Here in the second part we’ll take a look at some of the other mechanics of Burning Wheel and why I like them. I’ll touch on the Resources and Circles attributes now, and Steel as well. We’ll then move into some general final thoughts on the game at the end.
Resources
A lot of RPGs work on the D&D model of money and wealth; you do adventures, you get monetary rewards, and you spend it. Now, there’s nothing wrong with this, and there’s even an element of fun to it since the player can indeed watch the number of gold pieces or credits or whatever go up, and can imagine gaining things for their character for it. For me though, it’s bean counting. I do enough of that at work, and I appreciate BW for NOT making me count money in-game. It’s also a great way to create even more tension and give players choices. Resources represent not just your cash, but favors owed, your place in society, and the willingness of others to give you credit and whatnot. It lets you buy and sell, do pure cash or whatever else you’d do with, well, your monetary resources. I think it’s a great system that lets wealthy characters feel wealthy, and incentivizes going out and getting paid (though the game’s activities). I strongly appreciate the Lifestyle rules as well, and wish more games had them; only a handful that I’ve played do, where the character needs to pay something to maintain their lifestyle and level of living (do you have an apartment? A car? If you’re a knight, do you have lands of your own? BW can account for all that.
Resources is a weird animal in BW. It represents raw buying power, favors owed, your place in society, and the willingness of others to give you credit and whatnot. Roll the dice and see if you can purchase something. I personally love it, because it means I don’t have to bean count as the GM, and I don’t have to think about rewards so much (is 100 GP a lot? How about 1000? Is that enough for this job?). In BW, just look at the Resource level of the PCs, figure out how many expendable cash dice you wish to give them (or a permanent increase in Resources from, say, being ennobled) use the guidelines in the book and bang, your off to the races. I strongly appreciate the Lifestyle rules as well, and wish more games had them; only a handful that I’ve played do, where the character needs to pay something to maintain their lifestyle and level of living (do you have an apartment? A car? If you’re a knight, do you have lands of your own? BW can account for all that.
Circles
The greatest mechanic. I’ve made some version of this for many different games that didn’t already have something like it. To wit, Circles is basically what you roll when you want to find somebody. Need a captain to run the ship you just bought? Circles. Looking for a doctor in town willing to treat your ne’er-do-wells as you pass through? Circles. Because of how the mechanic works, it means the GM doesn’t have to rely on their own imagination for every NPC, and helps answer the constant question of – can I find such-and-such a person here?
Steel
Another favorite mechanic – basically, how psychologically tough are you in terms of frightening or surprising things? Can you stare down a dragon without running away? Can you keep control while hiding as your enemy runs your beloved servant through? I admit I don’t use this enough, but it adds something special to a game when used (much like Call of Cthulhu’s vaulted Insanity mechanics).
All the Rest of It
There’s so much more to talk about I could easily do a third or fourth article (and maybe one day I will). For example, we haven’t touched the scripted conflict systems, or how heath and damage work, or any of those things. Again, for a full review, there are plenty out there. But I do want to say that the whole injects elements of chaos to what the PCs do, and I personally think that’s good. In many games everyone knows exactly, mathematically precisely in fact, what they can do at any given moment: how far they can move, can they take on X-opponent, can they out argue the other side’s lawyer, etc. But in BW, these things are a bit murky. Weirdly, this gives the underdog a chance, and maybe that’s what I like the most. With work, smart play and effort, players can up their chances in BW.
And I think that’s the end, really. Looking back, I’ve said a lot, and yet I’ve really said nothing, because there’s much more to say. I hope I intrigued you a little about this game; it is one of my favorites, and a game I’ll probably write more about later since I’m running it now for my group, and figures heavily in my thoughts. I also need to say something at some point about Burning Empires, an offshoot of BW, which has influenced me mightily as a GM, an Torchbearer, which intrigues me for a genre of play I actually don’t like very much.
As always, there are more articles that I’ve written, which you can have a look at here: Articles
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