Truth be told, I've been re-considering a noble house campaign ever since I started listening to the campaign shenanigans of the Podgecast crew. One of the Podgecasts hosts, Luke, uses Burning Wheel to run a house campaign inspired by George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series of books that begins with th "Kingdom the Next Generation" (don't look at me, I just listen to the podcast)

After a quick reading of the A Song of Ice and Fire RPG, I can't say I'm really inspired to run one based on Green Ronin's rules as is. Perhaps I need to take out the ASoIaFRPG system for a one shot and see how it really runs. And yet, the more I looked into Burning Wheel myself (there are free excerpts on the Burning Wheel wiki, the more I was convinced that Burning Wheel

My other go-to games don't really have the intrigue and social interaction mechanic I'm looking for or the level of PC Mojo is out of whack for the gritty, wheels within wheels style a Game of Thrones type game calls for.

• Savage Worlds - Too heroic. I love you lots SW but I gotta say you're not the right one for a Blackfyre game.
• D&D - Again, don't think a mace would be a good weapon to use when a rapier is what is being called for. And as I'm already running a 4E D&D game, I'm looking for something different.
• FATE/Spirit of the Century - Ahhh, another one of my RPG darlings. I lurve many facets of FATE, especially the Aspect system but it's a bit too pulp for my tastes. Now I could do some tweaking but I'm just don't feel like monkeying around with the system.

Of course, I could graft FATE's Aspect system and hack the Intrigue mechanics of Green Ronin's ASoIaF RPG. Once again, I just don't want to invest that much time being monkeying around with house ruled game mechanics. While picking up a new system and reading up on the mechanics also represents a lot of work, reading and studying consumes far less of my time and creative energies. I'd rather read Burning Wheel and work on the "fluff" as I go along.