Earthdawn driving on Burning Wheels

Burning Wheel Modifications, Hacks and Expansions
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First off I am new the Burning Wheel, and this is cross posted from the G+ BW Community.

We are working on adapting ED to BW. ED has a bunch of mechanics that are absolutely setting necessary, and we are going to try to keep as many of those that we can. Here are my ideas so far…

Skip character creation for now, we are porting existing characters, so I will grant some traits, resources, and circles.

First off the characters Discipline (magical totemic classes) Circle (character level) are represented by a Natural Magic SKill [Discipline Name]. This skill provides the umbrella for the rest of the disciplines skills/talents. The Discipline Skill, Sky Raider for example would provide the max skill level for the discipline skills, a means to address training tests, and access to discipline specific powers/new skills.

An ED mechanic that I want to keep is the karma ritual. It serves to generate a pool that the PCs can draw from to power their more powerful talent/skills, and provide the occasional skill or attribute boost by adding a karma die. It looks alot like the BW Fate die. My current thought is to have the karma ritual be a way to generate fate points in addition to the usual ways provided in BW. DOes that seam crazy?

What do you think so far?

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Fate dice are already pretty easy to rack up.

I don’t know Earthdawn well. What makes it a good fit with Burning Wheel?

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Not sure really. We are just looking to get away from a d20 derived system to a dice pool system. It was this or hack a version of Shadowrun that I don’t currently own. BW was one the shelf, and I like the basic mechanics. You can see the Shadowrun roots so it despite its jargon is familiar. I like the idea of social combat being fleshed out, I like the idea of character motivations being rewarded. Also, I just like that the book itself is simple, and not glossy. I am sort of sick of RPG books being poorly edited, poorly organized, poorly indexed, and COVERED with glossy are and fancy page borders.

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I wonder if Torchbearer wouldn’t be a better fit, as far as burning games go.

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You’re using existing characters. Have you thought about what their Beliefs might be?

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What’s involved in the karma ritual?

If it’s just a rote thing you can do without much struggle or description: don’t attach Fate Points to it. That’s not doing anything useful for the artha economy.

If, on the other hand, it’s a good structure for some kind of scene (think about the refresh scenes in Lady Blackbird) – I could see making that a common Fate-point generating activity. Not just for its own sake but as a structure you use to make “drive the game forward with a belief” or “invoke a trait that sends the game in an unforeseen direction” happen more often.

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It could turn into a mess very easily as Burning Wheel is a skill based system and earthdawn is a class (discipline) and level (circle) based system.

It would be a lot of work but I’d have to recommend generating lifepaths for each ED circle of each discipline (or if not each circle at least groupings of circles).

Create talents that reflect the ED discipline abilities and link them into the lifepaths you’ve created for them.

The Burning Wheel Elves, Dwarves and Orcs are very “Tolkin” so you’d have to rewrite them to make them more Earthdawn in addition to the T’skrang, Windlings, Trolls and Obsidiman.

I’d have to say it would be worth it in the long run.

The Karma Ritual shouldn’t be connected to Fate points because in Burning Wheel Fate points are a part of character growth and as such they are not freely awarded and their expenditure is tracked (as what they are spent on will eventually shade shift, provided the requisite persona and deeds are also spent).

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Burning Wheel’s Orc LPs may be a good reference here. They’re tiered pretty hard (because all young Orcs are essentially expendable). Might give a good feeling of “levels,” if that’s what the game needs. (The Mannish LPs, in contrast, let you make crazy things even with 3 LPs.)

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If you are new to BW trying to hack it together with another game, keeping some of its mechanics, is a good way to have everything crash down in shambles. I speak from experience here! BW’s parts interact in some surprising and unpredictable ways that you can easily break. If you want to port your Earthdawn game I’d recommend hewing as closely to BW rules as you can, which means more work.

Porting characters is hard. You can’t really burn them; the lifepaths aren’t right and you’d end up with something slightly wrong anyway. Just making them up, though, has big pitfalls too. I’d likely go with the latter, but it’s missing one of the major aspects of BW.

I don’t understand what you’re doing with Discipline and Circle. Turning Discipline into a skill makes sense. It’ll be a very powerful skill, though, and might end up used for too many things. On the other hand, Sorcery is powerful and the game survives sorcerers. Just be careful not to make too many other skills useless because of Disciplines. But it also sounds like you’re throwing some non-standard uses and meanings of “skill” on this one. Can you explain further?

