Hello 
Does the Gold Edition contain everything in the 2 revised books?
Is it an update/revision or word for word the same as the 2 books?
Does BW come with a setting or is it setting less?
How does it measure up to Harnmaster in terms of complexity?
Thanks
From the Store: âThe Gold Edition combines both the Revised Editionâs Burning Wheel and Character Burner. It has been reorganized for clarity and updated by the author.â
Itâs neither setting-less in the sense of, say, main-book GURPS nor does it have a setting in the sense of like Greyhawk or something. No maps, no stat-blocks for NPCs you donât care about, none of that bullshit. But the character burner does give a certain flavor. Thereâs some Harn folks around here, they seem to dig it and I suspect you will too. I never did the Harn thing myself, so I canât compare rules complexity.
All of the âRimâ subsystems have been tweaked, Fight the most.
BWG is an update and revision that combines the two core books of Revised into one new core book. It doesnât have a setting, but it has an implied type of setting based on the available lifepaths: humans are quite medieval, with all the social stratification, illiteracy, and feudalism that comes with that. Sorcery comes with a very particular flavor. (You can modify the flavor created by the mechanics if you want, but itâs non-trivial). Elves are Tolkienesque and driven by the grief of witnessing tragedies over their long lives. Dwarves are familiar subterranean, grumbling, burly types with an affinity for crafts. Orcs are terrible, bloodthirsty, and backstabbing, driven by burning hatred; theyâre quite often insane but not really any stupider than other races. You can make very different settings out of the mix, but you canât make any fantasy setting you want without a lot of work.
If you want to know about setting complexity, thereâs none. If you want to know about system complexity, I read many complaints about the crunchiness of BW but find it quite simple. Combatâs a little more complex, but actually shares a number of unusual qualities with HarnMaster. Iâd rate it slightly less complex overall for better unity in how the rules work.
Itâs the same content save for whatâs changed. Itâs not word for word.
Itâs simpler than Hârnmaster, but it also is more precisely written than HM4.0x (which is the edition I got for free)âŚ
The Setting is implied in the rules, rather than explicitly described. HM is explicit setting with some few elements evoked in rules alone. BW is everything evoked, nothing explicitly defined. Itâs generally late medieval/early renaissance, but can easily be used for much more.
I little wary about this âconflictâ theme that propels the game along. Something to do with setting the odds in every encounter/conflict you have.
Does it come across as heavy handed or can it be ignored if needs be?
In respect to increasing a characterâs skills/attributes/etc, how much growth can characters have rules wise?
I think youâve perhaps misunderstood something here. âConflictâ is certainly central to BW, but in kinda the same way that, I donât know, âdungeoncrawlingâ is central to D&D.
Conflict, as a theme, means that your characters want something that will not happen without a struggle, and then they try to make it happen. If thatâs not true of your games, BW is definitely the wrong choice (but if that were the case, you wouldnât need any game at all to have a nice little tea party, would you?) âConflictsâ or âdetailed conflict subsystemsâ or what-have-you can refer to the Duel of Wits, Fight, and Range & Cover systems. They fulfill, basically, the function of combat systems. (The DoW is a social mechanic instead.) They are semi-optional, but I donât really think youâre actually asking about them.
Itâs as heavy-handed as you want it to be.
The story evolves according to the PCâs Beliefs â the GM doesnât pre-write big detailed adventures, but instead lets the story unfold more naturally according to the whole groupâs interactions and motivations. This tends to make the central conflicts in the story more personal to the PCs themselves.
The dice only hit the table when something interesting is going on. You donât roll for stupid crap in BW. You roll the dice when there is an interesting consequence of failure. Otherwise, just role-play.
So, in a sense, yes, the odds are set for every encounter, and it can often be quite tense. But it isnât âheavy-handedâ at all. The odds are set because the story is so relevant to the PCs on a personal level. The players are invested in the story, and are therefore invested in setting the odds before tossing the dice, because the outcome really matters to them.
Skills advance as theyâre used, and can be practiced during downtime. A plethora of new skills can be learned.
