Burning Empires

Yesterday's Forgotten Tech

You are probably familiar with Christopher Moeller even if you don’t know him by name. Christopher has been a prolific artist in nerd spaces since the 90s, illustrating for properties such as Star Wars, Justice League, Magic the Gathering, and Dungeons and Dragons. In 1994 he began work writing and illustrating his graphic novel series; Iron Empires, under Dark Horse Comics. For brevity’s sake, Iron Empires can be described as Isaac Asimov’s Foundation¹ setting invaded by brain worms (literal, not the contemporary turn of phrase).

Fast forward to 2006 (probably earlier), and Christopher is collaborating with Luke Crane of Burning Wheel game to develop the tabletop roleplaying adaption Burning Empires.

Respect the Premise

Iron Empires is a tabletop roleplaying game designed by Luke Crane, adapted from his other game – Burning Wheel. It is grown from the Iron Empires stories of Christopher Moeller, notably the series of graphic novels. Additional design and production² work was provided by Christopher Moeller, Thor Olavsrud, Radek Drozdalski, Alexander Newman, Chris Allingham, Mauran Tiruchelvam, Rich Forest, Jahanna Novales, Rich Douek, Sean Bosker, Rob Doherty, Mike Holmes, Mike VanHelder, Pete Tierney, and John Pythyon. Art is provided from Christopher Moeller along with Michael Kelleher, Jordan Worley, and Peter Bergting. Burning Empires was released in 2006 and is still available in PDF although no longer sold in physical print.

The book presents an artfully concise primer for the setting of Iron Empires: Far into the future, after centuries of interstellar expansion and settlement, the empire of humanity faces collapse. Kingdoms fracture, corruption spreads, civilization takes a back foot. All in perfect timing for a new species to rear its eyeless head and encroach on the shores of humanity.

Iron Empires gives the reader an immediate threat and call to action – which side are you on? This is not some blank affordance to the player; a collection of wiki entries and tidbits. It is a demand for storytelling – what do you think of this world and what will you do to change the outcome?

Christopher Moeller’s artwork is excellent. His mastery of color, texture, and volume gives so much character to what could easily have been a duller game. Space marines defending interstellar aristocracy vs eugenic brain worms is the kind of thing that could be drowned out in hackneyed sludge-core aesthetics. Moeller brings a vibrance and depth to these characters.

The marines of the Iron Empires are globular and hefty – their armor wrought from pitted iron, or perhaps castle stone³. Clerics in gaudy garb bearing crosses and swords and spaceships and suns, wielding laser pistol billowing smoke so thick you could scoop it with a spoon. And the horrible little brainworms – proper annelids; ichthyoid-white fleshed worms. They trigger a real parasitic fear – so weak and pathetic, but promising total death of the soul should they wriggle up your brainstem.

What a joy it is to have structured stories and campaign guidance. This is not a game of mercenary, roguelike gig work. There is a game plan to the invading force and how it will play out. Narrative events broken into infiltration, usurpation, and invasion giving the players an overarching narrative for a grand campaign, or a more structured framework for a shorter series of sessions – do they want to play a spy vs spy story, a political thriller, or war epic?

The framework of Burning Empires is its scene-by-scene metastructure. We are familiar with the moseying, wandering campaign: a series of isolated and post-hoc connected scenes. A Saturday morning cartoon version of a story. Episodic writing with no plans for moving forward even with a goal in mind. Burning Empires is militaristically focused. Every scene is for a purpose. At the end we package all the events and drama up and tally some numbers – who’s winning? Humans or worms?

According to the Rules

The world burner, that is, the character creation rules for the setting itself, are incredible. It develops an immediate player-character knowledge of their home that is sadly lacking in most ttrpgs. And it is driven by motivation. Invaders and defenders, why does this world’s atmosphere matter? Its government? Import restrictions? Industry? We have been browbeat into believing these things must be in service to simulationism. These things matter in Burning Empires because they are the facets of the story.

Burning Empires still uses the bedrock of Burning Wheel; a bookkeeper’s wet dream. The lifepath system is an excellent way of crafting characters, and a tremendous amount of prep work for someone who believes backstory means a page of free writing. There is one thing the lifepath system conquers, at least for me; the pain of learning lore. Running through the lifepaths is the same process as learning the backstory and setting of Iron Empires. I’m not learning the chain of command of a Hammer ship⁴ because it’s history being vomited on the pages. I need to know how many years I must work as shipfitter so I can be promoted to a proper engineer and get that sick Cryonics skill.

