxy Polly—something that Michel didn’t want his spouse to know about. Michel went to Geoffrey for help, and Geoffrey wisely kept all the paperwork for the healing ointment that he got the man.

PC Bertrand dug through his brain for rumors he heard about the man via a B2 Family Secret-wise, +3 Persona, +2 Help to find out what the noble gossip is about his true motivations (Ob 4). With 5s, Bertrand remembers Michel as a petty manipulator, who once tried to get Bertrand’s family estate condemned as a fire hazard in a power play. Bertrand knows him to be a powermonger; with the new information added, pieces start to fall into place and Bertrand realizes Michel is playing kingmaker: he’s actually working for the Loyalists trying to get an heir back on the throne!

As this comes out, the discussion gets heated. Benoit realizes that Gerard was right: Bernard was being executed as a Loyalist sympathizer! Bernard explains that the surrounding countries won’t sit still, and they need a monarchist ruler if Occitania is to remain free—he intends to head back out on the streets and fight for that! Geoffrey sees this for the bad plan it is, and says he will keep them there by force if necessary.

My companions are a liability for me. I must act in their best interests, even if they disagree.

Geoffrey’s Belief

Cousin Bertrand is highly offended, gets up from the sofa, and loudly tells Geoffrey he has no right to do this. If they wish to walk out, they will. At this point, PC Bertrand also shoots up from the sofa and gets in Cousin Bertrand’s face about it.

Bertrand’s actions will result in chaos, strife, and discontent; he and his must be stopped

Bertrand’s Belief

Benoit, seeing this escalation, realizes something must be done. He doesn’t want to see his cousins come to harm but he also cannot stand for them to put themselves in harm’s way. He feels they should move up north to Avignon-sur-Chantre for a while and lay low.

I must keep my allies safe.

Benoit’s Belief

With the debate running on a knife’s edge, we turn towards a Duel of Wits. Stating Their Case, Geoffrey proclaims: “You will do as I say, or I will hurt you!” (in harsh, graphic detail); the cousins, equally filled with vitriol, rebuke him: “We will walk out of here and do what we please—you have no say over me!”. Both end with a Body of Argument of 5 as they square up for the first exchange.

Geoffrey, in no uncertain terms, accuses them of being fools, as going out now while they just publicly embarassed the person who tried to execute them is the same as putting your own head on the chopping block (Incite B2 Intimitation, +2 FoRKs Knives & Extortion), with PC Bertrand laying out the facts (+1 Help Ugly Truth) and Benoit pleading them to listen as they’ve done so in the past (+1 Help Trouble-wise). The argument doesn’t land (4s vs Ob 4 Will), as the cousins insist this time it’s different. In fact, they follow up by calling the group hypocrits, as they argue for freedom while tyranically restricting that of the cousins (Incite BL B4 Will, +1 Help) but their clumsy argument falls flat (1s vs Ob 8 from BL B4 Will).

While Bernard & Cousin Bertrand try to appeal to Benoit’s family ties, arguing that blood should stick with blood (Avoid B4 Will, +1 Help), Benoit calmly and rationally lays out the facts for them (Stoic Trait): getting yourself killed helps nobody, no matter what your views. Being a Loyalist is downright wrong and nullifies everything they’ve worked for. He will not see them hurt, so the only thing to do is to hide away for a while to cool down (Point, B3 Will, +7 Advantage from failed Incite, +2 Help). Here, we mess up the rules (more on that in the next section) and conclude that Benoit’s roll (4s +1s Fate reroll) wins against the Cousins’ roll (2s). As a result, the Cousins are furious but have to cede defeat: they may not agree with our group but they can’t say that they’re wrong either. They stomp off to the servant’s quarters of the estate where they’ve agreed they will lay low for a few days until arrangements can be made.

Based on this, some of our characters have some new Beliefs:

“Michel’s silly antrics have gotten out of control, I will attempt to sway him to the right path.”

“Bertrand has threatened my life, I will nip this in the bud.”

Bertrand’s new Beliefs

“I must determine in Bertrand is able to manage to stress of power”

Geoffrey’s new Belief.

The Session

Mechanically, this session was a little tougher than before. I’m still not too comfortable with the Duel of Wits system, so we bungled things at times there. I suspect that also made things a little less enjoyable for one of my players, who prefers rules-light systems in any case, as we didn’t consistently apply the right methods. Furthermore, me and one of my players (who also has a copy of the books and has some experience as well) needed to reference some rules to get things going. The session also started off with some bookkeeping, as we realized we’d forgotten to account for Practice in the time we skipped before the previous session.

One thing that we messed up rules-wise was the end of the Duel of Wits. We had to roll Point vs Avoid but we accidentally applied the rules for Obfuscate and Incite to the roll; normally, the outcome of Point vs Avoid should be deducting— (Point successes – Avoid successes) from the Body of Argument of the other. We misread the special exception for Obfuscate and Incite, where the full roll applies, as applying to everything. So, in effect, we reduced the Cousins’ Body of Argument to 0 where we should have reduced it to 2. Given that both parties had a Dismiss action scheduled for the next Volley, we would certainly have ended up with a compromise rather than an all-out win for one side. Live and learn for the next one, however! We’ll let this one stand, and move on from here.

