Thanks! I will ask the developer then.

In regards to  "dis-learning":

I want to game the way I know these days, cause it's cool and everybody  seems to like what I do as a GM. I'm just looking for more toys. BE could have new toys.

Quote from: SettembriniIn regards to  "dis-learning":

I want to game the way I know these days, cause it's cool and everybody  seems to like what I do as a GM. I'm just looking for more toys. BE could have new toys.

But getting re-educated is fun!  I hear that you are having fun now with whatever you are doing. I guess what I'm suggesting is playing the game you get out of the box, and then changing things around later once you get a handle on things.  Because there is a lot of new stuff to get a handle on, and how you GM that works well could easily go very poorly because it is built on a number of assumptions about the game that are likely not true. I'm guessing you'll have a lot better luck transforming it into something in your particular grove if you learn it by playing it in it's original form first.

EDIT I certainly don't limit this advice to Burning Empires. If you really don't want to change what you are doing and you are basically going to rearrange a game immediately into what you already have on your bookshelf then why bother go out and buy a different game to start with?

EDIT2 There is easily room for improvement in everyone. Think of this as cross-training to expand your range of abilities to ultimately create an even better game table. Growth is a pretty good test to sort the living from the dead.

In case you, or anyone else is still interested it looks like that blog is back up now.  I was also off on the number of entries, it was only five.  Here is a link to the fifth one, links to the first 4 are in the column on the right side of that page.

http://urdwell.blogspot.com/2006/08/burning-empires-from-inception-to.html

EDIT Even if you aren't interested in the game I think those blog entries provide an interesting look at the inside of the creation of a small self-published game.

QuoteI guess what I'm suggesting is playing the game you get out of the box, and then changing things around later once you get a handle on things.

Well, so much is assured, that's undeniably true. I'll have to muddle through the RAW. I want to know if it's worth it, even if I never play it afterwards with the RAW again.

QuoteIf you really don't want to change what you are doing and you are basically going to rearrange a game immediately into what you already have on your bookshelf then why bother go out and buy a different game to start with?

Simple: More toys.

Quote from: SettembriniThanks! I will ask the developer then.

In regards to  "dis-learning":

I want to game the way I know these days, cause it's cool and everybody  seems to like what I do as a GM. I'm just looking for more toys. BE could have new toys.

Yeah, Luke's ("abzu") a straight shooter.  He'll be straightforward about things with you, I'd say.

While it is not directly on the topic of selling Burning Empires the game, I can say that after reading about BE on this forum I went to the local comics store and picked up the Iron Empires graphic novels...  

:eek:  They are FUCKING COOL!  I am almost done with "Faith Conquers" and will be starting the second as soon as I am finished.  Great art, great characters, and some nice pacing to the story.

Really, even if you end up not liking the game but are into gothic sci-fi with a military twist I would highly recommend checking them out!  The quality of the work has seriously increased the chance that I will take a chance on it and buy the game.


TGA

Quote from: SettembriniWell, so much is assured, that's undeniably true. I'll have to muddle through the RAW. I want to know if it's worth it, even if I never play it afterwards with the RAW again.

I think I mentioned in another thread that a lot of the basic concepts are in a bit purer, more general form in Burning Wheel. The basis of the World Burner apparently originated in Burning Sands:Jihad extension download. But if you play it then I think you'll walk away with the same benefits of the basic ideas, which is well worth the price of admission.  Plus with a cool toy that'll look good on the shelf. See Assyrian's post above about the original art, which is all throughout the RPG book.

QuoteSimple: More toys.

That's cool. But pay attention to the instructions and warnings that come with that Red Ryder BB Gun. Don't point it at your face or you'll shoot your eye out kid. :cool:

Quote from: The Good AssyrianThe quality of the work has seriously increased the chance that I will take a chance on it and buy the game.

It helped me make up my mind. That and the fact that Christopher Moeller was involved in the game (had approval, did some art, wrote the forward) and feels the game really captures Iron Empires. "Luke and his crew have brought the Iron Empires to life. They totally understand it's quirkiness, it's dark undertones, it's sense of heroic fatalism, and I can't wait to see how it grows once it's out in the wider gaming community."

Quote from: The Good Assyrian:eek:  They are FUCKING COOL!  I am almost done with "Faith Conquers" and will be starting the second as soon as I am finished.  Great art, great characters, and some nice pacing to the story.

Not surprising you feel that way given that you share a love of Traveller with Moeller. He wrote the Forward to Burning Empire, along with input on the rest of the book too, and in the Forward he lists a youth spent playing Traveller as one of the three major influences that brought him to initially write the two Iron Empires books.

P.S. Not sure what ate Paul Watson's post?  Did he get pulled over and his post tasered into submission by the Automated SPAM Gestapo? EDIT: Ah, it's back now.

So Settembrini asked me to rezzer this thread and sell him on Burning Empires.

Well, Settem, if you want to play a hardcore strategic RPG and use tactics and resources to win the day for your world, Burning Empires does it and does it hard and real. The Infection mechanic is a strategic game you overlay atop your regular roleplaying game sessions. You use maneuvers like Conserve, Take Action and Gambit to destroy your opponent and get what you want. Skills like Strategy and Logistics and Psychohistory are very important.

But Burning Empires is not an adventure game per se. Or if it, it's at the farthest extreme of adventure gaming. There's a group of characters nominally striving toward one goal, but there's a lot of other forces at play.

Burning Empires play is intensely character driven.  If you want to conquer that planet, you're going to have get in the trenches and play it out. There's no hand-waving and a die roll. You've got to slog through that war and win it. Not every battle of course, but the character's fate is tied to his world's. So he must persevere.

