Character Creation

Character creation – or character “burning,” as the game calls it – proves to be one of the central features of the BWR system. Central enough to warrant its own book, in fact, as the core rulebook is divided into one book for character creation and one book for pretty much everything else.

Characters start out with six Stats: two Mental (Perception and Will) and four Physical (Agility, Speed, Power (strength) and Forte (endurance)). Character age determines the number of points available to divide between the Mental and Physical Stats.

The character’s Attributes are derived from Stats and other factors: Health (ability to recover from injury and ignore pain) from Will and Forte, Reflexes (number of actions) from Perception, Agility, and Speed, Mortal Wound (the point at which the character dies) from Power and Forte, Steel (resistance to fear) from a variety of Stats and background elements, and various character-specific Emotional Attributes (Faith, Grief, Greed, Hatred, etc.) from answering various questions about the character.

One quick note here: I like the fact that a character’s willpower can help him recover from wounds and shrug off pain, but there’s still only so much damage his body can endure (based on strength and endurance) before giving out.

The overall process involves one heck of a lifepath system, picking up new skills and abilities at each stop along the way while the character ages and incurs the risks inherent in growing older. By the time you’re finished, you will have very fleshed-out character with a story behind every quirk and scar. Of course, that process is likely to take at least one game session, and it really helps to know the steps that will get you where you want to go, lest you spend an inordinate amount of time running into dead-ends on your way to creating that wizard you’ve always wanted.

All that work yields some interesting results, though.

For one thing, the Traits a character accumulates include both advantages and disadvantages, but both cost points – the reasoning being that disadvantages help put the character in the spotlight and give him the chance to earn more experience, thus improving in the long run. Traits can also be called into play in various ways during play: adding dice to rolls, allowing re-rolls, serving as tiebreakers in the Trait-holding character’s favor, etc.

And then there are Beliefs and Instincts. The former, of which the character can have up to three, helps describe what makes the character “tick” – things like “they are all out to get me” or “I must always help the helpless.” Instincts, on the other hand, are highly specific if/then responses that a character will take; e.g., “If my character feels threatened, he will draw his sword.” This allows the player to have an advantage when the “If” factor pops up – everyone else will need to spend an action drawing his sword, while the character with the appropriate instinct will already have his at the ready. It needn’t be combat-related, however. An assassin might always check his food for poison, for example.

Basic Mechanic

The system’s core mechanic boils down – with a lot of boiling, mind you – to a simple pool of six-sided dice rolled in an effort to get as many results of 4 or better as possible. That, however, applies to creatures on the normal human scale, or “Black shade,“ as the game calls it. The two superhuman “shades“ are Gray, for which 3 is the target number, and White, for which 2 is the target number. In this way, the system allows for truly powerful beings without resorting to dice pools of cumbersome size. (Although, being the mathematical mental midget that I am, I’d have a difficult time immediately seeing whether X number of Black shade dice are better than Y number of Gray shade dice.) Certain rolls open-end (i.e., allow the roll of an extra die) on 6s, allowing for extraordinary results.

One interesting concept the game introduces is “Letting it Ride”: once a character makes a roll for some action, that roll and its associated successes will stand without re-rolls until the situation drastically changes. This serves to both minimize dice rolling and to keep GMs and players from asking for re-rolls until a failure or success comes up.

The expression of base skill values as half of their related attributes also helps keep dice pools in check as compared to straight “attribute + skill“ dice pool systems, such as the various incarnations of Storyteller and D6.

Combat

In the majority of systems I’ve encountered, the biggest hoop of complication through which the basic mechanic must jump is that of combat. BWR is no different in that regard. It differs wildly from other systems, however, in the way it handles those complications. Rather than simplifying and streamlining, BWR chooses to embrace combat minutia in order to create a sense of brutal, gritty realism. And this it most certainly does.

Central to BWR combat concept are the concepts of the Exchange and the Volley. Each round, or Exchange, is broken down into three Volleys. Before each Exchange, the players of all participants (including the GM) secretly mark what maneuver or maneuvers their characters will be taking in each Volley on a form designed for this purpose, with faster characters able to perform more maneuvers per Volley. The players then reveal their forms as the Exchange begins.