Aside from those mechanical issues, however, I was really pleased with this session. It felt like we really went into what Burning Wheel attempts to highlight. Every single one of the characters was tied into the scene in various ways: a family relationship, a sense of self-preservation, a personal gripe against the character—so much came into play at once! Every character had a Belief at stake in the argument, and we roleplayed to where we got to an important conflict that would significantly affect future events. At the same time, we set up more context for the world in future settings as well. Moreover, Artha was absolutely flowing in that session: the players poured in Fate and Persona to ensure their important rolls worked out, and equally so many of their actions were based on Beliefs, Traits, or Instincts, so got them back Fate and Persona as well.

On the one hand, the session was intensely zoomed-in as we spent two hours working out that one scene with the Cousins, yet at the same time there was a lot of world building happening because of it. Despite the struggles with the mechanics of Duel of Wits, the roleplaying of the encounter worked out and made sense as well. All the arguments flowed naturally, and the dice helped to determine the actual impact for the characters.

Overall Impression

In general, I’m really happy with how this session went. It was quite intense, and afterwards I felt a weird mix of being both pumped as well as drained from the experience. I would like to see if I can get a firmer grip of the mechanics on-the-spot, so I can help facilitate the experience for my players a bit better. I’d like that to be as smooth as possible so my players don’t have to worry about the rules as much and can keep focusing on the fiction. Nevertheless, as I wrote above, the session itself was quite interesting and engaging.

An aspect I really enjoyed from the GM’s side is how much our collaborative fiction is starting to write itself at this point. I didn’t need too much prep to work out what was going to happen here. Based no our previous sessions and our last session, I’d worked out some rough ideas of who’s around in the world and what they want, and that’s about it. The rest of the fiction comes out of the players working along in the world and seeing how all these things would clash.

Next week Thursday we already have our next regular session, so I look forward to seeing what that will end up giving us!

Yesterday, we ran the fifth session of my “Burning France” Burning Wheel campaign. Last time, we ended the first story arc, and so this time we ended up doing a sort of re-Session 0 for the next arc, and a little bit of play in the new Situation. It was a little tricky for me this time, as I’d had a pretty draining week and, creatively speaking I was just empty. Fortunately, my players are a really good bunch and we brainstormed a bit before diving in.

The Setup

After finishing our last story arc set in the village of Avignon-sur-Chantre in the north of post-revolution Occitania, the players decided that they wanted to return to the Occitanian capital of Sompteux. We also decided to do handwave a bit of a timeskip to 6 months later; I skipped over doing a Resources cycle, because we’re not really using that system as it doesn’t really fit with the story we’re trying to tell. I realized afterwards that we also neglected to look at possiblities for Practice, but I let the players know afterwards to have a look as they can certainly advance a Social skill or two that they have at a low exponent.

We wanted to tweak or Setting a little bit as well. We’d started this campaign off really broadly: Occitania is a post worker’s revolution fantasy France-like country where the nobility has been deposed. Roughly speaking, the players wanted to be itinerant lawspeakers: people who would be sent out to troubleshoot after the new revolution. Now, having skipped forward 6 months, the players suggested we bring a little more faction discord into this. The revolution worked out but now there are about three or four main factions that disagree on exactly what the new political structure should be.

The Situation was the next thing to get some new life. We’d decided that a character from the start of the campaign, Girard, the de facto primus inter pares among their particular revolutionary group, had manoeuvred himself into a crucial leadership figure and, as such things tend to go, started being corrupted by the power. While he’s now executing enemies, imagined or real, he’s also the only one that’s keeping this tenuous relationship between factions working. Our trio didn’t work for a revolution only to replace one tyrant with another, so now they seek to solve this problem without destabilising everything.

As the characters return to Sompteux, they see crowds milling towards the central market square and, curiosity peaked, follow along to see what’s going on. In stark contrast to the start of the campaign, where a violent mob raucously cheered at the public execution of a noble, they are now faced with a crowd browbeaten into watching yet another person brought to the guillotine for vague reasons. Lo and behold, when the hood is removed from this doomed captive, it turns out that this is none other than Bernard, one of the twin cousins of Benoit! Meanwhile, the other twin, Bertrand, is seen at the edge of the stage, anxiously preparing for action.

Having primed the action, the players have decided on some new Beliefs:

“I need to keep my head attacked to my body, so I need to find out why Bernard was executed.”

“I must keep my allies safe”

Benoit’s Beliefs

“Girard’s silly antics have gotten out of control, so I will attempt to sway him to the right path”

“Bertrand’s actions will result in chaos, strife, and discontent; he and his must be stopped.”

Bertrand’s Beliefs

“Oppression wears many masks, and miserable people are bad for business. I must stop this, subtly.”

“If a maniac is in power, I’d rather have a merry maniac in power, like Bertrand.”

Geoffrey’s Beliefs

They’re getting pretty good at writing Beliefs, and there’s some nicely evocative stuff in there that I can use. Moreover, I enjoy that these are getting more and more tied in together, which will make them function so much better in play.

The story

At the reveal of Bernard, Benoit’s cousin, on the way to the guillotine, our trio tries to get set up for whatever may come next. Benoit spots a handful of people spread out through the crowd ready to spring into action, so he moves up to the stage to get ready to help intervene. Meanwhile, Bertrand, the PC, moves to the side of the crowd to where Bertrand, the cousin, is standing. During this, Geoffrey moves to stand to the side of the crowd, ready to create a distraction.

