I can sympathize with the players wanting less complexity. TB is unabashedly a game with rules to learn and master. Mentioning that your players are more interested in just story, my hack wouldn’t be TB+DW it would be the reward and “alignment” system of TB (beliefs, instincts) and basic D&D mechanics. Just replacing the gold advancement system with artha.
They get the role-playing support of TB with easy to understand system a non-meta d6 weapon damage and armor class. It’s not that D&D doesn’t have the same complexity in a way, but in indie games a lot of the perceived complexity comes from putting on the players shoulders much of the responsibility that the DM use to carry in terms of plot and mechanics. It sounds like your players would prefer for the DM to do all the number crunching and dice rolling and that’s D&D.
That’s a good point, though I do like the way DW reminds the players of what they can do with the clearly delineated moves. I think that will help my players. I also like when the system makes clear what can/cannot happen, when it’s my turn to make bad things happen and when the players get what they want. Basic d&d doesn’t proscribe enough, it leave a lot to the gm, which can leave players resentful if they don’t understand what’s going on behind the curtain.
JB – I’ve run several TB games for my son (11 now, but started when he was 10) and two of his friends. TB works GREAT as a rules lite game. I wasn’t trying to run it as a rules lite game, mind you – but those kids are simply not going to RTFM and retain it – and I can’t remember every little rule – and I have a policy of never slowing down a game to look in the book unless there’s a lull in the narrative.
The effect: I forgot all kinds of penalties – monsters didn’t get their weapon bonuses added in – two adventures done before I realized no one had been making armor rolls – etc etc you get the idea.
Didn’t matter, because of THE GRIND. The Grind is the single best RPG mechanic I’ve seen. It puts constant pressure on the players, and it makes their decisions matter. I focused the kids on THE GRIND, their traits, their instincts, and their nature, and they loved it. Did we do it right? Well, they keep bugging me to keep the campaign going, so I think the answer is FUCK YEAH even though we accidentally ignored damn near 1/4 of the book.
Yeah, I was probably pushing too hard, to be honest, and they just weren’t getting the whole check ecosystem and really didn’t enjoy the abstract nature of conflicts. If I had just forgotten about the rules more and focused on the grind it might have gone better. I guess I didn’t know how to do that since the mechanical components of TB are so integrated with everything. You cannot camp if you don’t have checks, so if you can’t wrap your head around how and when to use traits against yourself things fall apart. Maybe you just let them flounder and start wracking up conditions, but then morale would start to drop as they felt like there was no way out of the hole. I just don’t think they were personally ready for the vicious cycles that Torchbearer is built on. They want to be heroes, not desperate murder hobos.
The more I think about it, the more I think this just isn’t the system for this group. Oh well, maybe I’ll actually get to play Torchbearer for reals some day…
Yeah, my experience with Torchbearer is that it really isn’t the system for players who want their characters to be heroes. It’s about a desperate struggle to survive. Doing right is a luxury, and if you have the resources for luxuries your DM probably isn’t pushing you hard enough. Burning Wheel is probably a better system for players who want to play heroes.
I (politely) disagree! Torchbearer is most definitely a game for those who want to be heroes, but it’s not a game for players who want their character’s heroics to be handed to them. It’s a game where you have to earn the right to be a dramatic hero–that’s why the game has artha and Beliefs.
I would say that it’s more about becoming heroes than being heroes. If you just want to be a hero then to a certain extend you just want power thrust in your hands, and then it’s about what you do with that power, what you overcome using that power. TB is about facing challenges without heroic power and finding your heroism by overcoming those challenges. But in that way it’s more emotionally (and intellectually, and socially) challenging, and it’s meant to be. So if you just want to blow off steam, enjoy a fantasy, and feel awesome, it’s probably not a good fit.
Yes! I think “more about becoming heroes than being heroes” encapsulates it quite nicely. Burning Wheel tends to have that element as well, depending on how many Lifepaths you start with, but it’s far less drastic than in Torchbearer, where you start at a pretty painful level.
It’s also, in my experience, even more complex and removed from “traditional” roleplaying. I tried it one or two times with a different group of friends and could see that one or two sessions were not enough to grok it. I don’t think I even understand BW well enough to really play it as intended, and I’ve at least read the book a time or two (though it’s been a few years now). There definitely seems to be a lot of… cultural knowledge, oral history if you will, with BW. It doesn’t seem like enough to read the book, you have to meditate on discussions of “What is a belief” to really get it. That was my impression, with my limited ability to find people to play with anyway. So also not a good fit for people who just want to be awesome and heroic. But even if I never play BW it was still worth buying for burning characters for their own sake. Oh well.
Yeah, Torchbearer is a game with layers that isn’t possible to experience the whole of in a single session. I think the book recommends 10-12 sessions to really understand, which seems about right. You could get through a Winter phase in that time.
It’s also just not a game for everybody. Some people are totally on board with the hard rules for resource management and some aren’t. I would have a meeting and talk to your players about what they like, what they don’t like, and then decide what to do from there.
Yep, that’s pretty much what I did. They want to try Dungeon World for a while. Looks like I won’t be playing any Torchbearer for the foreseeable future, sad day.