Dang, I'm sorry you didn't enjoy it Mike! I'm still fairly serious about running this thing, and you're always welcome if you want to play.
The rules are over-complicated in my opinion. I've never played BW, so maybe this was just new to me, but there seemed to be a ridiculous amount of play detail… . It seemed to me very rule heavy, but I'm partial to BRP and BX D&D. It may be that Mouseguard is a gamer's game.
I don't disagree, though I would phrase it differently. Burning Wheel seems to be about as complicated as Dungeons & Dragons Third Edition, which is to say, too fucking complicated for me. Mouse Guard is far less complex, but it's still confusing at first go-round.
I suspect that in objective terms it's not appreciably more complicated than Red Box D&D: the number of moving pieces seems to be roughly the same. But over 25 years I've grown extremely accustomed to the Dungeons & Dragons rules-concepts (Hit Points, Levels, Ability Modifiers etc.) so that shifting to Mouse Guard is like trying to read a Young Adults book in a foreign language.
Mouse Guard is screwy in one way: the authors clearly are trying very hard to explain the rules thoroughly to avoid confusion—but they end up putting me to sleep! I think writing good teaching texts for general audiences is an unsolved problem in the hobby. (Frank Mentzer's Basic D&D boxed set from like 1983 is an under-appreciated classic in this respect.)
