Without recreating Abstraction & Distillation in full, the best I can tell you is look at existing spells and use them as a guide. Go with your gut.
As for distillation, the idea is the base ob and number of actions are doubled in the “raw” spell. Distillation gets rid of that doubling.
Groovy. Thanks!
OK, that explains why I couldn’t find the rules if they’ve been cut out. My bad. 
Yes, I definitely see your point about making it a test instead of practice to do; I like how magic is dangerous in this game, and like to preserve that aspect whenever possible.
Still, I like the idea of it being a long and tedious affair, which is as it should be - discovering a new spell “from scratch” should be really time consuming and take a lot of work!
As a sort of compromise. I’m thinking I might make it a Linked test over a period of months, instead - 4 tests ordered Research, Read, Write and Sorcery (non open-ended), with one month in between each to represent the time taken to complete each task. Gifted trait is required to Help on the Sorcery test. Base Ob is double Ob of the spell they want to learn.
Success will give them the right to First Reading of the spell. Failing the final step could mean anything from just a flawed spell to start First Reading on to a full on Failed Casting result (GM’s choice, of course). And once they begin, they’re not permitted to stop until the linked test is complete.
And, of course, they still need access to a constant source of inspiration still, as I’ve described before. Being cut off from said inspiration (like, say, the cave example being denied due to them traveling on the open sea for many days) delays their next test until they can establish a new appropriate inspiration source.
Does this sound like a good idea? I also figure it falls in line with BWGR’s description of Linked tests usually being for groups of people to do - it even seems to help make Mage Apprenticeships make more sense for the masters, since Apprentices doing busy work Helps them discover new spells more safely. Trying to do it all yourself should be doable…but only just, and even then, only for low power stuff; you otherwise have to be really powerful or in a group of Mages to succeed.
Liking the ideas of “improving/tinkering” on the spell, too! I’m a sucker for “customized variants” of stuff like this. For now, I’ll just use those verbatim and see how they work out.
Ah, interesting process, I like it! Really hammers home the feeling of danger and complexity that I’m going for with discovering spells. I might make use of it as a more advanced form of spellcrafting to my Linked Test idea, sort of like how Fight! is a more advanced melee system to Bloody Vs. Right now, just need a process in place so my player can get their magical mojo started, and if there’s enough interest in my Sorcerer to continue discovering/tinkering with spells, I’ll introduce it.
And yeah, as I’ve got another Sorcerous player coming into the game soon! And while I’m certainly able to put “quests for lost spells” in their way as time goes on, I know for sure that they’re going to want to come up with their own stuff over time.
Linked tests would be a way to do it if yoy want to go that route, but I want to clarify that you don’t need multiple tests to do something that takes a long time. You can read a note in a second or two. Or read all of the books in a library over a life-time. Each is one read test.
If you’re gonna do Linked Tests, you should clarify the Task of each test. What are they reading? What is the nature of the research, etc. I personally wouldn’t handle it with Linked Tests, I don’t think, but that’s mostly because I’d want to leave the process more open-ended. Also! I don’t know that you’d have to do research to create a new spell – though it certainly might help.
Read and Write were mostly just there as placeholders, so they can easily be removed to make it more streamlined.
I know for sure that I’d want Research to be involved in the test, though (or some substitute to it if libraries aren’t available/appropriate, such as Animal Husbandry to study animals properly; players can argue for appropriate substitutes situationally) - while I suppose they could just do a Sorcery test on its own, that says “throw spells at a wall and see what sticks” to me, which just sounds reckless in a game where I showed the player how Low Speech can literally transform into a 3 second, 50-mile radius earthquake with some bad rolls…
And while I know they could FoRK Research (or equivalent) into a standard Sorcery test, that implies that you don’t need Research to succeed at all if you don’t have it - it just helps in that case, same as Symbology or Astrology would. And I would like to put some more emphasis on it then normal, giving more risk of consequences for taking a laze-fare approach to toying with magical forces beyond your understanding.
