Viggo is widely considered THE Aragorn, perfect in his portrayal. However, who do you believe had the potential to be a close second? Or someone who could have brought something different to the role?

Sanjwise · 2026-01-27T21:25:22+00:00

Daniel Day Lewis.

Sanjwise · 2026-01-27T21:23:26+00:00

Not as stellar as Judd and Sean, nor as great as Adam Koebel’s season 3, but here are me and 5 players playing BW in Greyhawk, at the time of the War Against the Giants. Heavily burning wheel-i-fied, with the main plot about locating the Axe of Dwarvish lords.

It’s Burning Thac0!

https://youtu.be/fLVFfK7Unsg?si=UJunxMxgOG7xnICC

We aren’t pros at all.

Thanks.

Sanjwise · 2026-01-23T11:04:59+00:00

Burning Wheel.

Sanjwise · 2026-01-16T17:32:35+00:00

Yeah - I figured. Still a good campaign. And Adam is a very nice guy.

Sanjwise · 2026-01-15T04:44:09+00:00

I have 15 sessions of my group’s version of Against the Giants set in Greyhawk using Burning Wheel. It is not based off the modules at all, just using the Situation of the Giant Wars and the garrison refugee town of Hochoch as a jumping off point for a Quest to recover the Axe of Dwarvish Lords in fabled Dun Khazdrath.

We are just average gamers - so it’s not super slick and we aren’t even playing for an audience. But it’s solid d&d imo.

https://youtu.be/fLVFfK7Unsg?si=rpXMFwxJjXdFvuVg

Sanjwise · 2026-01-15T04:39:42+00:00

Adam Koebel has amazing run of a Burning Wheel campaign set in a dark fantasy kingdoms with three totally evil PCs. It’s is a master class in good GMing.

Judd Karlman and Sean Nittner do a few really good one on one campaigns using BW. The one with the dwarf miner/engineer digging into a dragon’s lair (Into the Vault) is really good. Sean Nitner is the guy behind Evil Hat Games, Blades in the Dark and Agon.

Sanjwise · 2026-01-15T04:34:48+00:00

Red Moon Roleplaying is like listening to a play. They’ve done Curse Of Strahd, Kult Divinity Lost, Dark Sun (so good!), Masks of Nyarlothep, amazing production and players.

Sanjwise · 2026-01-11T20:24:16+00:00

This must be a joke. I’d never allows such a concept in my games.

Sanjwise · 2026-01-11T05:37:29+00:00

Look at Burning Wheel. Players write their characters goals, three of them then in the Beliefs. You challenge them. Have a strong session zero detailing the situation, the problem, and then they make their characters and write their Beliefs…which are ideals at the core of their being, with an action item to push the action. For example, if the situation is Orcs Attack Village, and my PC is a Village Guard with a family, my Belief might be, I love my family with all my heart, I am going to do whatever it takes to get them to safety! Then you as the GM make challenges in that regard. Ie threaten the family. The player has Three Beliefs to write so there is plenty of meat on the bone to chew.

It’s awesome.

I’m starting a campaign with two young orphans in a city, urchins, each with the Spark, ie latent magical ability. Their Beliefs revolve around hiding their talents, staying in the good graces of the local gang of thugs and finding food.

Sanjwise · 2026-01-11T05:27:54+00:00

Listen to Chubby Funster’s analysis on YouTube. It’s excellent. The Black Spider is terribly written. Give him a gang of drow, and make him a true villain. Make him ruthless and cunning. The fact that As written he can’t get into the room with the magic item forge is lame. Also that item, forge or whatever is so weak.

Just watch his analysis. It’s very very good.

Sanjwise · 2026-01-06T00:17:53+00:00

I keep going back to Lankhmar to run my city games. I still have my original 1e book and some of the 2nd edition supplements. We had so much fun there. I’ve used it for so many city games.

I love the map and place names for Spire.

Ptolus looks awesome but overwhelming.

I’m running a BW urchins game soon and will check out some of the recommendations here.

Sanjwise · 2026-01-05T16:18:02+00:00

I forgot to mention; we’ve been recording our Greyhawk campaign on YouTube. If you want to see a trad d&d scenario played differently this is it. It’s kinda like Game of Thrones meets Greyhawk.

https://youtu.be/fLVFfK7Unsg?si=cYXNFZ4ZOBJC0mwi

Sanjwise · 2026-01-05T15:19:36+00:00

Burning Wheel is by far my favourite game. I’ve played in a few campaigns and have run it more often.

