For quite some time I jealously eyed Burning Wheel as ”that god-damn complex game with all those brilliant ideas in it”. I even tried to steal and incorporate a good many of those ideas in my own games, as I was best able to (resources, lifepath character generation, duel of wits etc.). Eventually, I came to the conclusion that if I was willing to practically transplant half of the game and bolt it onto my own franken-houserules, I should just accept that I really want to play BW and do that instead. And so, I though it only fitting that I finally gave BW a proper test now that the (supposedly better) gold edition is out. I have only really read the hub and spokes in-depth so far, but I’m really digging it. The best part for me is how organic it is. Characters are not built – they are grown (or burned, if you will). It is the complete opposite of how many other RPGs foster a ”character build” mentality, where you are encouraged to plan out your character’s advancement in detail, from the very beginning all the way to the end. You know exactly how he is going to end up looking. Not so in this game, even if you are a dirty powergamer like myself.
In the interest of helping a newbie who have never played the game, I hope you are willing to answer some (probably obvious) rules questions.
I’m a bit confused about how perception and advancement works. I get that perception (the stat) tests must be successful to count, and I’m assuming that doesn’t hold for perception-based skills (that is, they log advancement whether failed or succeeded). But what happens if you’re doing beginner’s luck with a perception-rooted skill? Must the test then also be successful in order to reduce aptitude? Or is it just the case that you don’t log advancement towards the stat if you roll versus a difficult or challenging test and fail?
Can you use beginner’s luck with practice – that is, get routine tests for a skill you haven’t opened yet using the practice system? I get the feeling this is not the case, as it talks specifically about advancement in the practice chapter (and so the only two ways to open skills are via tests made in-play or by getting instruction from another character, correct?).
-On that note, why are routine tests listed on the table for practicing stats (p. 48)? As far as I understand, routine tests count for nothing when advancing stats – am I missing something? Why would anyone practice a routine test for a stat?
Can you use beginner’s luck to help someone who is also using beginner’s luck? I’m assuming so, as although it’s written that stats may not help skills, the other guy is technically using his stat when doing the test. It just seems a bit counter-intuitive to me that once the other guy gets a bit more skilled (opens his skill), then one can’t help anymore using beginner’s luck.
Is aristeia worth it? As it sounds like you very rarely get a deeds point, and that ”the artha should constantly be flowing” (i.e. spent), it seems unlikely that a player would ever find himself with all that artha on hand at once. Secondly, regarding shade-shifting a skill for a scene, wouldn’t all those points be better spent on improving a boatload of skills (in a more effective fashion) rather than simply shade-shifting a single skill temporarily? Or am I just not comprehending how useful a grey skill is? In short, is aristeia worthwhile to save up for, or is it very situational?
How much artha can you earn for each belief/instinct/trait? Can you earn fate artha from following a belief, and then earn a persona point for completing it, in the same session? Can a savvy player earn, for example, 3 fate artha from the same, single belief if he played his character right - or must he then hit all three of his beliefs?
I am not sure I understand the ”working carefully”-rules. Can the player only invoke this rule if the time element is pertinent in the test? In other words, can the player work carefully even if it doesn’t matter in the first place whether he takes a long time to do it or not? Or is it rather the case that the GM should then make the time element significant, somehow? I’m asking because it seems to be an easy/automatic way of getting an extra die. For instance, in the example with the person trying to pick the lock before the guards arrive (p. 32), it seems to suggest that the GM can have the guards arrive as a complication regardless of whether the character is working carefully – and so the player might as well grab that extra die because he’s going to get arrested if he fails whether he does it carefully or not.
-Or is this just another auto-correcting case of the player shooting himself in the foot if he always goes for the extra dice (helping, FoRKing etc.), and thus stifling his skill advancement?
Finally, what is the optimal way of recording all those skill tests (for advancement) during play? As far as I can tell, it doesn’t seem like a big problem as long as you’re just using the spokes of the game (regular tests), but as soon as you move into using the more complex sub-systems (fight, range and cover), it seems like players would have to stop all the time to calculate every single positioning test and sword stroke. I get that only a single test counts for advancement under these sub-systems, but it still seems like it would slow down play a lot. Is there an intelligent way of short-cutting the bookkeeping? I’m thinking of making players write down the raw details of each roll (obstacle, dice rolled) and then later going over them to suss out whether it was a routine, difficult or challenging test – would this help? I’m just worried that the advancement system I love so much is going to feel like a chore to new players.
It only must be successful for a stat test to be logged. Routine tests for Beginner’s Luck don’t have to be successful, but Difficult and Challenging ones do, since they are logged against the stat.
