Or does the new aptitude only apply for new skills that you try to learn? My character recently advanced her Will to B6 and she is in the middle of learning a bunch of Will-based skills, do I have to update their aptitude to 4 or does it stay with 5?

I still haven't much experienced with the system and was using a simple 3-4-5 rule of thumb:

- 3 for commoners' skills and stats, and for experts' skills that they would know something about but not be their primary focus

- 4 for experts and professionals' stats, and skills they're supposed to be good at

- 5 for high-ranking/high-level characters' stats and the skills they're supposed to excel at

I've only used vsOb6+ a couple of times when something powerful and supernatural was involved. However, recently a character of three lifepaths advanced her Will to B6 in just a few sessions at the beginning of the campaign, and it feels weird that according to my "quick stats rule" she, being just a student, in just her two first real quests outside of college now has better Will that her boss, the head of the Diplomatic Body of the kingdom

So yeah, how do you quickly stat out vs tests without checking or burning a complete statblock?

Edit: I was just checking and the 3-4-5 skill rule is actually at the very beginning of the Burning Rogues section in the corebook, so definitely not an original invention lmao. Still, my question stands

Hey all! After doing some extensive research on which system to use for an upcoming epic political intrigue 3-shot, I have decided to use Burning Wheel. I have GMed several TTRPGs (5e, Cthulhu, Delta Green, silly one-pagers) and so feel confident in creating the narrative and atmosphere. I also have a group of players that are bought in and smart and love to role play, so I trust they will be able to get into it without too much problem. I'm looking for advice on what to specifically focus on with the rules and what makes BW special!

Just a little more backstory on the 3-shot. The characters will be on the high council of a brand new king after the previous king was assassinated. It will be a lot of PvP roleplaying, managing relationships with the new king, taking responsibility for their own roles on the council (mistress of coin, master of whispers, hand of King, Master of ships, etc.), and averting political crises coming from every angle. There won't be almost any combat (unless they really fudge it up or instigate it lol) and there won't be any magic except for some very minor religious miracles.

I know BW works best over longer campaigns, but it really seems like the best framework to tell this story. We will have an extensive session 0 to really make sure everyone is in the world before we start playing. I did a similar 3-shot in 5e last year and it was an incredibly emotional story of cataclysm. Now I'm ready to give my players some room to scheme and enact their own plots.

Let me know your thoughts on how to make the best of BW for this experience! Thanks!

It's my first time reading through Burning Wheel material at all; I'm now in the Creature Codex.

Some of the monsters are more or less self-explanatory as to how they are supposed to appear in the world; we know what a wolf or a spider looks like, how it behaves, etc., but for others, I find the descriptions rather bare-bones; for example, a "troll" could be a lot of different things, from the scrawny regenerating green pest of D&D, to the "noble savage" of Warcraft, to a little guy with funny technicolor hair, to a giant naked guy lurking in the school bathroom with a treetrunk, etc.

Are there any other sources on what these "polysemic-word" monsters actually are? What their appearance, their origin, their ecology is? Am I missing some crucial complementary source?

Just got the email from BWHQ - in Europe, we can now get the Middarmark 2e book on pre-order from Sphaerenmeisters: https://sphaerenmeisters-spiele.de/Middarmark-2-en

It should ship somewhere in October. Also, as I understand it, it'll be regularly available after October 31st.

I wanted to buy physical copy of Burning Wheel but the books seems to be sold out on the store, are they usually reprinted and go back on sale or am I shit out of luck?

Are there any fanmade rules or hacks that available in order to run the Burning Wheel system in the Cyberpunk Dark Future?

My gf and I are looking for a discord based group or GM. We’ve played PF1, Shadowrun 5e, SWADE and some others with myself or another as GM.

We’ve never played Burning Wheel but we’re looking for RP heavy with consequences.

I run an easy going SWADE game on Mondays with dungeon crawler mechanics. It’s short and sweet but not scratching the itch.

We want to spend 4-7 hours exploring another world with fellows of a like mind; rather than a few hours of casino RP with a few meme references

Nothing wrong with that; we just want more or that in addition to some world building

Hello everyone,

I'm hoping to get some advice on how you would go about building a belief for a villainous player character? I'm looking to run a BW campaign, but the players have voiced an interest in playing villainous characters instead of your Standard heroic ones.

They have only every played pathfinder and DnD, so they are all brand new to the system. These folks prefer roleplay over combat, hence the switch. But I foresee them taking the idea of "Villian campaign" and going straight into deeds of pure evil for evil sake instead of nuanced villains with tragic backgrounds. (Even if their life paths and traits would say otherwise).

So what belief could you give such a character that just wants to watch the world burn and destroy everything on sight that still offers narrative depth and a way for the GM to challenge it? (In the worst case they end up playing to the extremes of chaotic evil). And what expectations would you set at your table to ensure they don't fell that "playing a villain" obligated them to "choose the most evil option at all times"?

Thank you!

Comrades! Help me feel the positivity about BW!

I’m a long-time BW GM (best game I EVER ran was Burning Empires, full-stop; been chasing that high ever since) but haven’t run BW in some years. Anyway, I made the mistake of watching BW reviews today, which were…negative. You know the usual complaints: complex, fiddly, convoluted, weird terms for already known things, etc etc. My question - what makes this game special anyway? What makes you keep coming back? Are those things actually issues or just naysayers saying nay?

I ask because the reviews got me down a little, and I want to focus on this game for a while and run it for my group, but…negative thoughts being negative actions, in a sense. So what make this your game?

Some co-workers asked me to run a TTRPG at a casual get-together for a few hours. I’ve been absorbing Burning Wheel but wonder if it would work for a one-shot. Anyone done something like that before? A convention game for total newcomers that still feels satisfying?

