Pedro asked a cool question about Situation and Burning Wheel and a game he’s planning with the Night’s Watch. Nothing brings out my INTERNET OPINIONS like talking about using Burning Wheel to play Song of Ice and Fire.

My response:

So, let’s look at Game of Thrones and situation.

The first book has a doozy. Your best friend, the king, is asking you to run the kingdom for him as the Hand because he’s a shite king and he’s surrounded by his wife’s powerful family.

That drives the whole first book.

With the Night’s Watch, there are plenty of cool situations at hand. In the books, the situation is that the White Walkers are coming and the Night’s Watch is ill-equipped to deal with it.

But let’s make our own.

How about, there is an Iron-born bastard in charge of Seawatch who is making political moves to take hold of the entire watch with plans to turn it into his own personal band of reavers and killers, taking his anger out on Westeros.

No, your starting new recruit cannot solve that problem and that is awesome. It is going on in the background, driving play, making things difficult while he trains and figures out where he stands on this conflict and makes his decisions.

Does that make any sense?

The Situation, isn’t an itch under the character’s doublet, it is a fundamental imbalance in the world that is going to topple things and force the character to make meaningful decisions.

Hope that helps, happy to discuss this more.