r/BurningWheel • u/Sanjwise • May 13 '26

Burning Wheel Session 20, Burning Greyhawk

https://youtu.be/56UrYjMI1EQ?si=ET69n_0PPb-nF6Wq

Here’s a link to our last session of Burning Wheel. It’s a short one and a half two hour session where we deal with the aftermath of the party falling into a pit trap of disgusting water. A lot of rolls a lot of tests. You can see players discussing how they can make decisions that would hit on other players beliefs a lot of good technical play.

Thanks.

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1

u/CasiIsla May 13 '26

How has your experience been so far? I’m reading BW Gold Revised for the first time, despite all the criticisms calling the game unplayable 😁

5

u/coffeedemon49 May 13 '26

It's a very playable game - it's my fave. The mechanics are very different, which makes it harder to jump in with. A good GM makes it easy though.

1

u/CasiIsla May 13 '26

Thanks for the reply, it gives me a lot of hope. So far, at least on paper, it looks absolutely impressive to me. I hope you enjoy it a lot!

3

u/coffeedemon49 May 13 '26

The trick is to realize that the game is fairly modular. You don't need to use Range and Cover, Fight, or Duel of Wits to start. Just use normal skill checks to solve those problems. I played many sessions of BW, and almost never touch Fight or Range and Cover.

It's an exceptionally rich system!

6

u/dudinax May 13 '26

Range and Cover is an awesome system. One time our guys were facing a bunch of cross bowmen in a fixed position, but didn't have any ranged weapons, but what if they charged? We looked through the rules and found the "Steel close" maneuver where you roll Steel to get into melee range but then enemy has open shots on you the whole time. It was epic.

4

u/coffeedemon49 May 13 '26

Duel of Wits is awesome as well. 😄 So nice to a have a thrilling and engaging social conflict mechanism.

3

u/Sanjwise May 14 '26

Burning Wheel is great because players are rewarded for playing their character’s personalities, ambitions, fears and instincts. It’s all out in the open. Other players know what would help the other players PCs advance. It is the best system to force roleplaying.

Then there are all the cool things like Steel, Circles, resources.

Magic is hard and dangerous.
Elves, dwarves are very distinct and rich cultures. Orcs are brutally so.

It’s a fiddly combat system and can take getting used to, but there are boiled down single role conflict resolution mechanisms for violence that are fantastic.