Hey, everyone. Thought I'd cast off my dusty old ghosting cape and throw in my two cents here.
Our group switched from playing DnD 3rd edition to playing Burning Wheel about a year ago, I think. The main reason was we were getting tired of dungeons and combat, and wanted something with a bit more depth of roleplaying, and a set of rules to support and encourage that depth.
I had developed an interest in the so-called indie rpgs (check out The Forge if you don't know what I'm talking about) and finally managed to persuade the rest of the group to try some of them out. We experimented with several - "Dogs in the Vineyard", "Polaris", "The Shab-Al-Hiri Roach", "Dust Devils", "Don't Rest Your Head" and "Agon" - but decided at one point to focus on Burning Wheel, because that seemed like the best game to support a long, on-going campaign. Plus it's set in a fantasy setting.
Basically, we never really got the handle on this game. On paper, it seemed like the perfect game for us. The skills, advancement system, combat and duel of wits looked like exactly what we were looking for. The implied setting was a bit too Tolkien, but that didn't matter.
But somehow it never clicked for us once we started playing. In all, I think we tried about three different campaign models over the course of about six months or so. The main reasons why we as a group didn't enjoy this game, I think, are these:
1.) The rules were too complex for some of the players. Full enjoyment of BW really demands that everyone understands how all the subsystems work, or you'll find yourself as GM (or whoever's read the rules) explaining the same maneuvers and rules over and over again. This is especially true for combat and duel of wits. Some of the players in our group did not want to read the rules - "Just explain the basics so we can get to playing!" This resulted in some people being annoyed that others didn't know the rules, and others being annoyed that the rules were too complex and weird.
2.) It was too different from everything else we'd ever tried. Some of the players in our group have been gaming for twenty years, and none of the bigger "mainstream" games compare to BW in terms of complexity and what it demands of the roleplay of the people around the table. It was hard to wrap our brains around some of the concepts in BW. Mainly, people had problems with the fact that you get Artha (xp, roughly) for certain types of roleplay. To some, it felt like "min-maxing" (or whatever it's called) when you created a specific Instinct or Belief that you knew would give you Artha whenever you did X. It seemed like bad roleplaying, when in fact it's the opposite.
3.) It didn't feel right. In the end, this is probably what it boils down to. It turned out to be not what were looking for after all.
This all sounds worse that it is. These were minor annoyances, that mostly just resulted in the game being pretty alien to the playstyle we've settled on over the years. Most of the time we did have fun with BW, and the decision to quit (or give up) was mainly based on the fact that, in the end, it just felt like too much hard work for what we were getting out of it.
On the positive side, I will say that the Duel of Wits is one of the coolest things ever, once you get a handle on it. The same goes for the Fight! mechanics. Basically these two forms of conflict (social and physical) use the same core rules - where you "script" your next three actions, like Golanthius mentioned - but when arguing with someone (using the DoW) you're trying to bring down their Body of Argument, thus proving them wrong or whatever your goal might be. To do this you use maneuvers like "Point", "Rebuttal" and "Avoid the Topic" where you would be using attacks, blocks, feints and so on in combat.
Also, the lifepaths are really cool. And once you've finally found the perfect way to creating whatever character you were aiming for, you'll start out knowing a lot more about his past that you usually do in other games.
Burning Wheel also has one of the most comitted and helpful fan communities I've ever seen.
Finally, a bit of advice:
To anyone intending to give this game a spin, I'll say this: Start out small. This advice is even in the book, but we thought "Bah! We're experienced roleplayers, we can handle this!" We couldn't. I strongly suggest playing at least the first session without using any of the Fight!, Duel of Wits or Range And Cover systems. Then start adding them one at a time, in that order. Wait until you have a firm grasp of a system before you add another. This might seem unnecessarily slow, but I think it's the only right way to go about it. In retrospect, I think this might be the root of most of our problems with BW. The game's just too big a mouthful if you start out with everything.
Also, there are a few of the concepts in the game that are far more abstract than most gamers are used. Resources stands out as the most jarring one to me, but there are others. Basically, Resources is more like a stat than a pool of cash, and when you want to buy something big, you roll a check to see if you can. This represents scraping together funds, calling in favours and so on. If you succeed you get whatever you were trying to buy. If you fail, you don't get it, and there's a chance of "taxing" your funds, which means they decrease (this description totally doesn't do the system justice, though). My advice is to just go with it. Accept it as part of the game and don't try to build around it - it won't work. None of us liked the abstract way funds were handled in the game, so we house-ruled an elaborate "cash on hand" system that ended up slowing everything down and sucking. Resources (and Circles and Reputation and so on) are a part of the whole, and were meant to get rid things that the designer hated in other games.
It's not "min-maxing" to choose BITs (beliefs, instincts and traits) that you know will get you Artha at certain points. You should be thinking of the BITs as "What do I want my character to get rewarded for doing?" or "Which situations Do I want my character to deal with?" or simply "What do I, the player, think is cool?" and base your BITs on that. It's an incredibly cool way of showing the GM what you want the story of your character to be about. We also found that having a Belief in common was a good way to ensure that at least some of the players' actions were motivated byt the same things. The downside is that this can put too much emphasis on that one Belief.
It helps to think of Duel of Wits as Combat with Words. It uses the same core system as the Fight! mechanics, only a lot simpler. The main difference between the two is that you have to roleplay the dialog between actions in the Duel of Wits.
All in all, Burning Wheel is a game that requires a fair bit of patience a first, along with the will to make it work. Once you do get it to work, though, it's an awesome game. We did have a few moments where you could sense what this game can do. In the end it just needed more work than we were willing to put into it.
