Fight me!

I posted earlier this week that my next session of Burning Wheel would use the Fight! rules. This is one of the features that people raved about when the game was published. Naturally, I was excited.

We got into it. Two of my players know the rules well so I often lean on them for rules help. They were great! They know the ins and outs of it. They suggested ideas and rules interpretations. We had the fight.

And I hate it.

I fucking hate it.

It took an hour to resolve six volleys. The stakes were resolved nicely but the effort required to get there was far more than was necessary. Because of these rules, my once-a-fortnight game turned into treacle. I couldn't move. I couldn't breathe. The story became a statue. Nothing happened. Two hours of gaming advanced the story almost nowhere.

That makes me sad and angry. I wanted this to be glorious. I wanted it to be active and meaningful. I feel disappointed that it's not the play experience I had expected.

Part of me wants to convert it to DramaSystem, Fate, or even D&D. That's unlikely to win me any friends in the group. I'll probably just never use the Fight! rules again.

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Intermission: I wrote all of that in the 30 minutes after my game finished last night. Then I slept on it before coming back to it.

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I still fucking hate it.

I was ready to sell all my Burning Wheel Revised books, or give them away as a prize at the next Go Play. I just wanted the foul things out of my life for the time I won't ever get back. Instead, I've mellowed a bit to figure out what I've learned from this.

I've learned that I don't like the Rim of Burning Wheel. In the last couple of games I've tried the Duel of Wits and Fight! to add something to our experience. The Rim doesn't suit my comfortable play style at all. After a good night sleep I've come to the conclusion that I like shorter fights, perhaps no more than a few rounds of action. Poison'd fits that category nicely. So does Primetime Adventures, most Fate games, DramaSystem, low-level D&D, and so on. So what does that mean for my game?

Bloody versus linked tests. That's about as complicated as I want to get for a fight in Burning Wheel. If a simple bloody versus test doesn't suit the story then I'll make it a linked test of three to five tests with a mix of fighting styles or agility or whatever it is the scene needs, and be done with it. I'll be able to handle multiple combatants more easily and get to a resolution within five minutes.

Will I ever use the Burning Wheel Rim again? Very unlikely. I'll keep playing the Hub and Spokes of this game, though, but the Rim has suffered a mortal wound and there's no coming back.

Adjusting to the Crunch

The third session of O Mortal played out last night. At the end we spent a couple of moments talking about the game and one player said, "Wow. Only eight rolls all game."

For context, we played for two hours. That's one roll every 15 minutes or so.

At first I shrugged it off but the players reminded me that this is Burning Wheel. Every roll is a test. Every test helps towards advancement. Advancement is built into the psychology of this game. Therefore, by not asking for die rolls I'm hindering the players' desires for character advancement.

As a GM this was a great moment for me. My players are telling me that they want something from the game that I didn't give them. They want the game to be Burning Wheel and I ran it as though it was Fate or DramaSystem. This kind of disconnect can lead to players being dissatisfied with the play experience and potentially with the game system itself.

My role as a GM includes participating in creating the conditions for enjoyable play. I'm included in the mode of production of the story so I have to respond to the others at the table in some way. It might not be acquiescing every time, but it has to be a response that moves towards greater enjoyment.

More importantly, my role as a GM is to respect the game that I run. A game is written to be run as that game. It might be similar to other games but that still doesn't make it the same. After playing PTA and DramaSystem games for the last few years, I need to adjust to the crunch of Burning Wheel.

The Perfect Game?

I think I've almost played the perfect game. At Go Play Brisbane last month my game of DramaSystem using the lyrics of Queen II was perhaps the best game I've ever run, and one of the nicest storylines I've been involved with.

All credit to the players. They were interesting and inventive. They rose to the occasion, and played the hell out of that game.

I'm delighted and relived about it too. I'd had this idea for a game years ago but never had just the right moment to play it. So now that it's happened, it was worth the wait.

Maybe I will never run it again, just because of how much I enjoyed this one. It was close to the perfect game.

Go Play Brisbane, my session is full!

On a whim I decided to prepare a DramaSystem pitch based on the lyrics of the Queen album Queen II (released in the early 70s). The idea was to run it at Go Play Brisbane in April. I've never run DramaSystem before but I really want to.

After a long weekend it seems that the session is fully booked, much to my delight and surprise.

Nagademon 2015: Nuria Setting

*blows dust off blog*

My Nagademon 2015 project is to write a DramaSystem pitch. I have an idea for a setting and I want to see where it goes. Each blog post will be one (or two) of the sections typically used in a pitch. I'm going to write this in the open, rather than write about it while you wait to see if I compile it into a downloadable file.

Nutshell
Rebel factions struggle to overthrow the foreign power which invaded this ancestral orbiter five generations ago.

Setting
The orbiters high above Earth were built in response to the disaster left on the surface. Long after the war stopped and the surface dwellers started cleaning up the pollution, several of the orbiters declared independence and demanded recognition as sovereign states. And soon after that, they developed more weapons and went to war in the heavens.

The first recognised nation-state orbiter was Nuria, previously called Orbiter Artemis. Its people were intensely proud of their place in history, having left behind the confict of older ways in favour of a peaceful existence. Their commitment to a new way of living also made them an easy target for the larger, and more powerful orbiting nations. When the Turit Federation began to expand, it was inevitable that Nuria would fall. The Nurians believed that they represented something bigger than this kind of war, and trusted in the Turit to leave them alone.

They were wrong.

Making short work of the Nurian defences, the Turit absorbed their orbiter into the federation. They let them keep most of their customs, on the proviso that they paid their taxes and remained peaceful. In turn, the Nurians became sullen and resentful. They longed for their independence again but could not agree on how to gain it. Political factions formed quickly, capitalising on the emotions of the populace, and while most people wanted to live a quiet life, they all wanted one of the factions to get rid of the Turit off their orbiter.

You are active members of the factions, though perhaps not all of the same faction. With all your heart, you seek freedom for your fellow Nurians and you know there is only one way to secure it.

You are politicians, rebels, journalists, militants, and terrorists. You destabilise Turit power at all opportunities in order to preserve the Nurian people and the Nurian home orbiter. But you must keep your real agenda secret. The Turit have spies everywhere and are ruthless towards anyone who threatens the peace.
But it could be worse; you might be a Turit spy, sent to infiltrate the factions. Your people will brand you as a traitor if they ever found out, but it's for their own good that you do this.

No matter your faction or your orbiter, what you do you do for Nuria.


Next time: the factions

Hillfolk for me

It's here at last; my kickstarter copy of Hillfolk. It's much larger and has more pages than I had expected (although I could have checked the page count in the PDF). Still, it's a beautiful book, reminiscent of the gaming books I bought in my teens: large and hardcover.

I can't recommend this book enough for all your "loosey goosey"* gaming needs. The followup settings look to be quite promising as well. Between this and Fate, I may never need to buy another game again.

Although I probably will. ^_^

* A necessary description for this product, as listeners of KARTAS would know.