The action pops off between the two Bertrands, as a quick nod of the head is given as a go-signal, and people start rushing the stage. Bertrand the PC tries to lay an B0 Ugly Truth (Ob 1, doubled to Ob 2 because of Beginner’s Luck) on Bertrand the Cousin, reminding him that rushing up there ends up with two cousins dead rather than just the one. His words fall on deaf ears (o successes) and Bertrand the Cousin starts for the stage. Bertrand the PC, however, chooses to escalate by all-out blocking his path and taking him down to the ground if necessary. We choose for an opposed B4 Power test, since the two won’t actually be fighting, and Bertrand the PC manages to stop Bertrand the Cousin long enough for him to miss his opening (5s vs. 2s).

As a result, with one half of the action on stage now disappearing, the guards have ample space to focus purely on the other activitists who served purely as the distraction and quickly overwhelm them. On the side, Geoffrey sees his moment to add to the confusion and gets his husband to fake a medical emergency, as he loudly calls for a doctor. With a Beginner’s Luck B0 Conspicuous test with a base Ob4 for a large crowd, though, he has no chance of success (1s vs Ob8). The guards are not attracted to the medical emergency but rather by this suspicious character drawing attention at this exact moment. With nerves of steel, however, Geoffrey doesn’t run away but fully doubles down: a B3 Falsehood against Ob 4, putting in a Persona and forking in Guard-wise, sees him almost fail (2s), were it not for the fact that Geoffrey has an Aura of Innocence! His Call-On reroll nets him +3s, deftly meeting his Ob4. After a doctor in the crowd reprimands all there for wasting his time on a mere fainting, Geoffrey rides off in his cart while giving all there a nasty looks for disbelieving his pleas for help.

In the midst of all this bedlam, Benoit sees his opening to help his cousin Bernard. A quick whistle, a nod of the head, and an opposed B5 Speed test with +1 Advantage later (2s vs 1s), Benoit barrels through the crowd, opening up the path for Bernard to follow him as they easily lose the guard. They turn down alley after alley until they can no longer hear footsteps behind him, and a truly overjoyed Bernard embraces Benoit in thanks. Having done the impossible in saving his cousin (though condemning his three conspirators), Benoit heads towards Bertrand the PC’s villa in the city in order to reconnect with the others in the group.

The Session

As I said above, this one was a rough start for me. The previous session was a week before and I’m used to having some more time to prep ideas for the next session. I have had a rough week at work and felt creatively drained. I literally had no ideas laying around when starting the session. I’m happy that the players were willing to explore the options and throw the ball around a little to see where we wanted to take this. Fortunately, they had some ideas on where to go next, and we ended up with two or three options to choose from.

What I think really helped this time was that it prompted a very clear idea for a Situation for me. So far, I hadn’t brought in the players’ relationships into the game yet. Benoit had twin cousins lying around, Bernard and Bertrand, and what better way to immediately prime the action by putting one of them at risk? What was really good to see was that the players started intertwining their Beliefs around this as well. For Benoit, this is a family affair; for Bertrand, this is about stopping Girard; for Geoffrey, this is about self-protection.

With the help of the players, I now have a Situation, Beliefs, and characters that are all primed to go, and I can see a few avenues to go down. The one thing that I’ll need to work on is the Setting in the background: while the players are engaging in their own dramatic story, I’d like the backdrop to be alive and moving as well.

Overall Impression

Despite the rough start and the brief session, I’m really pleased with how this went. There was clarity, focus, and direction. I feel that, with the practice we’ve had so far, we’re getting a solid grip on the essence of the system and are making it work for us. Based on the happenings in each session, I’m going back to the books to either re-read rules, review the Codex commentary on it, or exploring some optional or currently unused rules for the same situations.

Meanwhile, the game has also sparked my creativity in Wonderdraft, as I make little maps for this or that to show in the game. The main map of Occitania has been getting incremental upgrades as well, as I learn more and more about using the software. I’m quite happy with the current look of the map, though I have no illusions that I won’t be changing more things as we go along.

Last night was the fourth session of my Burning Wheel campaign, “Burning France”, which was also the last session of the first story arc, which I have retroactively dubbed “The Cleansing of Avignon-sur-Chantre”. For a write-up of what led us here, you can refer to my post about Session 3. I ran into a slight snag writing the blog post this time, as my players had already deleted their finished Beliefs, so I couldn’t refer back to them! Time for me to keep better track of those in the future!

The Story

The group heads out into the forest north of Avignon-sur-Chantre to handle the nobles camped out there. The trio decide to approach the group openly and warmly, carrying a cart of food. Benoit takes the lead and suavely greets people, leading the group to the centre of the little encampment. Having arrived there,  Joseph, the son of the deposed Noble of Avignon, greets the group, and Geoffrey sits him down for a picnic to try and sway his opinion. In discussion, it becomes clear that Joseph has a strong disregard for those he deems as lesser, and he accuses the villagers of having stolen the house his family has held for generations. Meanwhile, Bertrand is fuming at having to deal with this vile noble, and we cut back to a week earlier to when Bertrand and Geoffrey were investigating Joseph. Bertrand uncovers the vile truth of his family: they made (and still make) their money by selling off villagers to slavers.

