Does hanyone have any advice or threads about having the players divided between human and vaylen side? I can’t seem to find any, but I faintly recall seeing something about it.
What will cause us the most trouble, and why?
How should we best adjust starting artha? For PCs and GM FONs.
I know we probably should not, but we are going to, anyhow. :rolleyes: So don’t tell us to back off, that’s no help.
It just seemed like the natural way to do it - about half the players had ideas for characters on each side during world burning.
We are playing in a large grooup, six players and one GM (me), so we’ll try it nice and slowly and see what happens.
No, we haven’t played the game before, so we’ll have no end of trouble - shoot us, we’ll still give it a shot. If it doesn’t work out we’ll abort/or change plan.
I predict a bad end, most especially because this is your first outing with the system. There’s a whole lot to observe and understand about the way the game works without trying to hack it to do something else on the fly. It will be impossible for you to tell when something’s not working because you’re doing it wrong or not understanding it fully and when it’s not working because it was never intended to work in the kind of game you’re trying to run. Have you considered simply running two games instead? You have enough players. That said…
Have you run Fires over Omac? If not, do so. It is absolutely critical, if you and your players are to have any chance of success with this, that you all have some understanding of what you’re doing prior to character burning.
You shouldn’t have GM FoNs to speak of with three human and three Vaylen-aligned players. Treat all FoNs as player-side characters, and encourage your players to take them. That should solve Artha and so on for you.
This will mess up the core tension of do-stuff-for-your-agenda versus do-stuff-for-your-side, since I think almost all of the interplayer aggression that would normally fuel the internecine conflicts will be drawn off against the other side. Make sure you focus on balancing those two aspects of the game during character burning, particularly with respect to beliefs.
3a. Do you have BW revised? You should try running “The Gift.” It’s four Elven PCs and four Dwarven PCs in a very BE-like agenda-versus-side, infiltration-versus-invasion setup. Even if you don’t, look at the advice to the GM there and read the way the PC BITS are set up.
You should have a conference with each side privately to determine maneuvers, I think. Try to be quiet and listen for flags, and try to also get them to play a little GM game with themselves: “Hey Vaylen guys, when you were krushing da hoomans last week, what did you notice made them do the happy squirm? Push that harder.”
You should procure or create two special hats that you can wear, a human hat for providing opposition to the Vaylen players, and a Vaylen hat for providing opposition to the human players. I suggest a jester’s cap and a flayed human face, respectively.
being your first run at the game, i think this is a bad idea.
having played the game, i think it’s a cool idea… BEs scene economy mechanics inspired me to write a gm-less style play for burning wheel. we’ve been playing that game for a couple of months now and it works fairly well. that being said, familiarity with the system is the ONLY thing keeping us in check.
it sounds like your player’s ideas best fit gm-less play. if you have 3 vaylan players and 3 human players, why do you need a gm? all of the rules are in the book. in BE, the GMs roll is to be an antagonist to the players. theoretically, if the players are their own antagonists, there’s no need for a GM.
my advice, play Omac, maybe even play a phase to get the rules down, THEN come back and play 4 on 3. 4 humans, 3 vaylan. the mechanics kind-of support GM-less play, but ONLY if you are really, really familiar with the rules.
everyone gets their 3 building scenes except for the one-player per side that gets the conflict scene for that side. resolve the infection maneuver in the normal way. you are going to have an easier time with no GM than you would with a GM… you are going to have a MUCH easier time if everyone knows the system well, because basically everyone is going to be the ‘GM.’
as for NPCs, usually the NPCs are played by the player who is the leader/member of the faction they are a part of.
good luck, keep us posted… it’s a curious experiment, but one i’d wait to do until you’ve played it ‘normal’ a few times…
And I think I see my, the GM’s role, as more of a wargaming referee’s role - see that people stick to the rules, help them out, and throw wrenches in their machinery.
My intent is to antagonise both sides - and perhaps have yet another card up my sleeve.
We are all pretty experienced players and GMs of a variety of games, not all traditional in any sense - I’m particularily fond of My Life With Master.
As it looks like right now all but two FONs will be PCs. There is one on each side that will probably be GMPCs - which kinda suits me fine and gives me something to play. But that might change. (We were supposed to have our second session come monday, and burn characters, but apparently some of the guys can’t make it.)
It will probably change the way tensions build in the game, but I hardly think it will be less tense.
I"ve been thinking about a 3-on-3 game here as well. My current thinking on this goes like so:
Each side designates a proto-GM for the other side. In other words, the humans have players A, B, and C and the vaylen have players X, Y and Z. Player A is the GM for the Vaylen and player X is the GM for the humans. The GM’s job is primarily to set Obstacles and make oppo rolls against the other side, and basically be the final say on what his side is going to “say no” to.
Ensure there is both internal and external conflict built into the Beliefs. I agree with Devin, it’d be very easy to just have a 3-on-3 straight turf war when in fact there should really be tension between the turf war and a free-for-all among all six players.
During Artha review, players on each side can designate players on the other side for engaging scenes. 1x Workhorse and 1x MVP for each side as well.
Good point! I think we’re all set, though, seeing that several of the PC FONs are not altoghether on either side - the newly appointed Steward will mainly be on the vaylen side thanks to his incompetence, for instance.
Yes! Of course; I forgot that in my writeup as well.
It’s a little different structure than what Henrix is suggesting. I considered the 3 x 3 x 1 structure myself here, but it seems like having an uninvested 3rd party could fuck up the high-stakes competitiveness at the heart of the game.
