Has anyone here tried to port the BITs (Beliefs, instincts and traits) from Burning wheel to Dungeon World?

Has anyone here tried to port the BITs (Beliefs, instincts and traits) from Burning wheel to Dungeon World?

Has anyone here tried to port the BITs (Beliefs, instincts and traits) from Burning wheel to Dungeon World?

I am considering to try this out to help some of my less experienced players to set more clear & consistent goals for their characters and how they interact with the world. Kinda like flags but the other way around?

If you have done this already or something similar, what did you do and what did you like (or not like) about it?

12 thoughts on “Has anyone here tried to port the BITs (Beliefs, instincts and traits) from Burning wheel to Dungeon World?”

  1. I was wondering the same a couple of days ago. I haven’t tried it yet, but I thought that substituting bonds (or simply calling bonds beliefs and maybe apply these not only to pcs) could do the job. For traits, maybe use tags?

    I’m interested in hearing everyone’s opinion on this topic

  2. Alberaan Guardian I personally replace bonds with flag,s which tend to work way better in my groups. I also use the stats that make sense rather than +bond for help/interfere, so there’s no issue there.

    I was thinking of doing something a bit more specific with the beliefs by creating three specific ones for DW:

    World belief (something that relates to the world around the PC)

    Personal belief (something that relates to another person, ideally a party member)

    Self belief (something relating to the PC himself)

    To help both the player and myself as GM to get this into a more focused view, I was thinking to attach a ‘goal’ to each belief as well. A concrete ‘next step’ the character wants to make to act on the belief.

    Example:

    World Belief: The plague that is infecting the land must be eradicated.

    Goal: I will track someone down who might know a cure.

    This gives a concrete hook for the story to progress on, and could rewards XP once the goal is completed (maybe replacing the ‘end of session’ questions). Goals & beliefs may change over time as the story progresses.

    Similarly the personal beliefs could encourage interaction between partymembers even further than just the flags, and the self beliefs could assist with character development.

  3. I have totally done this. I don’t have the doc I wrote up.

    It didn’t work for my players, but that doesn’t mean the idea sucks. I would probably just stick with beliefs though.

    – Get rid of alignment and bonds

    – Add three beliefs, and give them each like a “type”. Perhaps one belief for the group, and two personal beliefs.

    – At the end of session, if they worked toward achieving a belief, +1xp for each. If they ACHIEVED it, +3xp for each

    – Aid/Interfere is rolled based on the relevant stat.

  4. For the dungeon world based RPG my buddy and I are releasing soon we created a system kinda similar called personality facets where you can choose 6 personality facets from buckets based on your characters horoscope. 3 positive and 3 negative. I loved flags and Aarons beliefs idea sounds cool too

  5. Aaron Griffin That is actually exactly my working theory to do it. The beliefs serve as a more (multi session) thing to work towards, XP can be rewarded when a goal is achieved (replacing the normal end of session questions).

    I might use instincts but only to give characters some flavor, not for anything mechanical. Traits aren’t really needed, but I use a lot of custom skills anyway so I guess I already have them.

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