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?

Timely & Efficient Posting

So this has been a busy week games-wise, what with Gen Con going on and the 2016 #RPGaDay.  I've also personally had a busy game week this week - ran another session of Stars Without Number Sunday night, did some Mouse Guard prep yesterday (although tonight's session unfortunately ended up being cancelled), and got to get introduced to a bunch of new roleplaying friends through Epidiah Ravacol's Google+ post, so no complaints on that end.

I started mulling over this post yesterday, and I honestly wish I had gotten it up then because it dovetails pretty nicely with day two of RPG a Day.  For those unfamiliar, the #RPGaDay hashtag posts a different discussion topic everyday during the month of August for us roleplaying nuts to come together and talk about.  Yesterday's topic was "Best game session since August 2015?"  So I'll call it close enough and post a day late.

Interestingly enough, last week's session for my Mouse Guard campaign was completely accidentally one of the best single sessions that the group has had to this point.  This same group just came off probably our best campaign stretch where they helped a group of female outcasts from Grasslake set up their own community, which I've posted a bit about before.  This ended up culminating with the patrol meeting up and forming a relationship with a civilization of moles that exists in the Wilds east of the Territories, and then fending off an army of weasels lead by a sable warlord.  Needless to say, it set some pretty high expectations for the following year in-game.

This year I've set up something slightly different.  Coming off a merchant escort run in early spring, the patrol needed to clear the northern shores of crabs that were causing shipwrecks and shutting down trade routes.  However, during this adventure the patrol found that one of the wrecked ships had been carrying a suspicious shipment of weapons.  Following sessions saw them take the investigation east to the port cities where the ships had come from, and followed the trail back west to where the weapons were headed.  Turns out that the weapons shipment was being funneled to help fuel a long-overdue rebellion in Elmoss, where things had gotten so dire that the merchant leaders had begun gleaning wages off of the citizens to keep things afloat.  Somewhat unsurprisingly given the patrol's history by this point, my players jumped in on aiding the rebellion rather than trying to shut it down.

This is where it's gotten interesting, though, and the Big Moment that I honestly did not realize was the Big Moment when I did the prep.  The leader of the Elmoss rebellion, a young but hardened leader of a lass, didn't fully trust the patrol's intentions and was hesitant to involve them further in the coup.  She therefore (following a failed Persuasion test to convince her they were on the up and up) gave them a mission to help prove themselves: coming from Copperwood was a shipment of food and supplies to act as relief to the mice of Elmoss.  The patrol needed to ensure that shipment never reached Elmoss in order to keep the citizens hungry for change, both literally and figuratively.

When I originally designed the mission, I had assumed that this would be a covered by a test or two during the Player's Turn - it was a possibly twist, and I honestly didn't even consider this as being something that needed to be addressed during the GM Turn.  I was shocked when this revelation completely halted the game (in a good way).  As their table chatter went on though, I realized that this twist managed to hit on each of their Beliefs in some way or another.  For reference, the group's Beliefs are as follows:

• Never back down, never give up.
• The needs of the many outweigh those of the few.
• Always work to better myself and others.

The logic behind the rebellion leader's giving them this task is very important to understanding why this became such an internal struggle for the patrol.  In the 1E canon, Elmoss' government was originally set up when the city was a thriving supply hub for the western Territories.  However, once many of those towns began falling during the Weasel War, Elmoss began to fall in power and influence.  The government, though, made up of the heads of each trade practiced in the city, remained the same, and became a huge burden to the citizens of the town.  In the rebellion leader's mind, this rebellion had been coming for far too long, and now that she had the citizens ready to pull it off, the relief supplies would cool their heads and the coup would miss its window.  

The first mouse (the patrol leader) understood this logic right away, and knew the danger - these mice were finally on the door of real change, and something like this might turn them away from their goal.  The second part of his Belief really shown here, not wanting to see the rebellion in any danger of falling apart, even if it meant he needed to do something questionable and that mice might suffer for it.  The second mouse and third mice were the ones that really were struggling with what was going on.  For the second mouse who strives to work for the greater good, who represents the few?  Is the need for rebellion among the Elmoss mice forcing permanent change greater than the need for them to feed their families?  Is providing food really buying time and avoiding danger for an small oppressive elite?  Similarly, the mouse looking to make herself and others better had quite the quandary on her paws.  Is the betterment of the Elmoss mice really with overthrowing their antiquated government in a bloody coup?  Can she honestly view herself as taking the steps towards her goal of bettering herself by denying starving mice food?

Ordinarily with this kind of conflict among the group, I would have moved this into an inter-patrol Argument Conflict to resolve it, but there was really one side and two questions.  Two of the three were having such an internal debate over what was the right course of action that there didn't seem to be enough to combat against the one mouse who was game for sabotaging the shipment.  They might get there on their own eventually.  In the end, I at least got them to agree that we would address the shipment in the next session so we could finish out the rest of the mission, so it'll be interesting to see what the end result is and how they handle everything.

While the session itself was interesting enough, it was really this moment that stood out as one of the best I've had in my gaming history.  I am slightly bothered that it came about so unintentionally, and that I didn't recognize ahead of time what the situation actually represented for the players, but such is a learning experience as a GM for a game like this.  I am at the least very happy that I got to be a part of the moment.

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)

Wherein I Talk About Space RPGs

I have always been more of a fantasy guy than a sci-fi fan for as long as I can remember.  I don't know if it comes from growing up in woodsy New Hampshire or if it's something other influence from my childhood, but I've always been way more into swords & sorcery than space operas.  This isn't to say I didn't love Star Wars growing up or that I don't still get the hankering for some space traveling now and again in my games, but it's something that comes and goes more often than not.

