#Burning Wheel

[anim-ttrpgs]

I'd love to know what some of the team's favourite indie ttrpgs are (apart from Eureka, of course. Otherwise, it'd be at the top of the list, I expect.)

Yes of course Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy, but for non-Eureka indie and small-press games, here are a few of the team's answers

@sirobvious:

Mothership. Hands-down.

@chaospyromancy:

mork borg

@ashweather:

Ash's Picks (AKA the "get more literate in the medium" pack) (Most of these are small- or medium-press not strictly indie but ya know)

Burning Wheel Seventh Sea (1st edition) Fate of the Norns: Ragnarok Mothership Don't Rest Your Head Troika! Hillfolk (aka DramaSystem) Savage Worlds Masks

@theblackwarden:

A Dirty World PATROL: The Trench Raiders Triangle Agency Paranoia Mothership A World of Dew

[pathetic-gamer]

Can you say more on The Burning Wheel? The information on the site doesn’t distinguish it much from other TTRPGs that I can tell, aside from being a D6 system. What makes it unique and worth playing? (You don’t have to provide a huge rundown haha I’m just curious!)

Sure! I tried to keep this short and failed miserably, but I'd be happy to expound even more upon specific things later, if people want more :)

(Please note that, as with any ttrpg, it would be hard to claim any of the things mentioned here are wholly original to The Burning Wheel. It would be even harder to claim that no other systems have used these mechanics or philosophies in the 20 years since The Burning Wheel came out. I am not going to claim either of those things - its the combination of them and the play experience they have resulted in for me that make it unique, so that's the angle from which I'm writing this post.)

So. why is it worth playing? How is it different?

I could talk about the skill learning system, the war rules codex, the whole concept of versus tests vs bloody versus tests. But to me, there are two main ways that it stands out from other systems: its treatment of role-play as a mechanism, and the overall philosophy behind the game's design, including the concept of setting clear expectations.

(using section headers to break up the text lol)

How it uses role-play:

The most obvious thing to point out is that there's a whole set of encounter mechanics for social situations or debates (Circles checks, Duel of Wits, etc.) - sort of the epitome of crunchy role play. But thats not what I'm getting at! What I'm getting is the fact that good role play is integral to the way the game functions.

Let's go back, all the way to character creation: When you're burning a character, you selecting life paths (page to squire to knight, etc.) with their associated skills and traits, then tie them in a pretty bow with beliefs and instincts to guide the character's actions. All of these things feed into each other to make a complete character. Easy! Familiar! We all know how to make a character, even if the numbers and labels are different!

What really matters to this engine once you're playing is whether the character you're acting as matches what you built. If it doesn't, the rules nudge you to redefine your character until it does through systems of rewards, penalties, and consequences. You are rewarded for sticking to and acting on your traits, beliefs, and instincts through different types of points distributed and voted on by fellow players, which can be used to alter the course of events or turn the tide of a bad situation later on. If you're not living up to a trait, on the other hand, you can lose it and all its benefits. (Took the fortitude trait, but ran from trouble one too many times? tough luck! the other players voted to take away that trait and now you can't call on it in moments of peril.) The beliefs and traits of a single character can end up at odds with each other, resulting in characters having to make choices that in other systems might seem insignificant or carry few lasting consequences, but here may alter the function of your character.

It's not all punitive measures, btw! One of my characters caused problems for everyone else by refusing to put away a weapon when someone else was in danger, playing off of an instinct that states he draws his weapon whenever his master does. After the session, another player suggested everyone consider nominating the Brave trait for him the next time we update them. As a character-type trait, it has no effect when rolling dice but does mean that henceforth and forevermore, anyone who interacts with him will notice a sense of bravery. Delightful!!

Also, the beliefs of different characters are practically guaranteed to stray from one another at some point, which is the primary source of inter-PC conflict. Because the mechanics of the game encourage and reward sticking to your beliefs or following your stated instincts even when it makes things significantly harder or causes problems, you're much more inclined to do it. As someone who is terrible at not slipping back into the same kind of character over and over again, I think this fucking rules.

