How Best to Handle a Long Skill List or New Players?

Burning Wheel First Reading
1

I haven’t played an RPG with a long, set skill list for a long time.

I ran Burning Wheel (The Sword) for some friends. I bumped into something that confused me that it took me some time to sort out.

There are so many skills in BW! And they are each so specific. And they are not all on the character sheet (there are too many!) And if one doesn’t have the skill, one is supposed to go to the Root.

But if you don’t know a skill exists, you… um… don’t know it exists. I mean, if a Test comes up, and you need a skill that isn’t on the character sheet, you need to figure out which skill would apply. And then from that determine the Root. But it seems like digging through the skills would take time. Maybe lots of time? It certainly confused me during that session of The Sword. We all sat there digging through the skill descriptions to find the most applicable skill.

Is there a method people have found to grasp the skill list more quickly? Do the skills kind of drill into the head with time?

I’m not complaining. I’m admitting that I’m kind of thick in this regard. How do people handle the long list combined with the find-the-right-skill aspect of the game?

Thanks!

2

You get used to the skills with time. There are also definitely some you see a lot and some that are very rare. Persuasion? Every game. Painting? Not so much.

It’s also extremely handy to have the Master List of Skills and Traits, available by logging into the Character Burner (first option). You can at least try searching for names of skills that seem likely.

Mostly, don’t sweat it too much. If someone has a skill that seems applicable, go with it. There are lots of similar and overlapping skills. If they don’t, you can guess at or make up an applicable skill, decide on a root, and have them roll that. At the end of the session you can do all the bookkeeping and reconcile it with the skills in the books.

3

Often, if you follow Wayfarer’s instructions to the letter, things will work out.

If not, just do whatever makes narattive sense.

Say a character is a carpenter. This carpenter is a skilled craftsman. It wouldn’t make sense for him to not be able to mark/brand his own goods as his, even if he doesn’t have a skill called “Good-Branding.” So, when he brands his chairs, group it under carpentery. Done.

4

But it seems like digging through the skills would take time. Maybe lots of time? It certainly confused me during that session of The Sword. We all sat there digging through the skill descriptions to find the most applicable skill.

From what I understand, it is expected that the book will be used often during games as reference (until extreme levels of system mastery are achieved) and so groups should expect to stop and look up rules. This is different from how, say free-RP dungeons and dragons is often done with the DM making up rules on the fly or hand-waving to keep the games narrative momentum moving. In BW it is no shame to stop and find the right skill.

5

For my first few sessions I prepared list of about fifty skills that could be used by average adventurer. So Firebuilding, Observation, Inconspicious etc. I skipped those that are very rare or situational (Astrology etc). It will make thing a lot easier. Also good to know skills involved in DoW, R&C and healing.

6

My first few games were hamstringed by trying to use all of the optional rules instead of focusing on the core rules (The Hub; pgs 1 - 74) and character burning, I suggest a human only approach for the first few games (without using Faith or Sorcery)
You get a much better handle on the rules as well as the commonly used skills that way (no matter what kinds of prior gaming experiance you may have had).

7

I know I’ve written about this issue in the past, but I just spent a fruitless 30 minutes looking for the old thread. C’est la vie!

There’s been some good advice already, to which I’ll add:

  1. Yes, the skills definitely become part of your mental Burning Wheel library over time. That doesn’t mean you won’t surprise yourself with some application you hadn’t considered before. It happens to us at BWHQ from time to time.

  2. As the GM, don’t stress about calling for the wrong skill. The game’s not going to break if you do. Probably the worst that will happen is that you’ll kick yourself after the session is over for not calling for that other skill instead.

  3. As your group plays, you will naturally develop a “hand” of skills that are your regular go-tos. In an Earthsea-inspired game that we played forever ago, some of the most frequently tested (and important!) skills were: Blacksmith, Mending, Carpentry, Boatwright, Knots, Rigging, Fishing, Cloth Dyeing, Dye Manufacture, Navigation, Pilot, Spirit Binding, Weaving and Rumor-wise. We chose to make conflicts about those things important through the campaign we established, the characters we created and the beliefs and instincts we selected.

