You need to fix the quality of this PDF. All the art is blurred, I don't want to read it. The text is clear, the art is blurry.

This game has some of the most baffling mechanics I've come across in tabletop. I played four sessions of Torchbearer with a group of TTRPG veterans, all of us looking for a gritty OSR game. Torchbearer has been the go-to name in old-school revival games, so we thought we'd give it a try.

There are some good ideas here: the "grind" mechanic keeps the game tense and keeps resource management at the forefront. The town mechanics seem deep and interesting as well, although they can sometimes stifle organic roleplay opportunities.

Beyond that, almost every aspect of this ruleset is over-complicated and full of contradictory approaches. Why are there two separate sets of experience points (Persona points and Fate points), that are earned separately and can be spent for mildly different effects? Why are there so many different types of PC abilities and traits (natures, wises, instincts)? Why are there exception to every rule? For example: every action in a dungeon costs grind time, every action except magic actions. And instinct actions.

I understand rewarding failed rolls with skill experience in order to encourage players to take risks. But this makes a LOT less sense in a system where every roll advances the grind clock, so your failed roll is always costing your whole party their grind resources, at least.

The fact that every "move" involves the whole party makes sense on paper, but immediately breaks down in play. There's no provisions for splitting the party, and doing so is mechanically punitive (each separate party's actions progresses the grind clock) and makes no narrative sense (why can't two separate groups act concurrently)?

All of these problems carry into the conflict resolution mechanic - my least favorite part of the whole design. Conflict scenes take multiple steps to initiate, and are full of arbitrary abstractions and limits. This alone makes it awkward to resolve quick conflicts - we found ourselves avoiding the conflict phase entirely when dealing with individual NPCs (instead we rolled them as skill checks to save time). Combat forces teams of more than 3 down to 3 combatants at a time (for no good reason) and abstracts the group's "hitpoints" into a shared pool. This is interesting, because characters are still knocked out of combat arbitrarily as these hitpoints are depleted.

Conflicts are forced down to 3 combatants at a time in service of the card-combat system - the player and the GM choose cards secretly and then reveal them simultaneously. This is a rock-paper-scissors mechanic that requires a matrix to determine the outcome, but that's not even the biggest issue. In every other RPG, combat actions are part DECISION (what your character chooses to do) and part RANDOMNESS (the roll of the dice). This system replaces the player's decision with a false choice - the card interactions are themselves ultimately random (rock-paper-scissors) and their outcomes require dice rolling - randomness on top of randomness. Another pet peeve of mine is the "conflict leader" - one player chooses the cards for the entire party, even while the consequences of those choices are visited upon their friend's characters.

Player flexibility and creativity can compensate for a lot of clumsy design in TTRPGs, but I'm truly surprised by the unanimous popularity of this system. My group has since switched to Forbidden Lands, a very elegant OSR game that much better accounts for the kinds of situations that emerge from roleplaying. Torchbearer feels like a boardgame without the board; narratively intuitive or satisfying actions will often be denied just because there are no provisions for them within the rules.

Interesting story from the Iron Empires

But the quality of the comic is very low. The file has only 8 MB. Thats for 112 pages!

I want a pdf version of the book. This is a great intro, but the hard copy isn't the easiest thing to navigate. There is a good index but a pdf would certainly make using the book easier. I have a physical copy and it is beautiful. I just don't feel like getting a degree in Burning Wheel just to find obscure references. Please consider making a pdf version available.

For just an intro and the fact that this is free I'd give it 5 stars. However, there is so much missing it really leaves you in the dark about the really great system that Burning Wheel presents.

A good bundle to get if you are interested in the Iron Empires setting. I truly liked the first and second comics and the third, if nothing else, adds another piece to the mosaic of the Iron Empires.

The review is more about the story than the edition itself because my copy from DrivethroughRPG was of bad quality and the images were not entirely sharp.

In general, I love how each volume of Iron Empires shows a different perspective on the world. Yes, we move in all three cases in the higher echelons of the society. However, Void brings into the image the Hammer and its space battles. While the previous two volumes spoke about the war on foot, the faith, the Worm, Void introduces space battles on the verge of the organized empires, it shows again the interesting baroque aristocracy and its spartan war machines and it also shows exactly how the Worm threat is viewed by worlds that are not directly affected by it - basically not at all, which makes it even more threatening.

I felt the pace of the book and the lots of internal monologues a little too slowing down. However, it is still a great addition to the puzzle of the Iron Empires world and if you liked the previous two or like the setting, it is certainly worth reading.

