I think that my first brush with Burning Wheel was (looking at these email dates) back in mid-2007.
I cannot quite remember why I bought Burning Wheel Revised (I’m presuming I’d seen some interesting reviews or discussion and went looking), but I can remember trying to wrap my head around it a number of times, flicking between the two books.
We were just starting to play in a WFRP LARP (a homebrewed LARP based on the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying game), and I did what I often / always do with a new RPG, and tried to burn up my LARP character in BWR.
WFRP had been my first RPG, back in the day, and with the LARP starting up, and with me running a home game of WFRP, I thought that I could see a lot of potential parallels, especially between WFRP’s Careers and BW’s Lifepaths.
Trying to burn up Heinrich Segler, a Marine, was a fascinating, and helped start clicking a number of pieces into place.
What in WFRP was a single career, someone village-born who became a Marine, I had to break down into the lifepaths of Burning Wheel:
- Village Born - (Village) Sailor - (Sea) Sailor - Marine
That works. Oh, but I can also do: - Village Born - (Sea) Boy - Sailor - Marine
… hrm. Or I could… - Village Born - Carpenter’s Mate (for Bullseye-Accurate Spitting!) - Sailor - Marine
But could I do this another way?
I could, of course, each ending up the same, but different, and potentially radically so.
BW-Heinrich never saw play, but that sealed it for me, and I just kept digging into Burning Wheel deeper and deeper.
…
Whilst I did (very) briefly play in a one-on-one, I’ve GM’d far more.
From early attempts that collapsed because you don’t use full-on-fight for the first 3 orcs you encounter (that’s what Bloody Vs. is for!), to trying out Burning Empires in acoupe of abortive campaigns, it took a while for me to find my feet. There were plenty of other RPGs that I could also be playing or, more likely, running.
Still, the hooks were in, and I kept circling the game and coming back to it. It looks like I joined the forum some time back in 2008, probably because I had some rules question / Trait issue that was tripping me up.
Although, when I look back (on this forum), it looks like it might have been in reply to Per Fischer to get involved in a custom Burning Wheel / Burning Empires dice order. (Said dice have continued to be used in every BWHQ game I’ve run since, and are a most belovéd).
…
In between, I’ve dabbled in all things Burning Empires, poked at Mouseguard, facilitated a couple of runs of Inheritance and run an 18 month Torchbearer campaign (Three Against Middarmark).
…
I feel like I really hit my Burning Wheel stride with our Broken Wheel campaign, that ended up running for over 100 sessions, a 5 player monster of a campaign, of hunting cults and saving the (WFRP) Empire.
After that, came Houses of Snakes, a 3 player game of initially inspired by Torchbearer and Hilary Mantel’s “Wolf Hall” (specifically Thomas Cromwell’s growing household and the interconnected responsibilities of those living there). That lasted for a solid 4 years, with the start point (lowest-of-the-low adventurers) - end point (command of the kingdom / lover to a god) being as epic (if not more so) than I had hoped.
Currently, I’m running Flussgeschichten / River Stories (another) Burning WFRP game (hi @DaveHiggins !)
@DaveHiggins 's excellent session summaries (written in the style of an in-setting biography of his character) let me know that we just played session 94 on Sunday 31st October.
Here, we’re dealing with cults (again - a strong natural default for me in WFRP), but also Halfling/Skaven apostle-hood, bargaining with ghosts, sailing and trading up and down the rivers, and (currently) heading into Sylvania, a vampire-ruled land to rescue someone’s daughter…
…
Thanks @luke , @Thor, @Drozdal, @AndyAction and all of BWHQ.