  4. As a GM, if I still have time after thinking about the beliefs of the PCs and important NPCs and considering the situation, I’ll flip through the skills section of the book and read the obstacles. It’s often great inspiration for situations/problems in the game.

  5. Even at BWHQ, we refer to the book often during play. Our table culture is such that when a player is interacting with the GM and it seems like a test is imminent, a player that is not involved with the scene will find the skill or skills that seem appropriate and give the page number to the GM (or pass the book over).

8

Hi all!

Thanks for the terrific replies!

Also, I read through the entire skill list and descriptions last night. As noted, it’s a lot less daunting once you realize you won’t be using most of them if you limit the kind of setting. (Human-centric, for example, as I plan on doing.)

Some of the stress was coming from the folks I’d like to play with this weekend: I’ve only GM’d BW once (The Sword). My fiancé has never RP’d. One guy has done lots of D&D. His wife had her first run at RPing with her husband a few weeks ago on D&D5. So the table culture is going to take some time. (I’ll probably go find a copy of BWG and gift it to the husband. He’ll love it… and there will be two copies on the table.)

Thor, this might be best in a new thread… but I’m fascinated by this from your post:

“In an Earthsea-inspired game that we played forever ago, some of the most frequently tested (and important!) skills were: Blacksmith, Mending, Carpentry, Boatwright, Knots, Rigging, Fishing, Cloth Dyeing, Dye Manufacture, Navigation, Pilot, Spirit Binding, Weaving and Rumor-wise. We chose to make conflicts about those things important through the campaign we established, the characters we created and the beliefs and instincts we selected.”

I’m fascinated by this. While reading the skill-list I realized how mundane so many of the skills in BW are. I also knew that there must be some amazing way to use them… that I frankly wasn’t seeing as clearly as I wanted while reading them.

Could you give me some examples of how you made “conflicts about those things important”? Or perhaps there is a thread at hand?

Thanks so much.

As I side note (for Thor, for Luke, and anyone else who has had a hand in the game): I’ve been picking up BW on and off for about seven years now. I had BWR, bought the supplements, really enjoyed the BITS… but never before saw all the gears of the entire system before as clearly as I’m seeing them now.

(I think the big breakthrough, after hearing about friends complaining about failing in BW all the time) is the realization that failing is part of the implicit ethos of the game. Going for bad odds means handing the GM opportunity to drive you into deeper narrative trouble which is also the source of skill improvement. Of course the characters fail a lot. Because it’s not about stop-in-your-tracks failure, but about the narrative spiraling into worse situations. Which is awesome.)

The whole thing is so smart.

Just wanted to say that.

9

10

Hey CK, part of the trick is not to focus on the skill when you call for a test as much as the failure condition. If failure is interesting, the test matters. So, failure at fishing? Maybe you fail to impress your betrothed father that the sea is with you. The player may just have been thinking fishing would save some resource tax, and then whammo. It matters now.

Of course, sometimes a fish is just a fish.

(I think the big breakthrough, after hearing about friends complaining about failing in BW all the time) is the realization that failing is part of the implicit ethos of the game. Going for bad odds means handing the GM opportunity to drive you into deeper narrative trouble which is also the source of skill improvement. Of course the characters fail a lot. Because it’s not about stop-in-your-tracks failure, but about the narrative spiraling into worse situations. Which is awesome.)

The whole thing is so smart.

Just wanted to say that.

That’s why I’m a big advocate for taking a moment to explicitly state what failure means before the player decides to roll those dice. It makes them complicit in their own pathos. :wink:

11

Yeah, internalizing that failure means complications rather than a brick wall really changes everything.

Anyway, I’d love to give some examples from that game, but we last played it in 2007 and our documentation of it is fragmentary. You can get a feel for it by poking at some of the topics we created for it on the Wiki, but I don’t know how helpful that will be: http://www.burningwheel.org/wiki/index.php?title=Tales_of_Ya-Gahn

I’m happy to jump into a new thread about making conflicts about mundane things important if you like. The short version is this: Players tend to think of the skills on their sheets as the proverbial hammer. They will naturally try to solve their problems with those skills. Kublai could tell you a thing or two about using the Ditch Digging skill for instance.

