BW fun at EnWorld

[luke]

Always a good time!

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=226603

[buzz]

On the bright side, that there are people there who a) have heard of BW, b) actually played BW and can express an informed opinion* is a pretty big step up from only a few years ago. Woo!


* A rare and wondrous thing, both among gamers and the populace at large.

[luke]

Totally! I'm pretty pleased with that thread so far. Thanks for all your hard work!

[Kublai]

"I think BW is a great read. It's like a Moby Dick or a The Great Gatsby of RPG text." -- Woas

Nice sig!

[Berandor]

Funny that it seems me and buzz argue with each other.

[Dwight]

Totally! I'm pretty pleased with that thread so far. Thanks for all your hard work!
I like how you softly lay in that "no this game isn't for your group.....but play it with the demo".

You evil bastard. :rolleyes:

[buzz]

Funny that it seems me and buzz argue with each other.
We're obviously destined to be nemeses.

En garde! :D

[Z-Dog]

some of the comments are just...strange

buzz deserves a BW merit badge! way to go out there and swing for the team! :)

[buzz]

buzz deserves a BW merit badge! way to go out there and swing for the team! :)
I'm sure I probably look like an ass. It's hard to not refute some of the ridiculous comments, though. (Which are mostly coming from the usual suspects.)

[pseudoidiot]

I get the feeling that some people are actively trying to find something to not like... then focusing all their hate on it.

[buzz]

I get the feeling that some people are actively trying to find something to not like... then focusing all their hate on it.
eyebeams (Malcolm Sheppard) has had a hate-on for LiR as long as I can remember. I don't really understand that, as what he describes never sounds anything like LiR.

jdrakeh, I dunno. I don't get the impression he's ever played BW, so I don't know why he's so keen on talking about how allegedly complicated it is (which I've seen him do on many occasions).

[Dwight]

jdrakeh, I dunno. I don't get the impression he's ever played BW, so I don't know why he's so keen on talking about how allegedly complicated it is (which I've seen him do on many occasions).
It wouldn't surprise me if he wasn't someone that either just read [part] of the book or tried to do what he's done with every other RPG and sit down a create a bunch of characters. The later especially is going to give you a very distorted view of the game. Character creation is far-away the more time consuming part of the game, especially as a newcomer and doubly so if you are a fiddler. Burning Wheel has just so many little paths to go down during character creation. *shrug*

Maybe I'll stop by there, though I don't know if I'll be able to remember my password so I don't know if I'll be able to post. Not that Buzz doesn't have it covered anyway.

[buzz]

Continued running commentary...

Thank gawd Luke just stepped in. I was about go down yet another rabbit hole with Malcolm. I really need to get better at resisting that. :)

[Judd]

I tossed in my helping die.

[Berandor]

I'm sure I probably look like an ass. It's hard to not refute some of the ridiculous comments, though. (Which are mostly coming from the usual suspects.)

How did I become I usual suspect so fast? I must have failed a Bluff check or something... and only because LiR doesn't work on ENWorld :mad:

[buzz]

I tossed in my helping die.
There you go, being awesome again.


How did I become I usual suspect so fast?
Dude, you are NOT one of the usual suspects. Seriously.

[jdrakeh]

To clear up a few misconceptions here, I have played Burning Wheel (three times, twice as a player, once as the GM), I don't hate it (if I did, I wouldn't have given Luke my money many times over), and I don't find character creation at all complex (time-consuming, yes, though that's not the same thing). To delve into specifics. . .

The only complexity that has ever reared its head in character generation during the aforementioned three games was in regard to wound levels. While I appreciate the cleverness of tracking wound levels on a big 'ole wheel, the gimmick initially got in the way of the concept for every single player except one (myself included). Aside from that, character generation was great (and is, in fact, the big reason why I still recommend BW to others).

