BW: Situation & Setting Bash
I've been trying to put together a new Burning Wheel game for some time now; Seemingly it might help to discuss the various ideas for games which i have been toying with lately. Here are some quick summaries:
- The New World (Reburn) - The simplest thing to prepare would be to take the game i put together over the spring, but which my group never got around actally playing, and give it a light reburning such that the situation is more immediately grabby for the players, the characters are more directly connected to each other, and the characters are updated to be more interesting. However, i'm not really too fond of the New World setting as a whole. (My central conceit for the game might not work, either.)
- Mokumakani (Reburn) - I really like the general idea of the islander adventure game i GM'd for a few sessions last year, however, at the time i put the game together wrong, and the play proved to be much less engaging than it needed to be. I would really love a chance to start the game over again, only this time focusing on the character's home island (& home chain) for the beginning of the game, making ocean travel a much more difficult/important/major undertaking (and more thematic, to boot), and making sure that the central conflict of the game is really the battle between the independant islanders and the would-be-emperor. (Instead of a treasure hunt - last time i should of moved the game onto the treasure island almost immediately!)
- Our Lady of the Wheel - The game i have been writing about more recently, the goal is to make an easy-to-get-into game (std. quas-mediaeval fantasy) resolving around the conflict between secular and religious (PCs) authority over performance of a critical service (keeping towns safe). However, really it is intended to produce ethical conflicts of the type D&D usually ignores - How do you tell the people from the monsters? Is there such a thing as a monster? etc (Orginally this idea was intended to for a D&D series, but i agree that D&D, even 4e, is really a poor vehicle for such explorations. The levelling gets in the way of the story-crafting.)
- The Great Expedition - A new idea heavily inspired by this thread and the fantasy novels i have been reading lately (Across the Face of the World, The Name of the Wind, & Mistborn), the basic idea here is to take our PCs out of their familiar quasi-mediaeval setting and place them on a journey, well, across the face of the world, where they will be forced to deal with alien cultures. However, it is not just enough to explore these foreign realms, no - the PCs have to be brought into a position where they get to "judge" them. (More ethics and values exploration, i suppose. Must be a strong theme with me...)
- Folkruler - I've been working on this idea on-and-off-again, varying between a BW hack and a stand-alone game. I'd love to take a shot at playing the premise within the typical BW ruleset, however. The premise is that the PCs are members of the ruling council of an idealized/genericised ancient (iron age) germanic clan/tribe, attempting to balance working for the good of the tribe with working for their own good (and their own families' good) . To a large extent this is inspired by King of Dragon Pass, but keeping in mind that this is to be a story-game instead of a strategy game. I haven't quite figured out how to handle the very important religious aspect of play yet - perhaps a variation of BW's Faith rules would work in this case, however. (Possibly, this game might be asking the large-scale question "Is a tribal familial society better than a centralized dogmatic one?")
I can definately see some underlying themes connecting all of these ideas - i suppose those are the areas of exploration i most want to address in my play!
At this point, however, i'd be overjoyed to get any thematic play at all going!
- The New World (Reburn) - The simplest thing to prepare would be to take the game i put together over the spring, but which my group never got around actally playing, and give it a light reburning such that the situation is more immediately grabby for the players, the characters are more directly connected to each other, and the characters are updated to be more interesting. However, i'm not really too fond of the New World setting as a whole. (My central conceit for the game might not work, either.)
- Mokumakani (Reburn) - I really like the general idea of the islander adventure game i GM'd for a few sessions last year, however, at the time i put the game together wrong, and the play proved to be much less engaging than it needed to be. I would really love a chance to start the game over again, only this time focusing on the character's home island (& home chain) for the beginning of the game, making ocean travel a much more difficult/important/major undertaking (and more thematic, to boot), and making sure that the central conflict of the game is really the battle between the independant islanders and the would-be-emperor. (Instead of a treasure hunt - last time i should of moved the game onto the treasure island almost immediately!)
- Our Lady of the Wheel - The game i have been writing about more recently, the goal is to make an easy-to-get-into game (std. quas-mediaeval fantasy) resolving around the conflict between secular and religious (PCs) authority over performance of a critical service (keeping towns safe). However, really it is intended to produce ethical conflicts of the type D&D usually ignores - How do you tell the people from the monsters? Is there such a thing as a monster? etc (Orginally this idea was intended to for a D&D series, but i agree that D&D, even 4e, is really a poor vehicle for such explorations. The levelling gets in the way of the story-crafting.)
- The Great Expedition - A new idea heavily inspired by this thread and the fantasy novels i have been reading lately (Across the Face of the World, The Name of the Wind, & Mistborn), the basic idea here is to take our PCs out of their familiar quasi-mediaeval setting and place them on a journey, well, across the face of the world, where they will be forced to deal with alien cultures. However, it is not just enough to explore these foreign realms, no - the PCs have to be brought into a position where they get to "judge" them. (More ethics and values exploration, i suppose. Must be a strong theme with me...)
- Folkruler - I've been working on this idea on-and-off-again, varying between a BW hack and a stand-alone game. I'd love to take a shot at playing the premise within the typical BW ruleset, however. The premise is that the PCs are members of the ruling council of an idealized/genericised ancient (iron age) germanic clan/tribe, attempting to balance working for the good of the tribe with working for their own good (and their own families' good) . To a large extent this is inspired by King of Dragon Pass, but keeping in mind that this is to be a story-game instead of a strategy game. I haven't quite figured out how to handle the very important religious aspect of play yet - perhaps a variation of BW's Faith rules would work in this case, however. (Possibly, this game might be asking the large-scale question "Is a tribal familial society better than a centralized dogmatic one?")
I can definately see some underlying themes connecting all of these ideas - i suppose those are the areas of exploration i most want to address in my play!
At this point, however, i'd be overjoyed to get any thematic play at all going!