A friend of mine and I are starting up a BE game. There will just be the two of us. We are doing it partly as a playtest, and also 'cause we think two player games can be fun
So… any advice or ideas that are necessary to make it work?
So far we’ve burned up a world that’s pretty advantageous for the human side (which I will be playing for). The only phase I’m at a deficit in is Usurption.
What I’m thinking so far is that my character needs to be pretty powerful (8+ lifepaths) and that all FoNs probably should not have 2 lifepath more than me
We have two FoNs so far.
My character is going to be a psychologist, circle of 10000 and all, so it looks like my skills can cover most of the manuevers in the first and second phase.
As far as I know, you’re heading into virgin territory. The only advice I have for you is to make sure to involve the NPC human figures of note in your scenes so you can justify getting help from them in the Infection.
I had a brief think about “How you could do a 1 on 1 BE game” a while ago.
I was thinking you could act as if both players where the GM. So in Character Burning both of you get a Circles and Resources reserve. Also keep FONs at around the same lifepath limit and both players would conform to the same exponent cap.
Can a NPC FoN help with maneuver rolls? As I read it, only players may help each other with maneuver rolls…
But that might also be the only modification that’s needed. If we allow the NPC FoN on my side to roll for maneuvers and to help with the roll, winning becomes a lot more likely.
Brief aside: you could play two characters, with the GM running the “other one” (the one you don’t prefer at the moment) in a scene in which they both appear, just as he or she would run an NPC. Just an idea for running it without doing a lot of hacking of the base rules…
I would allow an NPC FoN to help with Infection rolls. But the NPC still has to qualify to help you by providing help to you during play. And the GM still runs the NPCs, of course.
Just be aware that the game expects you to be able to muster 8-10 dice for important Infection rolls. If you’re mustering fewer dice, then your game is going to move at a slower pace. This shouldn’t be a problem since 1-on-1 games otherwise move more rapidly than 3+ player games.
Oh yeah, in 4-6 hours game night we might actually go for 3 maneuvers… Once we get our bearings.
One of the reasons I am not concerned is that I’m going to be swimming in persona. MVP and workhorse every maneuver… wow. Luckily nothing prevents me from voting on a NPC for workhorse or persona, so I can also keep the FoN on my side supplied.
Is the FoN helping on maneuver rolls a general thing? Would you also allow this in a game with more players?
It’s allowable, but I’m very touchy about it. I prefer a slavish focus on the players’ actions. Even a donated die dilutes the experience for me. But I admit that I’m a bit mad about this!
After a bit of further reading I discovered something weird with the scene mechanics for a two person game…
Only players who does not initiate a conflict gets a building scene, but since I am guaranteed one conflict scene pr. maneuver I am always initiating a conflict scene, so by a very literal reading I will never have building scenes.
We’re not taking this very seriously. I’m guessing the best way to play would be to say that I have a allotment of 1 color, 1 interstitial, 1 building scene, and 1 conflict. Another way to do it would be to say that I only have a building scene if I do it before my guaranteed conflict scene, since I can’t do a building scene if I have initiated a conflict this maneuver… blegh. An imposed scene order is not the intent of the rules and I am moving very rapidly into the realm of semantics.
Very soon I’ll be posting my character in the wheel of life and with a little luck I should be getting the world we’ve burned up on the wiki as well. The world favours the human side pretty heavily, but I’m happy with it anyway, Station 303N is going to be cool. (and yes, apparantly we are geeky enough to put l33t speech in our world name, the gm got +1s for that one).
So I’ve finally got my character fully burned up and he can be seen here: http://www.burningempires.com/wiki/index.php?title=Elias_Gerard_Sorensen
It’s probably the character that has taken me the longest time to burn ever, and I’m not fully satisfied with his skills yet
Part of the problem was that at first I didn’t have the concept fully fixed in my mind (he started out as a hammer captain turned constable) and that I’ve done a lot of looking the book for what skills I need to have a chance. As far as I can see he’s going to be a beast in the infiltration, good in the invasion and should be able to survive usurption.
I also put the world up here for your perusal: http://www.burningempires.com/wiki/index.php?title=Station_303N#Figures_of_Note
It is very favourable to the human side, the only place where the Vaylen disposition is higher is in the usurption fase. We thought that was necessary in order for the human side to have a chance, as the only one who will be doing infection rolls is my character… gulp.