I'm playing with a group of people I've been gaming with for almost five years, and this has opened the way for much richer dynamics between our characters than any of the other systems we've played, in part because as players we're less interested in acting on concensus to drive the plot forward. Working as one unit simply isn't the goal, and if it was, we would play a different system that encourages and rewards that.

the game's philosophy, aka setting intentions and also reading rules:

Now we're starting to get at the philosophy behind the game's design: It believes you have to know why you're playing burning wheel instead of literally any other game. This isn't a system you play on accident. It's admittedly a complicated game with a LOT of rules. It asks for a huge amount of engagement from all of the players, not just the GM - something like inter-PC conflict can only work well if everyone is on the same page (figuratively, but also literally lol) and ready to help adjudicate rules, ask for tests, discuss intentions, etc. Dream scenario for a chronic rules lawyer lol.

Obviously any game will be more fun if everyone has actually learned the rules before they start playing, but this is one where it's extremely difficult (if not impossible) to play if most players haven't learned them, and deeply rewarding if they have. It really operates on the expectation that everyone is putting in work, and everyone has respect for the time and effort the others are bringing to the table.

It's hard to put a finger on how this all impacts play other than the obvious elegence of People Knowing What Theyre Doing, but on a purely emotional and meta level, knowing that everyone is investing so much time and effort to play a game with you is just.. idk, it feels special and makes the time itself feel even more valuable. In that sense, the satisfaction of playing the game isn't coming from the game itself, but is still shaped by it.

(In my mind, this is the #1 reason to try the game, but as @thydungeongal alluded to yesterday, finding people willing and able to do it is also the #1 hurdle to, like, actually having a good time. it would be completely miserable otherwise.)

Also, for a game that does not boast a collaborative nature the way some others do, it is honestly pretty fuckin collaborative lol. I don't know that this was Luke Crane's intention in designing the game, but closing out sessions by going through and grading everyone's work and giving each other glorified gold stars, you will inevitably end up discussing and dissecting things, learning from people's character work, and seeing where and how you can improve individually and as a group. It creates a table culture that values honest expressions of discomfort or dissatisfaction, and also of appreciation and celebration. It's after-care. It leads naturally into setting intentions and expectations for the next session. It just feels really nice!!!

That's obviously a table culture that can be cultivated anyway, and it's a practice my group has learned to be very intentional about facilitating, but it's just interesting how The Burning Wheel of all systems manages to support that. I think that's what the website means when it says playing this changes how you play other rpgs lol

So yeah, idk how much more to say and also I'm sooooooo so eepy and was like an hour late for work, so its a weird brain day. but there you go lol

[haveyouplayedthisttrpg]

Have you played THE BURNING WHEEL ?

By Luke Crane

It is a medieval fantasy game with heavy focus on the beliefs of the characters and a unique character creation system that determines their life from birth

[ashweather]

Word on the street is you've got some Burning Wheel opinions? I still haven't given the book a thorough read so I'm interested to read your takes!

Yeah, I would say I have a lot of opinions on Burning Wheel! It's actually probably my second or third most-played TTRPG period. I got introduced to it by a good friend early in high school, and have had plenty of time to chew on it since, so I'm going to answer this as a quick overview - when it comes to specific points I'm getting overwhelmed by what to talk about honestly. I reserve the right to reblog this ask with random shit I think about specific Burning Wheel mechanics later.

NOT VERY THOROUGH OVERVIEW

Pros:

Essential reading for anyone hoping to get into TTRPG design or just learn more about them - this book does a LOT of things, and it even does some of them reasonably well! Beliefs and Instincts, Shades, Lifepaths, Duel of Wits, Artha, there's a ton to sink your teeth into and think about if you're wanting to get more literate in the medium. I could and probably will write paragraphs on any one of these subsystems.

It's pretty damn medieval if you like that sort of thing (in the lifepaths of Man, anyway). According to our mutual friend who has an MA in history, it "sounds pretty medieval." A ringing endorsement!

