ap08

Trophy Gold: Debt holders
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Trophy Gold: Debt holders

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Debt is a tangible mechanical part of Trophy Gold. I thought it’d be worthwhile to have options for the table when someone comes to collect.

Who is holding the debt?

1. Bulla Shrines

Said to have invented credit, debt and banking, the demi-god, Bulla is a faceless deity whose accountant-priests are known to have necromantic powers. Some say they use these powers to demand a spirit continue paying for the living’s debt, even after death.

Some whisper that Bulla’s displeasure with its government was one of the many forces bringing about the the Fall of Olde Kalduhr.

If you fall behind on payments, revenant-collectors will be sent to bring you to the nearest shrine.

2. Some Ducal Asshole

Some dukes and duchesses love being patrons to adventurers, hearing their daring stories and taking the pick of their treasures.

If you fall behind on your payments the duchy’s thug-knights and their retinue will most likely be the ones dragging you back to the ducal seat but sometimes a noble will get off their throne and pursue an adventurer themselves, often with highly paid bounty hunters in their company.

3. The Dark and Gold Guild

Some adventures live to see their dreams realized. Those in the Dark and Gold Guild are adventurers who earned a fortune and used that fortune to capitalize on others’ desire to delve and raid tombs.

Not wanting to ever don armor again, if you fall behind in your payments it will likely be adventurers coming after you, becoming more and more seasoned as the debt grows.

4. Starless Matron

The dark and deep parts of the world, where the starless elves build glittering cities and the cave-bear-folk tend to their shroombeast herds are the Starless Matrons, powerful fae matriarchs who pay homage to the All-Mother, (may her holy webs and eight legs be blessed).

If you fall behind in your payments, Starless Elf Freeriders, riding giant spiders or lizard-raptors will begin trying to collect your bounty. If that fails, they will turn to the altars of their spider-pantheon and begin summoning.

5. Death

Surely you were not so foolish as to put a lien on your own living soul for some trifling gear to go delving. Surely not.

If you were to fall behind on your payments, Death would begin collecting from those all around you until you found a shrine and paid that debt in full and then some.

6. Farmer Cooperative

They had a good harvest last year and wanted to invest in a hero so that their children could know wealth and live the dream. They pooled their money and put their trust in you and your daring, equipping you for a series of delves.

If you were to fall behind on your payments, the farmers would send their best trackers and veterans of war after you to reclaim payment or bring you back to the village for a trial.

The Trophy Kickstarter is in its last days, within bow’s shot of its last stretch goal in which myself and an amazing group of table-top role-playing game designers will get to design incursions that will be a mega-dungeon. Please check it out.

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The Wheel Turns and Burns

Every once in a while I get all misty-eyed and I-love-you-man about the folks I game with.  This is such a time.

Look posted this up on the BW forum:

Five years ago today we released Burning Wheel Revised.
In five years we’ve sold over 7000 copies of BWR alone.
We’ve traveled the US and Europe promoting the game.
We’ve introduced thousands of gamers to the Burning games.
We’ve played incredibly games (that just keep getting better).
We’ve made amazing friends who will be with us for many years to come.

Thanks all for making this dream come true.
We hope to see you all at 10/10/10 so we can celebrate!

-Luke and BWHQ

And it got me thinking back on the past five years or so of gaming, looking back on AP threads.

Here is my first BW thread, I believe, 3 BW Games in 5 Days, in which I struggle with the rules, fuck up pre-game preparation, still manage to have a decent time here and there but I’m banging my head against the system. Some of my friends liked what they saw in the system and some hated the damned thing.

So, why and how did I continue playing the game and wrestling with it?

It is because, in Ithaca, I am blessed. I don’t have one group in this town. I am lucky to have a network of players and people interested in gaming, up for something new, game to try something. There are a few dozen games in this town whom I consider friends, people I’d be eager and happy to share a beverage with.

