Speaking of balance:
In the very first session of my campaign I let my two players’ 3LP characters face 5 wolves… =)
I think I used stats I found on the wiki or here on the forum.
It went well! The wolves did not work together as a group, and when one was seriously injured they started fleeing, our heroes killed most of them. But I do believe my boyfriend was a little shaken afterwards. He did not think they would have survived the encounter, had the wolves been a little more experienced. =)
Although we’ve mentioned that GM’s don’t spend much time planning adventures, etc–it’s mostly a reaction to what the PC’s do and the dice rolls–this is a place where GM skill really does come into play. A good GM has to always be alert for what the Intent truly is. It’s rarely just “pick the lock”, although that might be what the player says. A GM has to realize that they really want to get into the building undetected–which vastly changes the possibilities of a failed roll. So instead of a failed roll meaning “you can’t pick the lock” it might mean “you pick the lock, but your clumsy attempts attract the attention of a town guardsman, who comes around the corner to investigate just as you’re tucking your picks away and the door is swinging open. What do you do?”
While that is true the game states that intents are explicitly stated. If you don’t know the true intent then you ask.
True. But I think if a player says “my intent is to pick the lock” the GM has to look at that and realize that maybe there’s more to it than that, rather than just say “OK, test Lockpick, Ob2.”
How I plan my encounters:
1.) I pull out the PC’s sheets for reference and refresh myself on their Beliefs and what happened in the previous session.
2.) Open up FreeMind (free mind mapping software) to start brainstorming.
3.) Imagine the implied end results of a particular Belief, and then dream up potential roadblocks between here and there. Who or what would oppose this character in achieving his Beliefs?
4.) For each roadblock, I jot down an appropriate Test. I guess this is where “game balance” comes into play, but I consider the fiction first and foremost. Sometimes I make it Ob 6+ because it opens up more avenues for Failure and will drive the story in an interesting direction. Or the PC’s will burn a bunch of Artha and do something seriously badass to overcome that high obstacle. Either way it’s cool 
5.) Create sub-nodes for each roadblock with different ideas for Failure (twists & complications just like Mouse Guard). I’m not trying to pre-plan here, just priming my imagination so I don’t have to come up with something on the spot.
6.) Look over my branches and decide if I need to burn up any characters or print out some stock NPCs for opposition.
In the end, I usually have a little mind map with 4 or 5 main branches, and 1 or 2 sub-branches spawning out from Failures.
The rest is just winging it and following the players’ lead.
How do I not kill a party with a combat system so fatal?
It really isn’t. Any wound beyond Superficial, and you’re out of the fight. I’ve played quite a few games and the only outright fatality was caused by a crossbow and rolling a B16 wound if I recall correctly. That was early on in my group’s play experience, and we all learned a valuable lesson not to fuck around with crossbows.
1) There is no such thing as balance because Artha should make up for any short comings or the players should just plain know better.
The system makes no assumptions about balance. Different stocks aren’t equally powerful. Different lifepaths aren’t going to result in equal characters. Some choices are mechanically better. You can milk some of that for artha, but that’s not a source of balance. If you want a balanced party you have to get the players to make one. On the other hand, BW is much less balance-reliant than, say, D&D. It’s driven by Beliefs, not stats, and everyone has the same number of those. A knight may be great in a Fihjt, but when you’re tromping through the wilderness the lowly woodcutter may have the survival skills you need. It’s in part the GM’s job to figure out what different characters excel at and give everyone a chance to shine—but that’s part of many games.
2) NPCs should be based on the Rogue’s Gallery in the back of the book, in accordance with their profession and expertise.
Maybe if you need full stats. Most NPCs can be made on the fly. B2 for things they’re awful at, B3 for what they’re okay at, B4 for what they’re pretty good at, B5 if they’re quite skilled. Roughly that. You’ll get a sense of numbers to make up in play. Or you can do it like me and make NPCs act as obstacles. A slightly obstructive bureaucrat might be Ob 2 on social checks, a run of the mill town guard Ob 3 for combat, the sentries at a camp Ob 4 for sneaking, the Orc champion Ob 5 for any way of circumventing him, and so on.
