The World You Play In

[TickTockMan]

I think that the Burning Wheel is a very polarizing game. In my experience, people will either love it or hate it, they will agree with it stands for or they will not. One topic I have debated with others is whether or not a world should have been provided with the system. With both sides coinceding a world is implied, but not explicit, I come down on preferring no world, and of course some others think their ought to be one. I like the rules set, and I will provide the world myself.

I usually use other source material for the background of my games; other games' settings, novels, comics, movies and what have you all come into play. I have some work of my own I use as well.

I would like to know if you use a specific world in your game or if you leave it vague? Who decided the setting? What parameters do you use to determine who and what is the characters' worlds, and what the characters can do?

Thanks in advance!

[Judd]

I feel like BW is written at my demographic:

Those who have gamed for years and have their own ideas about what a fantasy world should be.

I like making up the world as we go, allowing the players to make it with me in a collaborative effort, filling in the map as we go.

BW is written right towards that, methinks.

I like worlds that are spelled out entirely in a few sentences so that the players fill in the rest with their concepts.

[Kaare Berg]

Like Judd, I've found BW to be written for me.

And by looking through these here forums, particulary the Games and Campaign forum you will soon see some of the twists the posters here have put on their worlds.

Me personally, I am running a medival fantasy based on the Ultima world, too much LOTR movies and a swedish game called Drakar og Demonar 6.

search Miranna (at work and too alzy to link) to find more details.

Why, well its the type of setting I've been wanting to run for ages. And after having told the players what kind of game we are going to play I've let them run the show.

Might post more when I get the time.

[luke]

TTM,

My standard response: "Any thing you come up with is going to be better than what I come up with."

I believe it to be true. Do you really need another half-assed Tolkien rip-off/Tolkien-reactionary fantasy world? There are SO many out there already.

And with this game, you can rule them all! :x

ahem.

Also, I moved this to Games and Campaigns. 'Cause that's where it belongs.

-L

[TickTockMan]

I agree, Abzu! I do believe people generally have a better idea of what they want than in their game world than a game creator/publisher can. i am glad it is that way. There are not many settings out there that I do not modify to suit our games' purposes anyway.

That is why I am curious what worlds people have picked to play in. I like the ideas I see from these forums, so it seemed a natural place to come with these questions. Do they use pre-published worlds? Worlds from literature? Worlds of their own design?

And do they lay out much detail ahead of time, or just go with the flow?

I suually play in a world I am familiar with, so it is easy for me to improvise. Sometimes I do quite a bit of background mapping for the story, since the game inevitably goes in directions I had not planned. Other times, I just let the players decide what their characters will do, and i build a story around it. Just stepping outside your door can be an adventure!

I do try to be consistent with the characters' world thoough. If a world we play in has a feel to it, and the characters incorporate that feel, I do not want to turn the whole thing on its head. I think consistency can really add to long term development of a character, and retired favorites have been known to show up as NPC's!

[luke]

One of the more long-lived games I've run started with us noodling around in old ADnD modules. Cult of the Reptile God, Sinister Secret of Salt Marsh, and Slave Pits of the Undercity, if I remember correctly.

Aside from that, I take most of my inspiration from non-game related materials like films, fiction and history. That self-same ADnD moduled campaign was inspired by the films A Chinese Ghost Story and Tai Chi Master along with the book, The Origins of the Boxer Uprising (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0520058283/qid=1112199713/sr=1-38/ref=sr_1_38/002-9346983-5000834?v=glance&s=books)

-L

[rafial]

All the BW I've run to date has been set in Greek/Egyptian/Phonecian flavored "sword and sandals" type setting, centering around a merchant marine city/state called Tarshish. The setting was built collaboratively during the first game that it was used for, and each time I play in it again I figure out more stuff and the players add more detail.

[Angaros]

I would like to know if you use a specific world in your game or if you leave it vague? Who decided the setting? What parameters do you use to determine who and what is the characters' worlds, and what the characters can do?
I'm using HârnWorld for my campaign, basically because we were playing the campaign and switched to BW instead of using my own system. Hârn was chosen from the beginning because I know it intimately and it was a setting that the rest of the players was interested in exploring. What the characters can and can't do in Hârn is restricted by the setting and the system. It's a low fantasy setting very similar to our own Middle-ages. Making serious and lasting changes in large parts of the world is difficult, but I've tried to make room for as much player authority as possible without loosing the Hârnic feeling. Ultimately I guess my interpretation of what Hârnic is sets the bounds, but I try to gather as much input from the players as possible. If they feel railroaded or limited by my interpretations then we would have to sort it out. So far, there haven't been any problems, but if I were to start a new campaign, I would do it differently and make the what and how choices of the setting and campaign a democratic process and make sure everyone gets their say before anything is begun. It would make my life as a GM easier and it would make things better for the players as well I think, giving them a chance of influencing and deciding the general goals and direction of the campaign.

From the looks of it, my old gaming group (which I don't game with any longer since I moved out of town :() will be starting a campaign in a month or two and they will be using BW as well. They're more or less shopping for a setting at the moment wanting something fairly "complete" with lots of background info and preferrably also with meaty campaign modules. The whole group will most likely decide which setting is used together and they want a ready-made one because the GM hasn't got a wealth of time to use creating a setting of his own. That and the fact that the whole group wants something rich and detailed to play in from the beginning.