After years of knowing about Burning Wheel and vaguely wanting to try it, the time has finally come. With some friends from the Ranged Touch Discord, also inexperienced but curious, I’ll be playing in a limited (5ish sessions) experimental campaign of Burning Wheel. We’ll see how badly it falls apart.
In preparation, most of us have gone through the process of creating a test character. This post details my first time through BW’s character creation rules, using the Gold Revised Edition and Mephil’s fillable character sheet. It’s fairly step-by-step, with a few concluding thoughts at the end. For a much more reflective look at these rules, I really enjoyed Moose’s post on their own character creation test.
Step 1 – Character Concept
The first thing Burning Wheel asks for is a character concept, with the rest of character creation aimed at fleshing out and building up to that concept. Typically, this would be informed by the campaign premise presented by the GM, but for this test run I’m just going to assume a generic fantasy setting and not worry about the hypothetical campaign.
Burning Wheel has a pretty strict separation between human and nonhuman characters that I don’t want to engage with, so I’ll build a human character. I know broadly they’ll be the sum of a bunch of lifepaths (roles that the character played in their life with a set duration and accompanying skills and traits), so I start glancing through the lifepath lists for inspiration. The first one to catch my eye is Arcane Devotee in the Noble setting:
This lifepath is someone on their way to be a mage, but notably not yet acquiring any magic skills. This seems like an interesting setup: a sorcerous dropout who has a lot of the training around magic use but either no aptitude or inclination to do magic. Combined with the Scholar lifepath and the variety of administrative lifepaths available in the Noble and City Dweller setting, I think I have enough of a concept to continue on:
Concept: Trained from a young age to be a sorcerer, but found they had little skill or interest in magic use. Since has operated as a scholar and/or bureaucrat.
I still don’t know why my character is going out and questing as an RPG protagonist, but I think I can find that out as I continue to flesh them out.
Also, normally BW asks you to wait on naming the character until the last step. For the purposes of this blog post, I’ve decided to name the character now, and I’m going with Alyosha. Alyosha uses they/them pronouns.
Step 2 – Lifepaths
The rules call lifepaths as “short segments of the character’s life-usually centered around an occupation, a diversion or a class role.” They influence the stats, skills, and traits a BW character can have, and account for about 5-15 years of a character’s life before the game begins. By default, the rules recommend picking three to four lifepaths.
Born Lifepath
Character creation in Burning Wheel begins from birth, and every character’s first lifepath is the “setting” they’re born into. The settings represent broad geographic and class positions, and the settings with Born lifepaths are: Peasant, Village, City Dweller, Noble, Seafaring, and Servitude. Mobility across settings, especially upward, is limited; I know I want to end up in the Noble or City Dweller settings later, so I start looking there:
Born Noble takes 8 years, provides 15 resource points (representing access to wealth and supplies), and gives 5 general skill points. It also gives the trait Mark of Privilege, which states that the character is immediately recognizable as nobility; mechanically, that means bonuses to conferring with nobles and penalties for blending in with commoners. Born Noble also gives access to other traits: Your Lordship, Your Eminence, and Your Grace, which represent successively higher stations in the feudal hierarchy.
In contrast, City Born takes 12 years, gives only 10 resource points, and only 4 general skill points. It does allow a free Trait point to make up for that, and if the next lifepath I take is in the City Dweller setting, it won’t require the one-year “lead” transition that Born Noble would. But in the end, I think the character concept is pretty well served by Mark of Privilege, so I’ll opt for Born Noble.
Subsequent Lifepaths
While I was originally inspired by the Arcane Devotee lifepath, I find I actually prefer Neophyte Sorcerer:
In particular, I think Great Masters-Wise and Extremely Respectful of One’s Betters are fun and evocative and fit my concept really well. Having this sorcerous experience under their belt, Alyosha is then qualified to become a Scholar:
At this point, I could use these three lifepaths and have a character: at the end of a decade of scholarship, about to undertake an adventure. But for the sake of fully exploring the lifepaths system, I’m going to add one more, Municipal Minister:
Now Alyosha’s guaranteed to be a table favorite!
Step 3 – Age
This part is really easy: just add up the time requirement for each of my lifepaths, plus one extra year for the one lead I took between settings. The total comes to 34 years old, which feels about right. Solidly in adulthood but not to middle age yet. At this point, I think I have enough to start filling out the character sheet.
Step 4 – Stats
Base stats for a Burning Wheel character come in two pools, mental and physical, and the size of the pool is determined by starting age. For 34-year-old Alyosha, the base pool is 7 mental points and 14 physical points. However, their last three lifepaths all had +1 M, which increases the mental pool to a total of 10 stat points. Each of these pools can be divided as I chooses among stats of the matching type. (For simplicity, I’m choosing to keep every stat and skill black-shaded, which is the default.)
