Blue Rose: RPG

by Jeremy Crawford, Stephanie Pui-Mun Law (Artist), Dawn Elliott (Designed by)

Aldis, the Kingdom of the Blue Rose, shines as a new light following the dark age of the Sorcerer Kings. Now, envoys of the Sovereign's Finest strive to protect Aldis from threats like the Lich Kingdom of Kern and the fanatical Theocracy of Jarzon, as well as monsters and dark magic left over from the Shadow Wars of the Sorcerer Kings. Aided by the rhydan - their psychic animal companions - the champions of the Blue Rose guard the Light against the power of the Shadow.

Blue Rose, the Roleplaying Game of Romantic Fantasy, allows you to adventure in the fantastic world of Aldea. Based on the world's most popular roleplaying system, Blue Rose gives you everything you need to play. In it, you will find: A streamlined game system, requiring only a single twenty-sided die to reslove any action you heroes may take. Fast and dramatic action resolution, with systems for everything from fighting to social repartee. Complete and flexible rules for hero creation, with options to play rhydan (intelligent psychic animals) as well as humans, sea-folk, the night people, or the mystical vata. A complete system of arcane and psychic powers, from empathy to the darkest depths of sorcery. A system for defining your hero's light and shadow natures, and using the strength of your hero's conviction to influence the flow of the game. Narrator advice, and the introductory adventure THE CURSE OF HARMONY, everything you need to begin telling your own stories in the magical world of Blue Rose.

The word has gone out, the land of Aldis needs heroes! Will you answer the call? Join the sovereign's Finest and the Knights of the Blue Rose in safeguarding the kingdom and its people. Swear your allegiance to the Light and to the rightful Sovereign... For Aldis, and the Queen!

Genres: Role Playing Games, Fantasy, Gaming

224 pages, Paperback

First published August 15, 2005

Reviews

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Blue Rose is subtitled "The Roleplaying Game of Romantic Fantasy." What's romantic fantasy, you ask, and how is it distinct enough from regular fantasy to have its own name? Well, I could easily answer that with "Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar series" and be more than half right, but there are a few more specific commonalities: magic is an innate force that comes from within, tolerance and acceptance of differences are definite virtues, there's a focus on relationships and social contexts instead of tomb-delving and monster-slaying, the villains are frequently either the intolerant or simply the morally monstrous, the world is usually populated by intelligent talking (or psychic) animals and animal-people instead of the standard elves/dwarves/orcs, and community and belonging being depicted as inherently important.

All those are the kind of things I could get behind. I have read almost all of the Valdemar books, after all.

Setting
Okay, let me get this out of the way--Blue Rose is pretty much Valdemar as an RPG. The main country of Aldis is Valdemar, with its HeraldsSovereign's Finest traveling the country and righting wrongs, the CompanionsRhy-horses, KyreeRhy-wolves, and other intelligent animals, and the ruler chosen by divine fiat; Jarzon is Karse, including the theocracy in a harsh land that covets the neighboring country's rich lands, the priests burning people who exhibit "unnatural" powers, and the refugees who live just inside Aldis's borders but who are insular and suspicious of Aldis's tolerance for gay people or outre displays of magic; Kern is Hardorn, including the constant invasions of their neighbors, the use of mind-controlledzombified peasants as shock troops in battles, and the rule by a power-mad wizard king; and Rezea is the Shin'a'in, though admittedly here the resemblance is pretty small and mostly about how both the Shin'a'in and the Rezeans are kind of inspired by Native American plains tribes, with some additional Mongol inspiration in the Rezeans' case.

The history is one of the standard fantasy setting backgrounds. In the past was the Old Kingdom, where everyone lived in harmony, magic provided a high quality of life and easy transportation, humanity lived in harmony with the Rhydan (intelligent psychic animals),elvesvatazin, and sea-folk, and everything was totally awesome. At least, it was until unscrupulous adepts delved too much in the mysteries of Sorcery, were corrupted by the power, and overthrew the Old Kingdom with their armies of summoned darkfiends and magically-twisted shadowspawn. These sorcerer-kings instituted a reign of terror and blood, wiping out the vatazin, persecuting the Rhydan, and wasting thousands of lives in petty wars against each other or experiments into the darker aspects of magic. This continued until the remaining rhydan hooked up with some rebels and managed to overthrow most of the sorcerer-kings (except the king of Kern) and re-established their own kingdoms, listed above. What happened to the rest of the world is unknown, and while long-distance communication still exists, long-range travel does not.

