I went through most of the rulebook and I need help in understanding the whole cooperative aspect of the game. My concern is with player scenes. I get the color scenes - players just make stuff up and unless someone objects - it happened. What about other scenes? Are players simply reacting to GM scenes or just making stuff up? Does it work like this:
Say we play infiltration and players want to find Vaylen worms that I did not mention at all in GM scenes. Can a player then use the color scene to setup a situation - a spacecraft lands on a distant asteroid. Some miners are hulled and worms stored in the depths of the mine. Then this player uses his building scene to make an investigation? Say - the comm with the asteroid is failing - I take a ship and fly there to investigate?
What is the GM role in players’ scenes then? Or I simply misunderstood how this game is played?
Another question: I am intending to run two players game - starting with Omac demo - should players run more than one character or perhaps have more than one of each color, interstitial and building/conflict scenes? Or maybe I shouldn’t worry and leave things as they are?
Thanks!
Burning Empires is a superadvanced roleplaying game. It expects you to bring to the table all of your skills and knowledge from years of gaming. It then wants you to channel those skills and knowledge into a slightly different framework. So you’re still playing a roleplaying game – complete with the roleplaying, table chatter and banter – but you’re doing it in structured chunks while under pressure from limited resources.
And don’t ever have a player run more than one character in BE.
Luke, thanks for explaining.
Still I am at loss with the specific issue - can players just make stuff up like I mentioned in my first post? Or it works like this - GM sets up a situation, players react, GM reacts to their reaction? It boils down to the problem if players’ color scenes can be used to bring new situation to the world - as my example with mining asteroid being taken by the Vaylen?
Secondly, do I need to adjust number of scenes based on the fact that I will have only two players?
Thanks!
P.S. I found Prometheus chained podcast and campaign notes - it is a fantastic resource. I love the way they are playing and I started to see how this game is played.
Hey there, this is Jon, the GM of the Prometheus Chained game. Thanks for the compliment on the Prometheus Chained podcast. That game was a huge amount of fun. I hope you can hear us through the really awful audio, I seriously did not know what I was doing when we were recording back then. If you have any questions on the campaign go ahead and ask!
Glendower - your podcasts are making my day! I am sitting at work in front of the microscope and giggling madly at the Haansmann vs Ivo negotiation (I am now at the second podcast). I do not mind the quality - it feels very much as sessions we have - it is very entertaining.
I was a bit overwhelmed by this fancy Indie stuff but after reading the book and now listening to Glendower’s podcasts I am falling in love with the game.
Luke - if you are asking about the second question - adjusting game for two players - in normal RPGs we do less fighting and much more roleplaying (I guess more color and interstitials in BE terms). I guess I will try to play it by the book and see how it feels - due to the time constraints we have usually 3h sessions. I was a bit afraid that we will go through our scenes too quickly for one maneuver and not quick enough to do two maneuvers. On the other hand, I can be very talkative so most likely my worries are unfounded.