Yes, you may practice to open a skill with a few exceptions (training skills can’t be practiced (p.51), and Sorcerous skills require instruction for the first test(p. 49))
The helper may help with a skill or his stat if he doesn’t have a skill to help with. In the latter case, it’s just a stat test, there’s no Beginner’s Luck for the helper.
I would not aim for one, but if I had the artha and the situation called for it, sure. Divine Aura is probably the more powerful option here.
One point per bit. (see p. 70 “How Much?”)
It’s situational, but in general time should not already be a huge factor - the player is choosing to add that as a possible twist for the extra die.
The obstacles are really easy to figure out until your exponents get above 7, so it shouldn’t be too much. In a conflict, I note tests on some scrap paper until the end and transfer them to the character sheet.
Correction on #2, Stormie: per the page you cited, Training skills can be practiced, and indeed must be (or taught with Instruction), as they can’t be tested for.
Sometimes. I don’t aim for it either, but there are certainly situations where you’ll be testing one skill heavily for a scene, and there are other benefits to the shade-shift. Hitting Persuasion before a Duel of Wits, for instance, can be a good deal. Further, if the Duel is a Big Deal, I think you get an extra +2 on your body of argument for having a Grey skill.
There are also moments when it’s not the tests that matter, but the fact that you’ve spent the artha. If you need about an aristeia’s worth in order to score that epiphany, and you have the points, and it’s a good time for it… Well, for some skills, you might sit back on it, if you can test them all the time. But for cases where it’s harder to get tests, that’d be damn tempting, even if spending the points piecemeal on different skills might be more effective in this scene right here.
I don’t personally save up for it. If the GM is pushing, there should be a lot of temptation to burn that Artha before you have enough saved up anyway–and that can add to the tension. Do I spend it now or save it? That said, artha will often accumulate. I’d call it situational.
I am not sure I understand the ”working carefully”-rules. Can the player only invoke this rule if the time element is pertinent in the test? In other words, can the player work carefully even if it doesn’t matter in the first place whether he takes a long time to do it or not? Or is it rather the case that the GM should then make the time element significant, somehow? I’m asking because it seems to be an easy/automatic way of getting an extra die. For instance, in the example with the person trying to pick the lock before the guards arrive (p. 32), it seems to suggest that the GM can have the guards arrive as a complication regardless of whether the character is working carefully – and so the player might as well grab that extra die because he’s going to get arrested if he fails whether he does it carefully or not.
-Or is this just another auto-correcting case of the player shooting himself in the foot if he always goes for the extra dice (helping, FoRKing etc.), and thus stifling his skill advancement?
Yeah, it does sort of auto-correct. One of the things I like best about BW is it gives players incentives for doing dangerous, foolish things. In the case of something that already has a time constraint, I think it would be helpful if the GM explicitly laid out failure consequences–and the consequence for failing with Carefully should be steeper.
Finally, what is the optimal way of recording all those skill tests (for advancement) during play? As far as I can tell, it doesn’t seem like a big problem as long as you’re just using the spokes of the game (regular tests), but as soon as you move into using the more complex sub-systems (fight, range and cover), it seems like players would have to stop all the time to calculate every single positioning test and sword stroke. I get that only a single test counts for advancement under these sub-systems, but it still seems like it would slow down play a lot. Is there an intelligent way of short-cutting the bookkeeping? I’m thinking of making players write down the raw details of each roll (obstacle, dice rolled) and then later going over them to suss out whether it was a routine, difficult or challenging test – would this help? I’m just worried that the advancement system I love so much is going to feel like a chore to new players.
I don’t know how my fellow players do it (almost all of my campaigns have been over Skype), but I do it just like you describe. I jot down how many dice I rolled (excluding Artha) and the obstacle of the test. When I have a moment (like when the action’s focused on someone else), I figure out the test difficulty. That’s really important in an extended test, like Fight! or Duel of Wits, when you don’t know until after it’s over which tests are going to even count. (Incidentally, the “one test per stat/skill” rule is a great incentive to try a variety of maneuvers!)
This is something I struggled with mightily the first time I read the rules. I kept thinking - but players are supposed to use the rules to their advantage! That’s one of the things I love about this game! So how do I reconcile that with something so obviously abusive? This is something I think you’ll likely need to have communication with your players about so that they see what’s up too - make sure they know that this is a gamble. You increase your odds of success but at the cost of possibly fucking things up big-time.
If there’s no time constraint then the GM gets to introduce one, which may even change things after a success. If the dwarf wants to craft his dragon-slaying sword carefully, the GM stop and rethink and say okay, so agents of the dragon-king are headed to your house and if you fail then they arrive while you’re still crafting. Note that if he succeeds, there are still agents of the dragon-king headed to his house!
