Help! My Wheels are Burning!

It's a crazy time of year - Thanksgiving just passed (hope everybody had a wonderful one), and the holidays are approaching.  Sadly, this has meant that getting gaming groups together can prove a bit challenging, considering family obligations and all the things that need to get done.  I myself have had some trouble over the past couple of weeks getting my Burning Wheel group together, but we ended up having our second session last night, which was a big plus.

As I've mentioned before, my group (including myself, really) is brand new to Burning Wheel, although three out of the four of us were part of the Mouse Guard campaign that ended earlier this year.  Obviously with a system like Burning Wheel, there's a lot to try and work through for new players.  The biggest part of this is obviously the Beliefs.

Now you may remember that our setting is kind of weird - there's a city guard who at more or less as mercenary soldiers akin to The Three Musketeers, but with everybody wearing unique masks similar to lucha libre.  All this is in a more or less gothic horror setting.  Our first session was a reworked version of Words Remain Below, and it went pretty well.  The action was smooth, there was a lot of urgency, and it ended up with a fairly spectacular and tense (and successful) exorcism.  The problem was, coming out of that more or less self-contained session, there wasn't a lot of direction as to where to move things from there.  Looking at the players' Beliefs didn't add much guidance for me either, and it made me think more about the game I'd presented.

When we got together last night, the first thing I did was mention to everybody that I wanted to take a look at their characters' Beliefs a bit closer and get tighter with them.  I explained to my Mouse Guard players that, while they're called the same thing in BW, Beliefs function closer to a mashup of MG's Goals and Beliefs rather than the standalone, creedo-style Beliefs in Mouse Guard.  I used an example from the Codex of more of the two part Belief wording, where it's phrased more as a cause/effect relationship.

One of the players burned a relationship with a rival swashbuckler that involved a lot of Musketeer-esque posturing and one-upsmanship, and I used him as an antagonist in the first session to pretty decent effect.  I used his Belief as written in the first session as an example: "I will embarrass my rival Jank."  We talked about this a bit, and we discussed how the Belief as written was rather flat - "embarrass my rival whenever possible" is a good Instinct, but as a Goal/Belief it was too vague and generic.  We talked through a more actionable Belief akin to "Jank is my rival and I must undercut him whenever possible; I will embarass him by..." This gives me as a GM much better direction as to what the players are interested in exploring, which I explained to the group, and everybody got it.

That being said, I'm not placing the blame for a lack of direction coming out of our first session on my players, and I was absolutely ready for the first question for me once we ran through the example above: "Can we know more details about the setting?"  This was one of the pitfalls I realized when looking at the player's characters when trying to put together the second session - we had established a feel, not a true setting, and definitely not a situation.  So we ran through a bit more of the world to try and figure things out, and discussed a bit more about how I envisioned the game being structured to a degree, provided the players were down with it.

One of the big things we established coming out of our discussion was fleshing out the masks more.  We had established that everyone within the society wore a unique mask, and that those masks were tied to a person's identity.  We also established that, in keeping with the high-honor type of setting, the masks could be wagered in duels, with the loser being unmasked and humiliated.  What we talked about during this session was the idea of there existing in the world "lost" masks.  These would be masks of great renown whose owners had perished in battle or, in some cases, enchanted masks that could be sought out by people as either honor missions or to replace their own mask and regain their standing in society.  This is something that our dwarf, who started the game unmasked, can work towards.

We also had originally started off with necromancy being illegal in the kingdom.  However, we brought up the idea of it only being illegal in this particular kingdom.  I'm a big Elder Scrolls fan, and a lot of my gaming ideas come from that game series.  This idea comes from TES lore of necromancy being banned in the Imperial province of Cyrodil, but completely fine in the College of Winterhold in Skyrim.  We don't have any magic users in the group, but this has some possibilities later on I feel.

All in all, I feel very good about where things are headed with the game, probably even more secure now than I was following our first session.  It really just shows the pitfalls possible in putting together a Burning Wheel game.  The system has endless possibilities, but you still need to play to the system in order to make it go.  Otherwise, you're just wandering around in a fog.

Lucha Musketeers!

