Burning Empires is a space-opera game set far in the future, where the shattered remnants of a once-grand galaxy-spanning empire squabble for high-tech scraps and endlessly feud over the minutiae of doctrine. Advancing into the human frontier is the Terror - neuroparasitic worms that, introduced into a human skull, take over the body - leaving the original mind screaming and clawing at the walls of its Wormish prison.

The game is explicitly players-versus-GM, with a strict scene economy - only so many conflicts and expositions can take place (on either side: like all BWHQ games, the GM is as constrained by the rules as the players - no "Rocks fall, everyone takes 10 harm.") in the course of a maneuver. If you're at all familiar with Burning Wheel's Duel of Wits, the Manuever system in BE is like that writ large. The GM and players each generate a pool of points, and the object of each Maneuver in a session is to defend/replenish your pool or attack the opponent's pool.

BE is hella crunchy, though (in my opinion) not in a way that counters the visceral and juicy Belief-driven antics of the characters. If you like powered armor, psychological horror, space battles, brain invaders, mental math, risky plays, long odds, desperate holding actions, LAZER NOISES PEW PEW PEW, brutal repression, loving reunions, betrayals, cold calculations, epic romances, or big handfuls of six-sided dice... you might like Burning Empires.

Session 1 will be World Burning, i.e. figuring out what kind of world on which the action takes place and Character Burning, i.e. navigating everyone through the lifepath system to produce a character satisfactory to them.

I'm thinking that four players plus myself is about the limit of what I can reasonably manage.  I have plenty of familiarity with the system but have never actually run BE proper.