It's pretty damn Tolkein-inspired if you like that sort of thing. For example, half of elves' skills are songs and they have an attribute called Grief that measures how close they are to metaphorically needing to sail into the West.

Do you want crunch? This baby's got so much fucking crunch in it you're going to crack your teeth the second you bite down. What do Call-On Traits do? What the fuck is going on with the Magic Burner? How does Range & Cover work? That's a great question, the answer is nobody knows and we like it better that way. (This point may be a con to you, YMMV. Coward.)

Cons:

Oooooh sam gamgee. why did you put so many skills in this game. i am dying and dreowning. you can't have that mnay skills man they don't meaningfully interact with each other or the rest of the game as you have designed it. pleas luke crane my family is starving tell me in what circumstances you foresaw tree-pulling being used,,,

BW wants to tell a really specific kind of story in a really specific kind of way, but it thinks it's a broad toolbox game that can do way more than it's actually suited for. It's an ideal game for like, telling a Knights of the Round Table style anthology. It's kind of poorly suited to a lot of other stuff in my opinion, but it's not written with that perspective, which leads to a lot of cluttered, inelegant design.

Uhhhh honestly a lot of the other points I was going to make kind of come back to that last bullet, like how so many Traits feel stapled on, and how the extreme crunch ends up being distributed in such a way that keeping track of it all is difficult, but the end effect of all that tracking ends up being mostly unsatisfying in play, in my experience.

Feel free to ask follow up questions, I would love to talk more about it. I will likely ramble more on this topic in future reblogs. The bottom line is you should definitely read Burning Wheel, but I'm not convinced you should actually try to play it. (But if you do tell me I would love to hear your experience with it.)

[dean-belongs-with-lisa]

I’m watching “A Crown of Candy” and Brennan just called for a group espionage check, which just show how much he should be playing a game other than dnd

I’m sure there’s others, but the game that comes to my mind is Burning Wheel, which literally has hundreds of skills. There’s literally a Spycraft skill in the book.

And earlier in the season when they were escaping the castle, they could have used the Range and Cover rules in Burning Wheel instead of just kind of making due with dnds combat rules

[drakeanddice]

After eight sessions of Burning Wheel, we decided that it wasn’t clicking for our table. It had a bunch of neat tech baked in, but wielding the system was not a joy for us. It felt like we could either dedicate ourselves absolutely to the infinite Swiss watch design or else abstract down toward the core resolution forever without ever doing more than scratch the surface and in general neither of those felt…y’know, good. So we decided to drop it.

Which kind of sucks. I feel a little defeated by the book. Like, I spent a not inconsiderable amount of time plumbing through the obtuse and confusing self-referential and esoteric prose, trying to get to the heart of why so many of my favorite designers cite it as a seminal work in the TTRPG field, but all I got was the feeling that the inheritors of its ideas did a lot to clean them up, sharpen them, and make them infinitely more fun to engage with.

I’m left with a feeling I’m getting pretty used to. I missed that moment when this thing was “cool.” I missed the Forge, I missed G+, and I missed Burning Wheel.

But also, I’m given to understand the Forge, like Burning Wheel, had problems, so I’m not taking it too hard.

We decided to play Mausritter this Friday. In a complete 180 from the rule-heavy interlocking gears and levers of Burning Wheel, the 300 pages of character creation, we decided to roll 3d6 3 times, and then 1d6 twice and take our little adventurer mice into the great big world to face danger and find treasure.

I’ve been having a recent problem where I play games for the wrong reasons. I’m looking for inspiration, for pilferable game design thoughts, for experiences outside of my comfort zone. I’m running games as work, as research. I’m slavishly adherent to the rules as written because I feel as though I owe that to the designer, because they clearly knew what they were doing and were doing it for a purpose. It’s a mental weight.

So I am attacking Mausritter from an entirely different angle. It’s an OSR game, very light and fast and abstracted. The rules are loose and few. It’s very minimal mental overhead. So I don’t have a lot to worry about getting “wrong” in the way that I’ve been secretly fearing I’ve been doing for Burning Wheel these past eight weeks. I’m playing this one for fun.

