Magisterial Games

I made a mistake. I’m still paying for it. My first foray outside trad gaming was Burning Empires, the sprawling epic space opera adaptation of The Burning Wheel that came out in 2006. Great game, transformational, made me dig deep into my own analytical brain. It ultimately led to the creation of IGRC! I still have fond memories. I would love to run it once more in my lifetime, beginning to end. Probably 20ish sessions to play through the campaign system. A worthy goal. Because it was my first and I had a quarter-century of trad baggage at that point, we struggled. The most contentious and innovative design element we struggled with was the fact that Burning Empires is a competitive RPG. I wrote extensively at the time that the competitive element of the game was probably overhyped – you don’t have that much control over whether you won or lost a session – and distracted from the main point of the game, which is of course the roleplaying. Roleplaying in service to an existential…