In the above paragraph, I described Burning Wheel as a fantasy roleplaying system because there is no setting within these two books. However, there is a setting implied throughout the character burner, rather like the implied setting in the D&D Core books. That’s where the comparison stops.

It’s pretty obvious from the get go that there has been a lot of thought going into the design of Burning Wheel. Despite the lack of setting, I don’t think it qualifies as a generic system. It’s gritty, it emphasises thought over action, characters as people rather than heroes and the fantasy elements focus on flavour rather than power.

What do you get for $15 ?

After a brief foreword, ‘The Burning Wheel’ starts with a 24 page Introduction chapter which details the game mechanics. Basically, the system is dice pool with d6s. The Difficulty Number never varies for a given stat, attribute or skill and is determined by a shade for each of these. Black is 4, Grey is 3 and White is 2. Mundane characters normally have Black only. Then you have obstacles, which is the number of successes you need to perform the task. In shorthand, a skill could therefore be expressed as B4 (roll 4 dice, each dice equal to or above four is a success) and a test could be Ob2 (Obstacle 2, you need at least two successes to perform the task). Simple.

Characters are defined by six stats (Perception, Will, Agility, Speed, Power and Forte), six attributes (Reflexes, Health, Faith, Steel, Aptitude and Mortal Wound) that are either derived from Stats or defined by your character’s history, and numerous skills. From then on, we move to a 110 pages chapter on Gameplay, which details how to use the above in play : how stats, attributes and skills work, advancement, how traits, instincts and beliefs help flesh out the character and how they work in the game, combat, injury, magic and faith. Wow. I won’t break it all down but three elements do deserve a special mention.

First of all, the mechanics for advancement are pretty interesting. Instead of relying on experience points, like most games do, they rely on tests, but they do so in an intelligent manner. Basically, it’s not just the more you use a skill the more you progress. The better you get, the harder the stuff you need to attempt for it to progress. The concept is elegant although I’m unsure about the amount of bookkeeping needed to make it work. Rêve de Dragon used to have a somewhat similar system, but with an easier way to track advancement. Still, it’s a sound concept.

Then we have combat. This is where Burning Wheel truly innovates, compared to virtually every other system I know. Burning Wheel does not aim to emulate the theatre version of combat, but rather the gutter version. Think Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V. Blood. Gore. Mud. Chaos. How does it do that ? Basically, the combat system, called scripting, requires that each participant plan a number of manoeuvres in advance. Each combat round (called an Exchange) is divided into three volleys, and each of these into actions. The higher your reflex attribute, the bigger number of actions you may perform. Then the actions of all participants are declared at the same time, and actions that affect each other are resolved with the appropriate dice-rolls. There’s a way of changing your course half-way, but it costs in terms of remaining actions. There’s also a way of bidding for initiative to ensure that your action goes before the general round of actions. On paper, this system is both clever and different, and it’s easy to see how it would reflect the chaotic nature of melee. Having not playtested it, however, it’s hard to assess how fast and entertaining it is, and how big the tactical element can be considering the uncertain nature of future actions.

There are lots of added details that contribute to the gritty nature of the system, like the great way of handling varying weapon lengths, deteriorating armour, accumulative wound penalties, and steel. Steel is pretty cool. Basically, steel measures your guts and how you react to a combat situation, wounds, etc. Steel forces the player to accept that his character, however brave he is in principle, may very well freak out when he sees his guts spilling out...

The third element described in this chapter which deserves a special mention is the Magic system. It’s spell-based, but has a nifty failure engine. Basically, each component of the spell (area, duration, element, etc.) can shift when you fail your casting, thus resulting in a totally different spell. It’s a very chaotic concept of Magic, but at least, there’s a real and potentially dangerous side effect to botching Magic. There is no 'divine magic' as such, but instead we get a freeform mechanic called 'Faith' which allows the faithful to perform miracles. This is how I like my divine interventions in any game I run, so I'm happy with that.

Following these ‘basic’ game bricks, we enter a 41 page chapter entitled Extended Gameplay which presents another lot of rules and tips which you may not want (or need) to use straight away. In there you’ll find things like mounted combat, combat and skill use complications, learning new spells and shades other than black, theoretically devoted to heroic mortals (Grey) and Supernatural creatures (White). The only odd thing here is that we find the rules on healing which should really have been in the previous chapter. Minor nitpick.

Then we enter the final 12 page chapter entitled Campaigning in which we find things like rewarding characters and changing instincts and beliefs over the course of a campaign. The really interesting part of that chapter are the rules on Artha, a kind of meta-game karma that is earned through good roleplaying and success, and spent to affect the game (survive a lethal wound, ignore wound penalties for a while, re-roll, etc.)

Book one is not completely over yet since we then have a chunky 40 page Appendix which provides all the weapon stats, rules for martial arts, a detailed combat example, stats for a few monsters and bad guys, and the obligatory designer notes. Nice thing to have put them at the end, since it’s easier for people who are annoyed by such things to ignore them. I happen to like them and they’re not too preachy, so that’s cool !

So that’s the game, is it ? Well, no. There’s another book, just as long, called the Character Burner. What the Character Burner does is detail all aspects of the characters (traits, spells, skills, etc.) and provide a detailed system to create the characters called the Lifepaths. The concept of the Lifepaths is not new to Burning Wheel, it’s been used previously in older games like Traveller and, more recently, in Fading Suns 2nd edition. The principle of Lifepath creation systems is that instead of randomly rolling different aspects of the character or ‘buying’ said aspects with a pool of points, the character is designed through the story of his life. Every step on the path gives you skills, traits, resources, stat modifiers and offers you a number of options for the next step. So maybe you were born a noble, became a squire in your teens, captured during a war and reduced to slavery, escaped and became a mercenary. Each of these steps will have brought you different experiences and will have made you what you are now.

