New Burning Wheel GM Questions

Burning Wheel First Reading
96

Some stuff I’ve come up with for the Kingdom:

-As a magic user that’s sanctified by the crown, you are forbidden from ever having a noble title in the kingdom. This is an ancient law that’s designed to prevent a Mage-tocracy from forming and taking over; sorcerers are not permitted to have true political power of any sort.

-Slavery is outlawed in the kingdom, and has been since time immemorial. That is NOT to say that slavery does not exist; underground “markets” are a thing in kingdoms that thrive on goods flowing through their borders. But such cells being discovered are traditionally treated harshly, with any involved being banished or imprisoned.

-The festival of Hallow’s Eve is celebrated nearly world-wide due to the verified cycle of magic and mysticism in the world, and the Kingdom is no exception. Here, it is treated both as a method of honoring the dead and as warding against the evil spirits that come out the day of. As such, work is canceled a couple of days leading up to the day for people to go to their temples and pray to Chuck for protection and forgiveness; at the same time, people take their “Hallowed Treasure” and purchase a luxury or two to place on an alter in their homes. The day of, all stay at home, both as protection against the spirits that walk the streets and so they can show their prosperity by demonstrating time to relax with the luxuries they’ve purchased recently.

97

Hey, it’s been a while; been wanting to have one last session to cap off this adventure arc of the campaign and finally reward deed points and have one more round-table Trait review before the end of the year, but sadly been having trouble getting enough people together for it. I think we’ve FINALLY got a date nailed down for the weened after this one, though. Fingers crossed!

So, last game WAs spectacular, but I wanted to ask about the ad-hoc system I came up with and see if there was a better way to do it. Something that’s somehow more in line with Burning Wheel’s ethos? For reference, here’s what I did:

-Character was put into an actively burning building (or other hazardous situation) and had objectives other then immediate escape. Point was to see how many of those objectives they could finish before the building collapsed.

-I slowed time down to a action speed.

-I used 2 D6s, placed prominently in the center of the table for ALL to see (even used a cup as a stand to prop them up).

-First D6 was used as a visual counter for how many objectives remained to complete. Every time they completed one, I ticked it down.

-Second D6 was actively rolled; the number that came up were the number of actions they had before the fire potentially caused something bad to happen (roof collapsing, doorway being blocked, etc). Every time they performed an action (including a single move to get to where they can perform said action), I ticked it down.

-Once the second D6 hit 0, I would roll it “in secret” and have the PC choose odd or even (it’s revealed at that time, of course). If they chose wrong, the fire would cause something bad to happen, either harming them to give them penalties or causing it to become more difficult to get to their objectives. After that, I would re-roll the D6 to get a new timer until bad stuff.

-If they ever hit 3 wrong guesses in a row, time would be up and the building would start collapsing around them. If they were still in the building, they would need to make an ob 3 Speed test to escape, assuming there were exits still available. Failure…was not advised.

-All of this was communicated to the table as I came up with it, of course, and the PC in question agreed to it.

It worked EXTREMELY well for making the situation truly tense for my players, and pretty much burned that session as the highlight of the campaign thus far for them! Even I was on the edge of my seat whenever it was time to do stuff with it, so I’m pretty confident I’ve got a winner that I’ll be using in the future!

But it was spur-of-the-moment, so I knew even then that it could be better. And having had time to think about it, I can already see 2 possibilities for improvement for next time:

  1. When other PCs came onto the scene later on, and I organized it into a D&D-style “round table turn order” to keep things simple; just literally went around the table and asked “what’re you doing?”; this is definitely anti-BW, especially since hostiles suddenly appeared on scene and I defaulted them to end of the “turn”. Next time, I would prefer to introduce simultaneous actions like BW encourages: “OK, everyone, write down the action you’re gonna do, and the hostiles will do the same. OK, on three, ready? 3, 2, 1…reveal!”

  2. Instead of losing the 50/50 chance 3 times in a row - a number I picked because it’s “round” - I would instead roll a final D6; that’s how many failures total they have before time’s up. So if that die came up a 4, they’d be able to fail 4 times before the building starts collapsing, sort of like an HP bar. I thought about making it “GM choice” and just having the D6 be a tracker for a number I pick from 1-6 for the given situation, as that would give me some more control over things, but I’d rather have more tension and chaos, and I as a fellow player would be hesitant to ever pick 1 unless they’re just being fools. Besides, even a straight 1 on this die isn’t instant failure. It just means they need to be very lucky in their 50/50 guesses, which will have them biting their nails every time I call “odd or even?”

So that’s what I’ve come up with for improvements, but I’d like to know if anyone else has suggestions for further bringing it in line with how Burning Wheel does things? Or is there some analog in the books that I’m overlooking that would’ve handled this situation for me in a similar manner? As I’ve stated before, I’m trying my absolute best not to homebrew stuff (at least, not right now while my players are still getting used to the core game) so if BW has this covered, I’d rather use that.

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98

One option for slightly variable number of actions between “bad stuff” would be to adapt the rules for linked tests. Set a default number of actions that can be performed (e.g. 3) and offer the player(s) an option to make a Staving off roll: if they succeed, they get +1 action but if they fail they get -1 action.

If you make the Staving Off roll be a test of something relevant ( e.g. Arson, Carpentry, Fortification) then it would also reflect skilled people being more able to instinctively pick a better path through a burning building.