I’ve told my table that I need them to keep me honest. This is not work. My Friday night table is often abused as a play test group, often treated as an extension of my job as a game designer. I design games so I must play them. But this one’s just for fun. Don’t let me think to hard about it. Because I’m not in a mental state to do that right now.

We’re going to be mice. It’s going to be fun.

Anyway. I’ve done a thing I haven’t done in forever and prepped for a game. I’ve got a cool hexmap (adorable), have created some factions out in the world (portentous), named some NPCs (wholesome), and home brewed up some interesting spells and items to sprinkle around (fun as hell). I have not sat and just played DM by myself in a while. Still not something I want to do every time, but a welcome break from conducting atop a surfboard in front of a disaster wave.

I’m excited about this game. Can’t wait to report back.

[dhwty-writes]

Lady Éloise of Penistone

I'll get to play Burning Wheel in August for the first time and am already incredibly excited. This is my PC's little sister that he absolutely hates.

Normally I don't really draw NPCs since I feel like that is more the GM's domain but my GM said medieval fantasy and when I asked how medieval said yes. So hennin and burgundian (inspired) gown it is and I asked if I could draw her.

Time permitting, I'll also draw portraits of the PCs, so look forward to that!

[skunts-own-truth]

Trying to think of what I should add to my little Burning Wheel fantasy setting that I’ll be using as my house-game with the wife and roommate. Here’s some concepts that are set in stone for it:

Feudal society with knights and kings and shit, on a misty and dangerous set of 15 large islands with a whole lot of tiny rocky islands around them. Lot of small kingdoms, with two large kingdoms that are currently at war with each other over a shared familial claim over the other’s realm.

The islands are a closed system with no one really getting in or out, a storm has surrounded them for generations. The outside world is hardly considered by anyone other than scholars and wizards, some claim there isn’t a realm outside the misty islands.

Orcs are not a natural species, but are folks affected by a particularly nasty curse. Anyone consumed by hatred that comes in contact with the curse can become an orc, with elves being the easiest to corrupt due to how deep elf emotions run.

Population of the islands is pretty well mixed, with humans being only 20% of the folk around with Roden (Skaven) being another 20%, and elves, dwarves, orcs, dark elves, and trolls making up everything else.

Elves are often the royalty and nobility of the various kingdoms, but there are some human, roden, dwarf, and orc royalty out there too.

Mercenaries are kinda like rockstars. Tales get told of their exploits, and the more deeds under their belt the more a kingdom is willing to pay for their services- with most kingdoms saving their actual warriors for wars, mercenaries are used often for dealing with monsters and petty disputes between lords.

There was a great and terrible dark lord a while back, but he’s long dead. The army of monsters, orcs, and demons he once commanded is now scattered with some old generals attempting to rally them and destroy the dark throne under their own banner.

Necromancy is very illegal, given that Death himself wanders the land and frowns on people trying to break the cycle of life and death.

No guns or black powder weapons just yet.

Lesser curses charged with intense emotion cause unique instances of suffering and horror. The Orc curse is a powerful one, a curse that spreads and lasts indefinitely, but a singular curse that turns a man into a giant centipede with bloated human fingers for legs- that’s a unique lesser curse.

There are many forms of magic, and a lot of mixed feelings towards it. There is a magic college in one of the larger kingdom, but hedge witches and wizards are the more common practitioners, with some unique forms of magic cropping up as individuals uncover different ways to manipulate reality.

The party consists of a grave digger who spent so much time with the dead he began to hear the whispers of dead gods and now worships them as their priest, and a necromancer who was born gifted and studied at the college of magic before breaking off and hiding as a street performer to travel and steal forbidden tomes. They have formed a little mercenary band, the two of them and a big dumb goon NPC who joined in with the promise of coin.

I have the first adventure pretty much written, but I think the setting needs just that extra push to really make it bloom.

[hivemuthur]

Do you have any OCs? Do you have a story for them?

