Hacker News Reader

Comment by awithrow | Hacker News Reader

Burning Wheel does this and I absolutely love the system. I liked how if you failed your wealth check, your score was lowered for awhile. You could also increase it like any other score with enough success of difficult tasks. The way all the various subsystems in that game interact was superb.

I do think you lose out in an abstract system though. Delving for treasure in a dangerous dungeon was most the appeal of the early RPGs. It's not quite the same rush discovering a horde that then gets abstracted away

View on HN

> I liked how if you failed your wealth check, your score was lowered for awhile. You could also increase it like any other score with enough success of difficult tasks.

Put that way, it sounds like it's less a wealth check and more like a credit check where it's assumed the boring stuff is deferred until after the adventure.

that's largely how its described in the rules. It represents calling in favors, requesting credit, etc. A failure could be described as not having the funds, funds being tied up in other ventures, requests denied, that sort of thing.

I have to admit that even though "credit check" may be more accurate, it may, er, remind players of things they want to avoid in an escapist fantasy.

(Unless you're a fantasy-denizen enjoying the reverse-experience of Offices & Outlays, I guess.)

The way cash works with resources in Burning Wheel is really genius design. Since you have your lifecycle maintenance cycles, and you will want to buy stuff, it ends up putting some pressure on the characters to get some cash to be able to handle those resources tests, especially since you have the Tax risks. And on top of that it makes it more likely the party will help each other to lower that risk.

But I totally agree that the abstraction loses something about finding treasure.

Burning Wheel was probably one of them, I know I played some games in that system. It's been a long time, but I remember it having a lot of clever rules (like the skill progression mechanic that required you to both succeed and fail).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com