r/BurningWheel • u/Freddie_Niche • Aug 27 '26
Advice for new BW GM!
Hey all! After doing some extensive research on which system to use for an upcoming epic political intrigue 3-shot, I have decided to use Burning Wheel. I have GMed several TTRPGs (5e, Cthulhu, Delta Green, silly one-pagers) and so feel confident in creating the narrative and atmosphere. I also have a group of players that are bought in and smart and love to role play, so I trust they will be able to get into it without too much problem. I'm looking for advice on what to specifically focus on with the rules and what makes BW special!
Just a little more backstory on the 3-shot. The characters will be on the high council of a brand new king after the previous king was assassinated. It will be a lot of PvP roleplaying, managing relationships with the new king, taking responsibility for their own roles on the council (mistress of coin, master of whispers, hand of King, Master of ships, etc.), and averting political crises coming from every angle. There won't be almost any combat (unless they really fudge it up or instigate it lol) and there won't be any magic except for some very minor religious miracles.
I know BW works best over longer campaigns, but it really seems like the best framework to tell this story. We will have an extensive session 0 to really make sure everyone is in the world before we start playing. I did a similar 3-shot in 5e last year and it was an incredibly emotional story of cataclysm. Now I'm ready to give my players some room to scheme and enact their own plots.
Let me know your thoughts on how to make the best of BW for this experience! Thanks!
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u/dinlayansson Aug 27 '26
Disclaimer: I'm not a systems guy. I'm more of a method guy. But I've been running a bi-weekly BW campaign for five years now, starting on year six, so I feel I have some experience. :)
To me, the biggest difference of running BW (compared to other systems I run, like Dragonbane, Symbaroum and Savage Worlds) is how we roll.
In other games, a player wants their character to do some kind of action, we all know that it needs a roll of some particular skill, then the relevant modifiers are applied, the roll is made, if it's failed there might be a chance for a reroll, and then I narrate the results, or ask them to describe how they accomplish this-and-that. It makes for a lot of rolls, and it's usually not particularly interesting, with high chances of success, and failures are boring because they either lead to a full stop or to something taking longer, with more dice rolling to follow until something's completed.
In Burning Wheel, on the other hand, we don't roll for trivial things. The rolling comes when we step out of the actual direct-speech roleplaying, and try to summarize something important and difficult the player wants their character to accomplish, that we bring out the dice. It's an interesting exercise; the player describing their ideal outcome, what skill they want to use, and what skill they want to fork in (which usually gives great flavor to the manner in which the thing is done) - and then I, as the GM, gets to make a judgement, not only of how difficult it is, but also clearly define the consequences of failure. If the consequences are too severe, and the risk is too high, maybe the player decides to ask for less. And then I can improve the odds and adjust the fail state. In any case, when the dice are actually rolled, it's always exciting for everyone around the table, because we know what is at stake - and the roll is final (well, after call-on traits and meta currency spending and so on).
So, the secret lies in the failures. To come up with failure states that takes the story in new and interesting directions. We've had some of our most interesting events happen because of failures. So have your players know that failures aren't something you need to avoid at all costs - they're spice of life. :)
Unless you fail at combat and get maimed for life or die. :o Best not to fight in BW, in our table's experience. We've only done it once in five years, so my players treat it just like they would in real life.
As for beliefs - I'm always keen on making my players be proactive and have clear goals for their characters, both long and short term, and in my opinion, beliefs are just a formalized version of that, with some metacurrency rewards attached. Some people love that and eagerly do the thing to get the prize, others just want to play their character and not be bogged down by formalities. I'm sure you'll do great, regardless.
Good luck! :)
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u/Freddie_Niche Aug 27 '26
Thank you for the advice and the encouragement!!! I love this break down of failure as such a rewarding aspect of the game. I will definitely be emphasizing this to my players! I have a group that loves "getting the prize" so I think having the meta currency attached to role play will work really well for them.
