Hi, On page 59 (Evolving Beliefs and Instincts) It kinda says that you can transform beliefs and Instincts into traits by spending Artha in them. It says theres more details on that in the Artha wheel chapter.BUT from page 66 to 71 I can’t find any details on how spending Artha into Beliefs and Instincts work…What does it mean?
Does it have something to do with the little Artha log next to the Beliefs and Instincts section on the char. sheet? What are these 3 dots/logs are for?
So, what it says is that you can use artha to accomplish Beliefs and Instincts–primarily, you use artha to try and achieve a goal-oriented Belief. It’s an implied part of the artha cycle: you spend artha on the rolls that are meaningful to your character. When you fight for your Beliefs like that, it’s a great flag to the players to vote a Trait onto your character reflecting the Beliefs you fight really hard for. The more artha you invest into fulfilling a Belief, the more powerful the trait they should feel free to vote on.
But no, there’s no formal connection, just the normal trait vote process.
Kudos on noticing that, by the way! The sentence further down, “Beliefs and Instincts are meant to evolve into traits throughout the course of play.”…that’s AWESOME.
So, Burning Wheel Revised had a recommendation to track how your artha is used in pursuit of your beliefs and use that to guide how much of a trait you get from the trait vote. If some text seems to be hinting at that, it might be because it’s a vestige of that.
For Burning Wheel Gold, that guideline was removed, though – I think to emphasize the fact that the trait vote is its own thing, based on the fiction rather than pure mechanical stuff. In BWG, the focus of earning and losing traits is now squarely on characters’ actions and accomplishments. Artha just helps you achieve improbably things that’ll make the whole table go, “Oh, man, you are a naturally gifted swordsman!”
Thats what I tought. The small logs on the left are just reminder of how important the belief or instinct was. BUT does that mean that everytime you change a belief or an instict it has to become a traits? Also how many traits you should change at a time or how many sessions without using it should be played before taking it away??
Nope, Beliefs in particular will flash past far too frequently to turn into Traits. You only gain traits during a Trait Vote, which happens after an arc of play. During a Trait Vote, players can go around and propose traits for other characters, and those are voted on. (You probably don’t want to have too many traits flying around during a Trait Vote.) The owner of a character or the GM can also propose that one of a character’s traits be removed. Then, everyone votes to whether it should go away.
Remember that a trait is an emphasis, a distinguisher. You can be stubborn even if you’ve lost the Obstinate trait. It’s just no longer a focus of your character, unless you work to bring it back.
The more artha you invest into fulfilling a Belief, the more powerful the trait they should feel free to vote on.