Character-burning

I will post a little guidance for your Beliefs here in this thread, and we'll explore specifics for concepts in the threads you create.

First, the term "Beliefs" may be a little deceptive.

There must be more to every Belief than just a belief.

Every Belief must have an underlying statement that is the actual belief part of the Belief, but every Belief must also have a clearly defined action-item.

To refer back to my example concept:
My underlying statement/belief is:
"The Chief has no legitimate-born heir, but the People know and love me."

My clearly defined action item is:
"I must get the Constabulary to support my bid for the Seat..."

So, do those two components make sense to people? Each Belief component statement has a role in the game mechanics...

To expand on the above, the reason Beliefs are so important to "get right" (to have a clearly defined action item) is because Beliefs too directly into Character advancement, via what the Hub and Spokes calls "The Artha Wheel".

Your PCs will advance in two ways, mechanically, in Burning Wheel.

1. They will improve Skills and Stats via use (and likely, mainly thru failure).

2. They will have Epiphanies, via the expenditure of Artha.

Advancing Skills and Stats thru regular use is very important and a bug part of the mechanical aspect of the game, but the big growth in mechanical power comes from Shade Shifts, which come from Epiphanies. Which come from Artha. Which comes from Testing your Beliefs (as well as RPing your Instincts, and Traits, and a few other places, in play).

So: it is very important that you can act on your Beliefs, because that is what will earn you - one way or the other - the kind if Artha that you need to have Epiphanies.

Make sense?

Yep!

I'd say go ahead and put together your PCs mechanically - choosing Lifepaths and things.

Use my character sheet template thread to post them in the threads for your PC concepts that you've already started.