If you really want to reflect how dangerous a burning building is, you could call for a Staving Off roll to take an action, with the Ob increasing automatically but players being allowed to spend an action on trying to lower the Ob (with levels of success lowering it further): that way, rushing into a burning building is easy while it’s just getting started, but getting out again with little golden-haired Amelia panicking in one’s arms will be a tense balance between putting all the actions into running with a challenging Ob or spending time to pick a good route &c. and hoping it drops the Ob more than the next automatic increase.

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99

That sounds pretty good, actually! I’ll try that out next time something like this comes up and see how it works out.

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100

Hey guys, long time!

Got a question from last session: When a character is performing Sorcery tests to learn a new spell (Practicals) should their Tax for casting be based off of the base Ob of the spell, or the modified Ob for practicals?

I looked in the book, but couldn’t find a definitive answer under Tax for that.

101

It’s the last sentence of the first paragraph under Tax (Page 504):

His obstacle [for resisting tax] is the spell’s obstacle.

Practicals is an Ob penalty to casting the spell, it doesn’t change the spell’s obstacle.

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102

Ah, good. That’s what we thought and what I went with; but magic IS supposed to be dangerous, so wanted to make absolutely sure.

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103

Happy to help!

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104

Hey, got a question again: If a player fails a test, but then something happens in the same scene to where they feel they can try for the same result again, but with a different skill/stat, is that allowed? Or are retries barred for the remainder of the scene regardless?

I suspect I know the answer, but would like independent confirmation, just to be sure.

105

If all that has changed is that they want to try with a different skill/stat, then no.

In the Codex, Luke says that your result “stands for all similar obstacles in your path for the remainder of the session or until the in-game conditions significantly change.”

However, if things do significantly change, then you’re absolutely allowed to retest. Let’s you’re trying to move a boulder by rolling it aside and fail, suffering a Superficial Wound and being completely unable to get through by yourself; you wait for the backup that was on its way (that you wanted to keep ahead of) and together y’all erect a fancy lever system with 5 strong people getting everything moving: things have changed enough that you have a new opportunity to test.

Retesting is, and should be, rare. “Being wounded” (but not unconscious) isn’t enough of a change, even in a versus test where the wound might be enough to swing it. But discovering the shocking truth, gaining newfound powers (or losing them) and suddenly having an army on your side are all clearly significant changes.

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106

Their feelings are irrelevant; it’s your (the GM’s) feelings that matter here.

You gotta ask yourself if the situation really has meaningfully changed.

There’s nothing saying that that meaningful change can’t happen in the same scene. If you’re unsure, I would err on the side of the results riding.

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107

If I were being generous, I might allow another test straightaway if the second test transformed the scene on its own, f/ex:
If the players fail at persuading someone for information, I might allow them to Intimidate or Torture the information in the same scene.

However, I normally would try to forsee that potential consequence and either make it part of the failure, or foreclose it as part of the failure: if you fail to persuade the snitch to give you the plans for the castle, it means you’ll need to pay a whole lot of money for the information; if you fail to move the boulder (in my precious example) then when you injure yourself and have to wait, the group success is automatic because failure didn’t block entry, it removed your headstart.

If no-one can light a fire in this storm, the Sorcerer breaking their cover and forcing a flame alight in order to treat someone’s hypothermia is probably sufficiently transformative too.

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108

That makes sense, and is pretty much in line with what I thought.

Mine that came up was that someone in the group failed to Intimidate an NPC into silence, so I had the NPC Uno-reverse that into a blackmail attempt: “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t turn you in right now”. The player then came back with a truly epic Persuasion success (13 success vs Ob 10! Deed and Fate points well spent!) where they promised pretty much the NPC’s heart’s desire in exchange for both their silence and cooperation. And yes, that Ob was as high as it was partly because of the failed Intimidate check from before…

At the time, I allowed it as it was great fun and I take the stance of “if I don’t know and can’t find the rule in the book VERY quickly, go with what the table wants”. But I wanted to make sure that kind of thing was permitted for future situations. Thanks!

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109

That looks to me like a decent example of a different obstacle with a different failure consequence: your players weren’t testing to convince this person to keep quiet, they were testing to get the price right.

The original test result remains intact, but mollified somewhat. They didn’t get round the original test by trying again, the fiction and metafiction both show a failed attempt followed by a drastic reframing.

Great job, your instincts were spot-on. (Including doubling the Obstacle, in my opinion, I don’t tend to agree that people who just threatened me have my best interests at heart)

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110

That’s very near the “New Test” suggestion from the Codex. One issue I see is that there failure didn’t really complicate matters here. The player was in about the exact same position after the Intimidation test that they were in before.

111

So giving disadvantage on the new test and forcing them to take on an additional burden didn’t complicate matters enough for it to count?

112

Seems it was for a number of veteran GMs in this thread!

113

(lol) OK, just wanted to be sure. Thanks, everyone!

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114

Quick clarification: the disadvantage alone wouldn’t cut it, because that’s not an Interesting Consequence, and also because you shouldn’t post-hoc declare that a test works like a Linked Test.

But yeah, “being blackmailed” is, in my opinion, a vastly different situation than “convince someone Scot-free” (admittedly, in my games, ‘getting blackmailed’ might have been the direct failure consequence, skipping a test in between, but if you had a great failure consequence for the test then that’s awesome)

115

By the letter of the law and its intent, testing against the same obstacle—even modified—is not the correct use of this rule. The intent is not “you failed, now redouble your efforts.” The intent is, “you failed, move on and find another way.”

But shifting from Intimidate to Persuasion is a legitimate use of the system. Those are two separate intents with two separate tasks.

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