Another possible model is Spell Songs. Can you break each Discipline down into a number of abilities, each of which is its own skill with its own effects and exponents? That seems like a better course to me, and it also means that for future use you can spread the skills over multiple lifepaths representing higher Circles within the Discipline.

Terminology is going to be hard, though, because Circles is already a stat in BW.

If you want a karma ritual, make one, but I’d make it its own thing. Again, spell songs might be a good model. You roll something (either a karma ritual skill or something else) and based on intent and Ob, get some benefit. An easy way to do it is something like an Ob 1 test, where for each success over the Ob you get one point in a pool that can later be spent to power abilities or as pseudo-artha. I’ll note that both of those are fairly foreign to how BW works, though. I’d really rather not have any such thing. Instead, karma rituals as a linked test to give +1D to a subsequent test seems appropriate and appropriately limited.

Welcome to BW, and I hope this helps!

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So, okay, the circles are like levels of magic, right?

Sounds a bit like Spirit Binding connections or Art Magic school dice.

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Beliefs will get written for sure. That isn’t that big a deal, we already know the characters, and it will helps is determine the next steps in the game.

One of the things I am struggling with is that almost all of EDs mechanics support the genre at every turn. It was FASAs goal to create a world that supported the dungeon-crawl (why are there dungeons infested with evil everywhere). Something like a karma ritual which doesn’t provide story, but supports core genre concepts is tricky. Karma ritual usually happens in camp, and off screen. Its only interesting in that it fuels special abilities later (something that Fate points can also do, correct?).

I am still contemplating Discipline Circle as a “emotional” attribute instead of a skill. That would provide room for the discipline crisis, access to new character levels (which is not important mechanically, but is important genre-wise), and access to new skills and powers, and training.

Porting the characters is odd for sure. I’ve gone through the life path system to come up with traits, and resources. The stats have so far come out very close to a d20-BW conversion doc I found. Skills I am taking from the characters skill/talent list and then tweaking to better fit BW.

Surprisingly spell-casting is pretty easy. Currently casters need three skills to cast safely, and two to if they aren’t concerned about the danger to themselves and the party. Thread weaving slows casting but forcing the character to take time to gather magical energy (the more powerful the spell the longer they need). Sorcery is the actual “targeting” skill. Spell matrices just provide spell slots (skill exponent provides the cap of spell “level”). They were written as a tribute to D&Ds spells per day limit. They are easy to change out of combat, and the caster can cast spells that are not in the matrix if they aren’t concerned about attracting the attention of, uh, critters. I’d be tempted to dump thread-weaving, but thread magic is absolutely bound up in the setting.

Torchbearer has stuff in it I am going to use, we will see how much later.

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I only have the Cliff Notes level of understanding of ED but the ‘support’ it seems to provide is a desirable McGuffin that is an external character improvement (a better tool). That translates in BW to Belief + colour.

I am still contemplating Discipline Circle as a “emotional” attribute instead of a skill. That would provide room for the discipline crisis, access to new character levels (which is not important mechanically, but is important genre-wise), and access to new skills and powers, and training.

What is the ‘genre’ you are talking about here? How are character levels critical to this, in your mind? How do you see an EA enabling that more?

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Yeah, but they’re foundational in Burning Wheel play. I’m trying to figure out if you mostly just want a die pool mechanic (which is cool) or if you want to port the setting to Burning Wheel. If it’s the former, I’m not sure that I have any help to provide as I know Burning Wheel but not ED. The dice resolution will do its thing without my help. If it’s the latter, then the mechanical support for every genre nuance in ED can probably just be baked into a few unique lifepaths, but messing with the artha currency is like performing open heart surgery, possibly fruitful but fraught. We’ve ported Dark Sun and Tribe 8 to Burning Wheel and didn’t touch artha, but it really depends on what you want to get out of it.

One of the things I am struggling with is that almost all of EDs mechanics support the genre at every turn.

The way I would approach it is to ask what are the behaviors I want the characters to engage in at the table during play? Where do I want them to focus their attention and spend their resources? A ritual done at camp that results in nothing more than charging up points for cool powers seems like it could be handled by just using sorcery and letting the ritual be a recovery for tax.

Karma ritual usually happens in camp, and off screen. Its only interesting in that it fuels special abilities later (something that Fate points can also do, correct?).
What does the Karma ritual mean to the characters in the game world?

