I’m starting a new game on Friday, and I was looking online for pictures to use for my character.
And I noticed something I’d never realized before.
For years, I’d played D&D/Pathfinder, and collected a number of great sites to choose character pictures from.
Today, in looking for her, I realized that almost every picture, on most of these sites, shows people who are ready to do battle.
I never noticed that, for all these years, because in D&D/Pathfinder, combat is the core mechanic. Roleplay fits around it. But in Burning Wheel, combat’s just another thing you do, no different, really, from all the other things. (Well, more deadly, but beyond that). So, in evaluating pictures for my decidedly-non-combat character concept, the weapons and armor jumped out at me in a way they never have before.
I’ve believed I was playing a roleplaying game for years… but I’m increasingly realizing that, despite the fact that roleplay was always my favourite part, I was actually trying to cram roleplaying into a combat simulator. And it took Burning Wheel for me to realize that, and escape it.
So I just wanted to write and say thanks. Thank you, Luke, for making this game, and thank you guys, rest of the community, for loving it enough to support it, to help it become big enough for me to find.