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.

General Gaming Goodness

Between finally taking a vacation last week and this week being super busy (as first weeks back from vacation invariably are), it's been a bit since the last post.  I figured it worthwhile to give a few updates about my gaming-related life and where I'm at with certain things.

Burning Wheel Witcher 3 Setting Hack!

The first thing I'll address is what's garnered the most interest up to this point, which is the Witcher 3 setting hack that I talked about a bit in one of my last posts.  Unfortunately, in perusing the Codex a bit more, it turns out that the rules for creating your own monsters, traits, and lifepaths were not carried over from the previous editions of the The Monster Burner.  For this I say boo, as this was one of the biggest things I was looking forward to when the Codex was announced, and for it to not be included is kind of super disappointing.

However, what I DID find after some online snooping was the worksheets for trait burning and monster burning.  The two biggest hurdles for the Witcher setting are determining the correct traits for the witcher transformation process, and the skills and traits for the various folklore monsters.  Using these worksheets, I've started trying to piece together some of these details, which I hope to have to share within the next week or so.

My Game!

Some of the distraction from my witcher project has been due to the progression of the game that I've been working on designing.  It's my first real attempt at designing my own system, and I've been shocked at how it's been going on.  Originally, the game was inspired by non-fantastic games centered around ordinary folk, pushed forth by my desire to create a game about kid-to-teenager life and the perils therein.  Seeing games in this vein being worked on like Damn the Man, Save the Music and Sarah Richardson/Magpie Games' Velvet Glove hasn't cooled that thought at all.  As such, I took a lot of inspiration from Paul Czege's wonderful Nicotine Girls game, which provided some of the framework for the character generation and some terms. 

However, as I've been moving forward, the game has moved from being a hack to it's own system, which has been very exciting.  I've reached the point where I'm just about ready to start playtesting, which is both thrilling and terrifying.  But hopefully I'll have some tests soon, and then I may reach out to some of my far-off internet gaming friends to try and run some playtests for me.

Games I Wanna Play!

As is always the case with gamers, I have more games than I have time or people to play with. Out of these games, though, there is one I've been reading and thinking a lot about lately, which is Hannah Shaffer's Questlandia. I first heard about this game at PAX East this past year and saw Hannah's display as part of the lumpley/Make Big Things/everybody from Massachusetts booth, but whenever I walked by she seemed to be tied up talking to somebody, so I didn't get a chance to inquire further about it (probably a great problem to have, as a game designer).  I did make sure to grab one of her fancy bookmarks for the game and researched it a bit following the convention.  The game, which for those unfamiliar, is a GM-less collaborative world-building game of sorts, I found super interesting and kind of outside of anything else I've run into in gaming to this point.  

Not having much available cash (I'm having a baby finally!), I couldn't scoop this one up as quickly as I wanted, but fortuitously enough Make Big Things offered it for free for Free RPG Day and I grabbed the digital version until I have the free scratch to pick up a physical copy like I always need to do.  Actually having the game rules and seeing how it helps with such deep collaboration only made me more fascinated.  While it clearly functions as a game in and of itself, what I find most compelling is how well it can tie into any other game for a campaign.  Seriously - for any system you enjoy or want to start a new game with, start first with a session or two of Questlandia to flesh out the setting.  You can pull characters and world details from that game into the next when you move systems, and having that as a jumping off point for a campaign is bananas awesome to me.

Cons!

I've been itching to go to a gaming convention lately, most likely due to my regular groups dropping off due to scheduling and life.  However, we're kind of outside of the big con seasons, and unfortunately I missed almost all of them besides PAX East.  There is the Boston Festival of Indie Games coming up in the next few weeks, which I've been debating heading down for.  It seems to be more tabletop and video games than roleplaying, but I still think I'll end up heading down.  While I'm clearly more of a roleplaying geek, there are still some appealing board games and indie video games I get into from time to time, and at worst it'll be a chance to hang out with some new gamer people.  I do need to make it a mission to attend JiffyCon next year though.

Anyway, hopefully there will be some more substantial progress with the things I'm working on soon.

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.

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.

Breaking, Hacking, Burning!

This weekend I had some free time and was nosing around the internet as one does, and I came across a post on the Burning Wheel forums that Luke Crane made a few years back when Mouse Guard was first released that laid out some guidelines for hacking the system.  Mouse Guard is, to this point at least, my all-time favorite roleplaying system, but I've never really thought about hacking it.  Not only that, but Scott Acker and Patrick Riegert did an amazing job with their Realm Guard LotR hack that they did a few years back.  Still, I've been wanting to get into game design a bit, and the idea of trying my hand at my own hack is intriguing.  At the very least, Mouse Guard is probably the first system that I've gotten involved with to the point that I would actually feel fairly comfortable working with it.

I started to try and figure out ideas for what would work as far as a setting.  As Luke outlines in the opening of the post, a proper Mouse Guard hack requires three things to function - team-based adventuring, an over-arching force of nature, and dramatic adventuring that emphasizes on fighting for your beliefs.  Without these things, the system just doesn't hold up and you'd be closer to creating a new game instead of a system hack.  Therefore, the setting and the player characters would need to be characters that would believably need to unite for a common goal, but one with enough grey area involved that there isn't one "right" way to approach the overall conflict.