I am still contemplating Discipline Circle as a “emotional” attribute instead of a skill. That would provide room for the discipline crisis, access to new character levels (which is not important mechanically, but is important genre-wise), and access to new skills and powers, and training.

Cool, so look at Faith. You have to have a trait, Faithful, to have access to it. One Belief has to be dedicated to it. It is tested through play and goes up as the character uses it. If it reaches 10, the character transcends and leaves the game.

I’d be tempted to dump thread-weaving, but thread magic is absolutely bound up in the setting.

Well, BW has casting times and a mechanic for working carefully and patiently. Thread-weaving looks like it wouldn’t be hard to keep.

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In Earthdawn character levels provide access to, but not ratings in a given skill. Its a skills based system nested inside of character levels. Characters must have x skills at y rating before they can test to the new level which then provides access to learning new powers, and such. The character class (discipline) level (circle in ED speak) is used for what are called half-magic tests. Basically its a blank check wise/basic craft skill for anything related to the characters discipline. Disciplines are totemic in nature. The characters are all magical heroes, and by behaving in a specific way they are granted access to their various special abilities and the like. If they fail to act in this way then they can suffer a discipline crisis. Emotional stats just seamed like they could be used to represent discipline circle. Advancing circle also requires a some testing, and a relationship with a senior discipline member. The emotional stat just seamed like it would be a good way to encompass all that.

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See, here’s where I’d deviate from ED and just use obstacles for different spell like effects. As the emotional attribute rises things become more achievable, but if you spend artha and get help and fork skills in, you may be able to buy a big time effect when it’s really important. The question then becomes what’s so important?

The character class (discipline) level (circle in ED speak) is used for what are called half-magic tests. Basically its a blank check wise/basic craft skill for anything related to the characters discipline.

Sounds like a bunch of specific Wises to me.

If they fail to act in this way then they can suffer a discipline crisis. Emotional stats just seamed like they could be used to represent discipline circle.
Yes, I’d look at Dwarven Greed and the “She’s Magnificent…” rule.

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Repeated: What is the ‘genre’ you are talking about here? How are character levels critical to this, in your mind? Because in all that I don’t see a ‘genre’ explained nor why the levels are critical to said genre.

Keep in mind that translations are often NOT going to duplicate mechanics strictly. Because ‘system matters’.

An example from my translation of from Earthdawn’s cousin, Shadowrun. Shadowrun has “Totems” for shamans. They are quite thin and very mechanical (even more-so in 4E/5E), you get a line or two description of what the shaman’s motivations are (an open invitation to stereotyping your PC), a die bonus of for a couple things and a list of spirits (denoted by domain) the PC can summon. Well blah. In Burning Shadowrun the totem is a character, an NPC and sometimes cohort (run by the player if no conflict at the time), rather than just a archetype and has their own individual set of BITs that are crafted to play off of, and thus often in conflict with the PC’s. This is only one of many metaphysics tweaks that were in order (and IMO covering weak spots within Shadowrun’s metaphysics).

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You lost me there. Are you suggesting that I use the emotional attribute to do casting or to achieve nearly any effect that might be covered by the characters discipline? Regardless you’ve given me the idea of using emotional magic to test to open new skills individually (also a step further away from character levels).

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Hmm… not sure how to respond to your first question w/o doing a long, in depth write up of the whole ED design philosophy which I don’t really want to do, sorry (I really am). I will ponder an answer though.

I agree that translations are not duplications. The key here is to emulate/honor the spirit of ED using BWs mechanics. SR abstracted the totems to much for me, our table played up the totemic descriptions (Dogs loyalty, Rats skulking, etc) pretty heavily, and I would say that disciplines deserve the same weight. If your a Thief that seeks combat (or a warrior that avoids it) all the time thats a problem, and eventually your magically/totemically granted skills will suffer or vanish altogether until you perform the correct rituals and behave in a manner fitting your Discipline.

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BTW this is all great. The discussion is forcing me to look at the BW rules, my goals in game, and ED in ways I wouldn’t have come up with on my own. Thanks all.

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If you’re going the Emotional Attributes way:

Note that Lost Faith is a thing that exists.

Also, Blossoms had an emotional attribute combo: Honor + Shame. They’re inseparable (and often rise together, actually) but can be out of balance.

If it’s a thing that ebbs and flows, look at how Mouse Guard does Nature, maybe?