Please do!
Oh, right: I’ve also put together an Excel spreadsheet designed to easily track # of tests remaining before exponent increase for all (non-derived) stats and skills, with a primary focus on completeness and ease of use (even includes opening new skills with Beginner’s Luck if you set the exponent to 0).
What’s the preferred way to share such a thing here? I know there are probably tons in older forum posts, but figure sharing mine can’t hurt. Got a VBA one that is slightly cleaner looking and a plain spreadsheet one that should be more universally compatible.
People generally put stuff like that in Modifcations, Hacks, and Expansions. That should work for you. Just make a new thread and title it appropriately.
OK, so session 0 got done. After 12-13 hours straight (alot to cover), I’d say it was a positive mixed bag.
The negative is mostly in one of my brand new players getting frustrated because they couldn’t quite grasp the concept of “Beliefs”, despite assistance from myself and other, more experienced players. Fortunately, we got some starting ones in the end, so I’m hopeful that it’ll become clearer once we start playing for real (you’ll understand why I’m hopeful below). And it’s nothing to do with BW’s rules or anything; my other brand-new-to-TTRPG player (and the experienced TTRPGers) grasped the concept pretty quickly.
So, now that the bad is out of the way, let’s get on to the good. I presented both scenarios as options to the group as practice - The Sword and Hochen - and after some deliberation, they chose Hochen. 4 PCs meant I just handed out the 4 Human stock characters to make it simpler (remember, this is mostly to practice the system). Only Rim rules I included were Bloody VS for combat and DoW for important social combat; everything else was Hub and Spokes only.
Also, for purposes of introducing the mechanics quicker, I suspended the usual “Say Yes” rule of BW (which I let my players know ahead of time) and demanded far more “unnecessary” tests the usual (Let It Ride still applied, though; I’m not a masochist).
So after we’d created beliefs, we started the game and…well, let me put it this way: you know how The Sword starts the game with that simple question “Who gets the Sword?”, right? I managed to “derail” the game with my very first question to the group after describing the situation:
“Who’s in front of the group?”
See, the Knight had made his character very “traditional”, in that he believed Nobles were above Commoners by birthright. The Sorceress had made her beliefs to be very self-serving, while also very covetous of power. And the Priest (the one I mentioned having trouble) basically made his character somewhat holier-then-thou, as well. And they’re ALL Born Nobles, unlike our poor Hunter, who’s a Commoner…
Yeah, a DoW initiated IMMEDIATELY between the Knight and the Hunter over who was leading the group, with the Knight believing HE should lead, where-as the Hunter thought it should be him as “he knows the way” (of course, he could’ve just directed His Lordship to the town, but hey, what do I know? I’m just a lowly GM…). His Pompousness won, to which I immediately asked:
“So, Hunter, since he’s in the lead, are you going to tell him how to get to town?”
“No! Let HIM figure it out!”
“Alright, then, Sir Knight, I need you to please roll your Orienteering skill. Oh, right! You don’t have that, do you? Roll Perception, double obstacle” 
…You can guess how THAT roll turned out (even with Help from his Noble companions, which I was happy to explain). Instead of “starting at the covered bridge”, they ended up lost in the woods near town, with the Hunter rolling his eyes even as everyone had to now scavenge for food in a winter wonderland. As they set down to make camp, one of the players commented about “how very off the rails for the module we must be”. Yes, OF COURSE you are, I say as I roll a DoF to determine if a certain Undead Ursine happened upon their night watch…
Oh, look: a 1. And the Sorceress is the only one on watch right now…
Surprisingly, the Sorceress managed to hold off the bear for a full 2 “Bloody VS” exchanges without taking an injury (thank goodness for her Instincts to cast her shield and light spells! The player even thought to try and blind the bear with the light spell, too!), which was long enough for Brave Sir Knight to wake up and come charging out of the tent to make a Mark hit with his Lance, followed quickly by the Hunter who got an Incidental on a ranged Javelin toss. The bear was rightly skewered by that kind of damage (16 total)! And all of this was happening while yon Priest sat in his tent meditating to become closer to his God, despite hearing everything going on outside…“It is not my place to decide her fate! Only God can decide if it’s her time! Oh, the bear’s dead? God willed it to be so! Goodnight! snore”
Unfortunately, they were not able to discover the secret of the bear, though they did realize it was “undead” from the a close-up inspection (which sadly meant they didn’t cut the body up for food…sad GM noises).
In the morning, out of desperation, the Priest managed to cast Guidance, and was lead out of the woods by a rabbit. About 100 meters away from where they’d camped, they spotted the town several miles away (the Hunter knew were it was the whole time; he was just silently laughing at the dumb Nobles). By the time they arrived, it was early afternoon, where they met a certain mayor who was wondering what had taken them so long…
Once they were in the Mayor’s house, things proceeded about as expected - Mayor’s a liar, the whole group realizes it (especially the Priest), queue a DoWs to break him. He attempts to run, but the Knight manages to tackle him and trip him onto the ground.
Just as he’s about to spill all the beans, in bursts a bunch of villagers, lead by the Blacksmith who demand that this Heretic be turned over for burning trial. A brief standoff ensues as nobody trusts anyone…but the Knight relents due to his Belief that he has a duty to his subjects. The game ended with the Blacksmith taking the ex-Mayor into custody and offering to show the group the shattered village, as well as inviting them to stay the night in the inn.
