Keith Stetson Not that you’re wrong—it might totally be not for you—but IMHO Burning Wheel is a game that you can’t fairly judge in a session. I ran a game for ~1.5 yr, and except for the proliferation of wises (I think they need an abstracted system, like Circles), we absolutely loved it, and would happily play it again. But the first dozen or 2 dozen sessions were really rough, despite following Luke’s advice and only adding in spokes one at a time, as needed. If you’d asked me at session 5 if this was the game for me, I’d’ve said ‘no’, that it’s just too crunchy and too fiddly and too tactical for me—that I prefer games where player mastery of the rules is less significant. But now? I think it’s not a pickup game, but one of the best long-term games out there, and I would happily run or play it again. And that’s despite usually rejecting running any game that crunchy.

Yes, I know that people play and enjoy one-off games, particularly at conventions. I still think that’s a poor fit for the game, not allowing many of the really amazing parts of the game to shine (because they require longitudinal play to come up), and emphasizing the difficult learning curve of the game.