The mental stats are Will, which is the general social stat and also represents “strength of mind;” and Perception, which governs acuity and awareness. Both stats seem important to the character, so I want to split my 10 mental points relatively evenly. I think Alyosha is probably a bit more book-smart than people-smart, so I’ll opt to put 4 points in Will and 6 in Perception.
For the physical stat pool, points are split between four stats:
- Agility, representing hand-eye coordination
- Speed, affecting movement speed and “overall” coordination
- Power, representing physical strength
- Forte, which drives health and resistance against death from an injury or wound
The book recommends bounding each of these stats within the 3-6 range. With each at a 3, I have two points left over. To my mind, being an apprentice sorcerer is probably pretty similar to an experimental chemist or a cook. With all those bubbling potions and unleashed primal energies around, you learn to be careful with your hands — and you take a few cuts and burns. So I’ll put the remaining points in Agility and Forte.
Step 5 – Skills
Alyosha’s lifepaths have granted a certain number of skill points to spend on opening (assigning to the character) and advancing (increasing the rating of) skills. In my case, that’s 5 general skill points and 23 lifepath skill points. The rules instruct to set the general skill points aside for now and begin with the lifepath skills.
For each lifepath, it’s required to open the first (new) skill listed. That means that three of my skill points are spent opening Write, Read, and Persuasion. From there, I get my pick of the remaining skills across the lifepath lists. Some are very easy picks: Research, Instruction, Administration, Rule of Law, and Great Masters-wise. To flavor the academic interests, I want Alyosha to be abstract and kind of stuffy, so I’ll go with History and Philosophy. Symbology (familiarity with arcane or obscure symbols) feels like a good way to gesture back to their sorcerous side.
By default, each skill opens with a value equal to half the root stat (or average in the case of two roots), rounded down. Here are the starting values for each of the eleven skills listed above, with 12 points left to advance them.
Spending the remaining points is pretty easy: I bring skills that feel core to Alyosha’s skillset up to B4. Persuasion, Symbology, and Instruction are likeliest to increase through play, so I leave them where they are. I make Philosophy a strong suit, and I intentionally don’t advance History in favor of Great Masters-wise, mostly because I enjoy the idea of a character whose historical facts are shaky but always has an anecdote of some “great” figure.
Finally, we have general skills, for which I have five points. These can be used to further advance lifepath skills, or to open and advance any other skills that don’t have special requirements. I think my lifepath skills are fine, so I’m going to use the general skill points to round out my character for danger: open Staff and advance it once, open Streetwise, open Riding, and open Observation.
Step 6 – Traits
This one is all already determined for me; the first three lifepaths I chose all give one trait point and have a required trait, while Municipal Minister doesn’t provide a point or a requirement. So in addition to Mark of Privilege from being born and raised as a noble, Alyosha is also a Know it All and Extremely Respectful of One’s Betters. Fun!
Step 7 – Attributes
This step is almost exclusively arithmetic based on the stats determined in Step 4. I’ll spare you the details.
Step 8 – Resource Points
From all their lifepaths, I have 72 resource points to spend on Alyosha. This buys gear, relationships, group affiliations, and other material and social resources that exist at the beginning of the game.
Gear – 14 rps
For character gear, I’ll take a staff (5 rps), clothes (1 rp), shoes (1 rp), traveling gear (1 rp), finery for the odd formal event (5 rps), and a personal effect (1 rp) — an old runestone from my character’s apprenticeship, never worked, the last thing they made before leaving to be a Scholar.
Property – 10 rps
Alyosha should own a residence in the city as a Municipal Minister, but it doesn’t have to be anything fancy. A standard house is 10 rps.
Relationships – 21 rps
Resource points can also purchase close and plot-important relationships. The cost varies based on importance and on other factors that complicate the relationship.
The first relationship that comes to mind is the mage who saw potential in Alyosha and plucked them from some estate to undergo sorcery training. As Alyosha showed little magical aptitude, she helped guide them to the academy. Still practicing in the city, she’s a respected and medium-important member of the community, so the relationship costs 10 rps. I’m going to call her Stefana.
The second relationship is more hostile: the nobleman who married his way to the title of Duke over the city just after the death of the old Duke when the nobility seemed precarious here. Handsome, charming, and popular, he’s credited with all but saving the city. But Alyosha knows that he’s slowly dismantling the healthy city administration and likely embezzling funds, despite their best efforts to fight against it. He also happens to be Alyosha’s brother. He’s very important, so his base cost is 15 rps, but the close family connection and the enmity within the relationship each discount that by 2 rp. I’ll call him Duke Ivan.