Back in the present, the trio execute the plan we didn’t even know they had: Benoit convinces the professional workers there to leave for Avignon by reminding them of their awful surroundings and that they can do much better than care for spoiled landowners. Meanwhile, Geoffrey distracts Joseph while Bertrand gets on a soapbox to address the crowd of bourgeouisie. The horrible truth of Joseph’s family tradition of slave trade is brought out into the open, and the gathered people leave in disgust. A heavy rain starts falling down as Joseph stands there shocked and stunned by his sudden and immense turn of fortune. Bertrand, seeing his opening, steps up without hesitation and plunges his dagger into the young boy’s heart, to demonstrate to Benoit how a true zealot deals with the nobility. As the pair walks off into the rain, leaving the crumpled body of the boy to bleed out into the mud, Geoffrey takes a moment to look down at it and, without speaking, tosses an apple on top of the corpse and walks away.

The Session

This session was quite an interesting one. I had read up on the rules for Duel of Wits and Fight! in expectation of the conflict with the nobles going somewhere in that direction. I made sure to read up on rules for sneaking in case my players wanted to make this some stealthy assassination attempt. I’d even briefly scouted through the Range and Cover rules to see if they would be relevant at some point. Given that one of the players has the Arson skill, I even read up on fires and burning materials.Now, I figured that the players would try to solve this diplomatically, so that went as expected, but what I wasn’t expecting was the players deciding to dig up the dirtiest, most horrible family secret they could to use as a weapon in a conflict.

What was quite interesting about this session is that when we had to reference the rules this time, it wasn’t particularly to find out how the rules worked but rather to find out what would be the most interesting rules. We could have made the rumor gathering an extended test with multiple characters to shine a spotlight on that but in the end we chose to make a single test with a help action. However, since it was the most disgusting secret around that would without fail turn his fellow bourgeouisie against Joseph, we set the test at Ob 4. As a consequence of potential failure, I set that Bertrand would instead discover a horrible secret about his own family instead – what stakes! Miraculously, with a B4 skill, the players threw everything they had against it and leveraged out a success! Well, while I figured this might have been a good Duel of Wits opportunity with two speakers going head to head to win the minds of the crowd, I felt like this was too good of a thing to overrule with a potential Duel of Wits loss.

I’m happy that when I asked at the end of the session whether the players wanted to continue (potentially with different characters, a different story, or even a different game system), they all wanted to continue to see where all this goes.

Overall Impression

I’m quite happy with how the session went. We were all a little beat by this week but still managed to make it into an entertaining session. On top of that, we were all quite more comfortable with the system and it felt like it was less “in the way” as it has been at times in the past when we needed to get used to it. Now, our interactions with the system served to encourage and stimulate roleplay.

I think this first arc has really set an interesting tone to the world. We’ve only just begun to see who these characters are and what they are about. In essence, this feels like the pilot episodes to our show, and now that the stage has been set we can take it places. I very much look forward to seeing where we head off to next!

Yesterday, we ran the third session of my “Burning France” Burning Wheel game. The write-up of session two can be found here. Our game is really starting to get going, and this session was more action-packed than the previous two!

The Story

Our recent fumble is a problem; the people of Avignon must be convinced of the righteousness of our deeds.

Bertrand’s Third Belief

We last left Bertrand and Benoit at the scene of a crime, where the now-murdered guard captain Matthieu had alerted the entire guardhouse with his dying cry. Benoit legged it at top speed, beating out the guards rushing out from the guardhouse with B5 Speed (+1 Fork) vs B4 Speed, rolling a magical 6s vs 3s. Meanwhile, Bertrand did his best to deceive the guards, saying he came to investigate the strange noises. Rolling B3 Falsehood (+1 Persona) versus the guards’ B4 Perception, it ends up in a tie with 3s vs 3s. Bertrand, however, relies on his good luck, and swings +1s success (Fate reroll). The guard are convinced that nothing serious is amiss.

The next morning, Bertrand and Geoffrey head to the guard house to try and sway the loyalty of the guards now that their captain is gone. (Duel of Wits).

Elisa employs the guard; we work for Elisa, so you work for us. We are certain the nobles did it, and they should be seen as the main threat.

Statement of Purpose Bertrand & Geoffrey, Body of Argument 7

Thank you for your kind donation of money; however, the guard will remain independent with regards to this murder case. Please leave us to it.

Statement of Purpose Guards, Body of Argument 4

The guards, initially trying to brush them off with a standard spiel, get turned around when they find their guests agreeing with them Obfuscate B3 Falsehood 2s vs Point B4 Persuasion 1s; not only that, Bertrand and Geoffrey manage to redirect their attention to the nobles hiding out in the forest: clearly, given that they were just about to close a deal with the captain, the nobles must surely have killed him Point B3 Falsehood (+1 Help, +1 Oratory) 4s vs Rebuttal B4 Persuasion 0s defend & 1s attack. Who can withstand such ruthless logic? The guards, thoroughly convinced of this evidence, agree to make the nobles their prime suspects.

My companions are a liability for me. I must act in their best interests, even if they disagree.