Hi Anon, thank you for the ask! And yes, I do, most of them come from TTRPGs, but the one I have in my writing so far is Renly, she's the OC for What was that? with not much backstory, other than being smart with science and stupid with emotions :') My most recent is Calmont, a Tammuz Promethean in my current Promethean the Created campaign, and because he's initially a type of Frankenstein's monster, his story begins when he gets awakened. He was made by his creator to recollect bodies deceased in the Black Plague to conduct more experiments, but right now he is serving a very evil necromancer, doing some double-agent work to abolish him.

My second favourite is Rosa Valetti, aka The Bluebird of Berlin, a cabaret performer I created for Masks of Nyarlathotep campaign with no other skills than singing and exceptional hearing. And boy, when she sings, the Eldritch Gods awaken :') She's single-handedly beaten The Father of Maggots on an expedition to Peru and she's crushing on her married friend, Sigmund.

I also have Luther (a young knight priest for Dark Ages Fae campaign about saving a nun from cultists), Aywin Leorel (a dirty elf-druid that only cares about trees and his horse for Burning Wheel short scenario), Maria Abramowska (a kindergarten teacher that gets snatched into another dimension in Kult Divinity Lost), and Algernon Griffiths (a butler for the Bedlam Hall campaign, who used to be a priest, but he got a girl pregnant, whoops!). As well as a few other, minor characters, but these are some of my favs :)

[othernaut]

Character Creation Challenge 2025, Day 2: Burning Wheel

The first thing she did after getting out was to name herself. Then her wolf. Then the trees, stones, and individual birds and beasts. Drunk on names, she named the arrows as she let them fly, the loudest crackles of her meager campfire. None of the old rules mattered anymore. No one could tell her what to do. If that night was the only night she lived, it was worth it.

But that wasn't the only night; there were others, and the giddiness of freedom only lasted so long. Hunger was an ever-present motivator, shelter and warmth. Her past, like an unwanted embrace, came at her in the day when she tried to sleep. Little Brother felt hunger more keenly than her, fumed with the solitude that she embraced. She could never travel far enough, it seemed, to leave the black mountain's shadow. And the fear - she found so many new things to fear. The green leaves and wild, soft things that were always intimated at being forbidden - not for someone like her. The sounds of unfamiliar speech over a wooded hill. The little signs of other people, dropped horseshoes and picked-through bushes - would they hate her?

Everyone hated her. The whole of the mountain seethed with hate, it underlined all she had learned. Some days she near choked with it, feverish, sick with hate. She hated the situation she had been forced to endure, hated the fact that her daughters were still back home - that she still thought of that pit of pointless misery as "home". The resentment in turning over a stone in search of insects and finding a dropped brass button, that others should have such fine things while all her life was rotten work and pain.

But more and more, day by day, there was a novel sensation - a quietude, a stillness in her emotion that hadn't been there previously. She felt it when she slept against Little Brother's warm, rough hide, when he kicked and whined in his sleep. When she washed herself in clean water, drank the river as it passed - she felt it then. Not the numbness of a new injury before it had learned to sting, not the confident reel of drunkenness. Something new. Had any orc felt this any time before?

No words for it in her sole, vile tongue. No use for it among the orcs and goblins. But it was peace she was feeling, subtle as starlight, and she craved it like an addict.

All from the thought: What if I just left? And years of preparation, but still. What if I just left? Death and consumption a sure thing under the leaves, according to her masters. Death and consumption a sure thing under the mountain.

No going back. Never again.

*****

Name: Hunched and Horned Under the Great Green Moon Concept: Burnt-out orc hunter looking for a way out of the bleak life Lifepaths: 5 (wanna roll the die of fate) Age: 28

Will: B3; Perception B3; Power B4, Forte B4, Agility B5, Speed B5 Health: B4; Mortal Wound: B10; Reflexes: B5; Steel: B5; Hatred: B4 Superficial: 3, Light: 5, Midi: 7, Severe: 8, Traumatic: 9, Mortal: 10 Skills: Foraging B2, Bow B4, Mounted Combat, Riding B2, Armor, Spear B2, Intimidation B2, Black Bile Poison, Scavenging B1, Hunting B3, Field Dressing B1, Stealthy B3, Tracking B2, Vile Poisoner B2 Traits: Cannibal, Cold Black Blood, Breeder, Fanged and Clawed, Loathsome and Twisted, Lynx-Eyed Like Burning Coals, Vile Language, Tasting the Lash, Brash, Cry of Doom, Scavenger