I've thankfully gotten back into the gaming swing of things as of late, which has been a very welcome distraction from everything else that's been going on.  Coming off of the successful Mouse Guard campaign that wrapped up, we've finally moved onto Burning Wheel proper, which I'm incredibly excited about.  I've been dying to run this system since I first bought a copy at PAX East years ago, and now finally getting the chance to do so.

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?

Sign, Sign, Everywhere a Sign

I had a bit of a rough Sunday this weekend, so I decided to distract myself from Real Life a bit with some work on my Witcher Burning Wheel hack that I've been tinkering with.  I posted the lifepaths and traits that I shared previously on the BW forums and got some excellent feedback on those from a couple of people, including some amazing advice from Thor for tweaks, so I'll be reworking those.

One of the big things that Thor pointed out is that the elven spell songs probably were a better model for the signs than using the Art Magic rules that I had initially intended to go with.  This solved one of my big concerns I had with having witchers use the Sorcery skill when there would be actual witches using the regular Sorcery rules in the game, which is something the Codex specifically calls out as an issue.  By making the signs themselves individual skills based off the elven spell songs, it eliminates the conflicting magic rules while still achieving the same effects.

That still leaves the issue of creating the new sign skills, though, so I've take a stab at that below!  These function mechanically as the elven spell songs more or less, being open-ended rolls but not requiring the Gifted trait.  Instead, the use of these skills requires the Witcher trait I shared before.  The other chief difference obviously is that use of these skills doesn't require sustained singing as the elven spell songs do in order to use to make them a bit closer to the magic used in-game.  Each of the signs is its own individual skill, it should be noted.


Quen  -- Ob 4^ -- 11 Actions
The witcher surrounds himself with a magical shield, absorbing damage from enemy blows. Functions as the existing Turn Aside the Blade spell.

Yrden -- Ob 4^ -- 2 Actions
The witcher casts a circle of magical fire on the ground, trapping supernatural foes caught within it. The caster chooses a single supernatural target to make a Steel test.  Hesitation is increased by the margin of success.

Igni -- See Description -- 2 Actions
A burst of flame erupts from the hand of the witcher, setting torches or foes ablaze in its path.  Functions as either the existing Flame Finger or Fire Fan spells as applicable to the intent.

Aard - Ob Speed -- 1 Action
The witcher assails his foes with a telekinetic blast.  Targets in the path are knocked prone.  Weapon length: as spear; Range: as pistol.

Axii -- Ob 3 -- 2 Actions
The witcher influences the mind of a target, forcing them to speak honestly or stunning them into inaction.  Targets must make a Steel test, and must speak honestly for a number of actions equal to the result.


Please take a look and let me know your thoughts, especially any changes you think might need to be made,  Are they too powerful?  Are they not powerful enough?  Let me know!  Once I get enough feedback, I'll work on putting together a post with the revised lifepaths, traits, and signs in a single post as an easy reference for anybody to use in their games.  At some point in the future, I might even take a stab at putting together some folklore monsters and Wild Hunt NPCs for those that want them, but that's a hill I'm not quite ready to climb just yet.

Oh, Witch-AY Woman!

(Note: Outside of this post being related to The Witcher 3, the title of this post makes no sense, and serves no purpose to the post outside of giving me an opportunity to quote my favorite obscure Seinfeld line.)

After some delays with Real Life going on (not the greatest week of my life, unfortunately), I've managed to make some kind of progress with the Witcher 3 Burning Wheel setting hack that I've talked about before.  Specifically, I've set about trying to come up with the new lifepaths and traits that I think burning a witcher would require.  While the Codex doesn't contain the rules for burning lifepaths and traits that I was hoping would be included, the Burning Wiki does have the worksheets for creating a new trait, which I used as a rough guide when putting the new traits together.  Mostly, though, I just tweaked some existing lifepaths and traits in order to get where I needed.

