Complications in Play

Combat is a frequent occurrence in the sword and sorcery genre. Characters should be willing to fight as and when necessary. However, the Fight! Mechanics in Burning Wheel are intended to make sure that getting into a fight is something that characters never do lightly.

Let’s look at an example. The great vanara general and former pirate, Jambavanta, has seen the city-state he was defending fall under the spell of a resurrected Hakshuqan wizard, Ksathra of the Three Fires. He’s traced the only artifact that can defeat Ksathra, the Heart of Manachi, to the port city of Ashinda. One of the local merchants was a frequent purchaser from Jambavanta in his pirate days, and has been reminded that it’s in the merchant’s best interest to help Jambavanta complete his quest and depart before the authorities recognize the once-infamous outlaw and start punishing his associates as well. The merchant, afraid that Jambavanta will be recognized anyway, has sent ten thugs to “take care of the problem”.

Should the thugs be able to kill Jambavanta when they find him? Jambavanta may be one of the greatest warriors in Naranjan, but the odds are that he will lose that fight and end up dead (although if he scripts well enough and wins a lot of positioning tests, maybe not). The problem is that that’s not an interesting end to the story. The solution is to look for ways that we can make the outcome of the fight push the story forward, whether Jambavanta wins or loses.

There are a couple of ways you can handle this in-game. The first is to make it a Bloody Versus test with the stakes set accordingly. When the thugs show up, Jambavanta’s player Robert proposes that if he wins, one of the thugs confesses who sent them and the rest flee, not bothering to warn their employer. The GM, Howard, proposes in return that a loss means that Jambavanta is rendered unconscious and left for dead, and who knows where he might wake up?

If Robert wins, he has a choice to make. Jambavanta can continue to try and pursue the Heart of Ahriman, or turn back and get revenge on the merchant who betrayed him (which would fit with Jambavanta’s Belief that Loyalty and treachery must always be repaid). If he loses, he awakes enslaved aboard a merchant ship. Either way, the adventure moves forward, but the story takes a different direction, ensuring that the test actually means something.

Sometimes, though, the Bloody Versus test isn’t a viable option. Let’s say Jambavanta is confronting Arihant, a mercenary captain who stole the Heart of Manachi from a traveling merchant. If Jambavanta wins, he has the Heart. If he loses, the quest becomes a lot harder. For this kind of one-on-one fight, so central to the story, a simple versus test will probably be unsatisfying, and you’ll want to use the full Fight! mechanics. However, those rules don’t let you define free-form stakes, the way that a Bloody Versus test does. If Jambavanta loses he’s likely to be badly hurt or even dead. In a situation like this, where you want to create a dramatic struggle for the characters but allow the story to continue if they lose, the Complication rules should be used.

Characters who lose a fight should be able to blow Persona points to have the nasty wound that took them down turn out to be a lot less nasty than they thought, as long as they regain consciousness in the hold of a slave ship, or owing a debt to a sorcerer, or about to become a meal for a pisacha.