I have BW Revised and think it’s great. I’m really not interested in a sci-fi setting; I’m only interested in medieval European or medieval, Tolkien influenced settings.
That being said, should I get Burning Empires? Specifically, does BE have mechanics, variations, ideas, etc. that I can use in a medieval campaign using BW rules?
It’s not going to be your thing, Wrathbone.
Fair enough.
Damn it all! I had this nice big reply written up and then the forum went and decided to log me out when I tried to post it.
Anyway, the brief version is: with the removal of some lifepaths, a few changes, and a reinvisioning of the main enemy, you could do a pretty good medieval modification to Burning Empires since the scene economy, infection mechanic, and even world burner stuff aren’t directly married to any one setting (again, with a bit of work). The big problems would be that high fantasy wouldn’t work so hot (no magic, no shading), resources work somewhat differently than in BW (so no direct porting of lifepaths over), and the firefight mechanics generally speaking work much better with firearms. That being said, an Age of Sail era game would be pretty awesome and very much doable within the framework of BE without too many changes (no Iron, Hammer assets are now ships, yoink out all the sci-fi flavoring).
If you do pick up the book and do a conversion, the amount of work probably wouldn’t be more than what was needed to convert BW into Burning Sands, and since most of the lifepaths make a lot of sense for the Age of Sail with very few modifications the time investment shouldn’t be too bad.
[shameless plug]Or, y’know, if he wants BE-ish play in a fantasy setting, he could just play Burning Kingdoms.[/shameless plug]
Matt
I believe I pimped the Burning Kingdoms stuff in my first post, the one that got eaten. As for things that’ll add some Burning Empires macro-scale goodness into a Burning Wheel game, check out the Burning Kingdoms system developed by Matt and Jon and posted on the Burning Wheel wiki here.
He already deep-sixed Burning Kingdoms over in the Battlelore thread where he asked the same question. I’m really not sure why, though, since it seems to be purpose-built for his needs.
p.
I think he wants “skirmish rules,” not “commanding rules” which is what both BK and BE use.
I’d think Firefight! would be more than adequate for skirmishing, but I think I get what you’re talking about. Kind of a BW-style combat system at the WHFB level?
p.