Part of the appeal for me of Burning Wheel is both the lack of a baked-in system setting, as well of the flexibility of the lifepaths and skills to create almost limitless possibilities for settings. This can obviously also be something of a curse as well as a blessing. It can be very easy to get bogged down with endlessly discussing setting ideas simply because there's so many options available to you.
My original plan, as I've mentioned before, was to run a session of Questlandia in order to come up with a setting as a group and then move that setting into a longer campaign of Burning Wheel. We had gotten together with this idea in mind, but between setting up a time to finally get together and all physically getting together as a group, I had some odd inspiration. I brought it up with the group once we all sat down at the table and laid out my setting idea, with the caveat that this was just a suggestion. If they still wanted to run Questlandia to try and build something fresh, I was more than willing to do so. However, as we discussed the setting idea I had in mind, I could see everybody kind of start their wheels turning listening to everything, and so I wasn't wholly surprised when that was the plan we went with.
So what's the setting then? Where did this inspiration come from? Turns out, a number of places.
Coming off the heels of Halloween, and leafing through the Codex on my downtime, I had the inkling for a kind of gothic horror feel. Some supernatural monsters, some folklore and superstition, that kind of thing. I've also been reading The Three Musketeers (my first time - I know, I know), so I also had that mulling around in my brain. Something like official city guards that are commissioned to defend the countryside against supernatural beasts, with lots of rules of etiquette and honor. Still, musketeers fighting werewolves still seemed like it was lacking something for me. What else could we add?
Lucha libre!
Alright, so not lucha libre specifically, but the mask portion. If I haven't disclosed this information previously, I'm a pro wrestling fanatic from childbirth really. Over the past five years or so, lucha libre in particular has fascinated me. For those unfamiliar, a lot of lucha libre culture and history is tied into a luchador's mask. Most wrestlers compete under a mask, and each mask is unique to that luchador - it really defines their identity. Because the mask is so important, a lot of the most important matches center around the masks themselves. Wrestlers will challenge each other for their masks, with the loser being humiliated into having to permanently remove their mask, essentially losing their identity.
This fit perfectly into the feel of the setting I wanted. So much of The Three Musketeers story is built around honor and rivalry that I wanted something tangible to draw players into that mindset. Having a rival in the game that you could needle and play off against until the tension is so great that you finally challenge them to a duel to claim their mask is just so attractive of a story element to me. And then after one of you loses your mask, what then? How does that change the rivalry? How does losing your mask affect your standing, and what other relationships are now changed because of it?
We had a session and a half of character creation and then played our first actual play session last night, which went surprisingly well. The group is made up by two thirds of my Mouse Guard group and one player who hasn't played in the system before, so it was a good mix. That being said, there was a lot of relearning of rules in the early stages, particularly as to how skill advancement works in Burning Wheel versus Mouse Guard. But I think by the end of the session everybody had a grasp on the basics.
I struggled a bit with coming up with our first scenario, and was really stuck for ideas. I ended up going with a kind of rework of Words Remain Below, which ended up being perfect. All in all, it was a great game and everybody came out genuinely excited for our next session, which is what everybody wants at the end of the day, isn't it?
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