One of things I really like are the deities. It's the relatively fantasy-standard idea of elder gods who are more associated with natural processes and younger gods who are more associated with human ideals, but there are several things I really like about this particular implementation. For one thing, even their existance is in doubt. They might answer prayers, they might be behind the Golden Hart that chooses Aldis's ruler, but they might not. There's no proof either way, and that allows for a lot more plausible religious tension than, say, the Forgotten Realms.

For another, the gods actually have relationships. Some of them are married (or dating, or whatever applies to deities) to each other, which shows up all the time in real-world mythology but rarely in fantasy RPG backgrounds. The divine relationships are also where the in-universe terms for gay and straight people--caria daunen and cepia luath, respectively--come from.

(I'm not sure I'd ever use those terms in an actual game, because there's always a tension between immersion from using game-based language and sounding pretentious and silly, but I like that they're there.)

I've seen complaints that Aldis is unrealistically benign, but I think the background supports its ability to be a place people from the real world might actually want to live. For one thing, they can replicate a lot of modern technology using magic, so santitation, communication, psychological care, criminology, and other fields aren't really medieval in mindset, even if the means they use to get there are different--telepaths or telegraphs, you can still send long-distance messages. For another, the background establishes that the ruler may be divinely chosen for their benevolence and purity of heart, and the nobility is an examination-based mandarinate where part of the examination is determining that the candidate is genuinely dedicated to working for the good of Aldis at the moment of the exam (thus leaving the possibility of corruption later). Despite those, there's still veniality, there's still corruption, two rulers have had to be removed due to evil or insanity, people are still poor, etc. There are plenty of opportunities for adventure even if the setting isn't very suited for the typical D&D game of rootless murderhobos, and the assumption that the characters are going to be members of the Sovereign's Finest, with the attendant duties and perks, gives plenty of opportunity to go around righting wrongs.

It's basically fantasy Scandinavia with magic. And honestly, it's more nuanced than the Valdemar novels, so there's that.

System
Blue Rose's system is essentially a stripped-down version of D20, and it was actually pulled out and repackaged in a settingless version called True20 for people who liked the mechanics but didn't like or were indifferent to the setting.

Most of the system is pretty much the same as d20 with small or cosmetic tweaks. For example, ability scores are just rated by their bonus (-5 to +5) instead of the raw score, which is honestly a change that they should have done in d20 anyway. Instead of tracking individual coinage, Blue Rose abstracts it all away into a Wealth score that is rolled to acquire new equipment. There's still skill checks, being flat-footed, DCs, rolling 20-sided dice, an action economy (full-round, move, standard, free), savings throws, and most of the other familiar elements of d20. The biggest changes are in the classes, damage and healing, and in the magic system, so I'll deal with each of those in turn.

Rather than the ever-expanding plethora of d20's classes and prestige classes, Blue Rose has only three classes: Warriors, thievesExperts, and wizardsAdepts. This is still somewhat problematic--Experts' focus as the class that uses a lot of skills isn't really a good focus in a more skill-based system like d20, and there's no mechanism for Warriors getting multiple attacks beyond feats like Whirlwind Attack--but it's much more open than d20 is. There's also options to dip, like a Warrior taking Wild Talent and being a latent psychic, or an Expert picking up a couple levels of Warrior to represent training in formal dueling.

Attacks and so on are calculated normally, but an entirely new mechanic is used for damage: the Toughness Save. Damage is always 15 plus the appropriate ability score bonus plus the weapon damage, and is opposed by a rolled Toughness Save. Failing the save by variable amounts causes different effects, up to and including jumping straight to bleeding out on the ground for failing by 15+. Lower-level injuries also stack up, so a Wounded character who is Wounded again becomes Disabled. Even the smallest injuries also cause penalties to later Toughness Saves, so everyone will run out of luck eventually.

This is great. It completely undercuts the standard farmer to ubermensch trajectory that D&D characters usually undergo, which is good, because one-man armies work against the communitarian themes of romantic fantasy. It also makes sure that the threats do not need to scale much. A knife in the dark is always dangerous and an enemy army is always a threat, even for high-level characters.

The magic system, called arcana, is entirely feat-based, and as such it is much less unwieldy, less prone to abuse, and impossible to make a CoDzilla. Learning to use one of the six types of magic takes a feat, every two new magic powers takes another feat, and every character gets the same number of feats, so while Adepts probably will be a bit more powerful than Warriors or Experts just by virtue of having supernatural powers, they're unlikely to be able to comepletely outclass them in every possible way because they'll always have weaknesses and blind spots.