Gear: Run of the mill bow, Great Wolf mount (Last Little Brother), Traveling gear, Rags Circles: B0, Resources: B0 Relationships: She Who Froths the Blood to Boiling, Chain-Forger Made and Remade, twin daughters, still back in it, both named and strong. No idea what they might think of their wayward mother, what they might be doing. A contentious thing, even when Moon was in the mountains. Beliefs: I refuse to accept misery if there is no point to it. The wild and untravelled places hold the only joy some of us will ever know. I want to believe that my people aren't past saving. Instincts: If not intimately familiar with an area, I stalk through it slowly and stealthily. I ensure my weapons are always poisoned. I ensure my wolf is well-fed and happy, even before myself.

Lifepaths: Born Chattel, 10 yrs; Scavenger, 3 yrs; Nightseeker, 4+1 yrs; Black Hunter, 5 yrs; DIE OF FATE! Rolled a 6, I'm fine; Astride the Beast, 5 yrs.

*****

When I first bought Burning Wheel, $9.99 Canadian for two books at the used bookstore, I bounced off of it halfway through the main rolling mechanics. Later on, displeased at the waste, I tried to roll a character and bounced, again, off the simultaneous profundity and restrictiveness of the lifepaths. I didn't like it. I couldn't tell you why, but the dislike was deeper than these wordless things tend to be - an instinctual flinching back, an "ugh" murmured softly to myself whenever someone praised it.

I have those words now. It has been analyzed, experienced. Burning Wheel is, fundamentally, up its own ass.

Burning Wheel is a system could be defined less as a "game" and more as a "difficult-to-play art project made through the mechanism of game design" - but hey, I like Noumenon, and that is the definition of difficult-to-play art project made through the mechanism of game design. This flinching, then, comes because I detect a mote of the less-than-genuine. The system reads less as an attempt to express than an attempt to impress.

Role-playing games are complex endeavors, even at the most one-page, storygame simplistic. There's always going to be something you get wrong, a mechanic you just forget to use, a story beat that slipped under the waves. But I try to imagine playing this thing - not even session zero, just, like, session two. The game after the training wheels come off, after you've made your characters, rolled some dice to test out how it feels. The part where you're supposed to remember everything. The part where you're supposed to know not only how to distribute metacurrency for yourself, but the triggers to distribute it to other players. The part where you have to engage with the advancement mechanics and realize you have so much bookkeeping to do - so much professed freedom, but so little control.

And I imagine going back to D&D. It's complex, too, but Christ, compare the base-level rolling mechanics. Roll a d20, apply positive or negative modifiers, there you go. And there are no absolute forbiddances or mandatories hidden, like, halfway through an otherwise unrelated paragraph. And no one calls you an idiot if you don't like it.

If you have a good DM, and you have a group of enthusiastic players, and you have a solid story you want to tell - yes, of course, you can play a good game of Burning Wheel. But it is fundamentally not my jam, and at the last, I'm grateful now to know why.

Next up: Further media disappointments told through the medium of dice.

[cryostrawberry]

Ah yes, the Pillars of Eternity ttrpg, or as i like to call it Burngeons & Wheeleagons

[anim-ttrpgs]

Have any of you tried putting the Composure mechanic from Eureka into Burning Wheel?

No, we haven't. I'm not even sure personally how that would work, or if it would work at all, but maybe @ashweather could say more on the matter.

[pathetic-gamer]

okay it was burning wheel day again and I got to meet my betrothed* and she seems like she might be a little bit of a war guy which fucking rules because I'M a war guy so I will be able to seduce her with my war guy practicality this is gonna work okay I can teach her how to use swords it's gonna be so fucking romantic

*not betrothed yet but through the power of war guy practicality and also romance we soon will be

[roll-gallery]

This Roll is from Hitoshi Ariga's Gigamix!