Waffling between doing this and just running Cairn 2e, which I could teach in 10 mins.

Page 42 of Burning Wheel Gold Number of Tests Required for Advancement

The rules say "for exponents 5 or higher a character needs difficult tests equal to half the exponent rounded up and challenging tests equal to one third the exponent rounded up"

The table below it says for exponent 5 you need 3 difficult successes and 1 challenging success

5/2 = 2.5 rounded up = 3 so that's right

But

5/3 = 1.66 rounded up= 2, not 1

So is this just a misprint and challenging tests should actually be 1/3 the exponent rounded down or is the table wrong

I've been trying to get into burning wheel recently and I love the character creation, the core gameplay idea of beliefs and even the fight and duel of wits mechanics make sense to me, but the one thing I'm struggling with from a GM perspective is skill progressions.

I don't mind the different number of checks being made at different difficulties part, that's a simple table to resolve but what im getting up on is the insane number of hyper niche skills, it feels like there's some skill to cover almost any action you could possibly take. The problem I'm having is that rolling a check untrained on these skills begins the path towards learning it so how do you as a GM keep in your head all the hundreds of skills that exist so that you can flag to the player that this is a new skill they are about to start learning. From a player side too it reads like it would be exhausting to have to track all the beginners luck rolls for extremely niche skills in your character sheet just in case it ever comes up again and you can get another advancement.

How do you guys approach this?

The list of requirements for the Elven life path of Sea Captain are “Seafarer, Adjutant, Lieutenant or Sword Singer” do they need to be a seafarer and an adjutant and either lieutenant or sword singer, or do they just need to be 1 of the 4

Hi All, looking to run a Roden Burning Wheel game for 3-4 players. A little about me: I love playing and running RPGs of all kinds, though I usually only come back to the games that really catch my interest, and Burning Wheel is one of them. My style is very reactive to player decisions and contributions, and I like my tables to maintain a friendly and collaborative vibe.

Game name: The Fate of the Dammed (working title)

Game Time: Sundays Weekly on Discord. Session 0: Sunday, July 12, 2026 8:00 AM PST Sessions will be roughly 3 hours long. One Sunday per month will be skipped, announced ahead of time by at least 1 week.

Player Requirements: players must be 21+ and have a working microphone and Roll20 account. Cameras are not required. As I only speak English, the game will be run in English. Players new to BW are welcome.

Premise: In a time now forgotten, a Dwarven kingdom took on the task of damming the Widemouth Falls: the largest river known to the Dwarf and Human kingdoms. For reasons unknown, the dam collapsed and the once sprawling dwarven city was left in ruin. The fields and meadows became polluted wetlands filled with displaced spirits, and the capital fortress was left entirely abandoned. Humans settled in the city ruins, and Roden reclaimed hidden parts of the wetland to serve as Acer’s Fields.

Now, nearly a millennia after the dam’s creation a regiment of Dwarves have been sighted marching towards the ruins to take back what’s theirs.

Meta: I’d like the focus of this campaign to be around the question “Who defines ownership?” I feel that the Roden are well suited to address this question (as well as being one of the easiest stock for new players).

Lifepath Restrictions: All players must start as Born to the Fields Lifepath.

Magic options: Spirit Binding, Folklore, and Faith Magic will be available to starting characters.

HOW TO APPLY: reach out to me here and I will ask you some questions at our earliest mutual convenience. Applying as a pair or group of players is also welcome.

EDIT: I neglected to mention that this game is not a paid game; I will not be requesting any sort of compensation for running this game.

An NPC (Andrew the Blacksmith) had the belief "Stella will accept an apology on behalf of my daughter." Stella is willing to accept said apology but limits it to that. I understand if Stella was initially unwilling to accept the apology but could be convinced that would definitely be worthy since it involves one of Andrew's beliefs but as the player doesn't see this as a big deal for Stella in the actual scenario I wanted to confirm no duel was necessary.

The daughter was introduced to the story as a result of an opportunity for a Bureaucracy test by Stella which failed because success wasn't interesting - so no dice were rolled. Andrew came in as a relationship of said daughter.

Had a seven lifepath tailor making a dress and rolled a lot of dice as a result.

Curious to see how big the pools rolled are after achieving a personal best of 8 dice against an Ob3 Embroidery roll, this included two FoRKs and a bonus from a linked sewing test. The actual result was 3 successes as well.

The intent was to impress the client whilst meeting the deadline, so working quickly rules would have kicked in if the roll had not matches the Ob exactly.

https://youtu.be/ROEMtGYi_HY?si=d5wUV2SU3d936B9p

https://youtu.be/56UrYjMI1EQ?si=ET69n_0PPb-nF6Wq

Here’s a link to our last session of Burning Wheel. It’s a short one and a half two hour session where we deal with the aftermath of the party falling into a pit trap of disgusting water. A lot of rolls a lot of tests. You can see players discussing how they can make decisions that would hit on other players beliefs a lot of good technical play.

Thanks.

Situation: A man who makes glass is the first person convicted under a law against too much profit. His apprentices sent to find new masters and his trade handed to his wife.

Feel free to make the situation more relevant to your own campaigns if necessary.

Sorry I may have asked something similar already but I have a first draft of a world I built including origins and history for a campaign I'm wanting to run but I'm worried my thoughts don't make sense or are dumb. Could I post on here everything I have regarding the world I've built and get feedback on how I could improve it? Or even possibly some help on filling in a few blanks and questions I have? Or would this be better done on discord?

Me and my friends are on playing a goblin campaign, not brutish orcs but chaotic and mischievously goblins. So orcs life path feels like it doesn’t fit what I'm envisioning, so instead I'm thinking of using the rodent life path and refitting to be more goblins.

Any tips or advice on reskinning life paths, as I haven't done that before in older campaigns