How to burn a city blacksmith?

Burning Wheel Character Burner
1

Hello!

I own BWR and the supplements, and now I bought BWG. I haven’t yet played it, but I have been learning the system enough to GM a game. I made some character concepts and tried to burn them, and then run the characters through the subsystems to see how they roll.

I had this idea of making a four lifepath human blacksmith, just to see how to make it, but I had problems. So, Lifepaths of Man.

The Villager setting has the easy route of Village Born - Apprentice (Villager) - Journeyman (Villager) - Master Craftsman (Villager). This route has 17 skill points and more than enough skills to choose from to make a proper master blacksmith. This is not the problem.

Then I tried to do the same with a city boy. The beginning of the career is just the same as in the Village: City Born - Apprentice (City) - Journeyman (City). After this there’s the Master Craftsman (City), but has requirements other than the Journeyman: “Journeyman and one of the following: Locksmith, Plumber, Engraver, Saddler, Blacksmith, Armorer, Atilliator, Cobbler, Bowyer or Taskmaster”.

Now all of these are lifepaths I can find in the lifepath list, except Blacksmith. There’s of course the skill Blacksmith, but I have understood the requirements to be lifepaths. I can of course make an Armorer and then turn to Master Craftsman, but it’s not completely same as a Blacksmith would be.

Of course, the Journeyman lifepath has the skill Blacksmith, so if that applies to the requirements one could go straight from the Journeyman to Master Craftsman in the City setting, too. However, from the other lifepaths required for the Master Craftsman in the city, it seems that the intention is to have one additional lifepath before Master Craftsman (City). This would mean that a City blacksmith would be City Born - Apprentice - Journeyman - Blacksmith. To me it seems like the Blacksmith lifepath is missing.

I can of course cobble up my own Blacksmith lifepath, but I want to know if I have misunderstood something here? Should there be a Blacksmith lifepath in the City Dweller setting?

In BWR the City Blacksmith path is the same as in the Villager setting, that is, the Master Craftsman requires just the Journeyman path.

Edit: some grammar correction.

Mikko ‘Pare’ Parviainen

2

Nope, the requirements are for LP’s. It’s probably an oversight–I imagine the “Blacksmith” requirement should have been removed, as it appears the LP was. It sounds like your Master Craftsman will have to specialize before he can receive his Master rank.

3

Or be a blacksmith in a village and move to the city or nevermind. Yeah it looks like an oversight.

4

Yeah. Never noticed that. I can’t find a Blacksmith LP in any setting!

5

I always just figured it meant Farrier. It’s always how I’ve run it.

6

Yeah, that’s aggravating. I’d imagine that Born City -> Apprentice -> Journeyman -> Master Craftsman is a great blacksmith.

Funny that you should mention this, I asked my roommate what he’d want to play if he was played a character in the Warhammer world and he said he’d want to play an Imperial Engineer, so I was looking for this a the same time I found this thread.

7

Thanks for the replies, so it wasn’t just me not noticing something.

I think I looked at the Farrier but that was more of a horseshoe maker than I my mental image.

If I ever get to GM this and somebody wants a city blacksmith, which is somewhat unlikely, I think I’ll just whip up a new lifepath for that.

Of course, I don’t think anybody here is going to make a blacksmith if I manage to GM a game.