Burning World

So I want to run a Game of Thrones style game with the flavor I love from Burning Wheel but with the speed of play and low complexity I love from AW. This is leading me to Burning World (someone shoot me, right the hell now, before I do something dumb). This is going to be the dirtiest hack I've ever done. This is just for my home group but I will be posting (so long as I remain sane to do so) what I come up with. 

This post is just somewhere to keep my ideas for now. I invite all of you to debate the wisdom of this with me, share ideas and suggestions, and point out obvious errors. 

What does BW do that I want to do with AW?

Fights are short and deadly, AW already handles that. 

Circles, easy enough, enmity is almost baked in. 

DoW, again, very easy to model in AW. 

FoRKs, thats new to AW but might be something that can be handled with tags. 

Lifepaths, definitely outside the realm of what AW does well. I'm thinking most LPs will be tag clouds with a move, bonus to a core stat, or both with fewer tags. Prerequisites might or might not make sense. 

Doing that might make each setting a playbook. Limit five LPs and make lead count as an LP with a free bonus to one stat. Make each LP have at least two of the three things, bonus, tag cloud, or move and players can only choose one. Players also have to take one bonus, one tag cloud and one move from their LPs. 

Linked tests, are they central to the feel of BW? I think so and I'm ok with adding that in. Temporary tags? They stick around until they are pealed off by a hard move or another player's move. Since tags seem like they are becoming important I think each setting may need some moves to manipulate them. 

Should tags have roots like BW skills do? If so does a tag rooted in a negative ability give negatives rather than positives? That is too much work unless I can design the LPs so that each tag cloud in them comes from one ability and the abilities on the character sheet have space beside them to list the associated tags. Might be too much hassle. I'll have to see. 

Failure and success lead to advancement. This says to me that I should drop the highlighted stats (was thinking about it anyway but it makes more sense now). Three successes and three failures to earn one XP sounds ok but I'll have to work it out in practice. 

BITs, these are so far from what AW is I'm having trouble figuring them out. Instincts seem the farthest from making sense in a AW hack so I'm going to ignore them for now. Traits seem like they will fit just fine in the tag clouds, I'll drop them there for now. Beliefs seem like Hx stuff but are totally not (Hx does not seem to fit with BW either). I think what I will do is go with something a little closer to DW style Bonds but player written for Beliefs. Each player has a Goal, someone is helping them, someone either wants to profit from it or is standing in it's way. So the Beliefs would look something like this;

"My Goal in life at this moment is...

...is helping me by...

...wants to profit from this by...

...is trying to stop me by..."

And then under that would be;

"I'm trying to help...
I'm trying to profit from...
I'm trying to stop..."

And doing any of those things in a game session earns you one XP at the end of the session. 

Resources are just like Circles and such, very easy to emulate with AW. 

The core stats, probably give them BW names but I'll have to wait and see. I'm only going to tackle the humans at this point and only the non-casters. If the hack does what I want I'll be back to the well with a better understanding. 

I've been working on the same type of "Burning Apocalypse Wheel World" hack myself, so I'll go ahead and divulge what I have. I won't give away my secret-sauce just yet...

Drop highlighting -- it has no place in a BW-hack. As an aside I find it leads to weird "Pawn-Stance" play anyway.

As you've pointed out Circles and DoW and Resources is easy enough to drift in.

I also have a pass/fail [Mouse Guard] thing going myself. One can alter that cycle to whatever XP economy one wishes for the game [ie. fast vs. slow advancement].

Playbooks: I found that the MC should figure out what type of game is being played (eg. Game of Thrones) and then look at the BW Lifepaths for a specific concept. Like Knight, for example: follow all of the Lifepaths to Knight, then one has a base for Traits and/or possible special abilities.

I didn't touch FoRKs or Linked tests. I didn't feel they were necessary [for an AW-hack]. I'd love to see them done well with the AW system though.

I didn't have any special Tag rules. I'm interested in seeing what you're cooking up on that.

I reduced helping to +1/-2 with no roll necessary, but the helper gets whatever consequences the "helpee" recieves.

BITs really are the core of BW, I kept them.

Beliefs give XP on completion or where it is obvious that the player made an attempt to complete them. This means Beliefs don't have to just be short-term goals, but can also be XP-mines. This means they can be tied to other characters and also still remain a source of base characterizations [eg. "I'm a pacifist" style Beliefs].

Instincts give XP when they complicate the situation and would work fine for "my character always/never does __" stuff. I see no reason to drop them and they provide good grist for the mill and characterization.

Traits give XP when they complicate the situation as well. They are potentially a source for special [playbook] abilities. Also good grist for the mill. It is also possible to make these more akin to Mouse Guard in how they are used.

Here's how I would do finer granulated skills in AW:

Name things that aren't normally Acting Under Fire for your character, like: Riding a horse, using a long bow, socializing at court, backing up what you were going to do anyway with scripture

Choose whether swimming is on that list.

At the end of a session, whoever has the most Hx with you picks something you did this session, and adds it to that list.

About Goals:

I think there's a strong divergence in how AW handles larger stuff/goals, and how BW handles larger stuff/goals.

In my ideal world, an AW-BW hybrid goal would be like:

Choose Some Kind Of Shit You Are Gonna Make Happen. Say how it currently is and what needs to be done for it. Write down some stakes questions ("Will people stop killing my family?", "Will I have a bigger harem than my stupid uncle?"). You get expierience by rolling highlighted stats to make it happen and letting other PCs convince you of terrible ideas when you try to make it happen.