3) It’s up to the player to not get themselves killed, unless they’re willing to die for their BITs; in which case, all the more powerful the story.
Again, not quite. Of course it’s up to players not to make suicidal choices, but it’s up to the GM not to make death a possibility unless it should be. Failure consequences are whatever you want; don’t make it death unless it’s necessary. Fight will rarely result in kills; don’t throw overwhelming opposition with B6 Power and weapon skills unless there’s compelling reason to do so. In the course of normal BW there won’t be constant Fights and most Fights cannot be lethal. Enemies can execute PCs if they’ve won, but you don’t have to make them do so. Make a story in which they wouldn’t, then don’t.
4) It’s up to the GM to figure ways to keep the story moving, even if the characters keep failing. Come up with non-dead ends they can follow, even as they get frustrated that they can’t pick locks, convert people to their cause, take on an army, or bake a pretty cake.
Well covered already. It’s critical that failure is a failure of intent, not necessarily of task. I in particular like to tailor it to the characters’ skills and lifepaths. You don’t want to pick a lock, you want to pick a lock for a reason. To get into the castle, yes, but you don’t just want that, you want to get in for a reason. BW rolls cover much more than rolls in other games.
“I want to defeat these Orcs so I can rescue the princess!”
For a peasant with B2 Sword, I might say that failure means taking serious injuries in the course of victory (or defeat). For a knight with B5 Sword, failure might mean dispatching the Orcs too slowly to reach the princess before she is taken to another castle.
For Persuasion, you may be convincing someone that the king has fallen to evil so that he will send his soldiers to join the rebellion. A success gets you that intent. A failure might still convince him to do so, but he’s not willing to fully fund and equip them. Now you have another problem on your hands—logistics. Or he says sure and then secretly reports you to the king. Or he’s willing, but only if you can get better evidence of the king’s evil.
5) Stop whining you number crunching, D&D playing, computer loving, n00b, and really give it an actual chance before you complain.
Giving it a chance will set some of your concerns to rest, but it’s good to figure this out in advance because BW is easy to screw up out of the gate and the less you do that the better the game will be.
One major point that I think needs repeating: intent and task in BW cover much bigger swaths of activity (and that’s part of Let It Ride). If you want to assassinate someone, you could roll Stealthy to sneak to their bedroom, or you could use Lockpick to break in, or you could use Intimidation and bribes to cow the guards into letting you do your bloody work. As soon as the GM agrees to the intent and task, you roll and that’s it. That lockpick roll will be enough to get past all obstacles and kill the target because that’s the intent. A failure roll could well mean you pick the lock but the guards are on alert—the failure isn’t always exactly linked to the task, although it should be most of the time. If you want to focus on an activity, make the players break down the intent into sub-intents. (That’s part of saying no, actually, and why you can’t use Persuasion to get a king to give you his throne. That’s material for a campaign, not a single roll—unless you’re okay with a single roll, in which case go ahead!)
My take on fights:
It’s better if you don’t use the Fight mechanics until you feel used to the game. For combat, just ask for simple tests as usual. (I would prefer not to use bloody versus tests at first, except when is a matter of life and death.) If a spider attacks a character in the woods, a simple Speed test will do. If the player fails the test, the character is trapped in the spider’s net. Test Power to break free. If he fails, the spider drags him to itself, trying to stab his fangs on him. He tries to draw his sword. Agility or Sword test. Fail? He loses the sword, which is left behind. When the spider catches him, ask for a versus test. If the spider wins, give the character a wound or something. And then the fights goes on or he tries to persuade the spider not to feed on him or whatever. A good oportunity to learn the Duel of Wits mechanics.
Of course, that’s when you want to zoom in on the details of a fight. Usually, you can do a lot of fights with a simple versus test, just one test for fight. If the player wins, the enemy is dead or run away or whatever. If the enemy wins, something awful for the character but exciting for you and for the other players happens: the character is taken prisoner, or seriously injured, even presumed dead, maybe he wins the fight and kills his enemy but his NPC teammates think it was an unnecessary act of cruelty (1D infamous reputation or something), etc.
