Newbe question

Burning Empires General Questions
1

Hi there all,

Over the last few days I’ve heard a lot of talk about Burning Empires, and having burning Wheels I thought I’d check it out here.

I have one question.

Reading the firefight forum and some of the descriptions of peoples experiences I was wondering if this was a roleplaying game or a skirmish game.

My reason for thinking this is that most of the write ups I’ve read are of squads/units fighting each other.

Do the rules allow for individual combat i.e. as a traditional RPG.

I ask as I’m very confused and would like clarification, have I totally misinterpreted the whole thing (which isn’t unusual for me :oops: ).

Hope the above question makes sense.

Jamat

2

The rules allow for beating someone to death with your bare hands on top of a speeding bullet train. Is that personal enough for you? :wink:

Burning Empires uses a somewhat different set of combat rules than Burning Wheel. It scales all the way from one-on-one desperate scrapping to engagements between fleets of starships. It’s not quite as detailed as BW’s Fight! mechanics on the low end, but its still based on the central concept of scripting a set of manuvers in advance and then comparing.

As a huge fan of the BW Fight! mechanics, I too was a little concerned about how well BE Firefight! scaled down, but after the aforementioned bullet train incident, I can testify that it is more than adequate at bringing the pain at a very personal level. Then again, how could i have doubted a set of rules that contain a section entitled “I corner him and stab him in the face”.

3

Ditto for what Rafial wrote. In addtion, the Small Tactical Group might juts be your Lord Pilot in Iron verse a squad of Anvil Marines. Or two attack sleds dog fighting one another. BE assumes your characters are “The Man” and will have resources to call upon. Given that… your Weapon is less the side arm you have but instead the strength of your squads and armed forces. They are your weapon.

os instead of battering each other with Claymores (or Halbards :)) we beat each other with Marines and Star Fighters.

PS: that is not to say you can’t just beat each other with swords or SCrEWs or Grenades