Character Creation
This system has no classes or levels. Character creation is based on a Lifepath system that determines the starting skills, level of skills, and starting traits that a character exhibits. The GM sets the number of desired lifepaths (3 Lifepaths for 'starting out' 1st level equivelents, 4 lifepaths for characters roles that are more established like 4th level mid-tier play). This lifepath approach is almost a mini-game in itself - each choice determines what branching is available for your next choice. Finding ways within the system to reach a desired lifepath for your concept often results in new and exciting concepts unfolding.
What is exciting about this lifepath system is that it aligns with realistic lives, not with character classes. Someone who is a peasant turned bartender has specific skills and traits appropriate to a bartender, not a thin veneer of bartender pasted on top of the Rogue class.
I find the lifepaths are exceptionally well-constructed models of specific societies - the mobility and lack of mobility in them is really well done. In particular, the Dwarven lifepaths implicitly describe and exemplify a complex and heirarchical model that I have seldom seen in any game that makes richly-developed and diverse dwarven archetypes. Humans are modeled with nobility, upper class, merchant class, peasants, the church, and the military structure and with realistic links and interplay.
Stories it is good for...
This lifepath system is ideal for games where characters are realistic, non-class characters thrust into the world. It also works extremely well for characters who are forced out of their comfort zone by life's circumstances and who need to grow in new directions and into new roles (see the advancement system below).
Example: If I wanted to run the Black Cauldron and have an assistant pig keeper, a headstrong but naive princess, and a blustering minstrel in over his head, all of whom need to grow into new roles and in new ways as they face the Horned King and ultimately try to stop the use of the magical cauldron from creating an undead army, this system is ideal.
Example: A mixed Fellowship that includes an elf, dwarf, wizard, and skilled ranger, but also a hobbits that are gardener, upper class dillentente, and two rapscalion teenagers without significant adventuring skills, this system also accomodates that. Each character will function equally in the pursuit of their beliefs and goals and will experience appropriate growth in their personal journeys (and skills) through play.
Character Experience and Advancement
Because there are no levels, there is no experience points.
Instead, there is Artha: these points are gained as rewards for pursuing your character's Beliefs and using their instincts and traits in your roleplay to your own disadvantage. All Artha awards are centered around roleplay and story development as the center of the game. The Artha are then spent for various benefits to your dice rolls in the game, making your character mechanically better as well, even achieving success in specific instances where it might otherwise be beyond your reach.
Skills that aren't used don't grow. You must use them in the story. Advancement happens in a character's skills by using them - each skill tracks how often it is used, counting both successes and failures. As you get more skilled, the requirement for advancing becomes more specific, requiring a certain number of successes and failures in different challenge categories - roughly: easy things, hard things, and impossible things. The system requires that you challenge your abilities in order for them to grow (with impossible things being possible by spending Artha, which is gained by good roleplay).
Characters who are out of their element and learning new things will find they advance those low skills quickly in play - this is ideal for the character forced out of his comfort zone by the circumstances he finds himself in. Characters who are experts - the elf with phenomenal archery skill, for example - find that many tasks are easy and that easy tasks don't ever make them better. Instead they must seek new challenges, put themselves in more difficult circumstances, and otherwise stretch themselves to meet a goal of growing in their mastery. Characters can open any skill by using it - the assistant pig keeper can both try to grow as a sorcerer by divining with his oracular pig and he can also learn to use a sword because he wishes in his heart to be a brave knight and there's no class-based restriction. All he has to do is drive gameplay by his beliefs and goals to end up in circumstances where the those skills can be used and tested.
Tests Matter, Shared Narrative, and Beliefs Drive Play
Because tests drive advancement, there's an emphasis that all tests are consequential to the story. Every test should have a consequence or twist that occurs on a failure, not styming the story but sending it in a new direction. There's also a "Let it Ride" rule - characters only test once for a given cirumstance and the pass or failure continues forward until the circumstances are substantively different.
