The Burning Wheel
 Burning Wheel and Character Burner |
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| Designer(s) | Luke Crane |
|---|---|
| Publisher(s) | Luke Crane |
| Publication date | 2002 |
| Genre(s) | Fantasy |
| System(s) | Custom |
The Burning Wheel is a fantasy role-playing game independently written and published by Luke Crane. The game uses a dice pool mechanic (using only standard six-sided dice) for resolution, and a system of prior-experience for character generation which tracks the development of the new character from birth up to the point they begin adventuring.
Unlike many other RPGs — but explicitly like earlier games — the Burning Wheel does not include a dedicated setting, beyond the setting implied by the rules and mechanics and the life-paths used in character generation, which implies a fantasy world by default, though it can be easily modified for other settings.
The core game includes two volumes: the Burning Wheel, containing rules and mechanics, and the Character Burner, with life-paths for generating Humans, Dwarves, Elves, and Orcs as characters, providing each with unique exceptions or additions to the overall game mechanics. Humans have access to Sorcery and miraculous Faith, Elves have a Grief statistic and spell-songs, Dwarves have Greed and Orcs have blasphemous Hatred. Rules expansions allow additional races, such as Dark Elves, who have turned their Grief into murderous Spite.
The Monster Burner supplement includes premade monsters and mechanics for designing and building your own creatures and complete life-paths for them, allowing the game to cover a much broader range of adventure and setting. This volume also contains four new and complete races for Burning Wheel: Great Wolves, Roden, Great Spiders, and Trolls.
The Magic Burner supplement was released in August 2008. It features expansion of the limited rules found in the main rule book Burning Wheel to include more in depth approach to forms and rules of magic. New forms of magic include death magic and spirit summoning. It also adds a system for building more spells, and magic on the fly. This volume also contains additional traits and skills that might be needed to create wizard characters.
The Adventure Burner supplement was released in July 2010. It includes three ready-to-play scenarios, a host of pregenerated character templates for all of the officially supported races in The Burning Wheel, and an extensive Commentary section that provides advice about how best to play the game and use the system for fun and challenge.
The game has had three dedicated settings:
January 2004: Under a Serpent Sun, described as "Suicidal despair in a post-apocalyptic wasteland".
August 2005: Burning Sands: Jihad, a science fiction expansion of galaxy-spanning religious war. A blog associated with the creators of Burning Wheel describes this expansion as being based on the Dune series.[1]
August 2007: The Blossoms are Falling, based in Heian-era Japan. "You play fearsome bushi trapped between honor and shame, wise Shinto priests who seek to placate the spirits who protect Nihon, powerful Buddhist monks who pray for the souls of the dead while plying strong influence at court, and powerful courtiers battling for control of the failing state."
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[edit] Editions
The original rules (now referred to as Burning Wheel Classic) were published 1 November 2002. A second edition, incorporating significant rules and text changes and generally referred to as Burning Wheel Revised, was published 5 May 2005. A single-volume 600-page hardcover third edition, Burning Wheel Gold, was published 11 August 2011. In every case, the actual name of the game, as displayed on the cover art, is simply The Burning Wheel. The three editions share many underlying concepts, but their rules are not entirely compatible.[2]
[edit] PDF Editions
No complete PDF Core rules set is released of the Revised or Gold editions. Extracts of sample chapters have been made available for download, both as teasers [3] and as pay extracts of the lifepaths [4]. A PDF of Burning Wheel Classic was released, and sold 10 copies.[5]
Teaser chapters of various supplements have been released as well, as with the Adventure burner[6], and some setting products have full PDF versions [7].
[edit] Related Games
Luke Crane also wrote Burning Empires, a science fiction RPG based on the Iron Empires graphic novels by Christopher Moeller. Burning Empires shares many mechanics with Burning Wheel, and was released at Gen Con 2006.
Luke has penned another full game, entitled Mouse Guard, which uses a simplified version of the Burning Wheel system and implements the setting of the Mouse Guard comics. [8] It won Best Role-Playing Game at the 2009 Origins Awards.[9]
[edit] References
- ^ "Burning Empires: From Inception to Finished Product (Part I)". 2006-06-25. http://urdwell.blogspot.com/2006/07/burning-empires-from-inception-to.html. Retrieved 2007-05-02.
- ^ "Burning Wheel Gold". burningwheel.org. 2011-06-13. http://www.burningwheel.org/?p=276. Retrieved 2011-06-20.
- ^ "Burning Wheel Gold Preview". 13 June 2011. http://www.burningwheel.org/?p=276.
- ^ "BWR PDFs?". 19 May 2011. http://www.burningwheel.org/forum/showthread.php?10851-BWR-PDF.
- ^ "BWR PDFs?". 19 May 2011. http://www.burningwheel.org/forum/showthread.php?10851-BWR-PDF.
- ^ "Another Adventure Burner Sample". 14 June 2010. http://www.burningwheel.org/?p=131.
- ^ "Burning Wheel Wiki - Publication List". 16 July 2011. http://www.burningwheel.org/wiki/index.php?title=Publication_List.
- ^ "Mouse Guard RPG". Archaia Studios Press. http://www.archaiasp.com/mouse_guard_rpg.php. Retrieved 2009-01-18.[dead link]
- ^ "Origins Awards 2009". 27 June 2009. http://www.critical-hits.com/2009/06/27/origins-awards-2009/.
