Does anyone have any tips on how to best run Burning Wheel with a zoomed out kind of perspective? Like Luke does in the Si Juk APs.
We want to cover a lot of time in our next session(s) but i am not sure how best to avoid the need to zoom in on stuff.
How do you set failure results for big swooping tests without having to zoom in on them and deal with the aftermath then?
Any experiences on this will be highly appreciated.
Set the stakes for long-term rolls appropriately. Success should be long-term; failure should also be long-term or delayed. And there may be very long periods of in-game time without any rolls.
Command: You are able to lead your men and succeed in repelling the occasional foray over the border. Fail, and your reputation as a leader suffers, your men mutter as morale crumbles, and nearby settlements dwindle as the populace leaves for safer areas.
Haggling: You’re able to secure the best deals for supplies and sell your products at high prices, and your business flourishes. Fail and by the end of the year your debtors come knocking, ready to repossess every asset your company has.
And so on.
In my games most of the very slow periods are simply due to not much happening. There can be long waits for events a long way off, a lot of time burned traveling, and so on. There’s no roll to travel from one end of the Empire to the other on foot (there could be, but in this case there isnt’!), it’s just slow.
Can you be a little more specific about your situation and what you feel you need to accomplish in your next session?
As a rule, tests are naturally inclined towards zooming in. Once you fail, the wheel starts turning and it’s hard not to try and put the fire out so to speak.
Without knowing your situation, I would maybe look at the rules for Graduated and Linked tests. The former are built specifically for thee kinds of long term, incremental success/failure. The latter will work for longer periods of time two but the results play off each other.
It also seems like this will be an appropriate time for the players to practice.
We have 3 Months of downtime where the group is basically stranded at a nobles palace. One of them is to marry their daughter and they have to wait until all the preparations etc. are made. So that character will have to deal with his new family in law and future bride. On the other side he needs their troops to fight the civil war in his own region and will most likely start to make plans for their counterattack as well as await word back from the scouts that will figure out what is going on there. The most trusted advisor of the queen also hates him because of a prior encounter.
His friend/servant/loose cannon meanwhile will most surely try to find out about their habits of slave ownership and maybe work against that. The future bride of the other character meanwhile has found in interest in him since he is young and athletic and not a cripple like her future husband. So that will be interesting.
Edit: Getting beliefs in now,
The noble wants to convince his future mother in law to gift him with magical healing for his crippled leg.
For the first character I would probably make a Linked Test between Strategy to plan the campaign/tactics of the civil war and then Bureaucracy to file all of the proper forms and see that supplies and whatnot are delivered, the proper missives sent, etc… Failure in this test could be due to the Queen’s adviser pulling some strings to make sure some of this is interfered with in some way, though it will likely come out at a later date.
All of the other stuff (slave ownership, potential love triangle) seems like it should be handled somewhat zoomed in. I would intersperse scenes of these two between the more narative backdrop of the war effort.
Don’t forget logistics. An army marches on it’s stomach.
I agree I’d zoom in on the slavery and any romantic stuff too. Maybe the Queens Advisor notices any attraction and pushes them together to better screw the lord in question.
Why didn’t i see that? Holy crap that is good!