Our group switched from playing DnD 3rd edition to playing Burning Wheel about a year ago, I think. The main reason was we were getting tired of dungeons and combat, and wanted something with a bit more depth of roleplaying, and a set of rules to support and encourage that depth.
I had developed an interest in the so-called indie rpgs (check out The Forge if you don't know what I'm talking about) and finally managed to persuade the rest of the group to try some of them out. We experimented with several - "Dogs in the Vineyard", "Polaris", "The Shab-Al-Hiri Roach", "Dust Devils", "Don't Rest Your Head" and "Agon" - but decided at one point to focus on Burning Wheel, because that seemed like the best game to support a long, on-going campaign. Plus it's set in a fantasy setting.
Basically, we never really got the handle on this game. On paper, it seemed like the perfect game for us. The skills, advancement system, combat and duel of wits looked like exactly what we were looking for. The implied setting was a bit too Tolkien, but that didn't matter.
But somehow it never clicked for us once we started playing. In all, I think we tried about three different campaign models over the course of about six months or so. The main reasons why we as a group didn't enjoy this game, I think, are these:
1.) The rules were too complex for some of the players. Full enjoyment of BW really demands that everyone understands how all the subsystems work, or you'll find yourself as GM (or whoever's read the rules) explaining the same maneuvers and rules over and over again. This is especially true for combat and duel of wits. Some of the players in our group did not want to read the rules - "Just explain the basics so we can get to playing!" This resulted in some people being annoyed that others didn't know the rules, and others being annoyed that the rules were too complex and weird.
2.) It was too different from everything else we'd ever tried. Some of the players in our group have been gaming for twenty years, and none of the bigger "mainstream" games compare to BW in terms of complexity and what it demands of the roleplay of the people around the table. It was hard to wrap our brains around some of the concepts in BW. Mainly, people had problems with the fact that you get Artha (xp, roughly) for certain types of roleplay. To some, it felt like "min-maxing" (or whatever it's called) when you created a specific Instinct or Belief that you knew would give you Artha whenever you did X. It seemed like bad roleplaying, when in fact it's the opposite.
3.) It didn't feel right. In the end, this is probably what it boils down to. It turned out to be not what were looking for after all.
This all sounds worse that it is. These were minor annoyances, that mostly just resulted in the game being pretty alien to the playstyle we've settled on over the years. Most of the time we did have fun with BW, and the decision to quit (or give up) was mainly based on the fact that, in the end, it just felt like too much hard work for what we were getting out of it.
On the positive side, I will say that the Duel of Wits is one of the coolest things ever, once you get a handle on it. The same goes for the Fight! mechanics. Basically these two forms of conflict (social and physical) use the same core rules - where you "script" your next three actions, like Golanthius mentioned - but when arguing with someone (using the DoW) you're trying to bring down their Body of Argument, thus proving them wrong or whatever your goal might be. To do this you use maneuvers like "Point", "Rebuttal" and "Avoid the Topic" where you would be using attacks, blocks, feints and so on in combat.
Also, the lifepaths are really cool. And once you've finally found the perfect way to creating whatever character you were aiming for, you'll start out knowing a lot more about his past that you usually do in other games.
Burning Wheel also has one of the most comitted and helpful fan communities I've ever seen.
Finally, a bit of advice:
To anyone intending to give this game a spin, I'll say this: Start out small. This advice is even in the book, but we thought "Bah! We're experienced roleplayers, we can handle this!" We couldn't. I strongly suggest playing at least the first session without using any of the Fight!, Duel of Wits or Range And Cover systems. Then start adding them one at a time, in that order. Wait until you have a firm grasp of a system before you add another. This might seem unnecessarily slow, but I think it's the only right way to go about it. In retrospect, I think this might be the root of most of our problems with BW. The game's just too big a mouthful if you start out with everything.
Also, there are a few of the concepts in the game that are far more abstract than most gamers are used. Resources stands out as the most jarring one to me, but there are others. Basically, Resources is more like a stat than a pool of cash, and when you want to buy something big, you roll a check to see if you can. This represents scraping together funds, calling in favours and so on. If you succeed you get whatever you were trying to buy. If you fail, you don't get it, and there's a chance of "taxing" your funds, which means they decrease (this description totally doesn't do the system justice, though). My advice is to just go with it. Accept it as part of the game and don't try to build around it - it won't work. None of us liked the abstract way funds were handled in the game, so we house-ruled an elaborate "cash on hand" system that ended up slowing everything down and sucking. Resources (and Circles and Reputation and so on) are a part of the whole, and were meant to get rid things that the designer hated in other games.
It's not "min-maxing" to choose BITs (beliefs, instincts and traits) that you know will get you Artha at certain points. You should be thinking of the BITs as "What do I want my character to get rewarded for doing?" or "Which situations Do I want my character to deal with?" or simply "What do I, the player, think is cool?" and base your BITs on that. It's an incredibly cool way of showing the GM what you want the story of your character to be about. We also found that having a Belief in common was a good way to ensure that at least some of the players' actions were motivated byt the same things. The downside is that this can put too much emphasis on that one Belief.
It helps to think of Duel of Wits as Combat with Words. It uses the same core system as the Fight! mechanics, only a lot simpler. The main difference between the two is that you have to roleplay the dialog between actions in the Duel of Wits.
All in all, Burning Wheel is a game that requires a fair bit of patience a first, along with the will to make it work. Once you do get it to work, though, it's an awesome game. We did have a few moments where you could sense what this game can do. In the end it just needed more work than we were willing to put into it.
This just adds a few more numbers to the scale, but also allows me as a rules-designer to make maneuvers and benefits have more different bonuses and penalties. It's really made the game better for us.
And I was checking out the website for the movie (The Gamers 2, that is. Not Professional Courtesy) and noticed that Monte Cook plays a minor part in it as well.