The Fight sub-system is only for the Big Fight, a fight for the life of your friends, for the destiny of a kingdom, a fight of conviction and belief. And of course the character could die! That’s the price of it. Are you willing to fight for what you believe? Are you willing to give your own life for this? This can’t be simulated. Must be a real choice for the player. And then one must face the consequences of his own actions. (The game makes sure you have real consequences for the decisions you make.)
slightly off topic, but yarnperson, that is one great whopper of a subject line - good marketing to get us to look at this thread. i have faith you’ll find a way to get the game to work for you. as evident from all the above responses, it took us all some serious perseverance. a lot of frustrating sessions, failed starts, and trial and error until we got it… but then… isn’t everything worth doing a bit of a challenge?
My experience is the opposite: In other RPGs, the prison is often a plot device for the GM to tell his story. One GM in particular likes to start off his campaigns by having us imprisoned, not letting us escape until he feels sure that we will follow his plot / hunt down the bad guy / save the child / whatever.
“But I’m the rogue. I want to pick the lock.”
“You have nothing to pick it with.”
“Maybe I have a nail hidden in my shoe.”
“No, they searched you before you were put in the cell.”
“You said we have a barrel of water. I scratch it until I get a chip of wood.”
“No use, and even if you did have a tool, there’s a magical barrier on the door.”
Etc.
My wish for any game, not just BW, is that if the GM has a story to tell, and if that story can only have one or two possible outcomes, then please just tell the story and then start the game.
The difference to Burning Wheel is the player’s level of choice. We’re not in jail because the GM has decided to keep us from messing up his story. We’re there because it was a logical result of a story we’re developing together.
“If you fail the sneak test, you will get arrested and you must spend three weeks in jail.”
“Well, I choose to take the chance anyway. And if I do end up in jail, maybe I can do a circles test to meet a person there who knows about…”
I have some thoughts about this one as well…
What if the “say yes” guideline is not there to force the GM to let the players have what they want, but rather to challenge the GM about what stories can be told?
And does it really sound ridiculous for a human farmer to end up as the king of an elven kingdom? It is not ‘realistic’ in the ‘real world’ sense, but in the tradition of epic legends and traditional fairy tales I think it fits right in. Stardust is a great example. Thumbelina. Puss in boots. Of course, the path for a 2LP human will be long and windy.
“I walk up to the elven king and ask him for his kingdom.”
“You never mentioned that you wanted it before.”
“Well, I do now.”
“You do understand that it is a big thing you’re asking? First you should change one of your beliefs.” (readjusting GM brain while player is pondering)
“Done.”
“OK, so now the story of your character is no longer about the quest to kill the dreaded pirate Burningbeard and becoming a pirate captain. Instead you turn towards becoming the king of an enchanted elven realm.”
“Can I talk to him now?”
“You must gain an audience with him, and you know that the only way for a human to speak with any noble elf in Goldenwoods is to become an Elf Friend.”
“How do I do that?”
“You don’t know. How do you go about finding it out?”
As a GM you can make the path to the stated goal as long as you want, and still have said ‘yes’. And quite honestly, it’s a lot of fun to see what people come up with. It is fun to create NPCs and their agendas in response to PC choices. I don’t know why all rpg systems don’t encourage GMs to think this way.
BTW, I also agree with the others that as a GM you should be comfortable with saying ‘no’.
Well, if you want to love the system, you really need to unlearn all the concept you know about RPG’s in general. BW is a very different system from any other games i played before. Sorry if i am cranky on this but, instead of giving people advice about what it should be and how it should be written, just take your time, do not make any conclusion yet, run “the sword” and keep reading advice on this forum. I start my first campain 2 years ago and i am still on the learning curve. Believe me, it takes time! This game is not about “Maths and Encounters”! It is someting else, you just have to open your mind!
Saw through that, eh? You’re too smart for me.
Thanks again for all pointers, advice, and anecdotes. Most are quite useful. Though, people keep advising me on something that I felt was obvious on the first read through. Something, that I suppose is my fault for not explaining what exactally I was looking for.
I’ve used the word “Balance” which… I’m starting to feel is a dirty word around here. The thing that has been posed to me by several people is how characters are not balanced when compared to other characters. It’s rare to find a game where this is true, but no more so than this game. A village idiot is obviously not going to be able to stand up to a squire in a fight.
