I was wondering if anyone has ever had experience with adapting Pathfinder Adventure paths to their Burning Thaco game?
I’m considering giving it a try with my current Pathfinder play group, but I am worried that it will be too combat heavy. Still the idea of adapting these types of published adventures into the Burning Wheel system intrigues me. Perhaps it would be possible with a little bit of modding of Burning Wheel as well.
Has anyone ever given it a try? Let me know how it went. If you have any suggestions, resources, or tips, I would be most grateful.
I’ve run D&D modules in BW. You have to cut WAY back on the opposition and number of encounters. And you need to provide plenty of room for social challenges – that can take the story in unexpected directions.
Use them as loose guidelines, rather than as they were originally built.
I appreciate the quick reply. I was thinking that I would have to be a bit heavy on social encounters and I would likely set up several encounters for social interaction even if they were originally combat only (bandit encounters can turn into negotiations instead of outright slaughter, etc). This is one of the reasons I am so drawn to Burning Wheel as a system. It encourages roleplaying instead of “Kill it dead!” which is unfortunately a mentality that has been drilled into many gamer’s heads.
Thank you again.
Anyone else had any experience with this sort of game? How did it go?
Also be careful about the implied setting in D&D modules. They’ll often involve wizardry, casual healing, inexplicable monsters, and huge piles of loot. Some of those get weird with BW’s different paradigm for magic. Extra monsters just give everyone wound penalties. Loot doesn’t really work well in BW either. You can give cash dice, which are fun, but there just aren’t really a lot of +1 swords, and there shouldn’t be any +3 keen flaming swords unless they’re also serving as plot devices. Since BW is much more character-driven, you can find the characters running off the rails of the adventure more easily. Since D&D lets failure bog down the adventure and is written with that in mind, you may find yourself working with weird failures.
In general, I’d say it’s worth reading an adventure, deciding what ideas you like, and then running that instead of actually really using the module as written. Even a really vague plot inspiration can blossom beautifully in BW.
To wit: we started our Burning THAC0 campaign using a few of the “B” series of modules, before veering off into the current Save The World ™ plot based on the backstory of B8. Panax is what we renamed Tuma to, after one too many instances of Fourth Horseman doing his worst Arnie imrpession.
I can’t help but feel that I might be trying to shoehorn an adventure path into burning wheel play, and that may not exactly be the best fit for BW game. I will take all of your advice and try to mine the modules for ideas/locations/plots and then let the players run with the game as much as possible.
Burning Wheel does adventure fantastically! You just have to alter your adventuring expectations. You probably won’t be able to fight armies of dragons - instead, you may eventually quest to defeat That One Goddamn Dragon. It’s a more Tolkien-esque adventure, much grittier than most stuff in Pathfinder.
I am not the most expert BW player here but I can show you how I tore apart a D&D module to run under BW. It might take a day or so for me to type it all up.
It’s not Pathfinder per se, but I’ve just finished running a game of the Keep on the Shadowfell using BWG. I simply used the starting situation, asked the characters to name a friend and an enemy and each had an affiliation with the organisation that wanted the cult investigated and off we went. It really was just setting and situation and tying in the characters relationships into the whole shebang. Worked quite well, and it has set up the setting for ongoing games that aren’t tied to any particular module but which will be far more player driven.
John
An adventure path is a series of linked modules, right? You can do that just fine with BW—as long as that’s what your players want. If you’ve got their BITs on board, you’re good. Do they value adventuring, loot, exploration, saving the kingdom, whatever it is they’re up to? Huzzah! If not, BW will fail horribly.
I don’t think that’s a failure of BW, though. Dragging players through adventures they don’t like in any system is bad.