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

'The Burning Wheel: 20 Years' by Malleus.

50cm  x 70cm 5 colour screen print on black paper, in a numbered limited edition of 35 for €100.

On sale now through the Malleus website.

Inventories in TTRPGs

I tended to use twitter as a place to just dump my thoughts on TTRPGs and the systems within them, and I hope to do much the same here. In this spirit, I’m going to ramble about one of my favorite overlooked systems in TTRPGs, inventories, and use two games that I’m quite fond of to illustrate how they can be used to reinforce the themes of a game. Even games that I quite like often have very boring inventories. The most traditional route is of course listing all of your belongings, with weights listed next to them in pounds. Whenever you pick something up, you check against some kind of “carry limit” to see if you can take it with you. This is often tedious, and doesn’t really reflect how someone carries themselves and their possessions in the real world. In the real world, how someone protects and uses their possessions says quite a bit about how they relate to society at large. It’s pretty trite at this point to say that character sheets tell you a lot about a game and what it’s about, so let’s look at the character sheet for a game called Torchbearer.

Torchbearer is a dungeoncrawling game in which the traditional murderhobo playstyle of D&D is embraced and deconstructed. The player characters live at the edges of society. They are vagrants and outcasts. Third children, who were too dull or disobedient or unlucky or ambitious to learn a craft or inherit a fortune or till the fields. They are trapped in a cycle of poverty where they dungeon-delve for the funds needed to rest in town to recover from the trials of dungeon-delving. They will adventure until they either truly strike it rich or die an ignoble, painful death. They tend not to have permanent lodgings, and must carry their belongings and property on themselves, or stash their property in safe places called Caches. Each object takes up a particular number of slots (1 or 2 usually) based on its bulk. Backpacks have more capacity than satchels, but take up 2 torso slots, forcing you to make decisions like choose between heavy armor or space. You are rewarded for creatively lashing your gear (carrying a dagger on a necklace around your neck, or keeping your spell components in bracelets or wrapped in an amulet-fetish) A large idol found in a cave might take up 4 slots, which usually means two PCs using both of their hands. Sacks can be carried empty as 1 slot, but can be filled with items and carried if you aren’t afraid to go without weapons. Here are some filled in Torchbearer inventories, as examples

I love this system. I love being allowed to shed useful gear for gems and coin. I love the dilemma of having too much to carry but being afraid of my hard earned gear getting stolen or damaged if I leave it alone too long. I love how weighty and physical it feels, knowing exactly where on my character everything is stashed and lashed, having to drop out of a combat stance to carry a torch or a lantern. but what if you want to play a character who is not on the edges of society, who isn’t unhoused, maybe even one who owns not just property but capital? Let’s look at the Burning Wheel inventory!

In the Burning Wheel, you truly Live in a Society. Most of character creation is following your life story, the jobs you've worked, the people you've met. Your property is more than what is on your back. They're your investments, they're your debts. They're listed in the same region as your relationships because of this. They exist outside of you. Weight is often ignored, it is generally assumed you carry what you would need and have a home to keep your things in.

Money is similarly abstracted. Instead of individual coins, one keeps track of cash dice, loans, debt. You often wont even use currency when acquiring something, instead rolling your resources (a stat based on leveraging your relationships and reputations). In this abstraction, the Burning Wheel seeks to simulate the complex gift economy of the pre-capitalist world. And it's fun! You don't fiddle around with weight or conversions and yet you still are guided by rules. Instead of seeking gold, you often are left seeking patronage.

When making a tabletop rpg it is tempting to gloss over the bookkeeping and inventory management, but in many ways, your inventory is the primary way that players interact with the material world. So much of life is based around what one owns and what one wishes to own,  and how you keep track of that informs the player on a lot of assumptions. Relegating it to a bunch of empty lines on the back of the sheet is, at best, a wasted opportunity.

Last night I got to play Burning Wheel, it's a fantasy Greek Setting with big Avatar the Last Airbender vibes.

