masters and slaves

[sanjwise]

Our game is developing strongly around the theme of Dominance. The players continually have to fight a battle of wills with their masters for the right to be Human.

I want to make a mechanic out of this, the task of the Masters being that their slaves assume the BROKEN trait and the Players, fighting to keep the slaves alive and agitated.

How do you think I could do this?

Sanj

[Thor]

Don't have my books with me, so I'm doing this from memory instead of checking the book:

As far as I remember, the only official way to gain new traits in Burning Wheel is through the Trait vote. So, if I'm correct, by the book you'd have to call a trait vote and then a majority at the table would have to agree to give the character the Broken trait.

With everyone's approval, you could take a page from Burning Empires. Make it a Duel of Wits. The only appropriate dueling skill is Torture.

The master's statement of purpose is to give a character a trait. may apply Maimed, Broken, Blind, Disfigured, Sickly or any other similar trait to his victim. The victim may set his stakes to apply a character trait to himself. Compromises change the severity or nature of the traits.

During the duel, the players should describe their actions and reactions
to one another, rather than focusing on what is said.

If the victim does not have the Torture skill, he may use his Will as the dueling skill, and suffer the double obstacle penalty as normal with Beginner's Luck.

Definitely talk this over with your players before deciding to use the latter system. It can get messy.