Also, not ONCE did I have to remind anyone to use their beliefs. If this game had been a campaign, I would’ve given out about 4-5 Fate points EACH, with a Persona point to a couple of them, as well.
Thus, why I say “positive mixed bag”. It mostly went fantastic. Just a bit of surprising frustration near the end that has me a little worried. But most everyone left my table in high spirits, and everyone seems to understand at least the basic rules, so that’s all that matters.
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Also, for any new GMs, I’ll go ahead and post my first test as a GM here:
When they managed to fell the bear, I was VERY tempted to not give it to them - to “tweak” the bear’s stats so that he somehow doesn’t die. “What will they do later on when they explore the cave?? There won’t be a big bear fight!”
I let the bear die.
Why? Because I realized the truth: “I’ll come up with something else to make it interesting.” That was what I realized, spur of the moment.
After the session was over and I’d had time to decompress and think, I realized I was exactly right:
-I wasn’t showcasing full Fight! mechanics in this little demo. Even if I was, the Smith and Cultists would make excellent fodder for such an example.
-The bear cave scene can still be interesting in a different way: since the bear’s not been there for X days, the smells and other telltale bear signs lessen and decay, which allows me to inject more mystery, with the fun of them realizing the truth and having to trace the bear’s corpse (and possibly finding out the hard way what happens when - say - starving wolves feast on Black Blood infected corpses…)
Take this as a lesson, as I did: do not be afraid to give the players what they deserve to get. They killed that bear. They lopped the head off the Big Bad Villain. Cool. Roll with it. If you need to, hype up the celebration then call for a break so you can come up with what to do next and how to continue the campaign (and you always can if you really want; even a TPK isn’t necessarily the end if you squint hard enough). I suspect that I’ll be doing a lot of improvisation as my players either bypass my NPCs and locations or come up with solutions to problems I didn’t even realize I had.
Give the players what they deserve, both good and bad. It’s what we’d want in their shoes, after all.
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How did you tally that damage?
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My bad; meant to say the Hunter got a Mark hit on the ranged javelin throw for a total of 15 damage. 9 for the Lance, 6 for the Javelin.
…Wait. Were they supposed to roll the number listed for damage instead of just taking the number listed as damage dealt?
I thought it seemed a bit lop-sided for all the talk of how tough that bear’s supposed to be.
Ah, no. You don’t add them together. The bear would have received one B9 wound and one B6 wound. i.e., one light wound and one superficial wound.
Note, it looks like the knight was on foot when he used his lance? You have to use it from the back of a horse to get those stats. Otherwise it’s a big, unwieldy spear.
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Ah, OK, I misunderstood how injury works in the game.
So is it possible for a lower, non-bleeding injury to be pushed up into a new category? Or can a sufficiently powerful character get 7 Light wounds before incapacitation (assuming they have the stats to handle -7D to everything)?
Yes, they can. Do bear in mind that Light wounds and greater require Steel tests when they are suffered. They also penalize Steel, so it is much more likely that a person runs, begs, or swoons before suffering so many wounds in a single engagement.
There is an exception about wounds not being upgraded and that’s Superficial wounds. If you take three Superficial wounds, they become a single Light wound.
To be clear, the only way for wounds to become more severe is that 3 superficial wounds will turn into a light wound (see Three Superficial Wounds on page 488 of Burning Wheel). Otherwise, only bleeding will increase the severity of wounds. However, wound penalties do stack and can incapacitate.
Since the bear’s Agility and Reflexes are B4, -4D in wound penalties will incapacitate the bear.
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OK, cool; I missed the Steel test for the bear as I thought the bear was dead. Nobody else got injured during the fight, so no other tests for hesitation were missed.
I considered having the Sorceress make a Steel test when the bear first confronted her, but decided to forgo that one in interest of letting the player test out the fight mechanics. In normal sessions, I’d probably do a Steel test for a non-combat trained character, though, at least for the first time they enter a real life-or-death fight.
Combat trained characters get bonuses to Steel by default. If they want to be able to stare down a horrible, undead mass of muscle, they can invest in traits to reduce Hesitation.
Conversely, don’t deny me the opportunity to log a difficult or challenging Steel test just because I have a violent background!
EDIT: If you think having players get routed with failed Steel tests would be a disservice to the game in the moment, describe the racking, bone-chilling, then Say Yes to the Steel tests to shake it off.
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Fair enough; a surprise ambush is a surprise ambush, combat training or no.
And no, I don’t think a failed Steel test would generally cause a disservice to the game; it’s there for a reason, same as all the rest. I only prevented it this time as I wasn’t sure others would wake up and wanted to use the opportunity to go over Bloody Vs rules.
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Yeah. There are some cases where getting picayune with Steel tests can cause trouble, same as any other test in the game. That’s why Say Yes is in the book!
If you don’t make players roll for specific shocks, there’s always the option of awarding a single test toward advancement for an entire series of events (p.364).
So, you could rule the Bear didn’t look scary enough to freeze someone in place because the Sorceress lit it up before it acted, but they log a test for seeing the Undead when they study the body.
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Yeah, certainly. But I feel like using the character’s background for determining that one PC doesn’t need a Steel test when another does for the same stimulus is a bit of a disservice. Especially when those backgrounds are already factored into Steel bonuses at character burning.
But it’s ultimately a matter of discretion. Really, we’re basically discussing taste at this point!
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I meant none of the players take a Steel test because the Sorceress pulled off a good reaction.
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Hence my clarifying. 
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