The big things I was concerned with when trying to put this stuff together were making sure that I covered the crucial skills a witcher would need, along with covering the very specific mutation process that a witcher goes through, leading to the fun cat eyes.  I decided against going with a separate lifepath for the mutation, given that I couldn't come up with any actual skills that would be gained form the process itself, and ended up just rolling an additional two years onto the Witcher lifepath.  I ended up basing the new lifepath on the dwarven Adventurer lifepath, which ended up also providing a pretty sweet bonus guide for the Witcher trait.  I also created one additional lifepath - that of the Witcher's Apprentice.  This was a slight tweaking of the existing Page lifepath from the mannish stock, reducing the years served and adding the Demonology skill, but with a big hit to the Resources points gained.

The one little wrinkle that I will say is probably necessary to tweak the game rules a bit to fit in is that the Witcher's Apprentice lifepath, like the Squire lifepath it's based on, requires that it be the second lifepath a character takes, but is itself an Outcast lifepath.  This means that, due to the lack of Born lifepaths that lead to the Outcast subsetting, you might have to fudge things a bit in order to incorporate this into your games and allow other lifepaths to lead into the Outcast setting.

Anyway, here's what I've come up with.  Please feel free to respond with your thoughts, and to use in your games.  If you DO end up using any of these for a game that you're running, please let me know how they play out.

Outcast Setting	Time	Resources	Stat	Leads
Witcher's Apprentice	5 yrs	5	+1P	Any
Skills: 6 pts: Brawling, Read, Write, Sword, Demonology
Traits: 2 pts: -
Prerequisites: If chosen, this path must be the character's second lifepath and may only be taken once.
Witcher	7 yrs	10	+1M/P	Any
Skills: 12 pts: Sorcery, Climbing, Folklore, Herbalism, Haggling, Brawling, Sword, Crossbow, Axe, Appraisal, Munitions, Survival, Symbology, Alchemy
Traits: 2 pt: Witcher, Mutant
Requires: Witcher's Apprentice or any Soldier lifepath.

Witcher	Dt
Witchers are feared by the commonfolk, considered freaks and meddlers. As such, Witchers gain +1 Ob to all Circles tests when dealing with Born Peasant or Villager humans. However, they may take a minor (1D) affiliation with the school that trained them for free.

Mutant	Dt	4 pts
The mutation that witchers undergo renders them sterile and unable to produce offspring. However, the procedure gifts them with sight into the supernatural realm. All Observation tests made to see traces of the supernatural are open-ended.

Getting My Wheels Burning

Busy and productive week this has been!  After months of trying toying with the idea of various different game designs and hitting various walls with each one, I had a random bit of inspiration the end of last week, and put together the early parts of a new game!  It's obviously still very raw, but I'm very excited with the shape that it's taken so far.  I gathered up some additional materials that I'll need, and I think the next step is to actually start some playtesting.  I've never hit this stage with a game before, so this is all very exciting.  Once I get a bit father along, I'll likely try to recruit some additional playtesters to get some more eyes on it.  But still, progress.

Also very exciting is the fact that I received my Kickstarter copy of the Burning Wheel Codex.  For those unaware, the Codex is a sort of rerelease of the original books that made up the original Burning Wheel set but weren't included in Gold - specifically, the Monster Burner, Adventure Burner, and the Magic Burner.

The Burning Wheel Codex

So not that I finally have the complete rules in hand, I've been pouring through everything pretty regularly.  The essays contained in the Adventure Burner in particular have been fantastic to go through, with a lot of great advice on running the game itself and some pretty rad ideas of gaming and GMing as a whole.

Anyway, the biggest upside of all the information contained in the Codex is that now I have better tools for making a setting to run a campaign!  Outside of the people I've played with online, the majority of the people I play (and I think a lot of casual gamers in general) are more likely to get behind the idea of a new game or campaign based on the setting.  So which one is the best to explore with my fancy new books?

Banner Saga
This one is partially on me playing this one recently, or rather Banner Saga 2, but I think from a Burning Wheel standpoint there are a lot of awesome possibilities.  The setting itself is pretty close to the out-the-box Sagas of the Icelanders game, but with enough distinctions that I think there would be a lot missed running in that system.  In particular, I think BW allows for really trying to flesh out the hulking Varl.  Still, pretty niche audience I think for the most part.