I've been heavily into the #FolkloreThursday hashtag on Twitter lately, and seeing all those tweets of fantastic creatures has really pulled me a lot in that direction as of late in terms of inspiration.  There are more varied stories of fantastic creatures and beasts than I ever would have imagined.  I've been toying a lot with the idea of trying to make a game that focuses on those types of woodland creatures, but the trouble in doing that with Mouse Guard comes down to what would unite these creatures to fight in unison?  Most of the mythic beings in the Norse and Scandinavian tales that have really peaked my interest are more meddlesome and chiefly are concerned with toying with humans.  This isn't really something I'm looking for in terms of my hack.  Still, I definitely want to go the fey route.  An early idea that I had when first mulling this over was to go with ents, with players acting as sort of woodland shepherds looking over the wilds.  While the premise seems to fit in where I want to take things, I can't really wrap my head around many credible threats for ents as PCs.  One of the main things that makes Mouse Guard work so well is the idea of the number of things that present real threats to the characters, be it weather or run-of-the-mill forest animals that would dine on mice.  With PCs the size and strength of ents, a lot of that is lost.

The Hidden People by Cory Godbey

Then I remembered a book that I purchased a few years back, artist Cory Godbey's excellent sketchbook The Hidden People.  This is a sketchbook that Godbey put together following a trip to Europe and was heavily inspired by the European creature myths.  Fittingly, I first heard of Godbey and saw his work in one of the Legends of the Guard comics.  In The Hidden People, the first chapter shows sketches of The Tree People, a group of humanoid creatures with twigs growing out of their heads that are born from acorns.  There are a few different sizes and varying builds, which plays into another issue I was having with the ents that I'll discuss in a bit.  I immediately began thinking over ideas that could play into a fantasy roleplaying setting, and I believe I now have my inspiration for this hack.

While I'll likely use the sketches as inspiration more so than an actual source material, there are a number of ideas that I'm planning on pulling in order to start building my game.  For one thing, the concept behind the tree people (who will definitely have to be renamed for the system) is perfect in that they are born of the wilds and are largely tied to to the (un)natural world around them.  Just as importantly, they contrast with the ents that I was considering originally in that they are much smaller, and therefore much more easily threatened.  Godbey also uses a few different models for the treefolk, which lends itself more to the Mouse Guard idea of The Territories.  The idea that these creatures can inhabit different parts of a forest and be born of different natural materials (trees, soil, rock, and what have you) gives a bit more customization in terms of player character options, and also allows for a territory system that's a bit closer to the standard game.

So now that I have some better idea of what the characters would be, now comes the tough part: what are they fighting for, and what would cause conflict?  I have some initial idea, in large part inspired by Princess Mononoke.  I'm a Studio Ghibli fanatic, and this is undoubtedly one of their best films.  For those who haven't seen the movie, a lot of it has to do with seeing to the well-being of the wilds, and the demonic corruption of the woodland beasts themselves.  Going off of this idea, the treefolk are the caretakers of the woods, similar to the role the ents play in LotR.  The difference here, though, is that rather than simply trying to grow the forest and make sure it's not destroyed by man or orc, there is a corrupting dark magic that the treefolk are battling against.  This allows for some opportunity for more unique NPCs, as in addition to simple beasts like wolves and bears, there can now be those that are corrupted by the darkness and provide a greater threat to the PCs.  Furthermore, and probably more important in a system sense, it gives a possible conflict for player beliefs.  Is there a way to cure the beasts, or is it wiser to destroy them?  Does the dark influence serve some kind of divisive good, similar to the way fungus helps decompose and renew a forest floor?

Circling back around to Luke's advice for hacking Mouse Guard, I've now largely answered two of the three primary focuses of the system: reasons for team-based adventuring, and something for the PCs to fight for that's maybe not as cut and dry as it would seem at first glance.  This only leaves the nature question to address.  While I'm toying with the idea of having different Nature descriptors depending on what type of treefolk a player chooses and where they come from, I think in general the nature of the PCs could come down to three descriptors: Hiding, Growing, and Renewing.  I may tweak these slightly before settling on the final descriptors, but I'd ideally like to shoot for this overall effect.  In Mouse Guard, if a mouse's nature rating gets too low, they lose what made them mice and can no longer live among mouse society; conversely, if it gets too high, they become too mouse-like and can no longer serve in the Guard.  I like the idea, given the creatures are born of seeds, that the nature descriptors could also somewhat apply to trees.  Perhaps if the nature rating gets to high, the treefolk just become trees instead, similar to the end of the old David the Gnome cartoon, where gnomes who are too old leave their friends and family and die, turning into trees.  Also, if you've never seen the series finale of David the Gnome, it was one of the most depressing episodes of a children's cartoon series ever.

So this is where I've landed, and as I tinker a bit more I'll try to share more of my process.  I'm hoping to have at least a draft for playtesting by the end of the year, but we'll see how ambitious I am.

As always, feel free to let me know your thoughts in the comments.

 

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.