Those who resent you are dangerous, and should be scared into obedience or destroyed.

Geoffrey’s First and Third Beliefs

Meanwhile, Benoit has been spending time with Elisa to find out how he can help her. She admits to being overwhelmed by her new responsibilities, and worries that the village’s food supply will not last because crop yields have apparently been falling for a while. There are a myriad of tiny problems besetting the village: farmers not using proper techniques, others are not cooperating, others are full-on fighting. Benoit and Elisa end up spending the afternoon touring the village, making an index of all of these issues B3 Farming (+2 FoRK Trouble-wise, Foraging) 3s. He encourages Elisa to take the lead in this, seeking to empower her through his experience.

Now that everyone is equal, we should all be able to shape our lives according to our own wishes.

Benoit’s First Belief

The trio meet back up with Léonce, the woodsman B2 Circles (+1 Golden Boy reputation, +1 Named Contact) 1s vs Ob 1, who was asked to scout of the location of the nobles. He informs them that he easily found them, spotting about a dozen people and counting about three or four hired muscle among them. Rather than looking to set up a counter-revolution, they seemed instead to be struggling to make due. The trio decides to let them simmer in their misery for a week or so before showing up with food and supplies to try and sway the nobles back peacefully.

We must find the deposed nobles and their sympathizers and make sure they don’t stage a counter-revolution.

Benoit’s Third Belief

During that time, Bertrand decides to rewrite his manifesto to sway the new revolutionaries to accept new leadership (namely: his); sadly, with a B3 Write (+1 Persona, +2 Fork Rule of Law & Philosophy), 2s vs Ob4 the final product does not end up being as good as Bertrand believes it to be, and it will net him a +1Ob in future tests. Benoit has a look at the developments among the farmers, and with a graduated test B3 Farming (+1 FoRK Trouble-wise, +1 FoRK Rumor-wise) 3s he notices that it is going quite well indeed. With some hard work on his side, not just the crops but the mood in the village is also doing better, making the whole place more homely. Lastly, Geoffrey wishes to get back into his old business, and decides to advertise the intimate services offered by his husband and wife, as well as set up a rudimentary spy network through them. Sadly, as it turns out, villages are more tightly knit than cities are, and the spouses of his new customers are not happy at all that he has started up business B2 Haggling (+1 FoRK Protitute-wise, +1 FoRK Persuasion), 1s vs Ob3.

Meting out justice is what’s required, but is it not justice to be considered first among many?

Bertrand’s First Belief

With that, time enough has passed for our trio to prepare to head into the forest and finally confront the nobles.

The Session

During this session, everything really started flowing much more naturally and easily. I’m getting the sense that the players are starting to get a good grip on who their characters are and what they want to do with them, and the Beliefs are coming into play more and more. It was quite satisfying to run this session, and I was impressed that with this increased clarity, I actually had almost no prep time for this evening.

Being more on point gave us the opportunity as well to engage in a Duel of Wits, as we got into our first difference of opinion in the conflict with the guards. While it was a little involved to try running this, it was also over before I realized it. I tried to give my players a decent hint at what the guards were going to do, and I’m happy that my players picked up on exactly that. Roleplaying the interaction worked relatively nicely, and I think once we get some more familiarity with this conflict resolution system, we can use it more naturally as well.

One thing that I slipped with this session was clearly laying out the risks of failure for rolls. I think this started with me neglecting to specifically ask after and confirm Task and Intent, and therefore forgetting to set consequences. Fortunately, it didn’t cause any issues but it’s a thing I should keep an eye out on.

Overall Impression

I’m really happy with where we’re going with this game. Every session I get more ideas of where to go as the fiction now starts writing itself. I’m also getting more comfortable setting Obstacles on the fly and estimating relative difficulty for Tests. One thing that I need to work on is a bit of time management. I was well on time for most of the session but near the end I wanted to have a little vignette to skip time before the next session, which ended up costing us much more time than I figured it would have. As a result, we again couldn’t do Belief workshopping at the end of the session as we should. Well, something to focus on next time!

Yesterday, I ran the first session of my Burning Wheel game, “Burning France” (traditionally, all Burning Wheel campaigns are named “Burning [noun]”). I was quite happy to get started after some unfortunate but unavoidable delays, though I have to admit I was also fairly nervous for the game. I haven’t GMed anything in years, and I hold my players in high regard for their RPG knowledge and experience. Fortunately, I think the session went reasonably well and helped set a tone and direction for the next session in two weeks.

The Story

Our setting is Occitania, a medieval France-like country, and the date is May 6th 1312—one day after the success of the glorious revolution of the people against the nobles. Each of our players (initial description in this post) had played a crucial role in one of the activist groups that have made this possible. Now, however, the time has come to settle into the new life, and we discover that while there’s been much talk of how to revolution should go, there’s not been as much talk of what the world looks like after and what the new power structures would be.

The characters, Bernard, Benoit, and Geoffrey, started off being called to oversee an unruly mob in a square of Sompteux, the capital city of Occitania. The activist group is concerned that if the revolution turns too bloody, they will lose the support of the people, leaving them weak to a counter-revolution or returning power to the ancien régime. The players approach to see a well-coiffed, powdered, and made-up dwarf, the compte d’chantilly, carried on the back of a mob to a makeshift gallows set up nearby. Scanning the mob, they see they’re heavily ambivalent about the affair: there are a minority of bloodthirsty insurrectionists at the head, surrounded by a significant group of people going along with the flow, along with a reasonable amount of people on the margins disgusted by the entire affair. The players are in prime position to swing this mob one way or another.

