Jun 8, 2026 · 1 hr 47 min · 12 segments
Book club episode! Andrew Gillis, designer of *Girl by Moonlight*, joined me to go through people's responses about my discussions questions on…
My, my first question as always is just an open invitation to talk about your experience with the game, what, any thoughts that you have in general.
So yeah, the first response comes from Fore, F-O-R-E. Fore says, "Burning Wheel was a formative game for me when I wanted to play D&D 4E, but the discourse surrounding it at the time felt way too noisy for me." [chuckles] That's the statement with, uh-
Fore says, "I actually still have some of the initial revised edition paperbacks around.
I got pulled into BW's emphasis on character drama and its varied life path rules.
I use this system more as a prompt for filling my other campaigns with interesting NPCs rather than the game itself now.
This is partially because it is difficult to wrangle folks into its complexities.
I had more confidence in running Burning Wheel because it put emphasis on things that I also valued in a storytelling game and was glad it advised using only the systems that would help you play, rather than demanding you learn and adapt each of those difficult systems into the mix." Nice.
That's the thing I said in the initial episode, right? Even as Burning Wheel is this big system matters game, it's also use the parts of the system that you want to use.
It, yeah, it's both modular and designed to, which is something that you'll see echoed in a game like Blades in the Dark-Or even Apocalypse World uses some, I think I've heard Vincent use some of this language of the game collapsing down to simpler systems and mechanics, and that it will try to do that gracefully.
I guess in Burning Wheel, it would be like a, the basic kind of check, right, of here's a difficulty provided to you by the GM, and then you as a player choose your, your approach, the skill you're using, you do your forks, et cetera, et cetera.
That's the core of the game, and if you just fall back to that, you're still gonna be okay, and you're still gonna be playing the game.
And yeah, you'll see that in, in a lot of games that follow in its wake as well.
My, my first question as always is just an open invitation to talk about your experience with the game, what, any thoughts that you have in general.
So yeah, the first response comes from Fore, F-O-R-E. Fore says, "Burning Wheel was a formative game for me when I wanted to play D&D 4E, but the discourse surrounding it at the time felt way too noisy for me." [chuckles] That's the statement with, uh-
Fore says, "I actually still have some of the initial revised edition paperbacks around.
I got pulled into BW's emphasis on character drama and its varied life path rules.
I use this system more as a prompt for filling my other campaigns with interesting NPCs rather than the game itself now.
This is partially because it is difficult to wrangle folks into its complexities.
I had more confidence in running Burning Wheel because it put emphasis on things that I also valued in a storytelling game and was glad it advised using only the systems that would help you play, rather than demanding you learn and adapt each of those difficult systems into the mix." Nice.
That's the thing I said in the initial episode, right? Even as Burning Wheel is this big system matters game, it's also use the parts of the system that you want to use.
It, yeah, it's both modular and designed to, which is something that you'll see echoed in a game like Blades in the Dark-Or even Apocalypse World uses some, I think I've heard Vincent use some of this language of the game collapsing down to simpler systems and mechanics, and that it will try to do that gracefully.
I guess in Burning Wheel, it would be like a, the basic kind of check, right, of here's a difficulty provided to you by the GM, and then you as a player choose your, your approach, the skill you're using, you do your forks, et cetera, et cetera.
That's the core of the game, and if you just fall back to that, you're still gonna be okay, and you're still gonna be playing the game.
And yeah, you'll see that in, in a lot of games that follow in its wake as well.
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3 of 5
“Not A Collaborative Game”
Andrew reads Burning Wheel's startling self-definition aloud
Power Dynamics Compared
Andrew contrasts power dynamics between two systems
System Mastery=Walled Garden
Mastery systems lock players inside gaming gardens
+2 more clips · 3 min 28 sec of audio in all
7 of 13
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