There are four ‘default’ races for which Lifepaths are proposed, and it won’t surprise anyone to learn that these are Men, Dwarves, Elves and Orcs. The paths of men are the most detailed, and indeed, reading through them feels like examining a neat cross-section of medieval society (with mages tacked on). It’s all-encompassing and, in that sense, truly generic for medieval fantasy. The Dwarven, Elven and Orcish lifepaths, on the contrary, feel very specific. They are full of flavour, customs, racial traits and powers :

- The Dwarves have a mechanic called Gold Greed which reflects their lust for gold and riches. Basically this mechanic emulates their tendency to hoard rather than use riches. Niebelungen like.

- The Elves have a splendid mechanic called Elven Grief which emulates the sadness of immortals. They also have a specific set of spells called spell-songs. Overall, elves are much more powerful than other races, but their social role (or lack of role) evens this out to some extent.

- Finally, the Orcs are as cunning and Evil as they should be. The brutish nastiness of warring Orcs in Mordor comes to mind. Orcs are also immortal but live such a brutal life that the more lifepaths they take, the more likely they are to have limbs missing or lasting injuries. They also have rituals of their own, and dark bloody ones at that.

What’s it worth ?

There are lots of good things to be said for Burning Wheel. The first thing that struck me was how well edited the game was. The layout is clean, the writing is clear, the illustrations tasty. In other words, for a game that boils down essentially to a system, it’s eminently readable. There are a couple of instances where I had to re-read a passage to make sure I’d figured it out correctly, but that was the exception rather then the rule. A good number of so-called pro publishers could do worse than study these two books and take a few lessons in writing, layout and editing. The added bonus for the most self-conscious amongst us is that they do not look like rpg books. You can safely read them in the public transports !

It’s difficult to do the game justice and describe its contents at the same time, but there are lots of nifty mechanics in there that I felt deserved mention :

- A failed Steel roll will sometimes make you run away or freeze up if the opponent is fearsome or once you’ve been wounded. None of that ‘we’re heroes, we never run’ malarky !

- Artha is a karmic reward that allows you to influence crucial rolls or have longer lasting effect on your character.

- Instincts and beliefs not only allow you to flesh out your character but have concrete in game effects in a way both clever and easy to grasp.

- There's a manoeuvre in combat called Moving Inside, which allows you to go inside the range of a long melee weapon. The spear wielder, provided he didn't anticipate you, is then well and truly buggered while you gut him with your daggers. Burning Wheel is the only game I have read to do the dagger justice.

All that being said, Burning Wheel is crunchy and as such will likely not be to everyone’s taste. Maybe not crunchier than D&D, but a lot more crunchy than Savage Worlds or most of the new wave of games released these last few years. However, in my opinion, it’s a good kind of crunch : it’s (mostly, see below) consistent, all the mechanics are there to emulate something specific that contributes to the gritty flavour of the game, and the rules are mostly easy to understand. In other words, it’s more a matter of learning curve than sense. I suspect that, provided you play often enough, most of the rules will become second nature, and you won’t even think about them.

What Burning Wheel feels like in play I can only guess, but I suspect it’s a game of raw survival, not only in the sense that every combat can be lethal or at the very least heavily crippling, but also that you only have so much control on how a combat is going to go. Tactical players may feel frustrated at the scripting in the sense that it always seems to be a double blind. However, with practise, I suspect it becomes a psychological game too, with players and GMs trying to outguess each other. The GM probably has a heavier descriptive duty with this system than in most other games, in the sense that he might need to give the player little tips as to what’s coming next provided the opponent isn’t the subtlest fighter in the world... Roleplaying combat : what a novel concept !

There are a number of elements that I didn’t feel so comfortable about. For example, after explaining at length about fixed Difficulty Numbers and how you rolls never vary except based on shade, the rules for armour and damage penalties make an exception to this and affect the Difficulty Numbers. I’m sure it makes sense in terms of probability, but the lack of consistency makes it more complex for players to grasp and remember and a lot less elegant. I wish there had been a way to only use variable obstacles for both of these.

In the end though, these are fairly minor quibbles. There are games out there with a lot less consistent systems, and many people seem to love them nonetheless. If you’re looking for grit, realism, innovative mechanics and a mostly consistent resolution system. Burning Wheel is all of that. It also has the potential to be tailored very closely to a homebrew setting by designing specific lifepaths for character creation.

I don’t know if I’ll run Burning Wheel soon. My current group doesn’t allow for frequent play and I usually favour rules-light games for that reason. However, not only do I really want to run it, but I really believe there’s a lot in Burning Wheel to use or steal even if you don’t run it as it is. Some of the mechanics mentioned above could easily be ported to any system you decide to run.

Another good point if you decide to purchase the game is that there’s a lot of online support at www.burningwheel.org. Luke Crane regularly proposes alternate rules, new material, additional lifepaths, etc. These releases are well thought out and open up the game. As an illustration of the attention Luke Crane devotes to fan feedback, the website already proposes a new wound penalty system with fixed Difficulty Numbers, and he's working on a similar rewrite for armour. Furthermore, there’s a published “Burning Wheel annual” in the works to collect all these add-ons and (hopefully) many more, as well as a “Magic Burner” to explore alternate magics, spells, etc. and a “Monster Burner” to detail creatures and alternate racial lifepaths.

Overall, Burning Wheel has been one of the most impressive releases in rpgs for quite a while in my opinion. Apart from a few minor consistency issues, it’s an outstanding product, both in terms of substance (4) and content (5). Now I just need to find a group to play it with...

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