My character was unexpectedly (we the players and GM agreed to it right before the decision in game), declared the Arch-Mage, and since then she has done everything she can to stay neutral, calm, and not start worsening the wars between the city-states.

A lot has happened, and last night's game she decided she was tired of just letting fate and other's dictate what she does, instead, she convinced her man (an Enkavman Soldier who had spent years trying to woo her in Kentriko, but she never reciprocated because she didn't want to get hurt again, but after all they've been through, she absolutely has fallen) to go ahead of the caravan they're with to get to Enkavma early so they can spend just a little time together where she is not 'thw Arch-Mage, beholden to the people and responsible for the world' but instead JUST Cassandra as she was back in her home village.

Sebastian was giving her a tour, and because no one knew who she was, she got a real good look of what the problems of the city are.

Including the lower part of the city flooded and many of the families forced out of their homes. Many of the families sleeping on the streets, because the inns are all full. Guards walking the streets and waking people to get up and moving so that they are not there when the Arch-Mage shows up (you know, it'd look bad to have that kind of a problem.) Which nearly came down to her getting arrested because she hadn't gotten much sleep, since her only coins are Trokosi, which they don't accept because war hate, so her and Sebastian wound up sleeping on the street as well. (Boy that's going to be a fun thing to deal with.)

Since she was on the streets she was able to talk to some of the others, get a good inside perspective from the people, and not just the Politics of the city (she made that mistake in Trokos, and has some regrets.)

We ended the session with Melanion, the other player, leading the caravan into Enkavma, as everyone panics, because where the fuck is Cass, what the fuck are they going to do?

He failed to impress the Archon, and tried to be like "She is secretive..."

As Cass walked out of the crowd without thought, because there was a fucking wizard present, and she's never met a wizard.

So our ending notes were him declaring she'd been among them, and she greeted the Archon, apologizing for coming in unannounced, though she never stopped staring at the wizard, because holy fuck, he may be able to help teach her more.

I cannot wait for the next session in 2 weeks! Cass and Melanion are one of my favorite games.

The dynamic is super fun.

Cass is a quiet failed acolyte, as she never got to finish her training. She was called back to Kentriko when her father died at sea, so she could take care of her younger brother Perseus (who was the original Arch-Mage candidate.)

Melanion is a head strong carpenter apprentice with dreams of grandeur. He has been training all his life to one day compete in the games, even though no one knew if the games would ever return, because the Arch-Mage was unknown/missing for 20 years. He is very much a Greek Hero, and loves the adoration and attention.

Perseus, despite being an NPC, has been a very key character. Not only is he Mel's best friend, but he is the reason Cass sold her house, quit her job, traveled to Trokos, and was declared Arch-Mage because he didn't want to stand alone in the deciding. Perseus is a headstrong asshole a lot of the time, who Cass has always had some jealousy and bitterness towards, because their dad preferred him, not only for being a male but also because Cass looks much like their mother, and it hurt him a great deal.

I could probably go on and on about the game so far, last session was one of the few Cass heavy sessions, and I really enjoyed that. Usually she kind of floats about, but I'm trying to make my beliefs much more solid to help give her more backbone in the game.

Yup! I'm on my pure bullshit.

Reflecting on my actual play of Burning Wheel, and trying to organize my thoughts with a diagram like it's the '00s.

This is a look at how I approach The Burning Wheel. This is based of my reading of the rules and experience with the system in play. It's a draft, so I assume it'll need tweaked for clarity.

If anyone has questions about this, or what anything means - ask away!

as a player you should really internalize the intent/task sentence structure. “i wanna open this door by prying it open with a crowbar,” “i wanna set fire to the hay bale with my firebolt,” “i wanna haggle this price by commenting on some minor scratches.”

very often i see players only stating one of these. either “i wanna open the door” or “i cast firebolt on the hay bale.”

what the intent/task structure does is properly communicate to your GM what a success/failure state looks like, and what kind of challenge they propose. sometimes players have a very specific outcome in mind, but when they just state the task, even a successful attempt will be disappointing because the GM does not know what you want to achieve. and vice versa, just stating your intent puts weight on the GM to not only come up with the consequences to the actions, but what even causes them to begin with.

so funny to me that miles bron doesn’t burn the incriminating napkin until after lionel asks him why he didn’t. not only does he steal his murder idea from benoit, he steals his cover-up from lionel. they really doubled down on making him steal literally every idea he ever has, huh.