Elder Scrolls
In keeping with the northern European but not quite viking high fantasy idea, the Elder Scrolls series provides some great options for running a game I think.  The setting itself is incredibly fleshed out, which is a benefit as well as a bit of constraint, as there's more room for butting up against canon in terms of campaigns.  Not the hugest deal in the world, but something to think about.  The other question in using the Tamriel is settling on the primary province of the game, and how that will affect mechanics.  Skyrim?  At least one person is going to want to play as a dragonborn, meaning shouts will need to be fleshed out.  There's also a much greater number of race options that will need to be determined.  The various man and mer races are likely to be covered by limiting and tweaks various existing lifepaths, but what about the kaihjit?  Or the argonians?  Some heavy lifting would be required here.

Which, I think, brings me to my most likely setting for a future Burning Wheel game.

Witcher 3
I'll confess something here:  I have Witcher 3.  I've played Witcher 3.  I have, as of yet, been unable to really get into Witcher 3.  This is largely to due with the control schemes of the game itself, particularly when it comes to combat.  For whatever reason, the game is very counter-intuitive to my play style when it comes to video games.  However, what is inarguable is that I do find the game world itself incredibly fascinating, well developed, and (perhaps most importantly for my purposes here) open.

There's a lot of generic in Witcher 3 that I think it would be simple enough to try and convert to a default setting like Burning Wheel's, and likely without much fuss.  Are there towns in Witcher 3?  Are there important characters?  Yes, of course.  But while I know many players could tell you there's a character named The Bloody Baron, I would think fewer would be able to tell you what the name of his town is.  I'm a fairly reactionary GM - I plan scenarios, I'm good at interpreting player action and coming up with creative responses to that action, even if I didn't plan anything ahead of time.  Where I am very weak is in carefully planning out encounters and fleshing out the meticulous details of a world.  I'm perfectly fine referring to a town as "that place we went where the duke killed his wife while we were there" in my groups, and I'm much more apt to remember that than the name of the town anyway.

That being said, it doesn't mean there's no work to be done in order to convert Burning Wheel's default setting framework over to Witcher 3.  For one thing, there's a lot of limiting of the available character races.  Dwarves would make sense given their roles in the game, elves would be iffy I think, but no orcs.  Really I would ideally limit the PC choices to human and dwarf.  Then, assuming the players are mostly planning on playing witchers, there need to be some specific traits made up.  Witchers are sterile in game terms, and also have their unique cat eyes that allow them to see the magic secrets in the world around them, so there's some call-on or die traits to be dealt with there.

Where the Codex really caught my eye as it relates to the way magic and the witchers actually tackling supernatural creatures would be handled.  The game is largely based around northern European folklore, so the system works perfectly there with the Folklore skill.  Players can use that to try and discern remedies and charms for combating various ghouls and beasts, very similar in that regard to how the story progresses in the actual game.  The bigger question relates to how the game would handle magic.  The game has witches and the like in it, so there are some spells there, but by and large the witchers themselves have only a handful of magical powers to work with.  These come off less like true spells in the traditional RPG sense and more general skills that happen to be magical in nature.

This, I think, would be something best covered by using the Art Magic rules rather than the standard sorcery rules built into the system.  For the most part, the spells like Igni and such would be covered pretty well by the various functions of the Sorcery skill under the Art Magic rules, maybe with some slight tweaking and interpretation.  The big thing is that, in trying to emulate the game world, the witchers less learn new spells as they do improve their existing powers, which grow in strength as they go on.  In that sense, it seems to me to work better to just have a single skill, broken into different schools of magic in order to allow a bit more customization opportunity and less ability to munchkin as much, and having that skill improve through play as the game wears on.  Plus, then we don't have to constantly remember exact spell names and functions (again, planning and details aren't exactly my thing).

This will take some time and some percolating as far as the specifics go, but I think there's enough here to work with.  Once I get things fleshed out a bit more, I'll try and post some of my tweaks and such for anybody else out there who'd like to run their own Witcher game.

As always, thanks for reading.