If there is a time constraint already, then the GM should make it worse. If the player is being a bit of a dick about it, first you should tell him he’s being a bit of a dick. If you say “If you fail to pick the lock, then the guards will come around the corner just as you’re getting the door open,” and the player replies with “Oh, well in that case I might as well work carefully since there’s a time constraint anyway,” I would say “Really? The guards are right around the corner and you want to take LONGER? Okay, well in that case the results are the same as before, but the first guard around the corner is going to get his crossbow up and get a shot at you whether you succeed or fail.”
Heck, there’s even a third scenario here I’ve just thought of - working carefully in combat. The GM doesn’t have to do anything - the player gets +1D and takes 1.5x the actions (rounding up)
As to your question 2.5: Why practice routine stat tests? The only reason I can think of is that maybe a player has a (really expensive) die trait saying that routine tests always count for Perception, or a (slightly less expensive) trait that says Power advances as a skill.
The “one test per stat/skill” rule also cuts down on the book keeping. Difficult/challenging tests tend to stand out, and once you’ve logged a routing, you can ignore anything that’s not difficult/challenging. The book keeping tends to only come up once or twice per skill.
Wow, thank you all for your comments, clarifications and excellent examples! It really helped. I realize there’s not much room for ‘interpreting’ the rules in a game like this, but the problem is that trying to interpret the ramifications of the rules requires you to properly understand how they work, and how they work together in the first place.
Challenging is easy, that’s when the Ob > Dice. Otherwise, count out the number of dice used on your fingers, while saying “1,1,2,2,3,4,4” (the only irregular bit is the ‘3’). That’s the highest routine Ob.
So if you’re rolling 4D, then you’ll have said, “1,1,2,2”, so for 4D, Ob2 is Routine, Ob 3-4 Difficult.
It’s pretty simple when you look at it the right way though, as you only need to learn what counts as Difficult (the rest is just lower or higher than that). For up to 3D Difficult is the same Ob as the number of dice. For 4-6D it’s the same plus the Ob one step under the number of dice and for 7D+ it’s the same plus the Ob’s two steps under.
I’ve noticed that some find the big table daunting but when you look at that fairly simple pattern most are able to figure it out on the fly without checking the table.
I think another way to look at this though, if time really isn’t a factor at all (you’ve got all day to pick that lock), then maybe the extra die requires some extreme ammount of time. In the lock example, if you have nobody looking for you, no guards on duty watching this door. Nobody EVER comes here. You literally have no time constraints. I’d say (as GM) “OK, so you’ve figured out what type of lock it is. This lock is easier to pick if you have a special skeleton key, but you don’t have one with you. If you fail, you’ll have spent a week looking for the skeleton key without any success. If you succeed, you’ll have found the skeleton key at a local guild and pick the lock within the hour.” So if the player wants to chance spending a whole week looking for the skeleton key that’s fine; he can get the extra die. Presumably, though, the antagonist of your story has just moved 1 week closer towards thwarting the heroes/achieving his own plans.
If time’s not a factor at all, I consider the Working Carefully +1D akin to an advantage die. Congrats, you have all day, that should make the task easier. Even if I can’t think of a time-based complication at all, I still let 'em have the die in exchange for taking twice (or is it half again? I forget) the time to do the task. Typically taking extra time has other weight in the narrative anyway (not around to Help someone else’s roll shortly after, etc.).
This is how I would do it as well. There’s not much logic in that you’ll only have it easier by spending more time on the task if you are pressed for time.
Since Working Carefully specifically says that it increases the time spent on the task by 50% I’d say it’s a really mean move by a GM to suddenly say that your test that normally takes a minute suddenly took a week if you fail just because you wanted an extra die.
I tend to figure it out pretty organically. I usually just assume it’s routine unless I think “Oh shit! This is going to be a hard test!” or “Wow! I barely made that!” When the Ob is close to my exponent, then I’ll figure it out.
Edit: Way to miss an entire page of posts before you reply and therefore totally put your comment out of context. Good job me . . .
For my groups, I make one of the players who is not in the spotlight be the scribe. He just notes things down, including tests, dice rolled and obstacles. Then when it’s his turn in the spotlight, he passes it to someone else, who notes the tests quietly (having John Anderson’s character sheets with the charts built in helps this) and also takes over Scribe duties. Works pretty well.
It can be a decent indicator but some Routine tests get harder the further you get up in the amounts of dice. If you roll 10D you only have about 17% chance of succeeding with the hardest of the Routine checks (Ob7), assuming black shade.