Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Assorted 'Indie' Role Playing Games Megathread
 
  • Locked thread
Cyrai
Sep 12, 2004
 What's the difference between Burning Empire and Burning Wheel?

* # ¿ Nov 10, 2010 23:18
  • Quote
Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 2, 2024 16:50
  • Quote
Cyrai
Sep 12, 2004
 So do either of them not suck too much to play?

* # ¿ Nov 11, 2010 01:35
  • Quote
Cyrai
Sep 12, 2004
 I hate you guys. Because of this thread, I bought Apocalypse World and Leverage, and now you want me to pick up 3:16? When will it ever end?

* # ¿ Nov 29, 2010 23:46
  • Quote
Cyrai
Sep 12, 2004

Doc Hawkins posted:

I will throw in a vote for moderation: unless they're fascinated with the design and development of RPGs, not every indie RPG is for everyone; that's one of the good parts of focused design! Don't buy everything, just buy things that sound, from play recordings or detailed reviews, like they support games of a sort you and your friends will enjoy.

By now, I've come to accept the fact that I just like the concept and design of RPGs. I don't hardly get around to playing them, and I don't have any real desire to design or write an RPG. I just like to read them, for some crazy reason

* # ¿ Nov 30, 2010 05:40
  • Quote
Cyrai
Sep 12, 2004
 Between Burning Wheel and Burning Empires, which is the better or most generic? I like my RPGs to be able to handle a wide variety of scenarios and situations without having to delve into specialized mechanics or subsystems for each possibility.

Cyrai fucked around with this message at 07:57 on Dec 3, 2010

* # ¿ Dec 3, 2010 07:48
  • Quote
Cyrai
Sep 12, 2004

Kestral posted:

Despite sharing similar core mechanics, Wheel and Empires are very different games. Of the two, Wheel is far more flexible and can handle most anything from Low to High Fantasy and historical fiction. Its baseline is either somewhere around A Wizard of Earthsea or the very best Tolkien adaptation ever produced, but I've used it to run games in Fantasy Not-Rome and an almost entirely magicless game in Not-Venice inspired by Noble House and The Lies of Locke Lamora. There's also a supplement for Heian-era (pre-samurai) Japan which is quite good, albeit difficult to actually play as intended unless you have a group of Japanese history buffs.

Empires is very different. It was designed from the outset to produce a very specific kind of story: chronicling the infiltration, usurpation and invasion of a planet by what has to one of the most insidious and horrifying alien races ever conceived. It has an overarching structure which guides play toward a well-defined end-game, uses scenes as expendable resources, and puts the GM in an openly adversarial role against the players while forcing him to operate under strict rules. It's not for everyone - I've never been able to get my home group to try it - but if it clicks for your group I hear it's a very rewarding experience. A metaphor that gets tossed around a lot is "weight training for roleplaying games" because of the intensity of play and the way it forces you to make every scene count because of the scene economy.

Thanks. Those are really good summaries

* # ¿ Dec 3, 2010 15:20
  • Quote
Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 2, 2024 16:50
  • Quote
Cyrai
Sep 12, 2004

bewilderment posted:

I took a glimpse at Dresden Files but was kinda put off by all the callbacks to the books. It seemed really heavy on the references, although that might have been the first few chapters or so, I dunno.

I like FATE in general, although I haven't taken a look at the new Strands of Fate. Spirit of the Century is cool, although it's only really 'pick-up' once everybody already knows the rules. Starblazer Adventures looks interesting as a kitchen-sink sci-fi, but the page count is enormous.

If you're interested in the Dresden Files RPG aside from the callbacks to the book, I'd say it'd be worth it to give it another shot. The callbacks all seem to either be side-chatter between the characters from the book that can generally be ignored, or they use situations from the books as examples of how the game would play. If you straight skipped all the annotations the characters have, you'd only miss a little bit of perspective on some of the issues

* # ¿ Jan 16, 2011 00:19
  • Quote
  • Locked thread
The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Assorted 'Indie' Role Playing Games Megathread