NPC Rolodex - Urias the Bear King

The Bear King by Chris Tulloch McCabe

Born and raised in the village of Kingshearth, seated at the feet of the capital of King's Ferry, Urias began life as the only child to a poor farmhand.  Helping the family by working as a lowly woodcutter as a youth, Urias began showing a talent for hunting at a young age, and was already an accomplished woodsman and trapper by his mid teens.  Through his skill, he was able to secure additional land surrounding his family farm, and by the time he reached adulthood he had one of the largest homesteads in Kingshearth.

Unfortunately, such wealth eventually attracted the envy and scorn of a local noble, Cleofis Grandall, one of the king's closest friends.  Looking to seize the sizable plot that Urias had built and amass even more influence in Kingshearth, Grandall orchestrated a plot with a few of the local trappers and framed Urias for poaching.  The king seized Urias' homestead, which was turned over to Grandall in short order.  Urias was to be arrested, but some of the townsfolk that Urias had helped through the years created a diversion by setting a house ablaze, allowing Urias to escape in the confusion.  Now a fugitive, he retreated to the woods with little more than a rifle and the clothes on his back.

Living as an outlaw in the wilds, Urias survived on what the forest could provide him, living alongside all manner of beast while evading the hunters who had turned against him and the king's men still looking halfheartedly to find him.  He and the fabled bears of the king's wood grew to have a grudging respect for one another, and eventually (largely through Urias' skills in healing) began living side by side.  

Now years later, Urias has grown into a kind of folk hero, a boogeyman that the villagers of Kingshearth use to scare their children into behaving.  He is known throughout the surrounding countryside as The Bear King, the protector of the wilds, and he stalks the forests waiting for those hunters who turned against him to pass beyond the treeline so that he may have his revenge.

Urias, The Bear King, Man, 38 years old

Lifepaths: Born Peasant, Woodcutter, Hunter, Trapper, Poacher, Outlaw, Strider

Will B5, Perception B5, Power B4, Forte B5, Agility B5, Speed B4, Mortal Wound B10, Reflexes B4, Health B6, Steel B5, Hesitation 5, Stride 7, Circles 2, Resources 1

Traits: 

Foul Smelling (char), Outlaw (Dt), Loner (char), Low Speech - wild beasts (Dt), Salt of the Earth (char), Suspicious (char), Intense Hatred (char)

Beliefs:

The bears have been true allies; I will see that they are protected as they've protected me.

I will bring those to justice who betrayed me, starting with the poachers who framed me.

I have lived too long outside the lands of man; I will never be able to return to a life in the city.

Instincts:

Always make sure I have ammo.

Never take a nobleman at his word.

Always check for tracks before making camp.

Skills:

Firebuilding B4, Mending B5, Foraging B4, Orienteering B6, Great Bear Husbandry B3, Great Bear-wise B3, Hunting B5, Tracking B4, Stealthy B5, Cooking B4, Firearms B6, Trapper B5, Observation B3, Royal Parks-wise B3, Authority-wise B3, Inconspicuous B4, Conspicuous B4, Forest-wise B4, Riding B4

Gear:
Rifle, clothes, shoes, Leaky shack, personal effects

Relationships: 

Cleofis Grandall, Kingshearth noble (significant, hateful)

Affiliation: Thornfang Great Bears (local)

Reputation: The Bear King (1D infamous, local)

The Waiting Game

I think it's true of any roleplaying game enthusiast that at some point in your life, your collection outpaces your actual gaming.  Inevitably, you end up with more games than you have either time or players to get on the table.  Sometimes time is the enemy - you're involved in too many games concurrently to be able to devote prep or play time to another game, or simply real life doesn't allow for any more game nights on top of your other responsibilities.  Other times, it's that the game you really want to run doesn't appeal to your playgroup, and so the book sits on the shelf, waiting for either their minds to change or for you to find another playgroup interested in the game.

So for this post, I'll look at some games that, for one reason or another, are still sitting on my shelf awaiting their first go:

Dogs in the Vineyard

Vincent Baker's Dogs in the Vineyard starts off the list.  This one is an interesting one, as this is one of the few games that my wife is really on board with playing.  We went to PAX East a few years back and the Burning Wheel guys ran a panel on adjusting your GM style to suit the game system that you're playing, and Dogs was one of the games they mentioned.  When we left the panel, my wife mentioned that the game sounded interesting, at that we should look into getting it.  I grabbed it, but the problem at this point has been setting.  For those unfamiliar with the game, Dogs is based around the idea of an alternate-reality Old West that was originally settled by a people very similar to Mormons.  The players then take the role of God's Watchdogs - members of the faith that go from town to town settling disputes and rooting out demonic influence.

