Burning Steel - The Riddle of Steel and Burning Wheel [Archive]

Leonides

05-04-2006, 03:08 PM

Here are my notes so far.

So far we're created and played characters that seemed to work pretty darn well.

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BURNING STEEL

Burning Steel is a homebrew system that – in the opinion of the author – combines the finest elements of The Burning Wheel (BW) and The Riddle of Steel (TRoS) role-playing game systems… mixed in with a few house rules of the author’s own design. This creates the most perfect system known to mankind.

Breeding two different breeds of dog results in a mutt. Oftentimes the mutt isn’t as pretty as either of its parents but usually it’s stronger (and bigger). That’s Burning Steel.

At least I think it is. Many will disagree.

Please note that you’ll need to purchase both systems for this to really make much sense at all.

BASE SYSTEM

For better or worse you can’t just smash the two systems together and expect to get a cohesive whole. Thus, you need to pick one as the base system and cannibalize from the other.

Both are fantastic games and have a great deal going for them. I’ve decided, though, to use TRoS as the base system. The reasoning is pretty simple: the TRoS combat system can be extremely complex (which is what draws me to it), while BW has “simpler” mechanics that are more abstract. Naturally, this makes it easier to mine it’s golden nuggets (of which there are quite a few).

ATTRIBUTE ADDITIONS TO THE BASE SYSTEM

TRoS is our base system and has the following attributes:

Social
Wits
Willpower
Perception
Mental Aptitude
Strength
Agility
Toughness
Endurance
Health

It also has these derived attributes:

Aim
Reflex
Move
Knockout
Knockdown

All well and good for most! However, I am a stickler for accurate (i.e. numerous) attributes to better reflect the character. I hate it when you have to “force” and attribute to fit with a skill. Many of the TroS attributes are only useful as arbitrary (i.e. player selected) dice pools for skill checks (Burning Steel uses the new TRoS Companion skill rules in part, though not the new advancement rules). I also want to add in some of BW’s more unique attributes which really add flavor and purpose to the game. I believe this will better model character strengths and weaknesses, and give an overall better picture of who your character is.

If you disagree with these additional attributes it should be an easy task to simply remove them from the system altogether.

The new list of attributes (which we’ll call “stats” a la BW) is:

PHYSICAL
Size
Endurance
Strength
Speed
Agility
Manual Dexterity
Beauty
Sight
Hearing

MENTAL
Intellect
Education
Wits
Willpower
Wisdom
Charisma
Creativity

Yeah, I know, that’s 16 stats. Deal with it. And then we have our new derivatives (which we’ll call “attributes” a la BW):

ATTRIBUTES
Health
Reflex
Aim
Move
Presence
Knockout
Knockdown
Steel
Hesitation
Sanity
Morale
Toughness
Blood Pool
Fatigue

Yeah, that’s 14 derived attributes. Hate me yet? Let’s briefly go over what these puppies.

STATS & ATTRIBUTES

Stay with me folks. It’ll be worth it in the end I promise.

PHYSICAL

Size – Size is a measure of the overall mass of your character. Up, down, frame, girth, etc. All that is taken into effect.

Endurance – Measures how far your character can run, how long he can hold his breath under water, and things of that nature. Basically how long he can take physical strain before collapsing. Useful for running a marathon.

Strength – How much muscle the character has on him and whether or not he knows how to use that muscle.

Speed – How fast a character can move. Useful for running away from dragons, amongst other things.

Agility – The control a character has over how his body moves. Walking a tightrope? This’ll be your stat.

Beauty – Simple, powerful, physical beauty. This rating is only for the character’s own species. Modifiers (positive or negative) should be in effect for other species.

Sight – Your eyesight. Easy.

Hearing – How well you can hear.

Scent-Taste – Scent and taste are heavily connected, thus only one stat.

Intuition – That sixth sense everybody has. Whether it’s supernatural or not, it’s that ability to recognize that something “isn’t kosher” or, conversely, that something “feels right.”

MENTAL

Intellect – Your raw brain power and problem-solving ability.

Education – How much you’ve absorbed in your education (if any). This is the only stat that can easily be “0” in primitive cultures. Some skills (such as, say, Quantum Physics) might require education as opposed to intellect. This represents book learning that your character might have done outside of his lifepaths.

Wits – How fast you can think on your feet. Useful in physical and verbal battles, not to mention dinner parties.

Willpower – Is your character a pushover? Does he back down when confronted? Does he have the mental fortitude to slog through it all? Those are the questions this stat answers.

Wisdom – Could your character ever be that old man sitting on the mountain, dispensing advice? Maybe, but that’d be a pretty boring campaign. Regardless this will tell you if your character has the sharpness of mind required.

Charisma – This measures whether or not your character is a smooth-talking bastard who can get throngs of people to follow him… or not.

Creativity – Can you get things done in half the time needed? Do stories or pictures flow through your mind all day? Essentially this is a measure of how well your character thinks outside the box and his ingenuity. Also useful for painting pretty pictures and singing songs that make men weep.

ATTRIBUTES

Remember to always round to the nearest whole number!

Health – This is not health in the TRoS sense, but Health in the BW sense. TRoS health has been replaced by “Blood Pool.” Health is the average of Willpower and Endurance rounded down. Remember to add in any lifestyle considerations and make the player hold to them!