If the players want to make a villager, mining engineer, apiarist, clothes dyer, name him Steve, and ask for a trait of unusually square head, that’s his bag. As long as Steve has invested interest in what’s going on, and wants to help in anyway he can, I see no reason that I should stop him, even when there’s a Barron, a sword singer, and an Axe Bearer in the group.
My questions on balance are more about, what players should roughly be able to handle. I’ve luckily got some good guidelines for this, but I’ll take you on a little trip I took today in my free time, if you choose to come with me. Warning, this is not for the weak of heart.
A question I constantly asked is, “How do I NOT kill my party?”
The answer I got was, “That’s really hard to do.”
So I came up with some numbers.
Character 1: 3LP Squire
Relevant stats and gear:
Sword, Light Mail, Shield, B5 Pow, B5 Sword, MW 10
NPC 1: Orc capitain
Run of the mill Spear, Low quality Leathers, B5 Pow, B5 Spear, MW 10
Bloody Vs.
Squire has 4D defense, and 6D attack. Moves one die over for 5 and 5.
Orc, has 2D defense and 7D attack. Moves two dice over for 4 and 5.
Squire Damage = I=4, M=8, S=12, add 2
Orc Damage = I=3, M=7, S=10, add 2
Chance the orc misses: 62.3%
Chance of Squire getting hit for I: 20.51%
Chance of Squire getting hit for M: 16.11%
Chance of Squire getting hit for S(Instant kill): 1.07%
Enter a new challenger, (Actually player character in group)
Peasent, Banner man, Court Jester
Superior Throwing Knives, Reinforced leather, B3 Pow, B4 Knives, MW B9
Fool has 2D defense and 5D Attack, Moves one over to have 3 and 4
Chance the orc misses, 36.34%
Chance for Fool getting hit for I: 27.34%
Chance for Fool getting hit for M(Knocked Out): 32.82%
Chance for Fool getting hit for S(Instant Kill): 3.52%
Yeah… the math is looking that way. Thanks for the input.
To keep a party alive…
[ol][li]Avoid Fight[]Avoid fight[]Avoid fight[]If you can’t avoid fight[ul][]make certain your maximum NPC/Monster S damage is below the lowest PC Mortal Wound threshold.[]Don’t coup de grace[]Don’t use the +1 IMS option of Great Strike (use the increased WVA, instead)[]Don’t use extra successes to increase NPC hits if you can move the hit location instead.[]Don’t roll enough dice to shift to S damage if it’s higher than the target’s Mo Threshold[]Give the bad-guys poor quality weapons with increased Add and/or reduced power to reduce the chances of huge hits.[]Apply the Arrgh! My Arm! optional rule (BWG 489) to NPCs[*]Give the bad guys a stat at 2 - the go out of action on two light or a midi [/ul][/ol]
[/li]
But, if defeated, either by surrender, failed steel, or unconsciousness, take something ELSE away. Give them scars or take their favorite toy away.
Oh, and a high skill guys with a knife that has a Superior damage in the Midi wound is a great way to quickly KO PC’s. And to cause Steel tests.
Guest playering for a friend, I demonstrated that a knife is a very powerful weapon, at least with the steel rules.
It’s not your job to keep the characters alive.
And… It’s not their job to be together. You can put every character against each other. It’s fun.
Don’t get into Range&Cover, that will ruin your day pretty fast. (Cross)Bows are dangerous!
The question on balance in terms of sending opposition against characters falls under the same sort of umbrella (thanks for the patience as we all explain in various ways!); just as character vs. character balance is nothing like the “linear fighter quadratic wizard” problem in D&D, character vs. non-player character balance is the same. The only exception is when you throw in monsters, but the majority of players’ opposition should be non-monster characters. I’m running a game where it’s only been humans vs. humans, for various reasons. Well, and a magically-enhanced wolf, I forgot about that. But never a monster unless I really had a reason to.
You could have monsters more frequently, and I think you have a good handle on the idea that throwing a dragon or troll at them is not a good idea unless you want to maybe kill them. But that’s because they have scary big stats. Still, don’t shy away from it; remember that they can always burn a Persona point to survive.
A question I constantly asked is, “How do I NOT kill my party?”
