The Seven-Sided Die

I finally picked up The Burning Wheel yesterday and read the first 77 pages before bed. At that point Luke tells the reader to go read the Character Burner, get some friends, make some characters, and try out the system as presented so far.

Burning Wheel is a pretty heavy system, so I like that the core is separated out like that. It means that there's a natural way to introduce players to the system. The Battle of Wits, Fight!, and other rules can be introduced later as players master the core concepts.

The other major impression is that the core concepts are subtle but powerful. Nowhere does Luke say that gameplay involves very large chunks of time resolved with some narration and a scant few rolls. If he had, the reader would probably rebel (if they're a very D&D-style, moment-to-moment gamer) or would have a hard time reconciling that high level of task resolution with the fine-grained character system. Presented as it is, though, the idea that infiltrating the Prince's castle and absconding with his valuables can be resolved with a few linked tests in a matter of minutes of play time—and that this is a good thing—just arises naturally as I grasped the mechanics and read the examples. I'd read that Burning Wheel games get a very lot done in even short sessions, and I can see why now.

The drawback and strength of the system is how much decision power it puts into the players' hands. It doesn't just say that the game revolves around the characters, but it actually builds it into the fundamentals of the rules. If you're using The Burning Wheel, you can't not make the game turn on the characters' choices.

How is this a drawback? The system demands very high rules contact from the players. Unlike a number of other systems, you can't run The Burning Wheel for players who don't care to ever learn the rules. Consciously handling the rules is the only way for players to make their characters effective at tasks. Some systems will work fine if the players just declare their fictional actions and leave translating that into mechanics to the GM. The type of gameplay it offers that distinguishes The Burning Wheel from other systems is inaccessible to that kind of player. There's little point in playing The Burning Wheel without investing heavily in the system as well as the characters and world.

I can't even say that the handling time for the system is long or short. It seems as if the system is almost always being handled. The system being very intertwined and about as elegant as such a heavy system can be will make handling the rules a pleasure, though.

Doctor Checkmate wrote a sort of review of Frozen Alive (aka Der Fall X701) and mused about the plot element that has the scientist wake up from stasis only to discover that he's suspected of murder. He mentioned frozen colonists as a plot element that might give more wiggle room for weakening the "but I was frozen during the crime!" alibi. I wrote the following as a comment there, but it became elaborate enough that it's worth posting here.

I immediately thought of the colonist idea too since I have Blue Planet right at eye level on the shelf here. You could get around the alibi by adding in mistaken identity. The "colonist" angle isn't really necessary for that, but it does imply that communication between origin and destination is tenuous and that presents many opportunities for fudged, missing, or swapped documents.

For Blue Planet, my thought expanded out to this: A corporate assassin is given extensive, expensive bio-sculpts and a new identity, then shipped as a popsicle through the wormhole with the expectation of picking up her full instructions once she's on Poseidon. She arrives and, lo, happens to be among that unlucky 5% (or whatever it is) that experience partial amnesia. She doesn't know who she is or why there are guns pointed at her, only that she has a mission brief to pick up planet-side.

As a further twist, it's not that the identity swap failed, but her new identity isn't what it was supposed to be, and that other person is a wanted criminal. Did her employer set her up? Was there a mistake made by the bribed emigration clerk? Is someone hijacking the assassin for their own use? Did a double agent intercept the ID swap? Does the assassin get her memory back? If she does, are they her memories? Can she get away and pick up her instructions? Can she trust her mission brief?