I’ll need to think about it more, but I’m pretty firm that I want it to be more then just a standard test, with Research (or equivalent) and non-open Sorcery at minimum if it’s a Linked Test. Coming up with spells on your own should be a complex and dangerous undertaking, and the test should reflect that to the player.
The complexity would be represented in the Obstacle, I think. While you wouldn’t need Research technically, practically, the player is likely to want every advantage possible for reaching those high Obs, especially if there are extra benefits to buy with extra successes (which there always will be with Work Quickly, if nothing else).
When you tell your player, “Yeah, you can try to create this spell: take three months and test your B4, close-ended Sorcery against Ob 6,” They’re gonna be coming to you for Linked Tests for advantage. That’s basically what you’re describing anyway with them being able to swap out tests to Link in. If Research is necessary, it’s necessary. If they can swap it out with something else, it seems optional.
Besides, creating new spells is explicitly listed in the Sorcery skill description as a thing that skill allows you to do.
And we kind of have to imagine that Research is optional because those original spells came from somewhere, and while researching what other sorcerers have done can certainly be helpful to crafting a new spell, it’s probably not necessary because you by definition cannot find a new spell written in an old tome, Optional.
All of that said… I really do get the idea of it being an involved process and shaping the play to create that sweet ludo-narrative cohesion. I kind of like Abstraction and Distillation for that feeling of the Sorcerer tinkering with their spells. And making them cast the spell in-play as “field testing” is real fun. I think I would use something like that, but I’m not sure what exactly…
By the way, it may not be clear so I’m going to clarify, this post has been opinion. If it sounds like I’m trying to shoot you down from an absolutist position, I’m not. I’m just expressing my personal taste on the matter, hopefully in a way that also generates useful feedback. Do what you think is cool.
Alright, after discussion with my players, I think we’ll be using the full Distillation rules as outlined by @Thor earlier. Looking forward to taking those for a spin and hammering them out; I’ll report back on my findings once we’ve had a chance to use them in full.
As for the “leaner” version we’ve been talking about, I’m going to hold onto it for another game; the party is definitely going magic heavy right now, so it makes sense for there to be emphasis on that, with some more robust and complex rules to help out. This quicker stuff is more for when there’s only one Sorcerer, especially if sorcery is treated as just one block in their box of toys.
And yeah, I think I am going to keep it to a Linked test. Even in a reduced form, I would like to emphasize the danger and complexity of inventing magic and working with raw cosmic forces a bit more then a single test can provide.
Oh, no worries, I treat these mainly as suggestions, not as hard rules. Not unless a page number is presented to me, anyway. But it helps me to consider possibilities that might be better then what I originally had. So your feedback is always welcome! 
Cool, cool.
OK, so I desperately want to reward my player who’s betraying the party, and not just with Fate points. I wanna give her Persona points for this somehow.
What justification can I use, if any? I’ve looked through the book quite a bit, but all I can see is giving her Fate points for RPing her beliefs to cause trouble. Which is…fine to start.
I’m eyeing up the one that says “turmoil caused by inner-conflict over her beliefs”. She’s got one where she wants to see if another party member can be trusted…maybe I could use that as justification?
I really really want her to have this because this is SO GOOD. It’s 100% roleplayed as their character, the entire table is on the edge of their collective seats over this, myself included, and it’s doing a bang-up job of highlighting Burning Wheel’s soul to everyone: a story generator that allows the players to be and accomplish what they want, when they want, with full GM blessing and support.
I’d give them a Deed point for it, but I feel that should be saved for after this whole situation is resolved, depending on what goes down.
Embodiment, Page 64 BWGR: “When a player captures the mood of the table perfectly and further drives the story onward, one persona point is awarded. Moments like great speeches, desperate decisions or gruesome revenge fall into this category. This is a tough award to get, as a player really must go above and beyond in his roleplaying.”
THANK YOU! I’ll be sure to get that over to them ASAP!