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u/Imnoclue Aug 27 '26 edited Aug 27 '26
I would echo some of the advice you’ve already received about making sure Beliefs are relevant and provide both points of tension and harmony. You want the PC’s lives to be enmeshed through their Beliefs and Relationships. To that end, I’d encourage the players to have Beliefs about things that are also featured in other PC’s Beliefs or about people that are Relationships of other PCs (I’ve seen advice about PCs taking a Belief about another PC, but I’ve always had better luck with orthogonal Beliefs). Regarding Relationships, I’d also try to adhere to the “Preservation of NPC” rule of thumb. If one character has a secret love affair with an NPC and another character has a rivalry with their brother. It’s a good thing to stop and consider whether the game is best served if the lover and the brother are the same person. That way the Relationships that the players are spending RP on are levers that help the GM with their job of getting these characters into each other’s lives.
Next, I’d just agree with the players that you’re going to examine Beliefs and Instincts after the first session of play to make sure they’re hitting or need to be tweaked. You’ve got a short run planned, there’s no point in wasting any time on things that aren’t working for you.
Lastly, when you’re playing. I’d make sure to take the time to explicitly spell out the consequences of failure before the roll, even if it seems obvious. Simply slowing down and taking a moment to consider and get everyone on the same page will immediately bring to light those moments where nothing’s really at stake and you should just be saying yes. It will also often suggest some failure result that is more interesting than the one you’d end up with otherwise. Can’t tell you how often the GM calls for a roll, player fails and then the GM realizes they really didn’t have anything in mind for this and should have just let it happen.
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u/Freddie_Niche Aug 27 '26
Thank you! Love the "preservation of the NPC" rule. Will definitely keep this in mind when we have the session 0. Great idea to check in after the first session to look through beliefs and instincts! I really love how BW handles consequences of roles. Explaining the potential consequences of a role before it happens will be a new and intriguing mechanic for the group, but I think it will really improve the narrative.
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u/sixpointfivehd Aug 27 '26
Burning wheel has a ton of really amazing advanced systems like duel of wits, but I recommend first timers keeping it limited to the "hub of the wheel" for a while as that alone can be quite complicated for people. Bloody versus tests are still amazing at telling the intrigue story you are looking for. No need for full Fights.
I also recommend that if it's just a three shot, reduce the requirement for leveling up a skill to 2 easy and 1 difficult if the stat/skill is low and adding in one challenging if the stat is high. Also, reduce the beginners luck to 3 times to open a skill. I'd also hand out double to normal amount of artha to accelerate folks into the system a bit.
I'd also recommend not planning all that much in terms of prep/plot. Burning wheel is best when the story is driven by player beliefs and motivations, with twists developed on failed forward rolls. Most actions the PCs do should "succeed" but there will be a price as they will actually fail their rolls a lot. That's where the narrative of the game actually comes from. The vast majority of non-major Npcs come mostly from player circle checks. Rivals come from failed ones. You should have a couple of known major Npcs, like the new king for example, but no need to map out the entire royal family and which of them like each of the players. Circles will do that.
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u/Freddie_Niche Aug 27 '26
Thanks for this advice! I was certainly planning to use the "hub" for rules rather than introducing any of the extra pieces. Artha is something I have already been thinking about as a helpful commodity for moving things along and prioritizing good role play.
As for prep/plot, this is precisely what I was thinking! I'm giving my players some hefty lore and backstory and then letting them go bananas with it! Last year when I did the 5e 3-shot, I had the players all come up with a list of NPCs (3-5) that their character interacts with regularly and some character traits about them. This was so incredibly helpful during the game for me to have as a resource. It also helped the characters feel like this was really a lived in world that they were inhabiting for a brief time. Sounds like the circles and relationships in BW will work perfectly for this!
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u/Dave_Higgins Thinker Aug 27 '26
For any BW game but for a political one in particular, make sure all the characters have several relationships; push players to make those relationships forbidden/hateful rather than entirely friendly.