Also, in Burning Empires, the GM is just another player with a special set of duties. He does not have unlimited powers and cannot make use of fiat. And there's a reason: Burning Empires is competitive. GM and players each represent one side of the conflict. And both sides are trying to win. To give one side the power of fiat ruins the competitive part of the game.

The scope of play is defined collaboratively during the first session. The players and the GM build a world and the conflicts present on that world together. They make a rough sketch of the important elements of the setting and the fault lines that are likely to appear. They set initial goals for their characters. Once play begins, those plans begin to unravel and spiral out of control and veer off in unexpected directions. That's the core of play -- that's part of what makes it a roleplaying game.

Lastly, the characters are explicitly protagonists in the developing story. They are the center of all the action. Nothing else is important to play except their fate (and the fate of their world).

If that type of play sounds interesting to you, I urge you to get the book. Personally, I love it. For me it produces intense, focused and dramatic play. If it sounds like it's not your thing, that's cool, too. Sounds like you have plenty of games to keep you busy and happy.

-Luke

PS: I'd like to thank Blakkie and everyone who went to bat for me in this thread. Very kind and generous of you gentlemen.

First let me thank you for the clear and complete answer!

Quotebut the character's fate is tied to his world's.

This is were I snap out. I cannot imagine this to be fun for me. I never liked Superheroes and the underlying mindset. I like Traveller for representing modern, complex societies, where the characters are just as important as anybody else.

But:

Quoteif you want to play a hardcore strategic RPG and use tactics and resources to win the day for your world, Burning Empires does it and does it hard and real. The Infection mechanic is a strategic game you overlay atop your regular roleplaying game sessions. You use maneuvers like Conserve, Take Action and Gambit to destroy your opponent and get what you want. Skills like Strategy and Logistics and Psychohistory are very important.

Sounds like way too much coolness and awesomeocity-generating stuff to pass.

I'll buy it.

QuoteHe does not have unlimited powers and cannot make use of fiat.

If I can piggy-back on here...if this is so, how far does BE differ from a board game? In Burning Wheel for example you've laid out some great guidelines on the use of Circles, but I still see those rules as requiring considerably more discretion and judgment than, say, Risk. And that seems to raise problems for a competitive game--not unlike the tired old Cops 'n' Robbers "shot you in the gut, no you didn't, you winged me" argument.

Settembrini,

I'm glad I sold you on it. I suspect you'll like it. It's a technical and deep RPG. Thor and I figure there's about 10 years of play in that one book -- based on all of the options provided by the World Burner and Character Burner (and the way the compromise mechanics work).

But if you don't mind, I'd like to dispute your superhero comment. Burning Empires is not a superhero game. The characters are mortal, fragile and fallible. The issues behind them do not relate to justice, identity or (usually) the ethical use of power. Neither does the game concern itself with the "man and the mask" dialectic that runs through most of the superhero genre. Burning Empires is based on Chris Moeller's Iron Empires comics and seeks to emulate them in feel and atmosphere: Chris' stories deal with heroic fatalism, honor, faith, conviction and the soul-crushing inevitability of fate.  

But in order to truly emulate the feel of Chris' comics, the characters must explicitly be protagonists. They must be the center of the story and forced to make difficult decisions in harrowing situations. And their decisions must ramify through the whole story. If they are not protagonists, the player's decisions are futile -- both success and failure become a shadow of what they could be. The mechanics of the game acknowledge and enforce this. The setting may be in upheaval and the world ending, but it's the players' actions which will truly decide its fate. Which is, in my opinion, how it should be. Even if you're playing out a bloody, dirty fight for a neighborhood bar (which you can do in this game), that ugly dust up is the center of the story, the characters involved are antagonist and protagonist and that's what the game is about.




Elliot,
Burning Empires is a roleplaying game and not a board game. First, there's no board. But more importantly, players take on the role of characters and must channel all of their actions through the actions and behaviors of their characters in the setting. One player is the GM. It is his job, once play begins, to play the antagonists to the players' protagonists. It is his job to present difficult and challenging situations that play into and off of the players' characters' beliefs. He does not set the pace of the game nor act as an arbitrator. The game has a built-in pace and we hope that the rules are explicit enough to be fair and clear to all sides. The GM does not single-handedly develop the "plot" either. With the other players he sets up a world in peril at the beginning of the game. Then he uses his antagonist characters to infiltrate, usurp and eventually invade that world -- simultaneously colliding with the players who are striving to protect their world or at least best the antagonists. "Plot" and "story" are generated as a result of these conflicts and collisions. We certainly don't know how the game is going to end when we set it up.

Does that answer your question?

-Luke

@Superheroes: You took it too literary/I was unclear: The whole concept of one person as a placeholder for entire societies is a thing I dislike. I call it "Superhero", maybe wrongly. To me a good example would be Babylon 5; wherein the characters each stand for whole organizations and societies, even races. And this is not my cup of tea, it's too artificial to make the decisions involved worhtwhile.

Luke, thanks, but no, that doesn't answer my question. Of course I know that BE doesn't have a board; what I meant was to draw a distinction between games with formally defined procedures and games with freeform procedures that require adjudication. E.g., even Charades has clear enough rules that there's no need to have a judge; at worst I think you might have to restrict the range of possible books, movies, etc. that each team can put in the hat. Among RPGs the game that's most like this, that I've seen, is My Life With Master--the only real discretion required in the overall procedures is whether to award Intimacy, Desperation, or Sincerity dice. That discretion is put in the hands of the GM, and thus presents an opportunity for bias, but actually you could play a game with one GM, one Master, and a bunch of players. Would a similar division of labor do anything for BE?