Given the religious-heavy setting, I haven't gotten any other players on board with this one as of yet, and given my wife's reticence to play solo (she's not really much of a gamer, despite her interest in this game in particular), this one hasn't seen play yet.  However, the system is one of the most innovative I've seen, so I may end up trying to hack this one a bit to get it to a more player-friendly setting that will appeal more to my friends.

Swords Without Master

Speaking of innovative systems, another game I've yet to play is Epidiah Ravachol's Swords Without Master.  This one is more or less on me for not playing, as this one comes down to two factors.  For one thing, there's a time issue, as the #SundayAMSwords online game that runs weekly (when there's enough players) tends to not be super convenient for me to be able to jump in schedule-wise.  But the other part of it comes down to me being a little bit shy when it comes to jumping into online games.  Google+ has been an incredible boon for me as far as gaming goes.  I've been very lucky to have had nothing but good experiences so far playing games over Hangouts and PbP games through Drive, but I still always hesitate taking people up on offers for new games, particularly when there's a webcam involved.  Chalk it up to just shyness I guess, but I'm hoping at some point I get past it enough to be able to play this gem of a game.

World Wide Wrestling RPG

Fun fact about me: I am a wrestling fanatic.  And so between my love of wrestling and my love of roleplaying, it's only logical that I would own Nathan D. Paoletta's wonderful World Wide Wrestling RPG.  It's admittedly kind of surprising that I haven't gotten a game of this one rolling yet, given that there's a considerable overlap in my friends of wrestling fans and roleplaying fans, but this one really just comes down to time.  I've got a regular Mouse Guard campaign running along with a Stars Without Number campaign, and so this one is really just waiting for one of those to wrap up so I can get it on the table.  It'll have it's time to shine soon enough.  Also, if you're not aware, Nathan D. Paoletta is both a genuinely wonderful human being and also a fantastic game designer, so if you're reading this you should head over to ndpdesign.com and check out his stuff.

The Burning Wheel

The last game I'll talk about in terms of those that I haven't played yet is also probably the most surprising.  Full disclosure: I am an enormous Burning Wheel fanboy.  Luke Crane's Mouse Guard was actually the game responsible for getting me back into roleplaying games.  I'm a huge fan of David Peterson's comic, and I actually found out about the game because of that.  When I picked it up, I was kind of dumbstruck by how much roleplaying games had changed since I was playing them regularly as an eleven- or twelve-year-old kid.  I immediately fell in love with the Mouse Guard system, and it was actually the first game I ever actually GMed.  Similarly, I grabbed Torchbearer as soon as it came out, and that game was the first and only game to this point that I've played over Hangouts, with an amazing group of gamers that I was fortunate enough to play with.

Here's the thing though: I have yet to actually play Burning Wheel proper.  To this point, all I've been able to play have been it's offshoots.  This one has largely come down to system.  Burning Wheel has one of, if not the most complex combat systems I've ever seen in a roleplaying game.  For a lot of my friends who are roleplayers, who generally were brought up on Dungeons & Dragons like most other hobbyists, the most important rules for a gaming system are how a game handles combat.  This presents a problem with Burning Wheel.  As I've always looked at the game and explained it people, Burning Wheel is more a game that has combat than a game about combat.  A fight really only takes place when it has to, when it's really important, and so the rules are set up to make those really important fights seem as epic and important as they should be.  Unfortunately for players who head straight for the Fight! chapter when they first crack open the book, this means that the rules for combat can be incredibly overwhelming, and that has turned off most of my friends from being willing to try out the system.  However, running my Mouse Guard campaign has gotten a group of my friends much more comfortable in the Burning Wheel system, and we've talked about finally getting this one going after our current game ends.  I really cannot wait.

Feel free to comment below and let me know what games you've been dying to play but haven't been able to as of yet.