If you're willing to accept point-buy character creation and the fact that players get to determine their goals and priorities, there's no reason that Burning Empires can' excel at playing people caught as cogs in the works of vast competing machines over which they have little or no control.

QuoteIf you're willing to accept point-buy character creation and the fact that players get to determine their goals and priorities

I´m not.

Quoteplaying people caught as cogs in the works of vast competing machines over which they have little or no control.

Well, I like playing playing decision makers, and I like DMing them. And I like them to have influence which directly correlates to the inner workings of the fantastoverse and not the needs for dramatic tension or personal beliefs.

But it´s very easy to convert, cause the crunchy bits are all there!
I really "dig the brick" in that regard. And Moellers writings and historical references just got all my creative juices flowing.

Quote from: SettembriniI´m not.

...correlates with....

QuoteBut one thing buggers me all the time:
Why should I care about the characters and their beliefs?

Randomly determining a character or not really has nothing do with whether they are 'superheros' or not. Purposely choosing the character just means the player purposely chooses what they are going to play. Could be a superhero. Could be an bureaucrat. Could be a 4-star General. Could be a smuck.

QuoteWell, I like playing playing decision makers, and I like DMing them. And I like them to have influence which directly correlates to the inner workings of the fantastoverse and not the needs for dramatic tension or personal beliefs.

...and if you random roll this may not come up. You instead end up with a 7 LP Waiter. So you either end up playing the game you didn't want to, or you sit there and fight the system to try play the game you want instead of the character fighting against their enemies. Basically you derail yourself and the rest of the table from playing the game until you managed to rationalize some subversion of the rules to get what you wanted anyway.

Look back in that random character generation thread here where so many people just rerolled until they got the character they wanted anyway. Or spliced in outside player determining mega-rules to get the character.

Quote...and if you random roll this may not come up

You play the hand you are given. That´s one of the biggest kicks for me. And I´m totally perfect with having a bureaucrat with admin -1. I just wanted to point out that I´m also okay with playing generals.

And as I´ll be making the tables for the random chargen, I´ll look to it so that everybody will be able to roll up a decision maker, or be near to one, cause planet wide conflict is the attractor  for me to this game.

Anyway, I´ll do as I see fit. If nobody makes any contributions in helping me, no need to share that goodness. You already have the game you want, so be happy and play that. I´ll make my game shine, no need to discuss the "if".

Either you are interested in the "how" or not. Seems nobody is, so we´ll see in other threads.

Thanks for the infos and pointers, greatly appreceated!

Quote from: SettembriniYou play the hand you are given. That´s one of the biggest kicks for me. And I´m totally perfect with having a bureaucrat with admin -1. I just wanted to point out that I´m also okay with playing generals.

And as I´ll be making the tables for the random chargen, I´ll look to it so that everybody will be able to roll up a decision maker, or be near to one, cause planet wide conflict is the attractor for me to this game.

I may be the biggest advocate for random character generation there is but in Burning Empires world burning is where the players and GM determine roles, affiliations, dynamics, people of note etc...  It sounds to me that you are trying to gut that aspect of the system to have your own GM created campaign.  By randomizing character generation you are removing even more player input.  By removing the BITs you are removing yet another mechanic built to let the players show the GM what type of conflicts they want their characters to have.  You'd almost be better served playing the Iron Empires setting with GURPS.  The sad thing is you'd miss out on what made Iron Empires great, the individual conflicts of the characters while trying to stop the greater Vaylen conflict.  

BE & BW are built to be character-centric and give the GM tools to make conflicts and scenarios character driven.  Though Luke may disagree with my assumption, I think the LPs and BITs were designed to answer a recurring problem in his own roleplaying experience.  It's an answer to the most subtle of railroads created by the dice or the GM defining a character's role in the campaign.  I'm not bashing on style of play, both are enjoyable to me.  It's just that if you're going to play BE or BW, play BE or BW.

Don't listen to Gunslinger, Sett. Not that you need me to tell you that.

Burning Wheel has a number of design concepts that are well worth stealing for your tactical/strategic grand campaign game, and I imagine BE has them, too, expanded and refined.

You bought the book. You can do whatever you want with it.

Quote from: SettembriniEither you are interested in the "how" or not.

I'm interested in the how.

I'd also like to hear some AP once/if you get around to it.  I will be upset if there aren't any hot lesbian alien roommates in it, though.

Quote from: SettembriniYou play the hand you are given. That´s one of the biggest kicks for me.

So are both sides going to be fully random?

Quote from: SettembriniIf nobody makes any contributions in helping me, no need to share that goodness.

Hey now, I am contributing! Giving pointers on just how far off the reservation you are going and some ideas about the size, scope, and location of the pitfalls you are likely to encounter.