Burning Wheel’s instincts and beliefs system are great ways to make dramatic characters. People distinguished from each other and capable of disagreeing or making decisions based on stuff other than what gives me the highest roll and take the least damage. The system is what it is though. I’m still not sure what the real difference between an instinct and a belief is.

An additional layer of complexity added in Burning Empires is technology. Making choices and doing bonus accounting to make create gadgets or guns or spaceships. It is thankfully the kind of thing that works dutifully under the hood; if you don’t care about crafting the perfect laser pistol you can just use the one already in the book.

This is plenty of carry-over from BW, but fuck it we’re already here; Circles is the best mechanic in both of these games. Steal/inspire yourself from the Circles system generously. There is nothing more useful to roleplaying games than a stat that you can roll to make a girl appear and figure out how powerful she is and if she loves or hates you.

Burning Empire’s skill system continues BW’s love it or hate it design. It takes a talented hand to craft the robust yet open-ended list. One that is general yet specific enough to communicate the setting. Something like Back-Breaking Labor is the kind of skill to highlight; despite the spaceships and nanobots, this is a highly stratified society. One that has not escaped the yoke of slavery and serfdom. A setting that stresses, sure, there may be a strength stat. But there is a difference between skilled athleticism and ditch-digging for ten hours a day.

The scenic structure is a great, if half-baked, idea. The call to structure and codify scenes helps define what the heck we’re supposed to be doing here. A call to stop spinning our wheels and run along the paved road. But the scenes as defined are too strict, and it ends the chapter pretty much telling you not to use them as written. Sigh.

The power of the system is rooted in its incarnation of experience points. Every skill has its own XP gauge. Not only that, each skill has different shades of XP it needs to earn. If you wish to advance beyond beginner levels you need to trigger tests you cannot mathematically succeed. If you want your character to become more skilled, you must consider them as a character, a person that will pick fights they can’t win, make gambles they have no hope of return. Burning Empires adds the extra stress that these tests are inherently limited; with every move ticking up each side’s power until one claims victory⁵.

Burning Empire’s test mechanics, with dice boosting, linking skills, difficulty sliding all works just as well here as it does in base BW. Returning to these systems, there is the impression that their true potential is not yet fully exploited. The detours into the scripting actions of combat and arguments, the circles sub-system of NPC generation, could have had more ludic coherence if they were better rooted in BWs dice system. Both games try to have it both ways; 600+ pages of interlocking mechanics, but cautioning the player to use them modularly. It is poor cover for a system that could have been wrangled just a bit more into one cohesive box instead of stapling all the exceptions and extra ideas to the outside where they are free to snap off when they break.

We experience games as art⁶

It’s fascinating how much work has gone into the Vaylen, the brain worm invaders of the Iron Empires setting. This rulebook could have been half as long if it didn’t account so thoroughly for a playgroup that wants to be the infiltrating alien freaks. But it’s all there. Lifepaths and caste systems determined by body and form. Even just browsing you can’t help but think of all the stories that could emerge.

The game’s meta-mechanics are extremely clever. They not only scaffold the narrative; they teach the GM how to run a game. Not sure how to build a scene? Set the stakes, declare the key players, determine environmental or situational considerations, throw it at the player. If you’re unsure how to handle player actions, ask them how it applies to the goal of the scene. Narrative and system working in sync.

I have bounced off a LOT of sci-fi games. There’s something about the aesthetics of technology that triggers the evil urge in the designer towards classification and codification. Words and words and words spent detailing how laser guns fire and FTL engines burn and alien biologies tick that could have ben spent telling stories. This is what Burning Empires does. In a universe of spaceships and nanobots and fusion power, why are there still slaves? Why are there feudal societies and primitive worlds? Why does a future of plenty find itself threatened by an outside threat, one that easily infiltrates a fractious and splintered intergalactic empire? It gets at the heart of science fiction; no matter how much we advance and explore, what are the parts of humanity we can’t seem to escape? What is it about humanity that drives us to the stars, and will it help us survive what we find out there?

1. I feel comfortable with this comparison since it’s directly called out in the bibliography

2. The book uses in-universe labels like “Sculptor” and “Hammer Lord” for credits, which is cute, but impossible to decipher what real-world work these things actually translate to

3. Either way it appears to weigh no less than three thousand pounds

4. or what the heck a hammer ship is in the first place

5. If you loathe bookkeeping, this system will probably kill you.

6. I love the Kerrn. Something about them tickles every fancy I have. Big alien diaspora frog people (I don’t have Chris Moeller on speed dial but they’re definitely Jewish coded to me). My favorite parts of running Burning Empires is playing Kerrn.