Burning Wheel

thaneofcawdor

So, Rym, you're thinking about getting onto the Burning Wheel, huh? Excellent.

Have you checked out the community at burningwheel.org? The forums there, while not exactly jumpin', are consistently active. The game's designer, Luke Crane, seems to reply very quickly to questions about the rules, or the game's philosophy in general. And the site is packed with extra content, like beta rules and community-submitted doodads.

And do you know what the real sweet part is? The whole game costs twenty-five bucks.

The only flaw I see with the game is that it enforces a certain style of play - character driven, on-the-fly, and does not encourage the style of Game Mastering where the GM arbitrarily sets the tone and the plot. It's all about what the players want. I happen to think that's great, but it may not suit everyone.

Apreche

Everything I hear about this system makes it seem really awesome. We're going to play a demo of it at Ubercon this weekend. If it doesn't suck I'm almost sure we'll buy it.

thaneofcawdor

I'm almost certain it won't suck, Luke Crane's running it. I only wish I lived on the same continent as you guys. I'd be there like *that*.

Rym

Hmm.. Like I'd said, I'm not too familiar with the game outside of its combat system, since that's what I had demoed for me. That character driven style of play, however, is something I always aspire to in D&D in general.

I assure all of you that we'll be returning from Ubercon with a full report of Burning Wheel (in addition to whatever other goodies we comes across).

Alex

Alright, even the limited, dancing-around-the-issue discussion you had in the Ubercon podcast was enough to seriously intrigue me about this game. The argument system in particular, as this is something I've been looking for since the last live D&D campaign I ran. The BW website has a preview of those rules, and it's certainly the best (okay, it may be the only) attempt I've seen in a game to take that kind of action as seriously as say, combat.

So, yeah, I may have to buy.

Ametto

It sounds really cool. I'm really interested in the fact that it may squash out the rpg drama. guh I have stories about that.

Apreche

I don't know what you m ean by squashing out the RPG drama. Do you mean out of game or in game drama? But I can tell you that Burning Wheel forces awesome drama to happen in-game. The GM even described our Viking escapade as a soap opera more than once.

Rym

I assume she means the drama that can ensue out of character when people take a game too seriously and use their characters to screw other people's characters ;^)

Burning wheel really forces you to stay in your role. Even when my character failed utterly, I felt accomplished OOC in that I had played him out to his end. The fun comes not in achieving your goals, but in striving for them.

Ametto

yeah Rym is right on the dot.

One of the players has threatened to kick the GM out of his house a couple of times for non sensical reasons. Once when the GM wouldn't allow him to be a Japanese samurai in a game with a medieval european setting.

Apreche

OK, rule #1 in playing any RPG. Don't play with people so immature that they will attempt to kick the GM out of their house. In fact, that probably isn't the kind of person you should ever associate with.

But if you think about it, Burning Wheel might help to keep those people in line a little bit. But nutsos will still freak out if they lose a duel of wits, refuse to change their beliefs, etc. I can see it happening.

Rym

So myself, Scott, and Pete all have our Burning Wheel books, and we're reading them furiously. Expect an episode all about this in the coming weeks.

Suffice to say, from what I've read of the core book thus far, this system is going to revolutionize the way we game. Expect Scott and I to run one-off scenarios at our various geekends to come ^_^

Pilitus

I got the books as well, it sounded interesting and I have the bad habit of collecting systems I will never get to use. I can see a variety of ways that some of the stuff in here can be used in normal D&D style gaming to improve some role-playing, even if nobody wants to switch systems.

I need to find a gaming group.

thaneofcawdor

I'm fairly lucky in that I have a crack team of 5-10 players (it varies from week to week) at my club that are willing to try any and every game I put in front of them. They took to Burning Wheel like a duck to cake. Gawd bless them all.

Burning Wheel is such an easy game to sell to other players, but I don't envy you having to find them in the first place. Are there no clubs in your area?