For example even having the characters select the LPs and then randomly rolling which Skills that Skill points are assigned to can lead to a big issue. The Infections skills in your FoN are ultra critical, as are Wises. This isn't something that the team can just cover off, it goes through one character and one character only for each side for a given phase. So if the skills don't get covered off you end up with either a pitifully lop-sided macrolevel game or a macrolevel game that drags on maneuver after maneuver in a battle of the invalids.

See this is like adding too much random into a wargame. You end up with it being boring as paste drying.  EDIT: Well I guess it isn't "like" adding too much random into a wargame. It is adding too much random into a wargame. You might as well roll randomnly for each brigades on both sides of Waterloo to see what location in Europe they show up at. Maybe you'll get a fight. If you do you'll likely get a lopsided one. Who knows where it'll be.

Another, Beliefs aren't like stats. They aren't set. Determining them randomly is like determining randomnly at the start of the game what colour shirt someone is wearing.

P.S.  I wouldn't expect a lot of help from Luke at this point. I picture him reading this thread at this point just as a career engineer at Porsche watching this video. or staring blankly at this. The horror, the horror! :hehe:

Quote from: Elliot WilenDon't listen to Gunslinger, Sett.

You bought the book. You can do whatever you want with it.

True.  You CAN do whatever you want.  In my opinion, it's ripping the heart out of the system and playing with the corpse.

My thoughts on random PC generation in BE: the player picks the final lifepath, and then starts rolling backwards until he hits a Born LP.

It would be tricky to set that up so you limit the number of LPs to 5-8.

The other way to go would be to have the players pick Born LPs and then start rolling from there, stopping when you hit the limit of LPs that the GM has set.

I'd let the players assign their skills and traits as normal.

I can see how it would be cool - sometimes you'd get lucky and end up with a good build, but other times you'd have to rise above the limitations of your PC - pushing to raise skills, making Go to Ground or Conserve maneuvers in order to learn new ones, all that.  Very challenging!

QuoteIn my opinion, it's ripping the heart out of the system and playing with the corpse.

So what?

QuoteSee this is like adding too much random into a wargame. You end up with it being boring as paste drying. EDIT: Well I guess it isn't "like" adding too much random into a wargame. It is adding too much random into a wargame. You might as well roll randomnly for each brigades on both sides of Waterloo to see what location in Europe they show up at. Maybe you'll get a fight. If you do you'll likely get a lopsided one. Who knows where it'll be.

So what?

That´s what I want from BE: a low prep randomized pick up strategic RPG experience, where the DM is an adversary instead of the facilitator for some kind of character centered endeavour.

Quote from: SettembriniThat´s what I want from BE: a low prep randomized pick up strategic RPG experience, where the DM is an adversary instead of the facilitator for some kind of character centered endeavour.

What does that mean? Nearly ever single roleplaying game is character-centered. Certainly trad ones like Traveller and DnD are. It's just the nature of the beast: the players take on the roles of characters in the game fiction. Play then is character-centered because the characters are the only playing pieces in the game.

I suppose the other side of that coin is the GM-story, sit-back-and-listen-to-this-tale-and-do-what-I-tell-you kind of game. If that's your thing, hack away, because BE emphatically does not support that kind of play -- not in the macro and not in the micro.



Anyway, I love random character generation! I even tried to make up a random character generator for BW once. It was WAY too much work, though. And it would be even more work for Burning Empires. Given the range of options in the World Burner and the Character Burner, it's more than likely that the characters and world simply will not make sense. And the characters will be ill-equipped for the perils which await them.

It'd be much less stressful to hand out pre-gens and say, "This is your character. This is the world. Now play." Much.

All that aside, you said you'd like to play the game as written first. That's awesome! I'd love to help you get started in any way that I can. As I mentioned before, our forums are brimming with people who'd love to help with advice or support. Some of them even frequent this site. I'll try to answer any questions you have over here, but the quality of support is definitely going to be better at burningwheel.com.

Thanks again for taking a risk and buying the game!
-L

QuoteNearly ever single roleplaying game is character-centered.

Well the gameplay obviously should be. But not the conflicts of the world.

Quote from: GunslingerBy randomizing character generation you are removing even more player input.  By removing the BITs you are removing yet another mechanic built to let the players show the GM what type of conflicts they want their characters to have.  You'd almost be better served playing the Iron Empires setting with GURPS.  The sad thing is you'd miss out on what made Iron Empires great, the individual conflicts of the characters while trying to stop the greater Vaylen conflict.

[Dr. Weird]Bullshit![/Dr. Weird]

You'd miss out on Luke Crane and anybody else on the writing staff telling you how to play out that conflict. You could do it the way roleplayers have done it for decades, and make that shit up yourself.

Plus, GURPS character creation isn't random.