I’ve been working on getting back up to speed on BW again after a decade or so without significant play. I have a copy of Classic (#802 / 1000), and have recently had my interest renewed by a confluence of a couple sources of exposure. (Helped Dwight playtest the ShadowRun con game, tried Torchbearer for a while, read through Alex’s Ölrun AP).
Which bring me to a couple questions:
How well does the BWG PDF read on a Kindle Fire?
Are there any major versions / revisions expected in the near future?
Any particular pitfalls or cognitive roadblocks to the version switch? (Thread links or published resources welcome, of course… I’m sure this all got hashed out years ago by the active players, and I don’t want to make everyone relive the past.)
Any particularly good reading to get me back in good habits? (I’ve played BW-Classic, MG and TB, so I have some exposure to BITs, but also a habit of mis-recalling rules.)
Thanks for any help y’all are willing to offer. I’m mostly playing in PbP format these days, so there’s no rush in responding.
Thank you for the feedback. I have, in fact, broken down and purchased the big 'ol red-gold tome from my local FLGS. It’s sitting on my desk, now, waiting for me to crack it open. I think I miss having the Character Burner separate already. I’ll try to work through the Su Jin threads at some point; the podcast might take a little longer, but I’ll see what I can do.
The changes between Classic and Revised/Gold are pretty substantial.
We’ve added lots of lifepaths.
Beliefs and Instincts are now expressed much more clearly.
Artha now comes in three different flavors which do different things and are awarded for different sorts of things.
We’ve added new types of tests, including Linked tests and Graduated tests.
Movement Multiplier has been replaced with Stride.
Lifepaths no longer give you all the traits associated with them for free. You are required to purchase the first one and have the option of purchasing the others. Any trait offered as part of your lifepaths costs 1 point.
We’ve gotten rid of Paces in Fight! and replaced it with an abstract positioning system.
We’ve added new conflict types: Duel of Wits and Range & Cover.
We’ve added two new core abilities to all characters: Circles and Resources. Resources is an abstract wealth mechanic that you roll.
Chase, Mounted Combat and Materials have gotten facelifts.
One thing that I will caution is that in the Podcast is that one of the players keep confusing revised rules so once you figure out which guy that is pretty much ignore any rules stuff that they say. Also if they would edit out the extra off topic stuff it would greatly reduce the length of them. still it was pretty good.
And Nick (the GM) failed quite often in challenging the beliefs the players gave him. It was still a really entertaining and enganging campaign but but not the best example on the belief challenging front.
Fortunately, I’ve been exposed to at least a couple of those concepts via other BWHQ games. Actually, I’m discovering Range & Cover now, and kind of digging it.
