It has to be said that Clinton R. Nixon already delevoped the basics for a Mouse Guard RPG, called Tiny Triangles, but Petersen is not a gambling man, and being a more tradidionally founded roleplayer himself he went for Luke instead, probably based on what he knew about on Burning Wheel. Petersen was probably thinking that Burning Wheel was a solid traditional fantasy game. Boy, is he in for a surprise, in a good way.

Mouse Guard is not going to be published by BWHQ, but by Mouse Guard publisher Archaia Studio Press.

Two questions remain: will this be the entry-level Burning Wheel game and WHEN CAN WE PREORDER? 

Monsters... triggered my imagination so much that I wrote a pitch for a supplement for the game and send it to the publisher. They liked it. Now I'm writing it. Feels good, haven't written a game supplement since maybe 2001 and that publisher closed its operations before my book could get published. It was a Heist supplement for a "cinematic" roleplaying game.

Last week we playtested a game called unWritten and send feedback back to the game's author. uW is a no-prep collaborative game without a GM that helps you create literary fiction. It's got great potential and still has some rough edges.

Last, but not least, I am considering writing another story now "scenario" for the Danish Fastaval convention in 2009. I wrote a Sorcerer scenario in 2005, which was suitably hated and liked for different reasons.  I'm hoping that con-goers anno 2009 are less in entertain-me mode than four years ago. If they are, I'd like to think that our push for crazy-ass indie games since then has played a part in this. Maybe it's just a crazy dream. 

These are without a doubt the yummiest dice I have ever seen. 

•     A local warlord's ancestral sword, much honored.
•     The ghost of a tyrant king, strangled by his own daughter.
•     A warrior-woman, queen of her small wild tribe, hard-pressed by advancing civilization.
•     A vengeful and jealous god, displeased by the lapses of his followers, however scrupulously they observe.

From that I build a small R-map, looking like below. I since added a couple of extra characters, but this was the version I presented to the players, along with a short description of the situation.

The Blatonn village, inhabited by pale-skinned people, mostly farmers, was expanding north of the Southern Mountains and had reached the borders of the Black Tooth Forest, home of the Black Tooth Tribe. The tribe people were darker skinned and with their bodies covered in elaborate tattoos. King Alfreth is dead and there are rumours he’s walking around undead. He was killed, strangled. Blatonn is therefore without a King, as its formal leader at the moment is the Fell weilder Faldur, who is the protector of the village.
I premade three characters with stats and descriptors, and assigned each a Fell weapon from the Charnel Gods book, but nothing else. Here are two of the templates - Gregor must have kept his, as I can’t find it.

STA 5 (Savage-raised, Trained soldier), WILL 4 (Righteous), LORE 1 (Naive), PAST 4 (Captain in the Amber Guard), Flaw -1 (Disbelief).
Demon: Trinfendel, a black sword. STA 10, WILL 11, LORE 5, POW 11. Need: Flattery and praise. Desire: Tyranny.
David chose this guy and named him Markos. David decided not to be connected to the R-map beforehand, and arrived as a travelling swordsman from the south. His Kicker was that he landed in the middle of a skirmish between the Black Tooth tribe and the villagers (at this point without their warrior Faldur).
Next character.

STA 3 (Throwback), WILL 4 (Driven), LORE 3 (Mentored), Past 4 (Nomad), Flaw -1 (Paranoid).
Demon: Irkspire, a long pike/spear with a black metal handle and inscribed glyphs. STA 8, WILL 9, LORE 5, POW 9. Need: Wielder must promise in not to part with it. Desire: Melancholia.
Gordon took this one and the character became Shara Grieffinder, the lover of King Alfreth. Gordon’s Kicker was spot on with the village guard arriving to arrest Shara for killing the King. Bam!
Gregor decided that his character was Thulan, a tribesman, brother to the Queen, who had been away to the south and arrived back expecting to lead the tribe, only to see his sister on the throne. And that wasn’t even the Kicker, no no, Gregor threw himself fully into action: Thulan wakes up after a battle, captured by the villagers and his Fell Sword Periffon is gone.

Here’s the R-Map including the player characters.

And, finally, the entire R-Map with extra characters added, some of which never came into play.

A game session kicks off by consulting one of the included "oracles", which are situational engines that provide all the creative fuel you'll need. And almost immediately this brilliant idea spawned a flurry of alternative oracles, because the four that come with IAWA are for the pulp fantasy genre.

There's much more to say about IAWA, and the game has already generated tonnes of inspiration on the different roleplaying forums. I'd like to briefly remember where the idea came from.

In March 2006, Vincent posted a yummy example of how to create situation from a handful of elements: Creating Situation: a practical example.

The elements then came from a prototype of the oracle, Clinton Nixon's "Cheap and Cheasy Fantasy Generator" I think it was called, which is no longer online. The early draft of IAWA was Art, Grace & Guts, which I know some of my Danish contacts played and loved. I used the idea of creating situations that literally explode into play for a presentation at the Danish con Fastaval a month later that year, but didn't play any of the early incarnations.

In a Wicked Age is one of the big small games. The machine running at its heart is fundamentally Sorcerer mechanics with a few nice twists of lemon added. As for Sorcerer, this game will be used again and again to run every thinkable kind of game, and run it effortlessly.