Depending upon the respective actions of any two adversaries in a given exchange, a roll might get a penalty or a bonus, or might not even be necessary at all. For example, one combatant might swing his sword while another uses his shield, resulting in an attack roll from the sword-swinger but extra protection for the shield-user – protection the latter would not get if his attacker had an extra action that volley with which to swing again. If they both had swung their weapons at each other, neither would get any protection, since neither would have their shields up. And if both had scripted a wait-and-see stance for that volley, then neither would roll at all – they’d just stand there looking at each other like goofs. (Well, or perhaps like bad-asses, if they squint at each other Clint Eastwood fashion.)

The end result is savage, intense combat in which every second literally counts – every desperate grab for a dagger, every swing with an unwieldy maul, every feinted sword thrust, and every vicious head butt.

Playtest: Now, this is actually the only part of the game that I’ve playtested. However, it was at a demo at GenCon 2005 run by the author, Luke Crane, so that ought to count for something. If nothing else, it certainly illustrated the blow-by-blow grittiness of the system. It also illustrated the fact that the author is a nut. (In good way, that is.) Bear in mind that the participants in the demo were myself, a forty-something man, and the man’s 10-ish-year-old-son. A typical Exchange went something like this: * * * * * **Luke reads flipped-over combat scripts and bounces around excitedly.** Luke: “Whoa, F*CK!” **Luke gives the father an apologetic glance.** Luke: “Oh, sorry... but, okay, so like, the elf is like, *POW*!...” **Luke illustrates with a punch directed at nothing in particular.** Luke: “…And the dwarf is like, ‘Oh, SH*T!’...”

The system applies this mini-game to social combat as well, with harsh verbal barbs and ripostes taking the place of their physical counterparts. This has the advantage of making interaction-heavy characters feel just as valuable as fighter types, with duels of wits just as intricate as duels of blades. I’m afraid this system would make what would otherwise be fluid roleplaying feel rather stilted, however.

In a broader sense, I can’t imagine using this system for anything more than a handful of combatants, physical or social. There’s just too much to keep track of.

Now, the game does offer a simplified alternative, but one that goes to the opposite extreme: the entire combat consists of one offensive roll and one defensive roll for both combatants, with the combatant with the greatest number of successes wounding or killing his opponent. The system offers nothing between total abstraction and obsessive detail.

Magic

For Dwarves and Elves, magic comes naturally – making things for Dwarves and singing for Elves. These manifest as race-specific skills with open-ended rolls to allow for spectacular results.

Men and Orcs use Sorcery, which is its own skill based upon Will. (Of course, Orcs favor Sorcery with a nastier bent…)

Sorcerers can choose to increase the area of effect of a spell in exchange for the casting being more difficult and can spend extra successes on enhancing spell effects. Failed spells have a chance at creating nasty side effects (like accidentally summoning something...), and all spells have the potential for wearing out the caster. I like the way this combination of drawbacks means that novices invoke powerful spells at their peril, while even master wizards (like Gandalf, for example) cannot expect to indefinitely push the limits of their power without wearing themselves out.

Miracles are another matter entirely, putting me in mind of the miracle system in Ars Magica. Only those with true Faith can pray for miracles, and the chance of an answered prayer depends upon the piety of the supplicant and the scope of the requested Divine boon.

Artha

As Tolkien-esque as the default setting may be, the grittiness of combat runs counter to Middle-earth’s heroic tone. All else being equal, fighting in BWR feels more like desperately hacking away with the poor grunts on the front lines of Helm’s Deep than it does swashbuckling on the battlements alongside Aragorn and Legolas.

To address that conflict, the system uses “Artha” – its answer to Fate/Drama/Hero Points. Awarded for both skillful roleplaying and in-character success, Artha may be spent for a variety of effects, not the least of which is the ability to survive an otherwise fatal wound.

Interestingly, though, the game distinguishes between three types of Artha – Fate, Persona, and Deed – in both the ways they’re earned and the ways they may be spent.

Players gain Fate Artha from interesting use of their character’s Beliefs, Instincts, and Traits, as well as for cracking up the group and for having the right skill at the right time. Persona Artha comes from skillful roleplaying in general, from the character meeting personal goals, and from the character being the “MVP” of the adventure. Deed Artha comes from achieving great things beyond any goals the characters have for themselves. Among their assorted uses, Fate Artha may be spent to open-end sixes, Persona Artha may be spent to add 1D to a roll, and Deed Artha may be spent to double the number of dice for a single roll. I’m not sure if the added complication is really worth it, although I can see this method making various special accomplishments in the course of the game seem more special from a game mechanics standpoint as well.