In addition to the immediate benefit of having a chunk of your NPCs defined for you, every relationship is—assuming players engage with the process—both an indication of what sort of plot they are interested in having and a lever for you to pull to complicate their life; for example, a player takes a non-romantic relationship with a chambermaid for their noble character might want blackmailing/fighting for commoners rights/both, and can be served a delicious plate of personal plot if that chambermaid is accused of theft/kidnapped/mistaken for an illicit lover.
If you want to incentivize players to take more relationships (or just want to offer greater complexity) a good tweak is to expand Forbidden to Complex so it allows for relationships that won't cause shame (or similar) if they become public knowledge but come loaded with one or more significant issues; for example, the two candidates for a single prestigious position are entirely free to publicly and actually be friends but it's still going to throw up more issues than most friendships. If you really want to open things up, you can do the same sort of thing with Hateful to bring in relationships where the problem isn't a strong dislike but does still bring a significant chance of negative consequences.
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u/Freddie_Niche Aug 27 '26
Thank you! This is great, specific advice on the relationship aspect of BW! I absolutely want them to be having some juicy, complicated relationships!
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u/elmago79 Aug 27 '26
Burning Wheel is excellent for one shots and short campaigns.
For session zero you really need to focus on BITs. Make sure everyone has a belief on how to deal with the monarch’s death and a belief about at least one other PC. The campaign seeds are written on the BITs of the characters. After that you will only need a list of important locations in town, and burn an NPC or two if needed.
As for what to highlight of the system, focus on the Hub and BITs for session one. BW plays a lot different than the other games you mentioned because of Stakes and Let it Ride. To pull this off I would set it right after the Monarch’s death, while all the PCs are still in the building and have to decide what to do before the news spread. You can close this with a Duel of Wits if you feel confident.
Second session, when PCs can move about on the city, circles and wises will come in hand. If things are going to get bloody, present the steel mechanics to see if PCs have what it takes to pull it off. Introduce Duel of Wits when it becomes appropriate in the flow of the game.
By the third and last session some Beliefs will have probably changed and there is no telling how, where or when the story will go. I would focus on the emergent properties of the game and don’t introduce any new systems.
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u/Freddie_Niche Aug 27 '26
Thank you for this breakdown of the sessions. I love the idea that by session 3 some of their beliefs will have changed and I look forward to seeing how that plays out! Also helpful to hear that BW works well for this style of mini-campaign!
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u/VanishXZone Aug 28 '26
Not to be another voice saying the same thing but Beliefs are everything! They will make this game work or fall apart. Make sure that players have beliefs that they are obsessed with, will drive their characters in play. Make sure the beliefs are pointed at each other, so that they come into direct relationships. Make sure that the beliefs always have an actionable step that players can work towards, so that you turn to one, and say “so what do you want to do” and they already have an idea and plan.
Looking at the list of ttrpgs you’ve run, the other advice I’d add is skip more stuff. Just skip it. Sometimes new players get derailed or bounce of the system or fail to uncover its joys because the GM is throwing random shit at them because they are describing boring stuff. A decent model is the tv show succession, sometimes between episodes months occurred. There is a new status quo. We don’t have to deal with the fallout of the board room vote NOW, no, instead it’s time for family gathering months down the line, and the boardroom is percolating in the background.
An example gone wrong: a player wants to go to the palace to complain to the king about a tax because this is their belief. So you turn to the player, ask them what that looks like, and they start leaving their house, and walking to the palace and blah blah blah. It is boring, so you try to challenge their belief by having a goblin raider attack them on their travel to the castle. But this is boring! None of this matters! It is not an interesting challenge to their belief! So skip the travel, just be in the court, you have an audience with the king, and all the nobles are looking at you, you shoeless peasant, you do not belong here.
Etc, etc.
So cut to the chase, skip the nonsense, focus on beliefs.
Then, and this is advice I give alllllll new burning wheel players.