Stealth checks are not made repeatedly as a character moves past each guard on the night watch - their stealth roll allows them to continue being stealthy past all guards until there's something substantively different - entering a well-lit area, a creature with different modes of perception (the sniffing guard dogs), etc.
The game strongly encourages player-driven story, and players and the GM are encouraged to engage in shared storytelling. Every character defines three specific Belief statements and then for each belief they refine a specific Goal. These aren't a tacked-on element, they are meant to be the core of the system - the GM drives play to specifically challenge the character's beliefs, the characters earn Artha by fulfilling their goals or struggling with their own beliefs. Writing the Beliefs and Goals is a clear way for players to signal what sorts of challenges and storylines are most important for the GM to develop. Characters actively pursuing their Beliefs and Goals experience personal growth on their character arcs. The Storytelling aspect of RPGs is encoded into the center of gameplay by this structure.
Personal experience here on these forums: This focus on honing beliefs, developing specific goals, and then supporting player-driven play with them is where gameplay has struggled. This is perhaps the hardest point for new players to Burning Wheel, but it cannot be skipped because it is essential to the rest of the system.
Combat Scenes
Now that you know advancement occurs by using skills and pursuing beliefs, we also understand that the defeat of others in combat is not in itself an objective or for advancement. Winning a conflict should be related to pursuing a belief and it advances the character by both achieving their goals and also using their skills to better them.
There are three discrete combat systems within Burning Wheel. Each of them involves a distinct tactical system, positioning, and actual blows/results. Each of them has a specfic tactical structure where (rather than initiative order) you lay out three intended actions at a time as a group and then play proceeds with those actions being revealed simultaneously by both sides and resolving.
- There is a combat method for melee combat that governs direct physical engagement. It's positioning system takes into account weapon length, ability to maneuver to your advantage and your opponent's detriment, and then ultimately to strike blows and cause wounds. There's no hit points - each wound is a big deal and individually tracked and healed with great effort.
Example: This is the only system I know where a peasant with a spear can effectively keep a wolf and its teeth at bay, as a spear is supposed to be used. I love this. - There's a "Range and Cover" system that addresses all archery and interaction at a distance. Positioning effectively uses range bands to address attempts to close on a foe, escape a foe, and wounding the foe in the middle.
- There's then a "Duel of Wits" system for SOCIAL combat. A "Body of Argument" is established for each side that operates like social hit points. Each side defines what they get on a win. Tactical positioning works by laying out arguments, feints, defending your position, etc. and then skill rolls impact the body of argument until one side wins. The most unique part of this method is that it almost always results in some level of compromise over a win - one side wins but the other side can earn a major, minor, or no compromise based on the proportion of effect they had on a body of argument. The compromise grants a part but not all of the win condition to the loser.
Social interactions that result in a winner and a concession drive game play in wildly interesting directions. Indiana Jones gets the head of the staff of Ra on his win but has to bring Miriam with him and out of Mongolia as a compromise. Or, the party must pursue the Black Knight and deal with him for the King, but the King then agrees to their own knighting afterwards. Rarely do people get a total win in an argument and this system for determining the balance of a win in a social encounter captures that better than any straight-roll game system.
Emotional Attributes
Burning Wheel is written to be very Tolkien-influenced. One way this shows up is that each demihuman race has a mechanic specific to them that is their Emotional Attribute, some feature of their race which defines what afflicts them as both blessing and curse of their fate.
- Elvish Grief. Elves live eternally in a world that otherwise has mortality. As their attribute rises they can better relate to the mortality of others, but as it gets too high their grief is overwhelming and they effectively sail into the West.
- Dwarven Greed. The dwarven appreciation of wealth, beauty, and power leads them to great works in pursuing it, but as it gets too high they become miserly and selfish and eventually lock themselves away from the world with their treasures.
- Orcish Hate. Hate drives everything in an orc and makes them fearsome, but as it grows too strong, the dragon consumes its own tail.
It is worth noting that this storytelling system is flexible enough to allow a strange variety of characters into play... humans, elves, and dwarves, but also orcs, great wolves/wargs, giant spiders are all playable and interesting characters.