Burning Wheel Gold is Up for Purchase

Yeah, you can buy it now if you weren't at GenCon.  From what I heard, they burned through the copies they had.  Even with the baby coming, I'm going to buy this.  It'll give me something to read to take my mind off of baby-related stress at least.

I'm very curious to see what changes they made.  I personally think of Mouse Guard as Burning Wheel with a lot of the problems fixed.  I wonder if the changes they made were to simplify or to add complexity to a game that already has a vast learning curve, or whether they made the idea that you can layer on levels of complexity as you go more explicit (in the BWR text it is there as a suggestion of doing so, but it is possible to pass over it, as I've noticed other people who read the game sometimes do).

That being said, BW changed both how I play and how I run games.  BW Gold might do it again - we'll see.

More on The One Ring - Designer Interviews

I'm playing GenCon catch-up, and am hunting down what information is coming out about the things that I'm interested in, like Burning Wheel Gold and The One Ring.  On rpggeek.com, I saw that someone had linked a bunch of designer interviews which can be found on YouTube.  Here is the link to the list.

Here's what I'm watching right now, a discussion of the tighter focus for The One Ring than in past games.  You won't be able to play a Rider of Rohan or a Knight of Gondor right off the bat, and I think it may be a good thing, design-wise.  It's definitely a good move, supplement-wise.  Assuming the game takes off, it'll probably be a bit like Dark Heresy leading to Rogue Trader - new settings and options released as semi-new games in themselves.

It's Up - The One Ring is available for purchase as a PDF

The One Ring is up for purchase as a PDF.  Partly because of my broke-ness, I'm waiting for some reviews before I drop the money on it.  If it seems awesome, I will also want a hard copy.

The One Ring Update

Cubicle 7 continues to release information about their upcoming game The One Ring: Adventures Over the Edge of the Wild.

Here's a link to what a friend just point out: some information on the mechanics of the game and a preview of the character sheet.

From what they've posted so far, it seems like they've taken some cues from other 'standard' fantasy rpgs with their roots in wargaming (you know the ones), a bit of the group mechanics found in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (a game I find very impressive), and some conditions mojo from games like Mouse Guard.  I'm pretty sure the d12 is just a gimmick, which is fine with me - I'm not anti-gimmick.  If there was a custom nine-sided die for an LotR game, that would obviously be better, but you can't have everything.

So far, it looks like a game I would run.  At this glance, it might be the best LotR game to date, at least by my standards.  Definitely worth checking out, and almost certainly something I'll end up buying.  Whether it means I drop my Servants of the Secret Fire project remains to be seen.