Beliefs evolve naturally over time.
Traits are gained and lost over the course of the characterâs career.
Skills can advance to Heroic level, or even Supernatural level as Fate points are spent on them over the course of a long campaign.
If youâre playing a campaign with a long in-game timespan, the character might be a completely different person by the time the campaign ends. You can see a LOT of character advancement and evolution.
And then thereâs also the gamist aspect of players increasing in skill level with the rules strategies. The combat system is easy to grok for a new player, but experienced players are able to find new strategies all the time. The entire game is like this, actually. Very simple to understand when youâre first learning it, yet intricate enough that youâre always finding new ways to approach the mechanics. Kinda like chess. ^^
An extreme example:
http://www.burningwheel.org/forum/showthread.php?10341-Burning-THAC0-Petronax-Revisited
Thanks all
If I hadnât just shelled out ÂŁ59.16 on rpgs Iâd be ordering this.
Think Iâll stick around all the same
BW looks fantastic â I love the art, and the writing style, it positively drips atmosphere and Iâve barely started reading it. It comes across as being a very elegant package. However, I have a few anxieties
Does anyone have a link or something to an example of combat?
Thanks
It does become messy if the combat is more than one on one. Duels work very well, as does, for instance, three vs. three when they pair up for duels. Two on one is possible, but itâs easiest to have extra combatants just add dice of Help. (It cuts down rolls, and if you donât do that the one is at immense disadvantage. Itâs probably realistic but it can be unfun for the one!) Large melees do work, but Iâd save them for when youâre very comfortable with one on one Fight rules.
âIâm playing a death cultist. After we get the information we want from the terrified peasant I want to slit his throat.â This is prime Say Yes material. The peasantâs role in the story is done. The character is acting the way he acts as flavor, and it doesnât make much difference, really. Donât roll anything, just let it happen. âOkay, you see his eyes widen in terror for just a moment as you bury your ritual knife in his throat. So what are you doing now that you know where the guards went with your captured friends?â
âI want to kill the sentry so I can slip into the camp undetected.â The sentry isnât a character and isnât important except as an obstacle. Using the Fight rules is overkill. You might have the player roll Knives (or Stealthy instead; either works!). But the sentry not dying isnât terribly interesting. Hereâs what I might say. âOkay, roll against Ob 3. If you succeed, you slip behind him and slit his throat and youâre free to enter the camp. If you fail the sentry screams before you silence him and the camp goes into high alert.â The manâs dead either way, with zero rolls. If the roll succeeds, the result is the intent: the character can wander the camp freely. If it fails, the character is in trouble.
âI want to kill the Wizard of Thâr in his sleep.â Now the Wizard is someone who matters. A major player in the world, or the story, or players have Beliefs about him. In this case Iâd say declaring the intent is too much. You want more effort and buildup. Itâs appropriate to say, âSorry, thatâs too much for one roll. You donât know how to enter his tower or what arcane defenses he has. You have other work to do.â But after a session or three, when the character(s) have shadowed his daily routine, studied his wards, climbed his walls, out-riddled his guardians, and disarmed his traps and ascended to his bedchamber? A single roll might well be appropriate. (You could also go to Fight, but thatâs not really ideal when one party is asleep.) Now the roll might be something like this. âSucceed, and he never wakes up again. Fail and you miss your clean cut. You inflict a Mark hit but he wakes up, terrified and enraged, with spells spilling from his lips.â And then you might go to Fight⌠or he might teleport away, flee in mundane fashion through his secret passage, summon more guardians, or trap you all in arcane chains and throw you in his dungeon, depending on the story youâre telling.
âI want to stab that murderous bastard Sir Learwyn in the throat!â Sir Learwyn is fully armed and armored. Heâs standing in front of you in the town square, his sword dripping after he cut down your best friend. Heâs a central antagonist. No, itâs not appropriate to roll and kill him; this is what Fight is for! Go to the full rules and see if you can manage to use your skill at arms and desperate rage against his training and his mail. For the record, you certainly can still resolve this with a single roll, as in Bloody Versus. This is just the kind of situation Fight is for. You donât have to use it, as itâs an optional system, but itâs fun and if not now, when?