Also, magic is fatigue-based instead of Vancian. This is personal preference, but I really don't like Vancian magic and would prefer basically any alternative. Adepts can cast all day long if they're lucky, but three failed Fatigue Checks will knock them out if they don't rest. There are also options to push powers to higher levels in exchange for taking more fatigue. Any power that lets the Adept Take 20 almost always adds 20 to the Fatigue Check, which will almost certainly cause them to fail.

Sorcery--Shadow-aligned arcana--is where the problems with the arcana system come out in force, though. Alignment has never made sense in D&D, and Blue Rose is no exception. Sorcery seems to be similar to the Dark Side of the Force, with a specific note that it comes from negative emotions and a Corruption mechanic in place for its use.

For example, summoning darkfiends is Sorcery, as is erasing someone's memories, or assaulting them with your mind. All makes sense, right? The problem comes in when using Flesh Shaping to alter a transgender person's sex with their permission is Sorcery even though it's entirely beneficial, and the text even calls out this very example in an earlier chapter as something for which the benefit might be worth the cost, so it's not an error (though the actual description does say that such uses may be able to avoid a Corruption check). Furthermore, magically influencing people to do things isn't Sorcery unless it's, "used to cause deliberate harm," but setting someone on fire with your brain or freezing them solid is never Sorcery even though it always causes deliberate harm. Reading someone's inner thoughts is always Sorcery even if you're doing it in a multiple murder trial to determine the accused's guilt.

The main principle seems to be that Sorcery is based on evil intent, except when it's not, which doesn't say...well, anything about anything, really. Whether something is Sorcery or not seems pretty arbitrary to me, except that greater priority is placed on the sanctity or one's mind than one's body, which would be cold comfort to people drowned by adepts using Water Shaping. At least the newly-deceased can be confident that they weren't killed by vile Sorcery.

Other than that minor quibble, I really liked Blue Rose. It's good to see a version of D&D that's both thematically and mechanically focused on social connections, promoting modern values, and finding non-violent solutions to problems when possible, and even if the system is still a bit too d20ish for my liking, it's much more palatable to me with the changes they've made. I may never run this as written, but reading it gave me a ton of ideas for other things.

[Lady Entropy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pelo lado bom de Blue Rose, temos o facto que é um jogo muito bem trabalhado, inteligente, e que se dirige a questões e problemas que normalmente são ignorados nos típicos jogos de fantasia. Tenta quebrar alguns clichés, porque é um jogo de Romantic Fantasy e vai contra o mais que batidinho complexo de Lone Ranger. A arte é muito bonita (se bem que delicodoce) e quem a escreveu fê-lo de forma acessível e simples, fazendo um esforço para aproveita mecânicas normalmente ignoradas no D20 normal (como a questão dos alignments) tornando-as mais significativas e interessantes.

Alguns paragrafos depois da introdução, leio a definição de Romantic Fantasy -- e fico com vontade de vomitar. Romantic Fantasy é o estandarte de tudo o que é Politicamente Correcto, cor-de-rosa e Bonzinho, com Unicórnios incluidos -- Ou seja, Mary-Sueland. Até a merda dos half-orcs (Night People) são herois que apenas lutavam do lado dos feiticeiros maus porque estes mantinham as famílias deles presas e depois se rebelaram. Isto já para não falar no facto que há animais falantes, toda a gente tem poderes mágicos (mas só usado para curar e poderes psíquicos) e só as pessoas más é que são preconceituosas e em breve serão derrotadas. Aqui luta-se para por KO, não matar e até os criminosos mais empedernidos são ou exilados ou é-lhes colocada uma coleira de pacificação para que não possam magoar-se a eles ou aos outros mais.

Tive que parar de ler por um bocado porque comecei a ter flashbacks com o "Laranja Mecânica" (o que até teria piada se os policias de BR fossem como os do filme.... querias! São todos bonzinhos). Todos podem ser nobres (só têm que passar no teste) a escola é grátis para todos, e isto é uma monarquia da tanga porque é tudo decidido à base de consílio. E o proprio governante é escolhido por um veado que sai de um vitral (don't ask).

Este foi o primeiro jogo que, após tão-só ter lido dois parágrafos da introdução, eu soube que nunca na vida iria gostar. Ao mesmo tempo soube porque é tão popular com muitas gajas e maníacos do politicamente correcto.