Affiliations – 20 rps
In addition to individual relationships, resource points can buy affiliations with groups or institutions. One comes for free with Mark of Privilege, a 1D affiliation with nobility, presumably in the local area. The “1D” portion represents both the size and power of the group, as well as the character’s standing or personal power within it. 1D is the smallest an affiliation can be, representing a small, local, not overly powerful group. I’m going to buy a couple more of these.
One group I want to make sure Alyosha is a small cohort of Stefana’s former apprentices whose studies overlapped with Alyosha’s. A few are practicing mages, a few pursued academic paths like my character did; most were slightly gifted commoners whose skill never developed, and they work common jobs and live common lives in the city. Despite some general class tension, there’s a strong sense of solidarity from surviving the grueling training together.
Secondly, Alyosha has started building a trusted inner circle of people who know or suspect Duke Ivan’s crimes. A couple other city administrators, some local movers and shakers in the community, a jaded court advisor. It’s not much, but they’re the only other people who aren’t fooled by his charming smile and heroic reputation.
Reputation – 7 rp
Speaking of reputation, it’s the final thing to spend resource points on. In the process of spending these points, I think I’ve found the inciting incident for Alyosha to become a hero: after getting caught looking into the Duke’s finances, my character was framed by the Duke for committing some of his own embezzlement. As a result, they have been removed from their administrative position and gained a local reputation in the city as an embezzler.
Step 9 – Resources and Circles
Resources encapsulates a Burning Wheel character’s wealth and material resources. It’s calculated as the amount of resource points spent on property, reputations and affiliations, divided by 15 and rounded down. For Alyosha, that makes Resources B2.
Circles represents a character’s social connectedness and influence in the community in the abstract. It’s half the Will exponent rounded down, so for Alyosha Circles is also B2.
Step 10 – Physical Tolerances
More arithmetic, so once again, I’ll spare you.
Step 11 – Beliefs and Instincts
Probably the only Burning Wheel concepts I’ve seen get a lot of use in other systems, a character can have up to three beliefs and three instincts that guide their behavior. These are probably the most fun part of character creation since choosing lifepaths, and there’s a lot of latitude.
One of Alyosha beliefs should be a goal for them to work toward, specifically clearing their name. For the other two, I opt to flesh out their opinions on governance and intellect:
- I will clear my name and return to my Minister position to protect the order of my city.
- Tax collectors and bureaucrats are the thin line protecting civilization from devolving to abject chaos.
- Every problem has a solution, if one is clever and educated enough to recognize it.
For instincts, I want to complicate Alyosha’s life as much as possible and provide strong and messy roleplaying hooks:
- I always correct someone I know to be wrong.
- Never rely on magic when a mundane alternative exists.
- I never explicitly disrespect someone of higher station while speaking with them.
Step 12 – Name the Character
We did this at the start, so that means we’re all done! Below is the final PDF of the character sheet, if you want that.
Some Concluding Thoughts
This experience truly disabused me of the notion that Burning Wheel’s character creation is daunting but excellent. Overall, I found it fiddly and overly complicated, with a lot of design wrinkles that to my mind should have smoothed over. It took multiple hours, and that was largely flipping through pages looking for info on specific rules or skills or traits; not how I want to spend my RPG time.
The stats were ambiguous and hard to differentiate at the point I had to assign them, and the additional math to average stats when a skill depended on two didn’t feel like it added much. Most of all, the mental load to manage all the pools (stat points, skill points, trait points, resource points), as well as the requirements scattered across multiple lifepaths and rules paragraphs, was exhausting. If I wasn’t writing this step-by-step log, I would have gotten really lost along the way. As it was, I got confused enough to redo stats and skills entirely while trying to manage skill points.
To the system’s favor, I think that lifepaths are very fun, and having a sense of a character’s entire history is interesting. It’s somewhat oppositional to many other games I play, which often have broad character archetypes and expect you to fill in backstory through play. But lifepaths provide a very material grounding for the character, including a focus on social mobility and its restrictions. There’s also a lot of flavor in some traits/skills, which I tried to lean into with Alyosha.
All said, I wouldn’t do this again manually. As I was wrapping up this exercise, I was shown Charred Black, an online Burning Wheel character creator, by its developer modality. From messing around with it, it seems to automate the tedious arithmetic and the tracking of skills, traits, points, and requirements. After putting in the reps once here, I can’t imagine anything is lost by that automation.
My next post on this experiment will likely be session zero and actual character creation for the campaign. I have a couple character ideas kicking around, and I’m excited to do this as a social exercise and with better tools. The hunt for “why are people so wild about this game” continues!
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[…] week I tried out Burning Wheel character creation to mixed success. The aspect that really appealed to me, though, were the lifepath mechanics. […]