Our characters decide to interpose themselves in the affair, helped by Bertrand The Bastard’s reputation as the insurrection’s Golden Boy and Benoit’s imposing stature. Seeing the moment as a tool, Bertrand addresses the crowd to convince them of the justness of the revolution and to not murder the man in cold blood like animals but to execute him as a result of careful and cold calculation—the undertone clearly aimed at those hesitant in the back: work with us or meet a grisly fate. He manages to bring parts of the crowd to his side, and a gruesome scene folds out.

A few days after, the trio meets Gerard, the first-among-equals of the insurrectionist group. Gerard tells them of Avignon-sur-Chantre, a nearby farming village that supplies much of the food to Sompteux, that is causing some trouble. There too, the proletariat has overthrown the bourgeoisie, but now they have chosen to keep all their produce rather than ship some off to Sompteux. While the group agrees to this plan, they also eye Gerard with suspicion as he moves off from table-to-table, apparently giving out orders with the same type of power-moves he pulled on the group. A first character has gotten a target painted on their back.

The trio travel to Avignon-sur-Chantre, where they immediately march up to the manor house to find a local nobody, Eustice, living their, having proclaimed himself the new lord of the manner. After a brief and forceful discussion (“You’re a lord, huh? Do you know what we do to lords?”), they take over the place and decide that the solution to the problem of these uppity villagers is to make them understand what the new world is like. Geoffrey, the former conman and barkeep, sends out his husband and wife to carouse among the villagers, spreading the gospel of how good city life is and how it’s a precious ideal to be protected. Meanwhile, Benoit and Bernard extract a list of big players and local gossip from Eutstice. The next day, the trio visits the most troublesome villagers, and runs their protection racket: there’ll be rewards for those who ship food to Sompteux again and if they’re not interested, well, they know who’s had an affair with whom, and it’d just be a shame if that got out somehow, right?

At the end of the day, the trio settles in to the manor house (after all, it belongs to the people, and they’re people, right?) and broadly consider that it might be nice to settle down in this village for a while. While exploring whom they could thrust into a position of power here, they learn from Eustice that the villagers just banished all the bourgeoisie into the outlying forests, leaving mostly the workers in the village. A group of intelligent nobles, socially savvy, out near a place where mercenaries are known to rob trade-lines—what’s the worst that can happen?

The Session

I was quite nervous, as this was the first tabletop RPG I have GMed in what is probably years. Fortunately, the friends I’m running it for are quite understanding and kindly helped me along during the session as well. As is the general recommendation in Burning Wheel, I wanted to start with a conflict right off the bat. I was quite rusty in starting off sessions (I’ve only recently started playing again, and as a player you can at least hang back and be passive), but fortunately with some player questions I got my feet back under me. One of the players also is quite familiar with Burning Wheel, so he also fell quite naturally into the role that the game asks of players, which helped me along.

The player beliefs are starting to get a little more focused, now that we’re also narrowing down on an actual Situation. I’m also happy how quickly and naturally through play we’re creating a bunch of loose ends already that are now giving me much more to work with for the next session. It’s certainly a lesson for me that I should have been far more explicit about an actionable Situation in Session 0, so that we could hit the ground running. I’m sure as we move on we’ll start working on specifying and fine-tuning our beliefs as well.

I was happy that we managed to do a few different skill checks during the session. We started off with a simple Oratory, and worked on ForKs and helping dice, and seeing how that works in fiction. I made sure to get Intent and Task clear by asking onwards for each test, which really helped in making sure that failure was never a block but always a case of failing forward. Near the end of the session, in the large protection racket being run in the farming village, we tested out using an extended test, with two separate rolls and a lot of helping dice. I am very pleased with how Foundry VTT automates most of the work. That helped me focus on the narrative, and reduce the rules-referencing at the table.

We did run into some small rules questions, which I adjudicated on the spot with the intention of reading up more later. One was the question of whether a character with grift-wise could use that skill to actively grift. One player argued that while in Torchbearer you indeed cannot use wises actively, in Burning Wheel you can. I figured to just run with it at the time, though in looking it up afterwards I couldn’t find a clear statement either way in the book. The description of Wises in BWG p. 309 states that wises are “a skill through which a character can call upon the knowldge of various details of the game world”, which to me suggests it’s purely passive. This post on the blog Take On Rules references Mouse Guard RPG (a Burning Wheel-style game), which more strictly defines wises as a means to either supplement another skill or to call up knowledge. So, next time, I think I’ll have to disallow the active use of Wises and rather suggest that a grift is run through Haggling, Persuasion, or Falsehood.

The other question I was left with was what to do with player-created items for future skill tests. Specifically, Bertrand started writing down the first draft of his pamphlet manifesto. His intention is to mass produce these and hand them out. I would imagine that would add helping dice to future Persuasion or Oratory roles but I’ll have to research a bit to find out what would be reasonable. My current feeling is that it should probably be a 1D advantage to roles.