The answer I got was, “That’s really hard to do.”
I think your approaching this wrong and it has everything to do with you thinking about math vs story. I don’t mean it in a disrespectful way mind you and you are certainly free to disregard this advice. I do think that if the only choices your giving your players are certain death/ victory then you do run the chance of killing them all a lot. Of course theres no reason to just offer a stark live/die scenario.
While you cannot control your players intent (although you should at least try to challenge it) , you can most certainly control the NPC’s intent. What I mean is that while your characters goal in a fight may be to kill the big bad Orc Captain, the Orc Captains goals do not have to be so simple. Perhaps his boss a certain White Wizard ordered him to capture prisoners for a later interrogation. Maybe the Captain is trying to fight to escape from the kings guard who are sure to arrive in a few minutes and player death isn’t that important. Maybe the Orc captain likes raw food, and wants to take some meat back to the caverns for later, or maybe he’s looking for some strong human backs to shovel coal and do some slave work. In your world orcs now keep slaves and only kill the old, weak and infirm which is cool storytelling. As for players, why are they fighting this Orc Captain fairly? Why aren’t they ganging up? He’s clearly pretty powerful and skilled at skewering players and by looking at the stats you’ve chosen (which are higher than either of his opponents one on one) of course he’s going to win mathematically. So why aren’t your players ambushing him, teaming up or in the case of your fool with throwing knives killing him outside of Melee combat. All of this ignores Artha too, the magical substance that transforms misses into hits and turn rolls into open ended murder fests where your squire aims for the orcs unarmored head and turns him into dead meat. Your math is also only about standing in one place and swinging which ignores positioning, (also armor it seems because that mail is going to be tough for Orkey to crack) and other types of attack that could turn the tide in your favor. Why aren’t your players trying to tackle this guy, or assessing to study this guys style? If they just swing and hit or swing and miss your not using the system right.
But in the end the answer to “how do you keep the party alive in this situation?” is pretty simple. You as the GM need to be making it about something other than murdering the players (unless you want to murder them). The life or death part is your choice. Give the characters a couple of fights to get knocked around in and they will earn enough tests to raise poor skills and easily make mincemeat of their earlier opposition.
I have a couple thoughts here.
My suspicion, totally spitballing here, is that you want some guidelines on how to calibrate any given encounter’s threat level. Like…“I want it so that really the worst that’ll happen is say a Midi wound” or “Maybe they’ll get taken prisoner but nobody gets ganked” or maybe even something along the lines of “Let’s set up a little fight so folks can earn some juicy tests and feel good about being badasses.”
If that’s the case, I have a couple thoughts on that:
This is like…the perfect application of the versus test system, Task/Intent and explicit consequences. Want a fight where the worst that’ll happen is a midi wound? Make that the consequences of a versus test. Want a fight where the worst that happens is that everyone gets taken prisoner? That’s the consequence. Say it out loud, roll it off, get on with it.
Do not use Fight! if you want to maintain some kind of GM-level “control.” The secret sauce of Fight! is that it is by design pretty chaotic. It introduces the possibility of really shitty, unexpected outcomes. It’s meant to feel dangerous for everyone involved: the players and the GM alike. It’s why you only really use Fight! when there’s a Belief in play. Because fighting for your Belief means the possibility of really shitty, unexpected outcomes.
Third bonus thought: The game design and designer actively hates, and will in every way seek to undermine, the desire for “mook fights.” That’s not a BW thing. The game will prompt you to either skip through it by reducing it to a simple versus test roll-off (and man…the dice-grubbing is pretty intense even if it’s all down to a single roll), or pushing you into this chaotic, oh-shit-we-really-might-fuck-this-up Fight!. That’s a feature, not a bug.
So in terms of balance? Just remember that whatever the dice probabilities say, you can always, always set the upper limit of awfulness. Just not when you use Fight! It’s perfectly self-balancing.
p.
Ok guys, enough of the dogpile.
yarnperson, you might be better served by more targeted threads about each concern you have. Omni-purpose threads like this can get out of hand with all the quoting and such. Everyone wants to help, even if it comes across as shouting.
My old eyes would also appreciate a blank line between your paragraphs, but that has nothing to do with the content of your posts.