Circles as BWG secret weapon

Burning Wheel Subsystem Advice and Guidance
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I am running the Enemy Within but setting it in the historic setting of the Holy Roman Empire in 1618.

As much as I love TEW as a campaign. There are quite a few times where the “plot” is railroady or it needs for people to find and follow a particular thread. For example the players have gotten into Bad Urach (which is standing in for Grissenwald) and they are looking for Etelka Hertzen. Instead of being swept up into thing there, they circled up a local poacher and got in with him to find out where Etelka’s folly is situated. Magic.

Circles pulls the game up from the minutiae of a published scenario and gives the players so much more “authorship” in what is going on. It is awesome.

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Yeah I love circles. I almost always run failed circles roles as ‘you find them and they help you with the current task, but after this they’ll work against you’. It’s a great way for the PCs to get out of their current predicament, by producing opposition and complications for the future.

I also love the ‘hey i would know a guy who could do x for us’ as a way for the PCs to be creative with their backstories.

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