Quote from: jeff37923;1066750I'm sorry, but you know what this reminds me of? A tech manual for a piece of equipment that was written by a guy with an engineering degree who has never and will never actually work on the piece of equipment that the tech manual is for, but who does have a publisher who also has never and never will work on the same piece of equipment that the tech manual is for yet needs to be impressed by the language with which the tech manual was written in order for it to get published. Language (the nomenclature) gets used to create more of a barrier than a bridge to allow this game to be played. It is a form of tribalism.

No apology needed. But, to push back, BW is no different of a language change than Dungeon World or FATE IMHO, but this may be its own damnation : ) FWIW.  

This said, I appreciate the new verbiage in the sense the it alerts everyone that the rules and underlying mechanic assumptions are completely different.   #NotInKansasAnymore

The fans for BW remind me of Vampire fans in the 1990s. A lot of pretentious garbage about how avant-garde and edgy they are. Insert one-way truism here.

I'm in the odd position of admiring BW while no longer wanting to play it.  It does what it sets out to do very well.  I just don't want to do it.

Quote from: Jason Coplen;1066869The fans for BW remind me of Vampire fans in the 1990s. A lot of pretentious garbage about how avant-garde and edgy they are. Insert one-way truism here.

I'll see that, and raise with an open invitation to anyone who wants to join us in the outskirts of Boston to see how we run BW.  We are not Vampires, not edgy (except for the one in the Pikachu hat), and we are certainly not one-wayism.  Just a bunch of fellahs who like gaming together, laugh, play other games than just BW, and have an affinity for pretending that they are Dwarves who are on a mission to reclaim Moria during the 4th Age of Middle Earth.  Nothing pretentious or strange in that. Oh, and this was photos was when we went off the rails with a session of Mafia (I was the the Doctor) - great game BTW!
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Fixed that for you

Quote from: Azraele;1066877Fixed that for you

Snort - well played.

Quote from: Tyndale;1066879Snort - well played.

Fair play: here's a picture of me as my alter-ego, "The Beautiful Butterfly"

Spoiler

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Say, if you want, I could "Burn" that character up for you.  The first Belief would clearly be, "I am majestic. Others will worship my beauty".  Oh, and your first Instinct would be, "When confronted, strike a pose". And the Trait would be: Boots!

Quote from: Tyndale;1066883Say, if you want, I could "Burn" that character up for you.  The first Belief would clearly be, "I am majestic. Others will worship my beauty".  Oh, and your first Instinct would be, "When confronted, strike a pose". And the Trait would be: Boots!

Alarmingly accurate

Quote from: Tyndale;1066883And the Trait would be: Boots!

You can have boots ... if you're willing to sacrifice the feet of your firstborn child. You can walk in comfort if your offspring never walks again! Until then, you get only socks and sandals.

My primary experience with Burning Wheel is Burning Empire, though I did buy the BW books at some point, the 'lets make up a new language for basic concepts' makes the BW books worthless to me. Spokes? Seriously?

I love all this talk about how complex and rich and deep and whatnot the game is.

No.

Its a small dice pool system with an embiggened Rock-paper-sissors element that was much better handled in Pelgrane Press's Dying Earth.


All that 'depth' and 'richness' and 'complexity' or other glowing adjectives of choice comes from the BITs crap.

And every single element of that relies entirely on Emergent Play.  Its entirely subjective, and if you 'do it wrong'... meaning you and your group didn't get the same awesome emergent experience as some other group, its always said you didn't understand the rules.  

Ultimately, however, BW... or at least the BE incarnation... is an RPG designed to play like a board game.  If the rules are remotely robust it comes at an utter lack of flexibility, which is why it is so very polarizing. If you don't get that emergent play experience, the game has nothing else to offer.

Quote from: Spike;1066892My primary experience with Burning Wheel is Burning Empire, though I did buy the BW books at some point, the 'lets make up a new language for basic concepts' makes the BW books worthless to me. Spokes? Seriously?

I love all this talk about how complex and rich and deep and whatnot the game is.

No.

Its a small dice pool system with an embiggened Rock-paper-sissors element that was much better handled in Pelgrane Press's Dying Earth.


All that 'depth' and 'richness' and 'complexity' or other glowing adjectives of choice comes from the BITs crap.

And every single element of that relies entirely on Emergent Play.  Its entirely subjective, and if you 'do it wrong'... meaning you and your group didn't get the same awesome emergent experience as some other group, its always said you didn't understand the rules.  

Ultimately, however, BW... or at least the BE incarnation... is an RPG designed to play like a board game.  If the rules are remotely robust it comes at an utter lack of flexibility, which is why it is so very polarizing. If you don't get that emergent play experience, the game has nothing else to offer.

So not for you then? Or to badly paraphrase, everything you just said was wrong.

Don't get me wrong I get not liking a game, I think D&D and it's various generational incarnations are shitwank,  it the crap that if I don't like it because it's emo, or board game or rules too strange wah is typical of this site.

*you do manage to put one or two criticisms in, that whilst still wrong, are better than the norm.

Quote from: HorusArisen;1066905So not for you then? Or to badly paraphrase, everything you just said was wrong.

Don't get me wrong I get not liking a game, I think D&D and it's various generational incarnations are shitwank,  it the crap that if I don't like it because it's emo, or board game or rules too strange wah is typical of this site.

*you do manage to put one or two criticisms in, that whilst still wrong, are better than the norm.

That was a very generic response.  Tell me, in what way was my criticism wrong?  

Is it, or is it not, a small dice pool system?

Does it, or does it not rely on a system of hidden choice trumps, a la Rock-Paper-Scissors?

Does it, or does it not, have an incredibly rigid structure of turns and actions covering every possible level of action, and a specific form of adversarial play,  very much like a board game? *

Does it, or does it not, rely on utterly rewriting the standard use jargon of game terms in order to dress itself up, for example: Burning instead of Character Creation? Or Mannish instead of 'man' or 'human'.

Does, or does not, the BIT system rely entirely on Emergent Properties rather than hard coded rules, to produce the desired outcomes?

Is it or is it not true that the Emergent Property elements of game play are the parts of the game that are most thoroughly praised, and most criticism of BW are focused on how the nay sayers 'don't get it', meaning that they didn't use said Emergent Play element (BIT) properly?


You are correct that BW/BE isn't for me. I prefer sandboxes, but you seem to be thinking that I don't understand or 'get' this style of play, just as you assume that D&D is my go-to system, which it is not.  But I listed some very hard, verifiable  descriptions of the system, and your vague counterargument consists of 'nah, brah, you're wrong'. **

Please, How? I've even made it easier for you, since you seem to want to make a case. Make it.



*If this is only accurate to Burning Empires, mea culpa.

** I was sorely tempted to claim you accuse me, in not so many words, of being a One-True-wayist, but that would be a stretch.  None of my initial comments rose to making a subjective claim about the game, but describing it mechanically. If you don't like how a cold description of the mechanics sound, that isn't my concern.  I reserved my complaints for the attitudes of defenders, in which case I can rest my case with your response. Thanks for that.

Spike is giving his honest assessment without offending anyone. Kudos for that.

The problem I see around here is that a lot of people appears to take pleasure in offending or insulting fans of games they don't like. That's something I honestly can't understand.

By Spike's line of argument, no game is all that and a bag of chips.  They all depend on emergent play.  A person might prefer dice pools or not dice pools, but the alternatives are nothing special, either.  Rock/paper/scissors/lizard/spock is nothing special; neither are mild bonus/penalty modifiers attached to a descriptive action.  

That might even be correct, but it hardly makes BW unique in that respect.