Surprisingly, the first roleplaying game I remember playing semi-regularly growing up was West End Games' D6 Star Wars. I had tried AD&D and couldn't get my head around it mechanically at ten or eleven years old, and I snagged a copy of ICE's Middle Earth Roleplaying around the same time period, but since I had the book I was expected to run the game, which I was very ill-prepared for at that age.  Star Wars kind of had everything in it that made it a perfect for me at that time period, which I should point out was also around the time the special edition movies were released in theaters.  The mechanics (or at least what we considered the important mechanics of combat and skill tests) were somewhat easier to follow, it came packed in with a familiar setting, and the best part was that it had rules for space combat and modifying starships.  All of our games tended to center around drumming up cash to buy a new ship or mod out an existing ship, and it functioned as a fantastic campaign device.

I recently had a group of close friends decide they wanted me to run a game for them, and they skew much more to the sci-fi end of things, so I started to look at different sci-fi roleplaying games that are out in the market at the moment.  Unfortunately, I never bought the West End Star Wars back in my heyday and it's currently out of print, so that wasn't an option.  But the big thing I wanted to make sure was included in the system was the ability to both modify starships and rules for ship-to-ship combat.

White Star

One of the first ones to jump out at me was James M. Spahn's / Barrel Rider Games' White Star, which is based on the OSR Swords & Wizardry White Box system.  I should point out that none of the players in the group were experienced gamers and had really only light experience with d20 rules, so this seemed like a good bet.  The character creation process is simple, with a limited number of choices, and there are rules for ship modification and dogfights, so this was the first game we rolled out.  One of us lives outside New Orleans, so we ended up using Roll20 for the game, which may have helped killed this one from the get-go unfortunately.

I should point out that there is nothing wrong with White Star as a system, and in fact I think that the game itself is a very well designed and appreciate the work involved.  It unfortunately was just not the game for my particular group.  Part of it was the lack of Roll20 character sheet integration, as I had to self design crude character sheets to keep track of everything.  But the bigger part I think was that the game itself is just too rules-light and open for me to run with this group, which is by design.  Combat is simple enough, and the space combat rules are seamless, but where the system falls apart for us is in the lack of skill checks.  This probably comes down to me not being a big OSR guy, but given how unforgiving combat in White Star can be for low level players, they needed to try and get creative in how they approached encounters rather than go guns-blazing.  But there is nothing there from a system standpoint.  No skills, which we could've probably gotten around by using attribute modifiers for instead, but there are no rules for increasing attributes when gaining levels either.  This meant that they would never improved as the game went on.  So then we looked at the saving throws (which advance with each level gained) as an alternative, but it was too broad.  It seemed very counter-intuitive that a pilot would be roughly as likely to be able to hack a security system as he would be able to execute some feat of great strength.  We made it three sessions with rules discussions in between before we shelved this one.

Stars Without Number

While we were working through our ill-fated White Star game, I continued researching other systems.  The next one that jumped out at me was Sine Nomine Publishing's much-lauded Stars Without Number.  This one also used a modified version of the d20 system, had rules for ship modding and space combat, and now most importantly had rules for skill rolls.  This addition also allows for slightly more customization of characters despite having only three classes compared to White Star's seven (including races), which meant rolling characters took slightly longer, but not Burning Wheel level by any means.

SWN also benefits from having interactive character sheets on Roll20, and I can say that I likely wouldn't be able to run the game with this group without it.  Between the completely different mechanics for combat vs. skill rolls and the number of modifiers for each combat roll, I doubt my players would've been able to grasp the mechanics without the Roll20 macros.  The game also has a pretty rad ruleset for factions and star system generation, although we haven't yet ventured into this part of the system.  In addition, the game allows for helpers on rolls, which appeals to the BW fanboy in me considerably.

That being said, I still find myself kind of dissatisfied with the system.  Part of this is that I am not a big prepper as a GM, and SWN is a game that requires a lot of it.  Another part of it is that the system is still more or less part of the OSR umbrella, which means it's very unforgiving combat-wise, especially as it pertains to healing.  The healing aspect is likely by design in order to function with the faction turns system, forcing characters onto the sidelines for an extended period while the universe around them advances plot-wise, which would be awesome if we were using that part of the system.  Given that we aren't, we've instead had to improvise our own healing system in the game.  I'm also not completely sold on the rules for Psionics, but that could dwindle a bit the more they get used in play.

D6 Space

Were it not for the group really being reticent to step outside of d20 mechanics, I think I would've gone instead with the spiritual successor to Star Wars, D6 Space (also by West End Games).  Granted it's been years since I've played in the D6 system and it lacks the built-in setting strength of Star Wars, but I still think if I had gotten my players on board with learning a new system we all might have had a better experience with our game to this point.  If the opportunity presents itself down the line for another sci-fi game, or if my players decide to give another new system a try, I think this will be the system I run in the future.  It will be interesting to see how much I've romanticized the system in my memory as well.  It could very well be that it just doesn't hold up as well with time, but given that the PDF is free on DriveThruRPG it's no real risk outside of time spent.  Plus, it has a Roll20 character sheet, which is a pretty surprising bonus.

Feel free to comment with some of your favorite sci-fi game stories or systems.  In particular, if you play White Star, let me know what I'm missing.  I don't enjoy the idea of calling a system a loss, so please try and convert me back into getting that one onto the table again at some point.