O livro continua com a típica história do mundo em que isto se passa, começando por um muito infeliz e cliché mito: eram uma vez 4 deuses, os primeiros, chamados primordiais. Um dos deuses, ficou com ciumes dos irmãos e ficou maluco e mau (uau, que original). Sem querer, criou sete deuses menores e maus e no processo, o mundo começou a ser arrastado para a sombra e vários demónios começaram a atacar os outros três irmãos. Uma das irmãs vá de agarrar a sua espada e lutar, mas os maus eram muitos. E que fazem os lorpas dos outros dois irmãos? Uma começa a chorar. O outro apanha as lágrimas dela num cálice. Raios me partam se eu queria deuses morcões destes... francamente. Não lhes ocorreu.... sei lá, ajudar? Quem quer o deus que em vez de pegar numa arma e lutar pelo recém-criado mundo ele se pusesse a fazer cocktails?

Das lágrimas saltaram os deuses menores, começando pelo "Lord of the Dance". Tive que parar de ler durante vários minutos porque só conseguia pensar no Michael Flately aos pulos lá para o meio.

Acalmei-me, depois de muito esforço, continuei a ler.... e parágrafos abaixo leio que este deus é também o santo patrono dos homosexuais. Não estou a gozar. O Lord of the Dance é também o santo patrono dos gays e amante do deus do cálice.

Foi tudo para as urtigas, e foi a partir deste momento que soube que nunca poderia levar este jogo a sério.

Coisas como os nomes dados aos homosexuais(Lovers of the Dawn) e aos heterosexuais (Keepers of the Hearth) bem como as alcunhas pelas quais se referem no caso de serem abordados por pessoas que não vão de encontro com os seus desejos sexuais, feitiços para transexuais mudarem de sexo, e a insistência que só os maus (e os gajos que vivem no reino vizinho que são um bando de extremistas religiosos) é que são preconceituosos, e que poligamia também é aceite (e tendo em conta o grande numero de animais sentientes e inteligentes) estava mesmo à espera de encontrar um parágrafo falando das vantagens do bestialismo.

Li o resto do livro sem grande interesse (queria mesmo encontrar a passagem sobre o bestialismo, mas não tive sorte), e apenas consegui ficar um bocado enjoada com as imagens da nova rainha (que é eleita no inicio do livro) que aparece sempre a chorar baba e ranho (apesar de supostamente estar no trono à 8 anos) em todas as suas imagens só porque supostamente quando o Veado de Ouro a escolheu para rainha, ela desatou a chorar.

Obviamente que esta rainha é muito bonita, muito boazinha, esforçada e quer que toda a gente se dê bem, e é também muito naive.

De resto, em termos de sistema, é D20. Poderia dizer muita coisa, mas hoje não me apetece. Francamente, acho que me fico pela dark fantasy.

Agora, vou ali ao centro médico apanhar uma injeção de insulina antes que apanhe diabetes só por ter lido este livro.

Meninas (e fanáticos do politicamente correcto) divirtam-se.

Meninos (e meninas más como eu) mantenham-se longe -- porque o Lord of the Dance pode apanhar-vos.

[S.M.M. Lindström · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really like this game system (especially the currency - or lack there of, rather). It's an easy base to work off of with a fun world to play around with. The group I'm GM-ing is house ruling it in a big way, which is the way it usually goes when I'm in charge, and this source material left a lot of room for that.

The things I felt were missing were examples of poisons and diseases, as well as a shorter overview of the general rules. As things are now you have to read each and every skill and arcana to get a full grip on the basic rules. Reading every single one of those took quiet some time, so a screen with all the tables and the basic rules would have been a way to get the game going quicker.

But that's mostly a complaint from me as GM/Narrator. My players had no trouble getting their characters together and they're both new to rpging. In short, good starter game that can be made more complicated for the more experienced players. Also, it's a big wish fullfilment game - you can become BFFs with unicorns and there are pet cats with wings. I am not complaining about this, this is a good thing.

[Geoff · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm intrigued by the "romantic fantasy" idea. I thought the setting and fast-play rules were pretty cool, so I checked-out dome of the suggested reading, specifically Mercedes Lackey's Arrows of the Queen series. I found them very enjoyable, as did my spouse. I hope tht maybe, someday, I might entice her to try playing a game of True20/Blue Rose.