Forget the plot, forget the story, forget what you want to do. Open the codex, go to the list of ways you can challenge a belief, figure out which is most interesting in this situation, do exactly that. You don’t need to think 10 moves ahead, in fact you shouldn’t. You shouldn’t know. The world beyond the table is real, but not as real as it should be for dnd, etc. it’s more quantum real.
An example: an npc has accused another npc of witchcraft, and then promptly dies. The players are all invested in this woman’s life, and are fighting with each other and the townspeople for jurisdiction. Query: is she a witch? Answer: I don’t know yet. She is a witch if that is a better challenge to a belief, she is not a witch if that is a better challenge to a belief.
Oh that need not always be true, of course. Sometimes we know, but try to keep the answers you don’t know open, and the correct answer is whichever challenges the belief.
Good luck! Please post a a post-game report, I’d enjoy that immensely!
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u/Freddie_Niche Aug 28 '26
Thank you! This is really helpful, especially the part about players being "obsessed" with their beliefs! That's an excellent way of framing it. Something that they can kind of always be stewing in order to help them frame their decisions and role play.
We will certainly be skipping travel and all that nonsense. This is high court intrigue, I need players in rooms talking as much as possible! I don't think we will be making any huge time jumps, maybe a few days to a week at most if that is necessary to enact some of the players schemes.
I'm going to pick and choose parts of the codes for my players to read beforehand because it is so much info and we definitely won't get to all of it in this game, but I will make sure that the section on challenging beliefs is highlighted!
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u/VD-Hawkin Aug 28 '26
“Hand of the King” - I see you are a person of culture as well! As others have mentioned, building good beliefs is core to a good BW experience. Beliefs are what drives the plot and the mechanics of this game: players are rewarded for playing for or against their beliefs, so it can feel very underwhelming if your beliefs are not challenged regularly.
Here are some examples of beliefs based on your setting:
Ned Stark: I will act with honour. - This belief drives the general personality of a character. It makes it easy to farm Artha to use for rolls and such. Make sure to have this player interact with unsavoury characters, traitors, etc. where they have to make the choice between what is good and what is easy!
Ned Stark: I will deliver justice for Jon Arryn’s murder. - This one is more goal oriented, giving the GM a clear idea of what the player wants to interact with. Opportunities for clues about the murder should be abundant so that the player can leverage that goal every session.
Remember that beliefs can be changed between session!
Hope this helps!
P.S. Since you’re doing a 3-shots, I would suggest giving them more leeway on the traits selection from character creation. Or perhaps you can have a trait vote after the first session, once the players have established their roleplay a bit more.
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u/gunnervi Aug 27 '26
beliefs are everything (Instincts and Traits, too, but to a much lesser extent). Poorly-written and poorly-conceived Beliefs can make a game fall apart or shut a player out of the story. If you have the BW Codex (and maybe the Anthology too? I forget if there's a chapter there on Beliefs), make your players read the chapter on writing Beliefs. Work with your players, and have them work with each other, to come up with Beliefs that are going to come up at the table and earn them Artha. Since your game appears to be semi-adversarial, make sure the PCs Beliefs play well against each other as well as in isolation: there should be some harmony and some tension, a minimal amount of apathy (where's the drama in that?) and probably no irreconcilable differences unless the players are fine with things coming to blows (or at least, those are the guidelines I was working with when planning my own House of the Dragon-esque "King's Council" game that never came to fruition—one day, though).
I think its important to keep in mind, especially for players used to more traditional ttrpgs, that Beliefs are a metagaming mechanic. In writing a Belief you are informing the GM of the kinds of scenarios and dilemmas you want your character to face. Don't shy away from this! The players in BW are meant to have a more active role in worldbuilding and narrative design than is typically assumed in more traditional games. That's not to say you should give them a completely blank canvas: you want some details in place to give them inspiration and, more importantly, a shared context so people aren't pulling in completely different directions. But give them some room to experiment, and more importantly, don't keep everything hidden from them. If there is some sort of upcoming threat you are dead set on including then you need to tell the players about it so they'll make characters that are primed to react in interesting ways to it.