Traveller + Burning Wheel: Roll Call

[Malenfant]

OK, who out there has the Burning Wheel rpg, (and the Monster Burner book)?

And who out there is interested in attempting or talking about a possible conversion of Traveller to the BW system?

 

[mike wightman]

I,ve got it, I'm still reading it, and come the holidays I'm going to try adapting Traveller to it.

Probably start with converting one career - say Army to start with - to the lifepath system in BW.

And I haven't got Monster Burner yet, I'll get that when the Magic Burner book becomes available.

 

[Malenfant]

I'd be interested in talking about such a conversion here...

My first thought is that the alien races all end up as "Born (whatever)", the Homeworld types are the Settings (as is Noble) and that the various careers are sub-settings.

 

[mike wightman]

That should work out.

How do you propose to rate homeworld type though? TL and trade classifications?

 

[Malenfant]

By TL probably. So you'd have low tech worlds (0-4), mid-tech (5-8), high-tech (9-12), and ultratech (13+), or something like that.

Though maybe Born Noble might not fit. You'd have all the Born (race) options, which would be available for any Tech Settings, and maybe Noble would be a subsetting in those.

 

[mike wightman]

I've found the MT TL descriptors to be useful for this sort of thing:
</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;"> TL descriptor
0-3 pre-industrial
4-5 industrial
6-8 pre-stellar
9-A early stellar
B-D average stellar
E-G high stellar
H-L extreme stellar</pre>[/QUOTE]

 

[clementk]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
OK, who out there has the Burning Wheel rpg, (and the Monster Burner book)?

I got both at Origins from the Burning Wheel people at the Key20 booth this weekend. Really liking it. I mentioned there were people interested in doing Traveller with Burning Wheel.

And who out there is interested in attempting or talking about a possible conversion of Traveller to the BW system?

I am. Still making my way through the books but I plan to burn some characters tomorrow.

 

[mike wightman]

Casey, did they mention if the Magic Burner book was nearly ready?

 

[Malenfant]

We could even just condense each class/career into a single lifepath to put into a given setting or sub-setting...

 

[clementk]

Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:
Casey, did they mention if the Magic Burner book was nearly ready?

Not that I remember. I wasn't aware of it until after I was done with the con though. It might be helpful with psi-p0w3rz though and looks cool in general.

Originally posted by Malenfant:
We could even just condense each class/career into a single lifepath to put into a given setting or sub-setting...

I was leaning towards that. Cutting down the divisions to where homeworld / tl / available career types become distinct instead of directly replicating Xd6 matrices.

If you're sticking to the OTU there'd also be some difference between people born in the different states. I'm not sure if it'd be enough to make seperate settings though.

As for noble, perhaps have it as a subsetting directly attached to a Third Imperium setting? So for Zhodani you could have Noble and Prole subsettings. I was tempted at first to have:

Third Imperium Setting
subsettings:
- Imperial Human
- Minor Race
- Solomani
- Vilani

but that as a whole might be too literal, redundant, and done better in another way. Still getting up to speed here.

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:
Casey, did they mention if the Magic Burner book was nearly ready?

I asked Luke on the BW forums, and he said:

well, I'm not planning on having it ready for GenCon 2006. So, it'll be sometime after that. 2006, 2007. However, we'll be releasing updates and chapters from it as we go along.

The good thing is that as soon as we do the Magic Burner, the last book is going to follow on quickly. The Adventure Burner. That's going to be awesome.

So it'll be a while. Curious about this "Adventure Burner" though...

 

[mike wightman]

Thanks Mal.

Guess I may as well get MB now rather than wait.

Curious about this "Adventure Burner" though...

Ditto

 

[clementk]

General note: I see under the Human lifepath there's room for culture variants/racial physiology which takes care of the fairly minor differences within Humanati. So I'm back to Homeworld slots for settings, careers for lifepaths under each setting, and having Noble be a subsetting. Since Noble actually includes all lifepaths normally found in the company/circle of a noble it's more flexible than I first thought.

Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:
Thanks Mal.

Guess I may as well get MB now rather than wait.

The Monster Burner has been described as the source code to Burning Wheel and I agree. Additionally the included spider and roden (think Nimh meets Skaven - Warpstone) lifepaths might be useful in coming up with a Hiver, K'kree, and Vargr lifepaths.

Well worth it.

 

[Malenfant]

I'm pretty convinced that ranged combat is somewhat broken as it stands. It doesn't integrate with the rest of the system at all IMO, and a lot of rules seem to be there for the sake of making things interesting from a narrative POV rather than to be actually consistent with eachother.

Since ranged combat is fairly important in a game involving guns, this is a bit of a problem

. I've tweaked the rules myself and made them more 'simulationist', but I'll have to test them out first...

There are some firearms rules in the Serpent Sun setting though. They're not too bad themselves, but there's still stuff missing (grenades, suppressive fire, hightech armour etc).

 

[clementk]

It does seem a bit fiddly. I'm concentrating on Lifepaths at the moment. There's a lot of rich content to digest.

I'll have to finish reading the Serpent Sun docs.

I think we've all joined the BW forums FWIW, though that parchment background plays havoc with my eyes. So I’ve not been able to read threads there like I want to. Have to try viewing it with images off next time.

 

[Malenfant]

You'll see all the trouble I had understanding the game on the BW boards. In the end, I think I'm just too 'simulationist' to grok the system really - there's just too many uneccesary extra bits that don't really add to the experience IMO.

The version of BW that I run is going to be very streamlined compared to what is in the book...

 

[DonM]

Just curious if anyone ever used BW lifepaths with Traveller, and how it went...

 

[Hemdian]

I've not had a chance to do anything with it yet but Burning Empire (a BW varient) gets you a lot of the way to a 'Burning Traveller' game. The BE author even says in the foreword that Traveller was a key influence.

Regards PLST

 

[Border Reiver]

Played my first BE session last week (2 sessions really, one doing the world and character burning, another doing an quick start to a possible campaign). It went really well.

I fail to see why some people are so vocally opposed to it. It is quite a simple system, fairly abstract in its play. Good fun. Not really my thing but good for long distance play due to its abstraction (I come firmly from the roleplaying is a type of wargame school not an amateur dramatic society presentation). I love the background, the world and character burners are great.

As to using it for Traveller, quite easy with a good GM.

 

[AndrewR]

OK, who out there has the Burning Wheel rpg, (and the Monster Burner book)?

And who out there is interested in attempting or talking about a possible conversion of Traveller to the BW system?

Burning Wheel is great for fantasy, but I think you should take a look at: Burning Empires instead. It's the Burning Wheel adapted to Christopher Moeller's sci-fi setting of the Iron Empires, and classic Traveller was one of his inspirations!