Where things got unfun for most of the players, quickly, was in combat. Both Fight and Duel of Wits seemed very, very, cool on paper. In actual practice, however, the fiddly nature of having to decide upon, announce, calculate and roll for different exception-based variables slowed things down to a crawl -- again for all players except one (I'm pretty certain that he's a forum regular here).

Now, I know other games have many variables or exceptions, too. It just seems that other games have fewer variables or exceptions. Whether that perception is correct isn't the issue, the issue is that the perception exists for a lot of people. Coming from a background of much more loose Story Games (e.g., Universalis, Donjon) and traditional role play, the mechanics of Fight and Duel of Wits just failed to click with the rest of us. The sentiment was that other game systems produce the same or sufficiently similar end results with far less work.

I have no problem at all with Let it Ride and understand it to work the way that Luke has described. I have no idea what Buzz was on about allowing the GM to call for re-rolls on a single action/scene in order to thwart player intent (if I'm mistaken about your explanation, Buzz, please feel free to clarify). As explained by Luke (which is also how I understood the rule in the book), Let it Ride works very well and is an excellent addition to the game system, IMO.

So, I guess where I (and most of my fellow players) stood after actually playing Burning Wheel is that, while the system had some very good ideas (I still think that Life Paths should be stolen and applied to other games liberally), it ultimately failed to work for us as a total package game.

To be clear, I'm not saying that BW is broken (which is what some of you seem to be trying very hard to construe my posts as saying) or flawed, merely that it didn't click with the majority of the gamers whom I know (again, save for that one guy who really enjoys it) for the reasons listed above.

[buzz]

I have no idea what Buzz was on about allowing the GM to call for re-rolls on a single action/scene in order to thwart player intent (if I'm mistaken about your explanation, Buzz, please feel free to clarify).
That was Malcolm, not me.

[luke]

Thanks for clearing that up, James!

[Dwight]

The only complexity that has ever reared its head in character generation during the aforementioned three games was in regard to wound levels. While I appreciate the cleverness of tracking wound levels on a big 'ole wheel, the gimmick initially got in the way of the concept for every single player except one (myself included).
That one blew my mind initially I stepped explicitly though the creation rules. Even then I wish it wouldn't use the Wheel. I've looked at doing character sheets with a single linear track labeled 1-16 for whatever shade your MW is which works most of the time. Unfortunately it is possible to have a MW a shade up from the other points on it. So it would only work well for an entirely computer generated character sheet...or if you were willing to mark in all the numbers on the scale manually, which would be confusing too.


Where things got unfun for most of the players, quickly, was in combat. Both Fight and Duel of Wits seemed very, very, cool on paper. In actual practice, however, the fiddly nature of having to decide upon, announce, calculate and roll for different exception-based variables slowed things down to a crawl -- again for all players except one (I'm pretty certain that he's a forum regular here).
Is this slowness during or after the scripting process? Were you starting out with all the combat options (stances, and everything)? I've often seen newbies initially paralyzed overthinking selection of the script, even with me yelling at them to just pick something. ;) "Go with your gut!" BWHQ really needs to put out some official shirts with that in BIG BOLD LETTERS on the front. :)

In the end though BW Fight! certainly does run up the complexity scale, with all options in place comparable to D&D core-rule-books-only with 5th-6th level PCs (but typically less time to complete because of the penalty spiral, and typically less looking up details in books). But then who starts learning to play D&D at 5th to 6th level? That's why Fight! is usually the last thing I introduce players to, and not with all the rules in play. I learned that the hard way from the first time I ran BWR.

It's hard for people to get though, to just not use all the rules available in a game right off the bat. Like it's wrong to scale down the complexity in the system in the way the rules books says it was meant to do. *shrug*

[buzz]

It's hard for people to get though, to not just use all the rules in a game right off the bat. Like it's wrong to scale down the complexity in the system in the way the rules books says it was meant to do. *shrug*
That continues to confuse me. It's like just doing what to book says is an alien concept. This is some serious baggage from other RPGs, methinks.