(My Goodreads review)

A great continuation of the Iron Empires story. It is independent of the previous volume thus one can read them independently. Great art once again and the story was now a little more compelling. I loved the designs of the of the armors and not to mention the idea to use artillery in space. This volume has also a little more of a Dune ring to it thanks to the introduction of psychologists.

(My Goodreads review)

I love the art (well drawn and reminds of me a more sober Metabarons version), the details, the world that seems familiar yet alien. The story itself in Faith Conquers is more of an introduction of the threat and of the world of Iron Empires and I think it manages to find the right balance between throwing the reader into the world and explaining it to him. What struck me sometimes as a little off was that while the world sounds detailed and realistic, the main hero is the all mastering super figure that is good at combat, good at stealth missions, hard to surprise etc.

I have mixed feelings about the world of Iron Empires. It reminds me too much of Warhammer 40 000, but it lacks the usual Warhammer pathos and is a lot more relatable as it is not such a weird future. The world is really well thought through and seems consistent, has a relentless threat of the Worm and presents great military sci-fi (as opposed to the often action-heroic madness filled W40K stories). However, Iron Empires is worth exploring, in this comics or in others, as it presents an interesting sci-fi setting somewhere between W40K and Dune.

(Originally a Goodreads review.)

This is simply a preview of the system, not the whole thing. I think it's awesome of the publishers to hand this out for free so you can assess the system before getting a full PDF or picking up the book. It's awesome that it's the actual first few chapters, if you read all of this you don't need to re-read the same material but "correct" if you decide to jump into the system, you can just jump into the details. My friends and I have already decided to play Burning Wheel for our next game, so I'm waiting for a physical book to get here. Kudos and 5 stars for letting me get started with learning the system while I wait.

I love all Burning Games, they bring something to the table that the most popular RPGs miss by a longshot.

Torchbearer is a game about crawling through dungeons and fighting dragons. Sort of. Torchbearer is moreso a game about trying to scrape by a living and maintain your lifestyle by doing the aforementioned D&D stuff. It's a good game about people in bad places trying to work together.

• It's eminently hackable. The Classes present in the game give you a good idea of what the game is about. As do the spells and miracles, and the traits, and everything else. And the mechanics are all very simple, an adventuring day is all about trying to be what's easiest and at the same time be professional and heroic, and figuring out how to do that mechanically and how you could slap together a class for that one concept you had isn't that hard if you pick up one or more of the supplements for additional character options.
• The game gives players a wider degree of control of WHEN they choose to fail, and does that in its reward structure for acquiring the 2 mechanical currencies, Artha and Checks.
• It's a simple game and easy to teach to people who are familiar with ideas in fantasy but not neccessarily with other roleplaying games, but maintains a good degree of tension and depth whilst playing.
• It makes for good stories and better narratives. The game reinforces the very gritty down to earth dungeonpunk fantasy present in it with every single mechanic. There are mechanical warnings of when things are going to change in fiction, and so it's way easier to run a long-running story with stakes and player investment than other games (as a warning, when you run the game, don't focus too much on reinforcing the weight of those things while you run the game, the game does it already and it's easy to get burned out on tension if there are no releases in tension). I suggest you pick it up and get buy in from the people you want to play it with before you do. It's a good time if you've got folks interested in the very specific niche this game fills, and still alright otherwise.

This system is really cool and I like the mindset behind it. It is really complicated and while I would probably never run a game with friends, elements can be easily copied into any other rpg system. Good for thinking through characters. HOWEVER... This edition has had it's legs cut off, and is about as useful as well, a hub and spokes. You cannot play a full game with this as the pdf cuts off halfway before getting to character creation. Using just this text will ensure a bumpy ride.

Very useful. Perfect game aids. Not that I've run a game yet, but with the level of book-keeping the game demands I'm sure these will be just what I need.

I got this as a primer to Burning Wheel from a PC perspective and it definitely accomplishes that well. It is essentially the first 70 pages of the Burning Wheel full book. If you are playing in a Burning Wheel game then this is something you should read.

I am a fan of all the products by this design team from Burning Wheel, through Torchbearer.

In Torchbearer I see all the familiar elements from the earlier games, and the mindset is very evocative of games I played in the late 70's and early 80's. The layout of the book, and chapter designations made it easy to read and I liked the choices in art style. The variation in the random charts design was excellent and made it feel like you were using the older game's books, without having to use anything other than a D6. The dice notation shorthand is smooth and keeps the math manageable so that you can focus on in game action without breaking character. I know the motif was emulating the more basic versions of its inspiration, I hope to see more supplements to expand on the options available as characters progress.

Reading this book made me want to pull out all my old campaign notebooks and run everything I wrote in the 80's and 90's all over again.

Excellent and well worth the price point...

David W Henley