Okay, so I have the book, and I've read through the planet design section. I want to run the game, but it's way too much for me to take in all at once.

What prep do I need to do for my first session (which, I guess, will be planet & character burning?)

And what prep do I need to do for the first session of actual play?

Thanks, I'll take a look at it!

If you approach this game in a GM must know the book kind of way it's going to kick your ass in a very unpleasant way :)

I would say: they players (and that includes the GM) need to know the rules among them. So, the first buy-in is to have access to the book.
The first time I played it we simply divided the book into chunks and read closely on the chapters we were assigned. That meant I would be the local 'expert' on CIrcles and game structure for example, while another player would know Firefight and so forth. That worked really well.

The good thing about using the demo is you can skip world and especially character generation for now.

I don't know if that helps you or not?

I don't think the GM needs to know the entire book. You could ask your players to restrict the type of conflicts you use the first few sessions. Session 1, Circles and Resource tests. Session 2, Duel of Wits. Session 3, Psychology. Session 4, firefight. Session 5, technology.

I think the hardest and slowest part of the game is making characters. But you could start with 2-3 lifepaths at first to ease into the process which will make things much faster. After that it gets much easier.

GM prep wise, we never prepped anything. Worldburning will define all the areas of interest that you could have conflicts over. If you don't to have a conflict over the atmosphere and life support, don't spend much time defining it. Only pick factions you want to actually use in play. Keep worldburning focused. Then name the figures of note, the main characters on each side of the conflict. Noting that a figure of note on the vaylen side doesn't have to be vaylen or even know about them. Their actions just end up helping the vaylen. Theirs could be a tragic story. Once you lay all these characters out on a conceptual layer, ask the players which figures of notes they want to play or have some of them create supporting characters that tie into the existing characters and will step forward to take the spotlight. This starts to create a rough relationship map.

Then use beliefs to refine your relationships and to brew conflicts. Have the players write beliefs about what they want to have conflicts over. Have them aim those beliefs at other characters, PCs and NPCs. Have them aim them at factions. Then have the NPCs write counter beliefs aiming their efforts right back at the PCs. Remember, you can change beliefs in play and short term beliefs rock. A short term belief could be accomplished in 1-2 sessions. Or even the next scene! Make them direct and target them where the other side hurts.

Using all this information, besides having to make characters for key threats, I generally don't have to plan out a session. I just use everyone's beliefs to push the story forward.

The resolution mechanics may seem complicated but at their core are dirt simple. On a d6 1,2,3 is a no. 4,5,6 is a yes. If you have enough yeses to get what you want, you do! Generally situations, equipment, powers just give you more or less dice. Even in the extended mechanics, you choose actions and then compare them to see if you get less or more dice. You could get rid of dice all together and just flip coins. Heads is no. Face is yes. The book is large mostly because of all the lists and examples. Specific skills have different uses but don't bother reading up on skills that are not in play. They are easy to reference.

One thing that will definitely help is printing off all of the reference sheets Luke's made available.

I seem to remember a Firefight, Duel Of Wits, and Infection sheet. I also made my own rules reference in Excel which was ten pages (I basically tried to summarize each chapter of rules into just a few lines).

Just to get this completely straight: We might be going into this with one of two agendas.

Agenda 1: To have fun as soon as possible.
Agenda 2: To learn the game as thoroughly as possible.

I understand that for Agenda 1, we should definitely play Fires & read the essay, then try to build a campaign from scratch. But I'm thinking (or perhaps just trying to convince myself for some reason) that if we made our own errors from the start, we'd learn more (Agenda 2). Perhaps that's just stubbornness, though. What do you think?

Matthjis, you can follow Paul's advice and still jump in and play. The best way to accomplish this is to follow my advice on pages 93 (paras two and three), 99 (Number of lifepaths) and, most important, page 107. Choose your phase and then make sure that your villains and the player characters have most of the skills for your phase plus a smattering of the conflict skills.

(Hey, thread necro! The campaign more or less died out after 4-5 sessions; we learned it well enough that some players really started getting into it... and I fell out of it. It's too much work and too little output for my taste.)

I think it's always good advice, because your second time through you will always be a lot better than the first. :)

Our Burning Empires game just barely got off the ground when it hit a 2 month hiatus due to scheduling issues...but it will come back.

I tried a game of Jihad (pitched as "Dune with the serial numbers filed off") with my regular group. It took us several sessions to get a feel for what it was trying to do, and at that point we collectively wished we could have gone back to character creation and started over, but it was meant to be a half-dozen sessions long and we played it out as we were.

The one thing I'd say above everything else: if a player says "Oh, I don't need to know the rules - you can tell me what I need when I need it" -- disinvite her. Even if she is a great entertaining character actor. Burning Wheel and its descendants really require full participation from all players for the game to be satisfying, and what I found was that the players who invested in the game were having a great time by the time we wrapped up, while that particular player was irritated at me that I wouldn't just give her fiat experience because she never managed to record her skill tests even when reminded.