The Burn
A downloadable game
We are a band of charcoal burners, living outside society by our own ways and working the oak woods of south-west Britain, sometime in the 1200s.
It is filthy, thankless work.
Burns last for up to five days and nights. Piling up the wood is backbreaking work. Tending the fire calls for constant attention: sleeping in shifts, pushing through fatigue, and standing watch in turns each night.
And the woods are old, and wild, and hate fire like winter hates the living...
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The Burn tells the story of a band of charcoal burners tending their fragile fire, and the visitors they face in the unfriendly shadow of the forest. It is a GMless historical RPG about ritual, sacrifice, and vigilance.
It is a game for 3-5 players and takes between 1 and 2 hours to play. It requires the use of candles and matches to play.
This game is brought to you by the generosity of my Patrons, and especially Cassandra. Thank you all so much.
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Comments
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This looks really interesting!
I have a few questions.
Three times what? I don't know what is required here. Three matches per person? Surely not ten candles per player.
When choosing the night that will be your watch in character creation, is it necessary to limit options based on the number of players e.g. if you have three players, you'd only pick from firstnight, secondnight, and thirdnight? I can't tell if this is supposed to correlate with the actual nights players take turns as the Burner.
Many of the night events didn't appear to be something threatening, but that might become clearer in a group setting brainstorming it.
Hullo! Thank you for your interest and your questions.
You’re definitely right - that should be three matches.
The intention is that your character will definitely stand watch as Burner for their night. For any nights left over, I think you could either choose amongst yourselves who does a second shift as Burner or kind of handwave past them and assume they went uneventfully.
You’ve got the right instinct, I think! The prompts are meant as seeds to build into something threatening, rather than all of them being inherently threatening. Mortals might hide sinister motives or beasts be more dangerous than they seem, and nature itself may be stirred to oppose the Burners. Sleep-deprived, dizzy from the smoke, and starring out into the dark, what they see can be deceptive in its form, an imagined vision to steal their focus, or threatening to their resolve, stability, or emotional state (I’m looking at the Ace of Hearts, as an example of that last). Remember that ultimately the visits are all driven by and expressive of the spirit of the wood itself, which is old, and wild, and hates fire (and thus the Burners) like winter hates the living.
I hope that helps!
I see, thank you for clarifying!
I suppose it makes some more sense if I view the events as seeking to distract or draw away from the fire, potentially allowing it to die, rather than more directly trying to put it out or bring harm to the Burner. Of the suits, Nature feels the easiest to build off of. The trickier events are those that appear to simply be watching or making no move towards the Burner or fire (e.g. 10 and J of Clubs).
In discussing the game with others, something I might try out is using Burner night happenings as journal entries for future games. As it stands, there isn't much encouraging either way for if a Burner decides to tell the others what happened. A journal could then be passed along to create a history, and for future Burners to choose whether to believe or not :)