# the Burning Wheel tags: #game/rpg/burning-wheel ![[the Burning Wheel (cover).jpg|600]] **The Burning Wheel** is Luke Crane's famously crunchy fantasy RPG that prioritizes a character's Beliefs, Instincts, and Traits over their ability to swing a sword — though it has plenty of rules for that too. It's a game of high-friction mechanics where you fight for what you believe in, usually while bleeding out in a ditch because you failed a Steel test. The system is a "black box" of interlocking gears that punishes casual play and rewards those who enjoy reading five-hundred-page manuals — the grim reality of being a medieval peasant with high aspirations and a very low life expectancy. The core is a d6 dice pool. Every task has a fixed **Obstacle (Ob)** number, and you must roll a number of successes equal to or greater than the Ob. By default any die showing **4, 5, or 6** counts as a success ("Black Shade"), with **Gray** succeeding on 3+ and **White** on 2+ — shade-shifting being the game's version of ascending to godhood. **Artha** (Fate, Persona, and Deeds points) rewards playing toward your Beliefs and lets you open-end 6s, add dice, or double your exponent. And **Let It Ride** means you roll once for a given intent and the result stands until the situation changes — no fishing for better rolls. Combat runs through the scripted Fight! and Duel of Wits subsystems, where you pre-plan actions and watch them collide. Its influence reaches far beyond its own dense pages: **The Burning Wheel** is one of the acknowledged touchstones of the **[[Blades in the Dark]]** engine, which credits it among the designs that shaped the FitD system. Editions run from the 2002 Classic through Revised (2005), Gold (2011), and Gold Revised (2018). ## References - [The Burning Wheel Gold Revised - Burning Wheel](https://www.burningwheel.com/burning-wheel-gold-revised/) - [The Burning Wheel Review - Shut Up & Sit Down](https://www.shutupandsitdown.com/rpg-review-burning-wheel/)