[Z-Dog]

"Go with your gut!" BWHQ really needs to put out some official shirts with that in BIG BOLD LETTERS on the front. :)

In the end though BW Fight! certainly does run up the complexity scale, with all options in place comparable to D&D core-rule-books-only with 5th-6th level PCs (but typically less time to complete because of the penalty spiral, and typically less looking up details in books). But then who starts learning to play D&D at 5th to 6th level?


As long as you print those letters waaaay at the bottom of the shirt so all that glorious gamer gut sticks out at 'cha at the cons. :)

That's a really good way of thinking about Fight! in its complexity.

And really, it took us a good solid three years of playing Dnd to feel comfortable with just the fighting rules back in 2000 to 2003...another couple of years to master it. Heck, I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed looking at all the changes that went into 3.5 to 4th.

I think people who say BW/BE are overly complex aren't thinking about how much time it took them to master their own particular favorite games.

[Dwight]

As long as you print those letters waaaay at the bottom of the shirt so all that glorious gamer gut sticks out at 'cha at the cons. :)
Why not just print them on "Daisy Duke" style shirts and with every shirt throw in a couple free press-on flaming Burning Wheel tatoos to encircle the wearer's belly button. That'd be a real eye grabbing [and plucking out] look. 0_x


I think people who say BW/BE are overly complex aren't thinking about how much time it took them to master their own particular favorite games.
There are games downscale of BW, to be sure (even though less than some people make there out to be). But on ENWorld where the vast majority of players have at least a passing familiarity with D&D.....

[buzz]

I think people who say BW/BE are overly complex aren't thinking about how much time it took them to master their own particular favorite games.
QFT. My main group has been playing 3.x since 2002, and we still biff things all the time. IME, there are more situational modifiers and exceptions in D&D than BW by an order of magnitude.

I think it has more to do with BW's different paradigm. D&D may be complex, but it's traditional. Roll initiative, take turns, roll to hit, tick off hp, etc. Fight!, otoh, is just like nothing else out there.

[Z-Dog]

And the main focus of Dnd seems to be "lots and lots of interesting tactical combat" often against multiple opponents.

I could see how BW could freak someone out if that's what they expected from their games. How the f*&#k am I going to do this?

It's the same feeling I got when I first read GURPs years ago and thought about running a fantasy campaign: shit, my guy's gonna take one hit to the arm from some goblin punk and then he's pretty much done for.

And yeah, again, looking through the 4th ed. quickstart rules after walking away from 3.5 a few years ago I'm chuckling to myself, "And they think BW is too complex? Please!" (especially since one of the selling points of 4th, according to my friend, is that it is simplified, clearer, and quicker than 3.5).

[Z-Dog]

Hey Luke: I gotta give you points for your last post to eyebeams, you're like a model of restraint and civility there.

I think what really gets my hackles up is when I can see someone just doesn't get the game. They've got maybe a 50 percent grasp of it and then they just go off, spouting all kinds of misinterpretations. "Edwardsian Calvinball"? Huh?!?

I can see how this gets the burners ire up and jumping out of the woodwork.

[stormsweeper]

Lovely anti-Forge terminology there. (At least I'm presuming that "Edwardsian" is a reference to Ron Edwards and not some attempt to compare BW to turn of the century England) Calvinball is a classic internet-fighter term to throw around, even though it's almost used in a way that doesn't make sense (like here).

[wreckage]

'Cos like, there's no way a GM can be an abusive arse in DnD.

eyebeams seems to be pretty well hung up on two things: the degree of situation-change necessary to invoke new rolls, and a dislike of game designs that reduce the number of rolls used, thus reducing "smoothing".

[buzz]

eyebeams seems to be pretty well hung up on two things: the degree of situation-change necessary to invoke new rolls, and a dislike of game designs that reduce the number of rolls used, thus reducing "smoothing".
He is both a great hater of all things Forge-like, and a master of the confusing neo-logism (e.g., "Edwardsian Calvinball").