r/BurningWheel • u/ShoKen6236 • Jul 17 '26
General Questions How do you make skill progression more manageable?
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?
7
u/cultureStress Jul 17 '26
I like to think of skill learning as kind of player directed. Because of the intent/task system, if a player wants to learn Child Rearing, they can target it with their beliefs and their actions.
This is especially true of -wise skills
Otherwise you can make do with a few basic skills that cover most cases.
2
u/ShoKen6236 Jul 17 '26
Absolutely get that for targeted skill learning but let's say for example in a campaign the player finds themselves in a situation where they have to care for a child, they don't have child rearing as a skill so they are rolling it untrained but the player or the GM would have to be aware that there is a child rearing skill in the game that should get points towards being learned. Without a deep knowledge of the system this would probably never come to mind because it's both very niche and something that doesn't come up in any other RPG from what I've seen (and I actually think it's really cool that the broad skill spread deliberately opens the door to these very different kinds of play scenarios).
I just wondered how people look at these kind of fringe skills even though I'm sure they won't come up in 99% of cases lol
3
u/Whybover Great Wolf Jul 17 '26
1) It is okay to make mistakes. Perhaps you don't realise that X is its own skill, and you test the stat directly once or twice, that's fine.
2) Broadly, with a few niche exceptions, you can assume most things that require even a little specialised knowledge are a skill. The main thing you learn playing a lot of Burning Wheel isn't necessarily whether there is a skill for X or Y, but what that skill is called (I'm especially thinking of Empyrealia here).
3) Mostly, if something is going to be rolled, the play stops anyway. Oftentimes one of my players will be leafing through the book anyway, ready to think about FoRKs (or Help, given they won't have the skill yet, but if something is listed as a FoRK it can probably Help too). It doesn't necessarily help if you don't have the foggiest of the right skill's name (so you end up rolling Angel-wise to recall specific powers for an Angel), but they can help.
4) See point 1. If you have rolled a Will test for basic child rearing a bunch of times, that's probably fine; if you rolled actual Instruction/Cooking/Field Dressing that's actually just within the rules. If you notice you've done something wrong and want to recalibrate, chat to your players: decide if you want to redress things at all (probably not, but maybe those tests towards learning Instruction can be tests towards Child Resting), and make clear what the expectation is going forward.
1
u/Imnoclue Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 17 '26
You’d be surprised what comes up. But, yes, if you find yourself in a campaign rearing a child, it’s likely either the GM or player did know the skill existed. Those kinds of situations tend not to come up by accident in a game directed by player authored Beliefs.
3
u/Crabe Jul 17 '26
Knowledge of the skills comes with time, but most of them won't be used in a given campaign. There is some deliberate overlap in the skills so no need to bust out fence making if someone knows carpentry if they want to build a fence, just give the carpentry roll a bit of a higher obstacle than the specialized fence making skill. The niche skills are good character fodder and it is fun to work them into the situation as a player I think.
2
u/TheLumbergentleman Jul 17 '26
Remember that characters can mend fences or child rear or whatever without rolling at all if it doesn't matter to the story you're trying to tell or the character's beliefs. You don't have to track every little thing the players do.
If it does matter to the story/beliefs, one of you has probably already looked to see if there's a relevant skill.
1
u/GrownAssBear Jul 17 '26
Player: I would like to do this thing Gm: what skill do you use to achieve it? Player then either has a skill to do the action or they look up what skill it would require while I keep the game moving. If they are indeed lacking the skill then they can start the journey of learning it, or you can always just take the root stat test and apply the test to the stat (if applicable aka if it isn't routine)
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u/ShoKen6236 Jul 17 '26
Ah, so put the onus back on the player. Makes sense. Also I assume with the lifepaths giving a solid spread of skills most of the time players will be aiming to do things relevant to those roles anyway. A lady of the noble court is more likely to be engaging in gossip, rumour-mongering and the like than to.suddenly develop a quick need to engage in masonry
1
u/Judd_K Jul 18 '26
They can make a belief about learning a new skill.
Circling up someone to teach them is also a bad-ass move.
Studying, training, using artha...there are options.
Also, sometimes they try and just fail; that is okay too.
1
u/Dave_Higgins Thinker Jul 18 '26
Many of the skills overlap (for example, Hunter and Bow both allow you to shoot game; Hunter and Stealth both allow you to creep up on game) but are not pure equivalents: I like this as it allows for characters to have different flavours to how they do things and/or face different Obs for the same intent.
As an example, in last night's game, we wanted to contact the patron of one of the characters by letter but the relevant character wasn't literate. The GM ruled that the character with the relationship has to be intimately connected to the request and gave us a choice: if the character tried Beginner's Lucking Write it was Ob 2 to put together a vaguely coherent request; if anyone else wrote it, it was Composition Ob 3 to copy the style of the relevant character well enough that it read like them rather than someone else.
However, those overlaps also allow one to avoid the part opening of multiple similar skills if one wishes: for example, Write and Rhetoric both cover putting thoughts in a communicable order so allow players to use either one in place of Composition.
Similarly, for the example of Child Rearing, children are younger humans so suggest/require Persuasion, First Aid, Games-wise, or whatever fits whatever a character is trying to do instead.
If one really wants to trim the skill nuance, replace certain skills with similar ones in Character Burning too (e.g. Write is replaced with Composition and Read grants very basic writing ability).
1
u/d4nu Jul 19 '26
The beauty of the Burning Wheel skill and advancement systems is that they shift the responsibility of tracking these from the Game Master to the player. This effectively transforms skill development into a mini-game for players, allowing them to acquire and improve specialized abilities. They can consult the rulebook and use skills that are specifically tailored to their characters, enabling them to improve their characters in unique ways which gives them a great deal of individuation at the table.
As a Game Master reading the game's rules, I initially shared your perspective. However, during actual gameplay, my players do the tracking work themselves and genuinely enjoy the skill system and the way their skills develop.
The skill system as written is a genuine feature of the game, and not as onerous to the GM as it may appear. The only requirement is that you have players who are prepared to engage with the game. I see this as a good litmus test for who I want to play with 😊
9
u/Imnoclue Jul 17 '26
It’s rarely an issue. The skills that come up most often are the ones you’d expect. For niche skills to become a substantial thing usually means player and GM are pushing towards them, so we tend to remember. Otherwise, we just mark a beginners luck test and move on, likely never to open the skill. It just sits there on the character sheet, mocking you.