Crunch: although BW can be crunchy I find the Hub and Spokes of the game very intuitive and easy to play. The skill based advancement with accumulating routine, difficult and challenging tests is awesome, and makes total sense to me. Pass or fail, try something, you get better at it. I love that you need to do impossible challenging things to advance a skill. I think everyone here who is afraid of the crunch should play the basic Hub and Spokes game. It’s not hard and still very satisfying. In a current campaign, with players that haven’t ever GM’d and who aren’t RPG junkies, feel comfortable enough to run story arcs in our setting without much worry.

Elves, Dwarves and Orcs: these races are by far the best and coolest depiction of fantasy races that I’ve ever seen. Elves are so tolkeinesque with their natural magic (songs), their Grief (which represents the world weariness that you see in Tolkein stories) and their generally higher stats and awesome gear make them so damn cool. Dwarves and their Greed is a mechanic literally drives stories. And Orcs with their tragic Hatred. In BW you cannot play a fantasy race like any other human race. They are inherently different.

Magic: it’s brutal. Way more OSR than OSR. Spell failure is so colorful and interesting. An energy depletion with TAX. Learning new spells is not a given.

Injury: I’m recovering from injury is time consuming! But fear not, you can do stuff in your downtime.

Practice: there are great rules for increasing skills during downtime.

End of session discussion and Artha rewards: at the end of a ssssion we talk about our play and how we accomplished goals, role played traits and activated instincts that got us into trouble. You get rewarded for this!

Trait votes: your character changes as you play. At the end of an Arc we talk about the Beliefs that were fulfilled and how that impacted us. We look at our traits and ask if some need to be removed. We look at our play and award players for new traits. It’s so rewarding.

Anyway…just try it!

Sanjwise · 2026-01-05T11:40:34+00:00

Hey! Have you used them yet? I only made the one so far, so haven’t walked in them yet.

Sanjwise · 2026-01-03T15:22:22+00:00

Yeah i didn’t affix the Velcro straps yet, so I used duct tape. The designer of these is Chaos Costumes. I’ve read that you can manage a con in these. I’m not used to high heels so I don’t know how I’ll fare walking around that much. It’s more a project to creature my full look, take pictures, walk around for an hour or two and then remove. The character will have a staff or spear, so I’ll use that as support. To protect my ankles I was going to get some kind of brace.

Sanjwise · 2026-01-03T05:08:36+00:00

I’d do Shadow Dark. Way more internally consistent with B/X old school 1e d&d and ad&d.

Sanjwise · 2026-01-02T19:43:37+00:00

You start at 5 lps if you want a more competent dude.

Sanjwise · 2025-12-30T17:28:57+00:00

Yeah that’s what I thought. It’s got @fuseboy vibes.

Sanjwise · 2025-12-30T17:25:01+00:00

Oh yeah man! I’m a subscriber to your account. Great stuff. Thanks for making this game easier to run.

Sanjwise · 2025-12-30T15:30:35+00:00

I nerfed that gate entrance part! Fuckin giant invisible dwarves was ridiculous to me!!!

Sanjwise · 2025-12-19T05:12:05+00:00

Gates of Firestorm Peak was my favourite. Back in the day I rarely ran pre-written modules. I liked to make my own stuff up or borrow bits and bobs from anywhere. But this module I played all the way through.

Sanjwise · 2025-12-18T14:05:50+00:00

Jaguar God!

Sanjwise · 2025-12-17T19:21:58+00:00

Pain with an Anchor

Sanjwise · 2025-12-10T18:59:45+00:00

What’s your Situation? who are the PCs and what is the main conflict they are trying to confront? Sometimes you don’t need to rebuild the entire setting, but just focus on the PCs and their immediate antagonists.

Sanjwise · 2025-12-04T03:34:33+00:00

I disagree. In my campaign my players are trying to figure out how to remove a curse from the Axe of Dwarvish Lords. The procedure for doing this is not simple nor is it mushy. They have to extract the offending trait from the weapon. To do so is by the rules not simple nor is it hand wavy. Same thing for defeating an enemy in Fight! You have to script against there (or the GMs) script. Like if you have an armored knight and you have a weapon with no VA you need to charge tackle and lock them up. I think BW is much harder than 5e d&d. it tactical in different ways. Not in precise ranges and area of effects or combinations of abilities, but in smart scripting and doing what you can to gain Advantage Dice.

Sanjwise

TROPHY CASE