If I was gaming group monogamous, I’d never be able to play the game again as soon as one or two people hated it. I get to play games that I dig with people who are willing and eager to try them because when it comes to gaming groups, I lean polyamorous.

I don’t play PTA with Jim or Aaron because they tend to like more mechanics to sink their teeth into. I play Shock: with Pete and Janaki because we love making up worlds together and see how they turn out when we bang on them with anthropological hammers. The BW character sheets make Janaki dizzy but make Aaron sing with glee. And I full realize that I can do this because I have spent the last 10+ years gaming in this medium-smallish college town and rather than sinking one night a week into creating the perfect group of uber-gamers, I have flitted around, weaving webs and making networks of buddies.

Some I don’t game with at all, because their games don’t interest me and mine don’t interest them but we have fun IMing or having the occasional lunch to talk shop and geek out. Some are up for long campaigns, some aren’t. Some are down with the occasional one-shot once the kids are asleep, some want to game on Friday night have rocking a porch party. Some were strangers who PMed me on a forum (and some of those became great friends and others faded), some got dragged into a game I was playing with through a stagnant university gaming club and others have been friends we met under the mantle of Kryos over a decade ago.

My gaming privilege makes me wince when people post on forums how “their group would never play X game that they lust after.”

So, thank you, my friends who despite their busy lives, careers and families spend time playing games with me.

Thank you to my friends who played

the pirates,

gunslingers,

revolutionary fast food workers rebelling against The Man,

the R&D exec and the Rogue Scientist,

the interstellar corporate agents,

the Patrol-men and Patrol-women,

the barber’s son from the Sangre,

the knight and the bastard,

the uncommon orcs,

the princess and the bodyguard,

the freebooter turned mercenary captain turned champion of humanity, the Herald of the Dawn, the Spider of the Book and the Chosen of Hell’s Honorable Brother,

the Horselord Prince, the Sheriff of Baal, the God-killers

the Elven Sword-singer and his loyal princeling apprentice,

the nobles and the jihadim,

the teen  samurai hostages to the sleeping emperor who dressed as ninja and went dancing at night,

the kids with magic out on the corner,

the Dragonborn Cleric, the Human Fighter, the Drow Ranger and the Elven Paladin,

the wolf pack traversing the World Tree in search of a new alpha,

the Barons whose lands surrounded the Hub of all Revenge,

the doomed samurai ascending a cold mountain for bloody reasons,

the cast and crew of Hare and Hound,

the Man in the Mountain,

the concubine and the dead god’s bride,

the Centurions,

Sharn’s Finest,

the cast and crew of Episode LV,

the Grey Legionnaires,

and many more.

Thank you, my friends for joining me in trying odd games, playtesting others and all in all making up cool shit.

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The Suck: #1 Burning Wheel Skype

The game has been going pretty well. Jim and I fell into an age-old pattern we have where his character get’s into trouble, way-way over his head and than plays the various powers against one another in an attempt to come out on top. Rich is right there with us now and it only took a few sessions for him to get his feet under him.

So, we’re into the second arc. The orcs have returned to the Broken Mountains, homeland to the orcs, to find that Rich’s character’s father has been driven into deep tunnels by an army of giant spiders.

And I heard myself say, “What do you want to do now?”

“How about now?”

“And now?”

I had no aggressive scene framing-fu at all. I was, as the GM, not contributing shit. I should’ve stopped, tossed some snow down my shirt and/or had the players read their Beliefs out loud again. I’ve got these two ambitious, brutal orcs with passions and hatred in their guts and I’ve got nothing to say.

If re-visiting the character sheets didn’t work I should’ve just cut the game short and admitted that I was just too tired to GM.

But I pushed on and GMed the most tepid session in years and years.

I e-mailed the guys and told them that I thought the game was suck and that it would be better next time.

Man, it is hard to write up experiences about games that suck. When you write about a game that is fun, you get to kind of re-live a touch of that fun and figure out what made it fun and celebrate each other. But suck is hard; its hard not to condemn anyone (including yourself) and just definitely not fun.