Burning Wheel, experience/opinions?

[Eurus]

I recently impulse-bought a copy of the Burning Wheel gold edition, which apparently includes both the character burner and revised edition core.

It was an entertaining read, and a rather handsome book to boot, but I'm curious as to how well the system actually functions. Rolling up a few characters was fun, but I find myself vaguely baffled by what sort of game and setting it's really trying to create. Am I just missing some other books that would provide the necessary context?

[Totally Guy]

My gaming preferences align well with the Burning Wheel game. (The biggest exception being my preference for short campaigns.)

In this game the setting is pretty much defined by the people you meet. All those lifepaths, each of them is an NPC. As a GM you look at the skills they have, set them from 3 to 5 and give them a name and that's an instant quick NPC. Most other games focus on geography and society to define a setting. This game leaves the big stuff to you but gives you all the little bits with the people and the traits and skills they have. That's why the lifepath settings are called that.

The game play itself can be pretty intense. The GM is not writing a out a plot but instead finding ways to challenge the beliefs of the characters. You create characters as a group and discuss what the situation is and the big details of the setting. The characters start out well tied to the world. Compelling beliefs are key.

To prep a session you create your characters and enviroment to oppose the characters' goals. You use one character's cousin as an NPC that'll oppose a goal of another character, you make the relationships a bit messy.

With the well formalised dice rolling procedure you have to get good at failure complications. Character fail frequently in Burning Wheel and good complications (that you state ahead of rolling) are key a good game. You don't offer up a roll with results that are unacceptable to the game.

You might add a monster in your prep but it'll be about how the monster upsets others or what it believes itself.


For starting out work with just the Hub and Spokes chapters. I say it's good to add in Circles, Steel and Anatomy of Injury. But at this stage it's important to see the formalised dice rolling procedure in play and the Artha awards rather than focussing on Fight and Range and Cover.

Oh, there we go. Now I'm really craving a session...

I've got the prep from the last one-shot I ran somewhere. Let me see if I can find it...

[CarpeGuitarrem]

I recently impulse-bought a copy of the Burning Wheel gold edition, which apparently includes both the character burner and revised edition core.

It was an entertaining read, and a rather handsome book to boot, but I'm curious as to how well the system actually functions. Rolling up a few characters was fun, but I find myself vaguely baffled by what sort of game and setting it's really trying to create. Am I just missing some other books that would provide the necessary context?
This might start to help (http://www.burningwheel.org/wiki/index.php?title=Downloads#The_Sword), it's a one-shot scenario that Luke Crane ran. Here's a 2-hour video of Luke running it (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIZtcfmETpo), watch that too!

The tone is very much "Tolkienean fantasy characters growing, changing, and adapting to a world". It's a bit flexible; you could easily tweak it to run A Song of Ice and Fire as easily as you could tweak it to run LOTR or Earthsea.

[Totally Guy]

While we're on useful links, this character creator app is great!

http://bwgoldburner.appspot.com/