Reflex – Same as TRoS. The average of Agility and Wits rounded down. The will be a major component to the combat pool.

Aim – Similar to TRoS, but we’ll use Sight and Willpower. This is used for the missile pool and, really, any time manual coordination is required in a task or skill.

Move – How quickly and efficiently you can get from where you are to where you want to be. Since we now have the “Speed” stat, this has been somewhat altered from the TRoS default. Speed, Agility and Endurance divided by two. Determines how much distance in yards you can cover on foot in 1-2 seconds.

Presence – One of my own invention, but I think it’s very important. There are times you look at somebody and somehow you just know they’re in charge, or that they’re one of Thoreau’s men, living lives of quiet desperation. This is most useful in determining somebody’s first impression of your character. It’s the average of Beauty, Size, and Willpower.

Knockout – Same as in TRoS, except we’ll do the average of Willpower and Endurance.

Knockdown – Same as in TRoS except we’ll do the average of Size, Strength, and Agility.

Steel – We’ll leave this beautiful attribute alone. It’s determined the same way it is in BW.

Hesitation – The meaning of this attribute remains unchanged from its BW roots. 10 minus Willpower. That’s how many exchanges your character will be stunned.

Sanity – C’mon, can you blame me? Cthulhu in da house. Anyway, Creativity, Willpower, and Wits divided by two. When called upon, a Sanity check is made using this many dice and against a TN of the GM’s choosing. If failed, dice get permanently taken away. Temporary insanity will take over. Get down to zero and you’re crazy. Insanity can be regained with lots and lots of rest in a peaceful setting.

Morale – One of my new-fangled attributes which is designed to (somewhat) model morale affects. Morale starts as the average of Willpower and Wisdom and can reduce or improve based upon weather, food, music, etc (up to the GM’s discretion). The GM can call for a morale test when appropriate and steal or add dice depending on the situation.

Toughness – Instead of a stat, I decided this was an attribute. The average of size and strength. Used the same way as it is in TRoS.

Blood Pool – This takes the place of TRoS’s old Health stat (though I decided this was better modeled as an attribute). This determines whether you bleed out or not. The average of Size and Endurance.

Fatigue – This is measurement that’s placed in “vitals” for brevity’s sake. Normally it’s “0.” Same rules in TRoS’s Companion.

CHARACTER CREATION

BW’s character creation system is – in a word – beautiful. The lifepath system builds your character from the ground up. By the time you’re finished not only do you have a character ready for play, but you have a very sturdy role-playing framework to draw from.

This whole system will be pulled from BW for Burning Steel, so most of TRoS’s character creation system will be jettisoned. What we need to do is come up with a simple conversion method that can be applied across the board.

Let’s take a look at a sample lifepath from BW that has all the elements one might encounter. From the Orc lifepaths:

Lifepath Time Res Stat Leads

Edge Grinder 10 yrs 10 +1 M / P Black Legion

Skills : 6pts: Mending, Weaponsmith, Armorer, Tanner, Sword, Mounted Combat*
Traits: 2pts: Suspicious

Okay. So we need to translate that to Burning Steel.

The time is fine.

The resources are fine (since we’ll be using the BW resource system).

Double any stat increases. +1 M becomes +2 M.

Skills remain pretty much unchanged. It is still one point to buy them and one point to improve them. Instead of adding dice, however, it will reduce the skill’s starting TN by one. Please remember that not all skills should start at TN 10! Cooking is a hell of a lot easier to learn than, say, Quantum Physics. Training skills such as “mounted combat” will be used with the same rules as BW (and cost two points to open).

Traits remain exactly the same, and we’ll certainly be using the traits presented in the back of the BW Character Burner. Lots of juicy flavor locked in there.

TRoS uses proficiencies, and Burning Steel will as well. When a BW lifepath lists a skill such as “sword” or “appropriate weapon” that is the opportunity to gain a proficiency. They will act the same as BW’s skills. They cost one point to open and one point to improve.

TRoS specializations are available. They cost two skill points for each level of specialization (+1, +2, or +3). During play they can only be acquired through repeated use and then awarded by the GM.

Now we need to translate BW’s starting Mental and Physical pools. For BW, mankind is at his peak during his twenties:

Physical: 16
Mental: 7

That won’t work with the stats we have. Using some simple arithmetic comparing the number of stats we have makes it easy to convert. So at peak performance, human’s get as a base:

Physical: 26
Mental: 17

The clever (or obsessed) amongst you will already figure out that we simply added 10. Do this for any age group you wish to play.

Distribute your stats! Hurrah!

RULES CONVERSIONS IN GENERAL

BW tends to use “Obstacle” (Ob) modifiers and “Difficulty Number” (DN) modifiers. We need to set up a translation for that, which is not two difficult.

Obstacle basically corresponds with the number of successes required on a dice throw. Generally, the number of dice thrown in tests is about equal between TRoS and BW. Thus, +1Ob equals a required additional success.

Difficulty Number is a little trickier since BW uses d6’s and TRoS uses d10. We need something fast so – generally -- +1 DN equals about +2 TN. This isn’t a steadfast rule and should be embellished when necessary.

Other than that… go with what makes sense! I’m not gonna go through each rule in both books. That would be crazy!

FoRK’s are allowed. Same rules apply.

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Still working. Comments and suggestions welcome. :)