âI kill him!â should never be cut and dried. If youâre rolling, itâs because the result matters.
The Arena forum right here has lots of Fight examples. They can be a little hard to follow but theyâre numerous. The downside: theyâre also pretty much all from previous editions, so the rules are slightly different.
That was an incredible sum-up.
Yes, thank you for the in-depth reply. However I do still have a few issues
Uh ohâŚHow messy exactly, complicated, or just detailed?
Love this part, it sounds very cool
Similar to my above grievances, this talk of fights being messy and hard to follow, Iâm beginning to wonder if combat is too complicated for me. The trouble is, that I donât want to read any fights from the arena, because if the rules deviates a little, it would just confuse me.
Maybe if I offered any example of what I can handle. I found Harnmaster combat easy enough. How does BW combat compare?
Finally, I have read some reviews and they all say that Character Burning is a big deal/event, with a lot of work up front. I donât mind that at all (weâve literally spent a session and a half creating GURPS characters), but what I donât want, is to invest that sort of time creating NPCs. So how quick and easy is it to create an NPC? For example, a guard sentry, and letâs say, one of the characterâs mentors?
Fight! handles nXn engagements by breaking them down into 1X1 or nX1. Where things can get convoluted are in how this happens. An example: Letâs say that a duo of assassins burst in on the king when he is alone with a sole bodyguard. The assassins both engage against the king, the bodygard engages against one of the assassins, and the king disengages. Everyone rolls their speed, and we proceed down from higest to lowest, with the highest getting their intent, and everyone else only getting their intent as long as it doesnât conflict with the intent of someone who rolled higher than them.
So, letâs say that it goes Bodyguard, king, Assassin 1, Assassin 2. In that case, the bodyguard is now engaged in combat with one of the assassins, and the king and the other assassin are both out of combat (the king flees and the assassin gives chace, but is unable to catch up). Alternately, letâs say it goes Bodyguard, Assasin 1, King, Assassin 2. The result of this is a 2x1 combat, the bodyguard and the king against one of the assassins (the other was outmaneuvered is unable to participate in this exchange). More interestingly, it could go Bodyguard, Assassin 1, Assassin 2, King. Here, we get a 2x2 engagement, which must be broken up according to the preference of whoever rolled the highest; in this case, the bodyguard would have his choice of the assassins, leaving the king to fight off the other.
Sorry Taelor, you lost me there because Iâve not got the book yet
EDIT: Have Notifications been turned off or something, because I donât receive any, and the settings are all correct?
The main reason multi-character combat can get messy is because combat is all pre-scripted. You choose a series of actions each round (such as attacking, defending, even throwing someone or getting them into a lock) and play them out against your opponents.
Taelorâs describing the engagement system which kicks in at the start of each round. You can only fight someone who youâre engaged with. So the king would want to disengage to get out of combat. When you have two characters on each side, though, you have a tangled mess of who wants to engage with who. 1v1 fights are what the game handles best.
Though, Iâve handled multi-fighter combats using helping dice. This somewhat lessens the numbers advantage of one side, but it makes things easier to handle. Only one character on each side actually does combat engagement and scripting; the rest throw in helping dice.
But letâs not make a mountain out of a molehill, either. Weâve had countless fights where piles of foes fight piles of heroes with little trouble. And even though you can only Engage once per Exchange, you can have an unlimited amount of opponents engaged at the same time. You donât auto-disengage with one just because you engage another. Granted, it takes practice to do this smoothly, but doesnât everything.
I have read some reviews and they all say that Character Burning is a big deal/event, with a lot of work up front. I donât mind that at all (weâve literally spent a session and a half creating GURPS characters), but what I donât want, is to invest that sort of time creating NPCs. So how quick and easy is it to create an NPC? For example, a guard sentry, and letâs say, one of the characterâs mentors?