Best of all, IAWA makes it easy for you to be creative. It teaches you a central thing about story games: not to think too much, not to try and be clever, but to go with your gut feeling.

IAWA will make you feel better. It will make you go play.

Trollbabe is pure roleplaying gold, both from a player and a GM perspective. Some say it's the finest game Ron has written so far.

Now go play. 

One of the things we haven't tried yet is a fully fledged firefight. When we played Omac we used the close quarters firefight option, which is basically a normal firefight with only a few options.

We've learned one thing, though, and that is the fact that you have to try Burning Empires before getting it. It's just not possible at all to read through even parts of the book and then say: "Yup, I know BE." Not. At. All. But taking the time to play it, and this is where the demo scenario comes in handily, and discuss options and rules clarifications along the way is the only option as far as I can see.

I posted a call on the Burning Empires forums if anyone was interested in doing a play-by-post space fight with me using the Firefight rules, and guess who answered: Iron Empires creator Christopher Moeller himself. Chris burned up an awesome Vaylen pilot, an intelligent jellyfish of the Makara species, and I responded with a human pilot.

Follow the fight in the Burning Wheel Arena. 

Christopher Moeller's website 

Every new-comer to the Forge seems to have hit the exact same wall that is so special about that place. The Forge is by no means a forum where you post without thinking very, very hard about what you want out of your post. And before you think about posting at all, you research threads and articles to see if you are merely re-animating thoughts  or experiences that have been debated endlessly before. And there's no back-padding there either - expect full-on, direct response and critisism.

Frank Tarcikowski, from Germany and author of BARBAREN!, used to be a fierce opponent, like myself, of anyone or anything that would dare to suggest his GM-centered playing style was anything but awesome or fulfilling. Then he entered the Forge, and thought: "I'll show these self-centrered fuckers what's right and wrong. Reward system my ass. System matters dick." Etc. Anyway, to shoot down the Forge-idiots, he had to delve into the Big Model and the whole theory/practice complex that penetrate Forge debate on all levels. So he started to read. And guess what? It changed the way he thought about roleplaying, and how he roleplayed. Like so many others, including myself, before him.

In fact, Frank because so deeply understanding of Big Model/GNS that he could post this fantastic brief recap of the whole theory complex, originally targeted for a German website. So here goes Frank's translated awesomeness:

What are the main points of Forge Theory?

Role-playing is a social activity
RPGs are played by people because they want to have fun. Therefore, any sensible analysis of role-playing must start with the players as real persons, and not with the characters as fictional persons. The whole context of social interaction between the players has been called “Social Contract”.

Role-playing is creating fiction together
The participants of an RPG are creating imaginary events through play. To do that, the pictures in everyone’s head of what happens need to match to a good degree. These matching pictures have been called the “Shared Imagined Space”.

The Shared Imagined Space is created through negotiation
The players’ interaction at the gaming table is directed toward including certain situations or events into the Shared Imagined Space. The back and forth thus developing is best understood as a process of negotiation. Only if all players at least tacitly agree to a new piece of fictional content can play continue on that basis. This simile has been called the „Lumpley Principle“.

System does matter
”System” has been used to describe the rules by which the negotiation process is organized. These rules may be written or implicit. In some groups, they deter massively from what is laid down in the game text. Therefore, if someone tells you that system doesn’t matter, she is referring to the rules in the game text, and she is saying so because her group is not playing much by those rules anyway. The actual rules they play by are mainly their own, and they do matter indeed. These actual rules greatly influence two equally important things:

1) The fictional content shaping the Shared Imagined Space.
2) How players act at the table to create said content.

There is role-playing, and then there is role-playing
The way how people role-play (see the above points) may vary widely from group to group. That’s because different people have different priorities in playing RPGs. You get the best chance for a gaming group to be fun on a sustained basis when all players in that group follow the same or similar priorities when playing together. This has been called the Shared Creative Agenda.

Attention: Creative Agenda is the full picture! It is recognized when watching a group play for a longer instance, with special attention to moments where specific priorities may conflict with each other. That’s not to say that any action by a player at any time during play needs to fit a scheme or something.

The following three general categories of Creative Agenda have been identified in the GNS model:

1) Gamism: The players accept the challenges of the Shared Imagined Space, taking risks and showing performance (as players) and reaching or missing a certain goal. Sometimes all players may work together to a goal, sometimes they may compete.

Attention: Gamism is not the same as “Powergaming”, which represents a sub-species.

2) Narrativism: The players engage in the moral and human issues of the Shared Imagined Space, taking a position (as players) and thereby making a statement about their characters/the game world/themselves.

Attention: This is not what is commonly called „Storytelling“ or „Cinematic“. If functional (= fun), both is usually considered:

3) Simulationism: The players experience the Shared Imagined Space as something worthwhile for it’s own sake, something which they do not fully control because it follows it’s own laws. Experiencing the Shared Imagined Space and contributing to it is part of any role-playing, but in this mode, it’s the top priority.

Attention: Complex „realistic“ rules are only one style of Simulationist role-playing. More frequently, you’ll find features like style, atmosphere, acting, or dramaturgy.