[iamthegm]

Rolling, Rolling, Rolling

Introduction:

The image of a die rolling is perhaps the most iconic aspect of tabletop games. We all live for that moment of uncertainty, right? Both players and GMs, if we didn’t we would just write books detailing our collaborative fiction. The dice roll introduces tension, it allows for us all to be surprised by what happens next. But I think we have all probably had moments where it feels like the dice roll didn’t actually matter, that the result had already been predetermined by our GM (or perhaps we were even the GM with the predetermined outcome). Maybe you’ve experienced the converse, where a dice roll mattered way more than you thought it would. Perhaps you thought the mob boss would be annoyed if you tried to haggle with him, but now there’s this failed Suasion roll and all of a sudden your character is dying from a knife in the gut. Perhaps you’ve run a game, and don’t quite feel like you have picked up when to call for a roll, maybe you feel like you’re engaging with uncertainty too much or too little. I think a near universal experience for GMs is having called for a roll, and gotten a failed check that ended in a narrative dead end. 

So, when and how do we introduce uncertainty via a roll of some kind, how do we interpret the results, and how do we minimize the chances of players reacting with “I didn’t know shit was going to go this bad!” when a roll goes sideways? Here’s what I (by way of much more intelligent game designers and GMs) think about when I call for a roll, the conversations that happen around a roll, and how we interpret the results. 

What’s in a Roll?

When do we know we’re heading towards rolling some die? I think it first starts with players declaring a goal they would like to achieve. The TTRPG Burning Wheel by Luke Crane calls this Intent. Intents are broad directions the players want their characters to move towards. They can be situation specific- something like “I want to kill the guard in front of me before his colleagues notice!” or they can be contextually broader like “We want to explore this dungeon!” The players take the fiction presented to them and decide what they want to work towards. When a GM is having trouble getting at player intent (because intent often gets confused with action) the GM might ask “What are you trying to get out of this?”

After intent is established, the next thing that needs to happen is for the GM to determine whether or not failure or danger introduced through this intent is narratively interesting. It's generally fairly obvious whether or not that is true- you think about something like “what happens if Maggie failed to kill this guard?” You might decide the guard lets out a shout and an alarm is raised, or that levies his pistol at Maggie. However, what do we do if there is nothing narratively interesting about having an obstacle in this situation? Burning Wheel gives us the phrase Say Yes, or Roll the Dice. Essentially, what Say Yes, or Roll the Dice means is that if failure is not narratively interesting, or the characters are assumed to be competent at the task, just let the players have the success. It's generally not narratively interesting for characters to fall down the stairs of the tavern. Don’t make them roll for it!

But what if failure is narratively interesting? I think we, as GMs, can fall back on my favorite question to ask players “What do you do?” Let’s look at it in context of the situation above. Matara, Maggie’s player, says “I want to kill this guard before the rest of his patrol finds out!” I, as the GM, have decided it's narratively interesting to introduce danger or a chance of failure. “Okay, you can definitely attempt that, but you hear the sounds of conversation getting closer. You think this guy's shift change is on the way. What do you want to do?”

Matara might decide that Maggie is going to sneak in with her knife and stab the guard. This is declaring what Burning Wheel calls a task. This is the other facet of what is needed to constitute a roll, alongside intent. Notice that I’m not calling for Maggie to sneak or to use her knife, Matara could have just as easily said that Maggie is running in screaming and brandishing her pistol. I’m countering what Blades in the Dark calls a bad habit which is calling for a specific action. I’m not telling Matara how Maggie needs to accomplish her intent, I’m letting her decide what Maggie’s task is. My role as the GM is to clearly illustrate to players how bad well or how bad the task could go, based on the roll, and I’m doing it before the die roll. In conversation this looks like saying “Okay, so Maggie is going to sneak up on this guard in order to kill him before his coworkers notice, right? Cool, if you succeed it's fairly simple, you’re able to kill him and stow his body away. If you fail however, you’re going to be caught by his shift change with his dead corpse cradled in your arms. Wanna go through with it?” Blades in the Dark calls this setting position and effect. I’m letting the player know what kind of complications they will run into if the roll goes poorly- the position, and what kind of success they can expect if the roll goes their way- the effect. The above quote is a good example of creating an opportunity for trouble through position, but what if I wanted instead to create a complication through effect? I might say something like “Yeah, you can definitely sneak up and stab this guy, but you can tell by the way he’s moving that this guard is wearing some pretty good armor under his uniform. You don’t think your knife is going to do it in one fell swoop. What do you want to do?”