12

James, yes. That’s one of the things that became clear to me reading the Skills last night. Every once in a while I would stop and daydream an example of a skill in use in play. And I’d think, “Wait a minute. There’s no interesting failure from this.” And then I would pause and then and think to myself, “Which means there’s no a conflict, dumbass! if there’s nothing at stake don’t roll the dice! Just say, ‘You do that and move on!’”

It’s not like that’s a new thought in my head. I’ve been playing with that thinking in one way or another for fifteen years now and have read through BW serval times and got the idea. But it’s interesting, picking up a skill heavy game and having to train myself, again and again, on this skill-heavy game, to really drill this into my head. There skills are not there to see if the character can do the skill. The skills are there to resolve conflicts with that skill.

13

Skills can also be important to inflect color properly. If your expert fisherman wants to go fishing and nothing’s at stake, he goes fishing and brings back a delicious dinner. No dice are rolled. If your effete noble who’s never done a day’s work in his life wants to go fishing, it’s perfectly reasonable to have him fail miserably and utterly and get blisters on his delicate hands. (Or, more reasonably, I’d tell the player that going fishing as a rank amateur isn’t going to go well, not that it’s important.) Also no dice are rolled and there’s no real consequence. It’s only when either game resources or major fiction is on the line that you roll, but that doesn’t mean Say Yes means you necessarily succeed.

Peasant games can be awesome. All those piles and piles of peasant and craftsman skills? They matter. Farming is life or death; it’s also whether you can give your daughter an impressive dowry that will get the blacksmith to consent to a match with his son. Skill with dye can make you stand out, which can make everyone come to you, which can effectively make you the speaker for the village. The priest of a tiny town may not have encyclopedic knowledge of scripture, but his Flock-Wise means he knows all the sins, where the bones are buried, and when to step in and keep little things from getting worse.

14

That just makes it more fun when the rarely used skills come out. I’ve run games where a passed Sewing test made the difference between the players achieving their goals and failing in them

15

An excellent point!

16

One thing I used to do, when I was still getting used to the BW skill list, was ask myself “now who (in terms of lifepaths or social roles) has to deal with this sort of thing, or something close to it, regularly?” And then I’d quick zip over to the Lifepaths chapter and skim for an approximate lifepath, and look at their skills list. Like, players are wondering what skill to use for stuff on a ship? Let me look at the Seafaring setting, and what skills those lifepaths imply will be needed at sea. Forestry stuff? Peasant hunters, trappers, and the like. (This was how I remembered that Firebuilding was a skill.)

Obviously this requires passing familiarity with the lifepath list, so it may not be that useful for you, but it sure helped me!

-B

17

That’s exactly the kind of thing I was thinking about. It seems kind of time intensive. But yes.

18

Just make sure everyone has a glass of scotch and we won’t complain about the wait :wink:

Actually, picking the right skill and getting the failure nailed down are part of the fun I have as a BW player. It’s not a race.

19

I’d be very hesitant to dish out failure like that, even in situations where there’s nothing really at stake.
I think my preference would be to let the player decide. Give them the chance to narrate their own failure:
“Yeah, I go fishing, but I’m an effete noble who’s never done a day’s work in my life, remember? I sure as heck don’t catch anything. I get blisters all over my hands and then I whine incessantly about how much they hurt all throughout dinner.” Could even be some trait artha in there for them.
And if they instead say “Yeah, I catch a whole ton of fish, it’s awesome!” then whatever, no worries, there was nothing at stake anyway so it doesn’t matter.

Bit of a tangent, I guess. I don’t have anything to add to the main discussion except that flipping through the skill section to look up particular skills is a great way to notice other skills en route and thereby learn what else is in the book. In practice, my experience has been that it doesn’t take very long to get the hang of it.
And often enough, the player will have a skill in mind already, which they’ll likely speak up about.