Some suggestions/Are we doing this right?

[grey.spiral]

After a somewhat lengthy span of playing D&D near-exclusively, I sold my group on the idea of playing Burning Wheel, which I have played before but never really ran. None of my players have played BW before.

We got together and ran through the Sword, which was pretty fun, and then we ended up taking another session to create the setting and the characters.

I've been playing with two of these players for somewhere around five years, and the third I have only recently began to game with, but we all are friends outside of gaming.

Upon initially discussing the game I found that all three players wanted to play magic users. We ended up throwing together a kind of Mediterranean/Persian fantasy setting where magic was illegal, and all three characters had been driven to a lawless border town to escape persecution from the empire where all three characters had lived previously. We then decided that the game would cover the empire sending out witch hunters to this town to root out magic users while expanding its borders, and that the pcs would have goals of uniting the town against the empire, and eventually becoming its rulers as a magocracy.

I kind of want to know if we are doing this correctly, and if there are any suggestions to make this game more fun.

Here are the three characters' concepts and bits:

Tegwen
The first character - Tegwen, played by my friend Dave, is a woman who always had been haunted by strange occurrences and poltergeist activity. Eventually a mage of some small ability saw these odd happenings as a possibility, and he decided to train her a few spells. The Empire's religious order found out and sentenced both to death. Tegwen's husband rescued her and snuck her out of the empire. He eventually joined the thieve's guild/gang in the border town, and Tegwen worked at a bar, trying to hide her magic. Eventually the two's relationship waned and they broke up, but her husband is still her marked-on-the-character-sheet relationship.

Beliefs
The thieves guild could be used as a great tool for good, but
something has to be done to put them back on the track of
benevolence.

Reserve violence for when all other avenues are exhausted.

The more powerful and spectacular the magic, the more dreadful and
horribly wrong the outcome can be.

Instincts
Holds grudges against people for any slight.

Never make or eat a hastilly prepared or low quality meal.

When in a group or with anyone else, always be the last person to go to sleep.

Traits
Base Humility
Gifted
Compulsive Liar
Haunted
Clumsy

Archidamius
Archidamius is played by my friend Pfloyd, who I have only been gaming with for a few months. Archidamius was the bastard son in a noble family who never quite fit in. While his brothers rose in renown amongst the empire's noble, military, and religious orders, Archidamius took to books and the occult, finding apprenticeship under another sorcerer. His father discovered his heresy, and drove him out of the family.

Beliefs
People are more easily persuaded by fear than benevolence.

This city needs me to lead it if it is to prosper.

It is more important for me to be powerful than it is for me to be pure/uncorrupted.

Instincts
Always identify possible exits.

Never go anywhere without my satchel.

Never let a slight go unpunished.

Traits
Tidy Aspect
Bastard
Mark of Privilege
Base Humility
Gifted
Cynical

Augusta
Augusta is played by my good friend Andrew. She is the half-sister to Archidamius (her father had an affair with his mother). She was drawn to Necromancy as a means to understand life, and eventually her master felt it was unsafe for him and her to remain in the empire, so he moved them both to the border town where the game takes place.

Beliefs
With careful and ritualistic consideration, Death can be the cruel fate to the innocent or the just end of the wicked.

No matter how powerful magic is it can never and should never be prevented, even in the most unwieldy user.

No one, not even Nobles, can choose their family, and that the bonds of blood should be protected over that of a name.

Instincts
Always cast carefully and patiently.

Always carry perfume, so to mask the scent of death.

Never show weakness.

Traits
Mark of Privilege
Gifted
Extremely respectful of one's betters
Tidy aspect

After burning up characters the group really wanted to play, so I asked them what they thought would be a good start to this campaign that we could play through kind of quickly. We all decided on the idea that the witch-hunters from the empire had been slowly making its way along these small border towns, executing wizards and heretics, and establishing local rule in the name of the empire. A gathering of all the magic users was called within several miles of the town that the game takes place in, and that they would all discuss what was to be done about the empire's advances. The group decided that there was a double cross, and that the witch-hunters would know precisely where the group was gathering. They were ambushed, we got in a couple range-and-cover and sorcery rolls, and the group escaped with their lives, deciding to meet in the basement of the tavern where Tegwen works to discuss the next course of action.

I handed out one Fate point to each player because they all got into funny-voices quickly and started rattling off affirmations of their beliefs really quickly. We got some skill rolls in, and we all thought it was a pretty good start.

So I have some ideas for where the game is going to go next. I think that I definitely want one of Archidamius' brothers to be part of the witch hunter group, and I was thinking of maybe having the witch-hunters capture Augusta's mentor and sentence him to death in some span of time, and maybe having the thieves guild work for the hunters, so that Tegwen's ex-husband is technically working with the inquisition, but risking his life to cover her tracks.

How do the characters' beliefs look? Are we doing this right? Any suggestions?

Oh and sorry for the long post.

[Sempiternity]

Your group's Beliefs seem pretty interesting, and follow the rules of the Brown Book...

However, we forumites find that a more involved approach to Belief creation yields better results in play. (Especially for the GM!) (It is sort of a case of rules-in-transition awaiting a new version of the rulebooks...)

The basic idea is to take a basal "motivation" (like the so-called proto-beliefs your players came up with, above) and tie that to a specific "goal" to be achieved in play, and possibly even a specific action to take toward reaching that goal. Not every Belief needs to be so concrete to begin with, however!

Another vital consideration is this: Beliefs should always be about things the *players* care about - if a player likes Fight! have him write a Belief about it, or if a player has come up with a cool sercet society in the town, ditto!

Two of my go-to resources for Belief writing are:

- The Belief Workshop Summary Page on the Wiki

- Paul B's Beliefs 101 thread here on the forum

Paul B's doco is especially good!

(Obviously, this forum itself is your best resource! )

[Paul B]

Whoa, I forgot about that one. It really was pretty good, wasn't it?

p.

[GreedyAlgorithm]

A good rule of thumb is to answer yes to these three questions:
1) Can I name a way to gain Fate from each of my beliefs?
2) Can I name a way to gain Persona from at least 1, preferably 2+ of my beliefs?
3) If no one at the table knows what to do next, can looking at our beliefs, instincts and traits usually make it obvious?

So "With careful and ritualistic consideration, Death can be the cruel fate to the innocent or the just end of the wicked." needs quite a bit of work, but "The thieves guild could be used as a great tool for good, but
something has to be done to put them back on the track of
benevolence." just needs "something has to be done" to be replaced with an actual something.

[grey.spiral]

Thanks for all the help, I really appreciate it!

So "With careful and ritualistic consideration, Death can be the cruel fate to the innocent or the just end of the wicked." needs quite a bit of work

I spoke with Augusta's player about this, and he said that he basically wants the belief to mean something along the lines that Augusta will use Death Art only on the corpses of criminals and the wicked, and never on someone who lived a good life. The in-character flavor text is cool, but I think I'm going to ask him to write this belief a little more explicitly - or to at least note what it explicitly means next to the belief section so the other players know what it means.

but "The thieves guild could be used as a great tool for good, but something has to be done to put them back on the track of
benevolence." just needs "something has to be done" to be replaced with an actual something.

Good idea. I'll talk to Tegwen's player about this. One of Archidamius' relationships is with the Master Thief, so something pretty interesting could probably come about because of this belief.

[Kublai]

I will use Death Art only on the corpses of criminals and the wicked, and never on someone who lived a good life.

What you wrote is a perfect Belief! Then as GM, you find a way to force him to choose between using DA on a good person, or suffering something terrible upon himself.