DarrenMantle
07-31-2008, 09:38 AM
Just some rambling thoughts on a Thursday morning...
About a year ago I bought Burning Empires, more on curiousity after reading some very heated threads about it over on RPG.net than anything else. The unparalleled physical quality of the book won me over right away, but I'll admit that I was scratching my head quite a bit through my first reading. Keep in mind that I went in knowing nothing at all about Burning Wheel and it's mechanics other than some very general descriptions from forum threads. So I'm trying to digest the unique aspects of BW along with the even more unique framework of BE all at once. Heavy stuff.
Probably the most unusual item from my perspective at the time was the concept of Scene Economy... the idea of concretely identifying types of scenes and having an exhaustible budget of them really took some getting used to. Eventually though, I realized the absolute imperative nature of the mechanic within the framework of BE, and grew to really appreciate it.
Since then I've bought several other RPGs, including just recently Burning Wheel Revised. And reading through other games, I find myself occasionally feeling like there's a lack of focus or explicit statement of intent for the use of the games... and I realize that I'm missing explicit Scene economy! I got so used to thinking in terms of limited scenes and tightly focused intent on gameplay while reading BE (and looking for a group to play it with) that I started intuitively thinking that way about other games that aren't written with that intent. It's very strange. But if there were an award for Most Innovative Mechanic in an RPG, the scene mechanic in BE should get the lifetime award. ;)
About a year ago I bought Burning Empires, more on curiousity after reading some very heated threads about it over on RPG.net than anything else. The unparalleled physical quality of the book won me over right away, but I'll admit that I was scratching my head quite a bit through my first reading. Keep in mind that I went in knowing nothing at all about Burning Wheel and it's mechanics other than some very general descriptions from forum threads. So I'm trying to digest the unique aspects of BW along with the even more unique framework of BE all at once. Heavy stuff.
Probably the most unusual item from my perspective at the time was the concept of Scene Economy... the idea of concretely identifying types of scenes and having an exhaustible budget of them really took some getting used to. Eventually though, I realized the absolute imperative nature of the mechanic within the framework of BE, and grew to really appreciate it.
Since then I've bought several other RPGs, including just recently Burning Wheel Revised. And reading through other games, I find myself occasionally feeling like there's a lack of focus or explicit statement of intent for the use of the games... and I realize that I'm missing explicit Scene economy! I got so used to thinking in terms of limited scenes and tightly focused intent on gameplay while reading BE (and looking for a group to play it with) that I started intuitively thinking that way about other games that aren't written with that intent. It's very strange. But if there were an award for Most Innovative Mechanic in an RPG, the scene mechanic in BE should get the lifetime award. ;)