When players are getting this kind of information and narrative feedback to what they are stating in their intent and task, they are encouraged to also negotiate their position and effect. Matara might decide that the risks aren’t worth the benefit. She might decide that Maggie is instead going to try and scale a wall to bypass the security checkpoint rather than confronting the guard directly. This gives us another opportunity to adjudicate a new intent and task with a different position and effect on the narrative. On the other hand, Maggie might decide that killing one guard isn’t enough, that instead she wants to throw caution to the wind and ambush both guards right as the shift change occurs to remove them both from play. GM and player get to negotiate position and effect based on the player’s intent and task. This conversation then gives the player the opportunity to refine their intent and task. All of this happens before the roll is made to make sure that everyone is operating on the same wavelength in regards to what is fictionally happening.

We’ve Rolled, Now What?

So, you’ve made the roll and now you need to interpret what the hell is going on. Let’s look at what we can do based on the kinds of results you can get! First though, no matter what, follow through on what you said would happen. Don’t cheap out on the players and not give them the success, or failure, that they earned. You all agreed to it while setting intent and task, position, and effect. On a success, the player gets the effect result you agreed on. Now, a common issue or trap for GMs to fall into is to keep players rolling again and again to accomplish the same task. This is really frustrating for players! Imagine, you’ve rolled a success and you expect to get the thing you want, but the GM decides that you actually only partially made it to your goal. Let’s look at this in context with the example I’ve been using. Maggie rolls to successfully sneak up on and stab the guard, but I as the GM decide that the guard isn’t actually quite dead yet and Maggie is going to have to keep stabbing him a few more times to put him down for good. That doesn’t feel quite fulfilling, right? Another helpful phrase from Burning Wheel is to Let It Ride. This means that the player’s success, or failure, carries through until the situation has changed significantly narratively. 

So, with that, let’s look at what to do on a failure. First, we follow through with what we said would happen. “Okay Maggie, you’ve stabbed the guard, but now his partner has happened upon you with the body. What do you want to do?” Failure, just like success, should move the fiction forward. Powered by the Apocalypse games generally refer to this concept as failing forward. A failure should never look like “You failed to pick the lock to the only door deeper into the dungeon.” It's narratively boring! Perhaps instead failure is “You picked the lock, but in doing so your lockpicking tools broke. What do you want to do now?” or “You’re working on picking the lock, and it's taking more time than you initially thought it would, and you can hear the steps of some horrible monster drawing closer. What do you do now?” My best piece of advice for dealing with failure is to not always make it about not giving the player/character what they want, but how to offer it up with a drawback, cost, or complication. 

Conclusion:

There is a lot of implicit conversation that happens around a die roll, that I think we’d be better served by making explicit. When we discuss how bad failure is, how good success looks like, and what a player really wants out of a situation, we end up creating a more clear fiction for everyone at the table. We bypass potentially negative surprises, and avoid outcomes that are not intentionally disappointing. 

Questions for Consideration:

How does the game I’m playing frame the conversations around a roll

How might failing forward create more fulfilling fiction?

Where am I currently not following through on what I’m telling players?

[cannibalhalflinggaming]

"Burning Wheel is past its twentieth birthday. The game, a famously complex child of the Forge, is one that everyone seems to either love or hate. I personally love it, but in this week’s System Split I’m extending a fig leaf to those on the other side (or at least those who tried to love it and bounced off)." - Aaron Marks