Overall Impression

While I’ve run better sessions for sure, I was pleasantly surprised how quickly I could get back into GM mode. I want to work a little more on my mood-setting descriptions, and particularly I want to remember to call on multiple senses to evoke the imagery. I still want to make sure to hold back and let players keep the reigns in their hands, but I want to be able to help their imaginations and initiative by providing them with enough information for them to imagine where they want the story to go. One player mentioned how he did enjoy the open nature of world exploration, as I figured he would, so hopefully I can encourage all of them to take ownership of more of this creation.

Lastly, it was also just good to hang out with friends again and play something like this together. Two of my players had run the first RPGs I’ve played in since a few years back, and I’m happy I got to run a first session for something for them (so they don’t have to be the Forever GM, either!). Oh, and it’s amazing that I now feel so inspired to create/write a load of things for the game again! Two weeks from now is the next session, and I’m already looking forward to it!

On the 28th, we’ll finally play out first session of Burning Wheel. We’ve had to move it so many times that I was worried it’d die before we get started. Granted, this last session was moved on my accord, given that I wanted to attend an event on that night (which I didn’t end up attending after all, because I was sick). Either way, I’m pretty excited to get started. I’ve been reading various RPG related blogs, articles, and so on to get back into the mindset of DMing, and the more I’m doing that the more ideas I’ve been getting again.

In the last post about the Burning France campaign, I described the progress of our Session 0. Back then, we didn’t have the Beliefs worked out yet but fortunately now we have everything set up. Without further ado, here are the sets of beliefs for each character:

The Bastard

1. Meting out justice is what’s required, but no-one said I couldn’t get paid in the process.
2. My companions obviously look to me for leadership and Guidance; I will set an example and put them on the path of righteousness.
3. (Direct goal-orientated Belief to be decided at the start of Session 1)
4. (Zealot Belief) Nobilé lurk around every corner; under every peasant lurks a budding, ambitious freeloader that must be stopped.

This is a good solid spread of Beliefs. The first is an ethical stance, the second is a party-orientated belief, the third will be a direct goal to achieve, and the fourth is a clear invitation for me to present obstacles and ties is quite well with the theme we’d set out in Session 0. Here we have a character with a clear direction: the insurrection has cleared the power structure, a new leader is needed, and The Bastard will be that leader for the group; yet anybody else who wants to pop up needs to get pushed back down.

The Bawdyhouse Operator

1. Always look out for number one.
2. Power cannot be trusted no matter what mask it wears.
3. (Direct goal-orientated Belief to be decided at the start of Session 1)

A solid pair of Beliefs, though I would have enjoyed seeing a party-orientated one here as well. However, I suspect that the goal-orientated Belief may end up being a comment on the party as well once we get to it. The first Belief may risk being antagonistic towards the party and invite some backstabbing, which isn’t particularly the type of game I had in mind, but the player intends for it to mean that her character will just save her own ass before helping others. That second Belief is again a nice one because it ties in well with our theme.

The Farmer

1. Now that everyone is equal, we should all be able to shape our lives according to our own vision.
2. My companions have shaped their lives according to their own vision, so they are well suited to dispense advice to others to do the same. I must trust their judgement.
3. (Direct goal-orientated Belief to be decided at the start of Session 1)

Another good set of Beliefs to work from. The first one is a good ethical Belief fitting to our theme. The second is a nice party-orientated belief that helps me see what role The Farmer will have to play in the story. While initially these Beliefs may be passive, as they’re all somewhat wait-and-see approaches (Burning Wheel is about passionate stances), I suspect that these are the starting point for Beliefs that are sure to end up changing and growing throughout the game.

Overall

What immediately jumps out to me is that each character seems to have a different view of what the new classless political structure is to be. The Bastard feels no one should be a leader yet also that he should lead (contradictory Beliefs are such a goldmine!), the Bawdyhouse Operator believes that all power is dangerous, and the Farmer feels that everybody’s view should be respected. Those three Beliefs will surely clash once the rubber hits the road. We’re off to a good start!

Yesterday, I ran Session 0 for the Burning Wheel campaign that I will be hosting. Session 0 is the name typically given to the first session where the group works out what to play and how, setting the stage, characters, and working out the story. It’s the first RPG I’ll be hosting in quite a while, so I am a bit nervous about doing so. Nevertheless, yesterday’s session has me excited, and thanks to the group I have a number of ideas for the game now that we can work with.

The World

The first step was establishing what we wanted to play. After going around the table, we settled on a number of characteristics: we’ll be playing in a dark, gritty neomedieval world. I distinctly call it “neomedieval” in the sense of medievalism and Eco’s definition of it: a world that’s reminiscent or referential to medieval life, but is starkly colored by modern sensibilities and perceptions of it. So, as we joked around the table, it’s not a historical middle ages, but one where a balding elf with a beer belly might be chugging a coffee at his desk while complaining about having to do clerical work on a Monday morning.

To further broadly describe our world, we settled on the idea that the group will be playing low-born, low-status characters. It’ll be a world of low fantasy, where the gods and magic may or may not exist; if either does, their effects are probably very subtle or very rare. The magic we may run into will be Folklore magic, defined in the Codex on pp. 363–366. Whether or not gods are real, religion will be, though our setting will be polytheistic. All stocks will be in play, though monsters will be folklore-based and relatively uncommon; in my mind, it’ll be similar to wolves in The Netherlands today: sure, there are a handful around, but you’re unlikely to see some unless you venture into the wild. Perhaps every now and then one might roam near settlements.

