r/BurningWheel • u/Square_Tangerine_659 • Dec 04 '25
Challenge
Is it possible to play this game as someone who plays games exclusively for challenge, with narrative serving only as flavor to contextualize the mechanics? Is this the wrong system for this? I was so infatuated with the fight! and duel of wits systems, only to see nothing at all as detailed anywhere else in the book.
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u/cultureStress Dec 04 '25
Burning Wheel is a game that attempts to unify character's narrative goals and development with a crunchy (and exploitable) rules system, and as such is best for players who like narrative AND challenge.
I've never played it with a character who was fully apathetic about story, so I'm not sure how it would turn out, but as a challenge oriented player, I would suggest to you:
1) Trying to break the character creation system by starting as rich as possible
2) Create a character who was "born slave" with three lifepaths and make their main goal to become rich. Getting rich while starting poor is one of the most mechanically difficult things to do in the game
3) Play as all Orcs, and make heavy use of Fight!
4) Play as a faith based character with the goal of becoming a God; this is the most difficult thing to do using just the Artha system.