Happy to help!
By the way, the way I’m trying to think of earning Artha per session is as follows, as a shorthand for players:
-Never ask for Deed points; GM will give those out when it’s time.
-Work hard and find ways to get Persona points; the whole table tends to informally decide when it’s right.
-Expect at least a Fate point every session, or at least ways to earn them; GM’s screwing up if you can’t seem to get an opportunity for a while, so call their ass on being a Scrooge.
Obviously the book has more clear-cut rules on how. I’m just using the above as shorthand so they can determine where to focus their efforts during games. And as a way to gauge my own behavior and where I may be falling behind as GM - has this player not really had an opportunity to get Fate points over the last couple of sessions? Why have I not been challenging their ? Something to look into, etc.
Hey, it’s been a while, I know; players had stuff come up over the past couple of weeks, so our next game is coming up this weekend (hopefully). But I’ve been busy with prep:
-Been fleshing out the details on the two spies Maggie is confronted with, and the player and I have been discussing options for how to handle things. They’ve gone and educated themselves on what a spy is and does now, so I’m more willing to work with them and let them get out alive with careful planning and tests.
-I’ve been fleshing out the stand-out locations more, such as the locations of the spy-rings, in preparation for explaining where/how the spies do their things and in prep for the players to scout the areas out. I’ve also altered several areas to have more magical stuff since the party is more magic-heavy now, with 2 Sorcerers and a Faith character.
-Been working on getting the main antagonist nation fleshed out, primarily their ultimate goal with all this. Conquest is obvious, but what’s the purpose of the conquest? Why not just make trade deals or just corrupt the current rulers; why do they NEED to be in charge of this territory directly? Again, the magical nature of the party indicates that there’ll likely be a magical answer, but I also plan on having them require direct access to the three other nations bordering the kingdom for some reason.
-A BIG thing: the players and I discussed it via texting, and they say they want the game to start with a more Black and White tone while players get used to the game, with a gradual decent into moral greyness as time goes on. To do that and keep my options flexible, I’m going to make a hidden Puppet Master antagonist pulling the strings of the aggressor nation, with their rulers believing that they’re all working toward the same ends. If it had been grey from the outset, I would’ve just had the two nations doing their thing, with no clear way to end the conflict outside of wholesale slaughter via assassination. As it stands, if desired, I can just have the PM move to the Kingdom and be in control over there if, say, the players decide to switch sides to the aggressor nation.
-If we really get into blurred grey morality, I can also try to give the PM a sympathetic backstory on why they’d go to these lengths, with a nice little “the ends don’t justify the means” as a last gasp of B&W from the beginning. Details on the PM and their ultimate plan are vague currently to give me room to breath, as this is a full campaign, so I don’t want the PM to be locked into anything until it becomes relevant to the PCs directly in case I need to pivot.
-I’m also working on fleshing out characters that the PCs are interacting with more and give them secondary goals. The Commodore, for example, is likely going to be fleshed out after the PCs finally finish this particular story arc that’s going on, fully stated out with a page of backstory and so on. I think the Baronette needs a secondary goal, as does the Captain, so they can be more active, and I think I’ve got the perfect way to handle things.
-Finally, I’ve begun fleshing out the kingdom culturally. For example, I’ve figured out the social hierarchy of the various noble and non-noble classes, and what they each get to do and why. I’ve determined that the kingdom does not condone slavery in keeping with the B&W theme, though the possibility of underground slaves in a merchant nation are certainly possible for later.
I don’t know how much of this stuff will actually be used in the game, but since this is a campaign, and the PCs are coming up with all kinds of fun ideas that bolster the spy-rings for me, I don’t see them leaving the kingdom for several more sessions yet. So there’s potentially plenty of time for them to learn this stuff and me to give them a kingdom that’s actually memorable enough to fight for.
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.
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:
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!”
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.
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.
That sounds pretty good, actually! I’ll try that out next time something like this comes up and see how it works out.
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.
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.