The Setting

After exploring a few possible ideas, we settled on a setting just after a revolution. We’ll be taking our cues from revolutions like The French Revolution, the Khmer Rouge, or the Russian Civil War: in short, in this 14th-century French-like small country, the proletariat has had enough of being oppressed by the bourgeoisie, and has rebelled against its masters. The revolution was a smashing success, and the entirety of the previous ruling class has been killed or run off, leaving the former peasantry finally in control of their fate. Freedom at last! The big problem is, in the great purge, nobody was left alive with experience of running the large apparatus of state, and the insurrectionists planned no further than “once the oppressive regime is gone, we will be free”. Power vacuums abound. What is left of “us versus them” when you’ve beaten “them”?

We decided that our little corner of the world will be a small province of this as-of-yet-unnamed French-like country; I think we may want to rethink that into a Luxembourgh-sized country, however—after all, what country would just accept an uprising in its demesne and not do anything about it? In any case, our capital will be a medievalist Paris-like city: a large hub of commerce and culture that’s pretty on the outside, but the dunnyman comes to collect your waste each morning just like any other village. While all Burning Wheel stocks are in play, our players decided to go for all Mannish stock. We decided that each character would have three cultural traits: Love Of Wining And Dining, Distrust of Formality, and Class Solidarity. They may be poor, but camaraderie is best done at a full dinner table; ettiquette is just one more tool of the oppressors to heap disdain on the commoners; and commoners have all bled the same, so we all share the same.

The Story

For the sake of making our first experience as a group with Burning Wheel a little easier, we kept to one of the three general situations from the Situation Commentary in the Codex (pp.59–62): Quest, Struggle, or Intrigue. The players had a fondness for Intrigue over Quest, though wouldn’t mind a story of Struggle either. One of the players enjoyed stories involved leaving a home village, and that sounded like an interesting path to take for me as well.

I had a few plot ideas lying around (I have a small notebook that I write down a plot idea in whenever they come to me), and after listing a couple, there was one that the players zoomed in on. It involved being appointed to a position of legal power and responsibility without much experience. Something similar to the now out-of-print Dogs in the Vineyard (sidenote: apparently, KN Obaugh has been allowed to do a retooling of the game, which resulted in DOGS). A core feature of this story, to me, is empowerment. The trappings of class have been removed from the world, and now the people are to reshape it. The big question will be: how do you reshape it? How do you determine what’s permissible? I suspect we may soon be needing anarchist theory to work out some conflicts in the game. Time to brush up on Kropotkin!

We decided that what we wanted out of the game was a bit of fun escapism, so we’ll be avoiding centralizing topics of racism, sexism, pandemics or plagues, or world-ending climate change. Similarly, we wanted to enjoy exploring a world of anarchist equality, so we’ll ignore some of the sexism by design in the game. For clarity, by default, Burning Wheel is meant to mimic a medieval world if Lord of the Rings was a historical record, so there are gender divides such as all dwarves who travel are male and all the female dwarves stay home. Fortunately, the game is quite explicit about this, and also recommends just ignoring that if you aren’t interested in it. Similarly, we’ll use the Burning Wheel terminology of “Stock” what in many other games would be called “race”, and we’ll work to avoid colonialist themes. Anarchism means inclusivity.

The Characters

As to be expected, each of our players has crafted a character. We’re still finalizing some of the details, so more specific descriptions will have to wait, but we’ve settled on the following characters for the group:

The Farmer

A Village Born child, who spent his early teens as a Kid causing trouble in the Village, before being put to work as a Farmer. At the last, however, he got swept up as a Conscript, and as such has played his role in the uprising.

The Bastard

A Born Noble, this character had the unfortunate luck of being a Bastard and therefore never really a big player in the noble scene. However, he’s taken his fate in his own hands, and became a Blackmailer to improve his lot in life. Over the past three years, however, he’s seen his opportunity to create real change and became an Insurrectionist.

The Bawdyhouse Operator

This character was City Born, and started out life as a Confidence Man. After that, she found good money in the field of being a Sex Worker Facilitator (we have chosen to rename “Whoremonger” on p. 194). For the past five years, however, she’s settled down as a Barkeep, to create a more steady and public-facing income.

Next Up: Session Planning

After writing this up, I’ve been noticing some interesting themes that may come into play. For one, our setting is quite anarchist. I think the story will likely start revolving around the ideals versus the reality of anarcist theory. Secondly, I didn’t notice it while we were making characters, but it’s quite interesting to see we have characters starting in the Village Lifepath, the Noble Lifepath, and the City Lifepath. The village character so far seems to be the most ethical, judging by the traits, whereas the city and noble characters are more corrupted and ethically troubled. This may end up serving an interesting theme, depending on where we land with the story. Lastly, based on this I’m not quite sure what the larger story will end up being about, but it’s open enough to quite a few minor conflicts. I think the way we deal with those conflicts will guide us towards a larger story.

The next challenge will be a far more practical one of logistics: when and how do we play?