I like toxic yuri. I do not like the Sapphic Overton window and how it's it's moved so far in the direction of unrealistic levels of purity that two women must act like inhuman saints and never have any conflict to be considered "healthy." And pretty normal women in love having realistic conflict for the plot they're in gets labeled "toxic yuri."

Malini and Priya from the Burning Kingdoms books are not toxic yuri, their feelings for each other and how they relate are pretty damn healthy, they're just trapped in impossible circumstances. Ditto Siuan and Moiraine from Wheel of Time. There's a difference between inherent toxicity and a dramatic plot pushing people to the breaking point.

Now, Lucille the repressed bisexual from Crimson Peak who is a serial killer and slowly poisoning Edith to death even as she desires her? Or Carmilla in the original 1872 story Carmilla who believes her love for other girls can only be death and so she's slowly killing the girl she loves to draw out their time together while slaying other women quickly to satiate her bloodlust? *That's* toxic yuri. There's something at the very core of their dynamic that is toxic. Not two women who are pretty sweet together forced into a mind-breakingly impossible situation and having conflict over it. I am into that shit - and I am into realistic writing and high stakes situations pushing people to the breaking point - and there's a very important distinction there.

Moiraine and Rand, alone again, naturally - 1x08 || 2x06

sometimes i have a good laugh as i think about attitudes re: balefire for most of the series like. the forsaken have living memory of balefire's destructive capacities and avoid using it much bc they're rightfully scared of it. moiraine cannot be tamed and WILL use it but tries to be judicious, sort of. rand, meanwhile, is a mentally unstable 20 yo,

Daniel Ricciardo discussing the new chassis he will receive at the Chinese Grand Prix

UH OH!

6 competitors, 3 winners, 5 competitors, the Wheel of Doom angers at these circumstances. Oh, screw the fancy talk, we gotta hurry this shit up before the structural integrity of this place burns to the ground! Tomorrow at Noon CST will be our next round, but instead of our normal 1v1 format, there will be 2 3-for-all matches. Be there or be square, because this is gonna be our most intense redemption match yet!

TREESINGING | The Wheel of Time 2x6

Thought I'd plop down one of my favorite characters to play, her name is Jerica Roberts, once the Dread Pirate of the Pentellaria, now a sell out Naval Captain.

She is motivated mainly by relationships, friends, family, and the plight of the lower class. She is trying to prove that treating the people working one's land and providing literally basic necessities is better than what they are doing. (She bought the town/land she was born on, it does not produce well because of poor farming techniques, so she is listening to her Headman on what needs to be done and paying out of pocket to keep taxes paid.)

Her greatest nemesis is a man named Admiral Lynnwood who is trying to convince the others that she should not be allowed to do so. While others are unbothered, he's going through great lengths to make sure she doesn't succeed in changing the status quo.

Her current lover/love interest is a man her age, named Westley Gibbson, they have had a rocky relationship built on trust and desire, which has been tried time and time again because they both have commitment issues. He tried to get her to give up pirating for years, while never turning her over and letting her get away. Now that they're on the same side, they are trying to make it work, though he does not trust her as much since she made such a heel turn from only learning Marcus Fields was alive.

I've been playing her for over 3 years now, started as my first Burning Wheel Campaign, we had a second player who decided to drop out.

Its been a real wild ride to go on, for a smart mouth horrible mother, she has settled down, is taking an interest in her daughter's life, and reconnecting with her ex-husband, best friend, lover, and for the first time since she was 8, her parents and siblings.

(Above art is done by the amazing @karofsky , he is my Fat Dealer, and I have many.)

EMILIA ROMAGNA GP 2021 - Fabio Quartararo & Marc Márquez celebrate their respective World Championship and Grand Prix win with a burnout