True20 Adventure Roleplaying Game

Mr. Pramas: If you are listening, thanks! I'm interested in the Blue Rose ruleset, but if you look at my centerfold bio, you'll see that one of my turnoffs is "campaign settings with modern day sensitivities and opinions on diversity as a key components".

So, thanks. I'll most likely be picking the pdf up when it is available.

Please keep up the good work.

Excellent! I like what I've heard about BR's system, but feel pretty much the way francisca does about.

As I have said in previous threads, I think folks are overlooking the posibility of using the Sensitive New Age Rose setting under the assumption that the reality of the world is much less kind than the write up. Without taking sides, remember how much ire was created here a few years ago when the Supreme Court weighed in on the presidential election. Now imagine if said decision was made not by the Supreme Court, but a magical deer jumping out of the fountain at the Washington Monument. Probably not a campaign I would ever run, based on the wide variety of other choices, but it would be interesting to run a campaign involving a civil war with no clear "good" and "bad" side.

In any case, don't beat yourself up if you (like me) bought Blue Rose just for the T20. I doubt GR would have been so quick to jump in with T20 PDF if all the positive respose had been "I would probably buy this if it came out without the setting attached". I lug around books with way more wasted space than this well-made cautionary tale of a setting.

I wonder if anyone could have come up with True 20 on its own. I general I enjoy rulesets that were made with some campaign world in mind, even if I don't use that world. Maybe some world-specific rules are easier to use (or change) when seen against the specific world they were made for.

I'd likely pick this up. I enjoy the True20 system (stripped out of the BR book) and like the fact that they are listening to the fans that want the system, but not the lame (IMO) setting.

Kane

I take a great delight in seeing GR change its mind. There were some fanatics who aggressively quashed anything resembling conversation over at the Blue Rose forums (as if publishing the rules separately had any bearing on their enjoyment of the BR setting... sigh). Some of that posturing against anyone asking questions deviating from canon was soooo ironic considering the overtly accepting nature of the BR setting, but alas.

I bought the Blue Rose version for the mechanics (and am using them with great success in a Midnight campaign), so I probably won't be buying TrueD20. Speaking of which, it is about time they did this. It works so well for Midnight, I'm happy to see them publishing it in a format that won't frighten off so many people (rightly or wrongly).

carpedavid said:

... Now, I will definitely be picking up the True20 Rules if it's issued in print form.

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Over at RPG.net, Pramas said: "We are planning a print book. We'll be releasing more info about our approach on that next week."

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=196352&page=6

Turanil said:

It's too late Akrasia. You are married man now (I mean: with Castles & Crusades ).

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Heh.

Well, I view as RPGs as 'friends' rather than spouses -- and one can never have too many friends.

C&C definitely remains my game of choice for 'D&D-style' games. True20 would be useful for games with a different flavour -- I think it would work well for a Middle-earth campaign (given its different magic system, stuff on light/shadow, etc).

Akrasia said:

C&C definitely remains my game of choice for 'D&D-style' games. True20 would be useful for games with a different flavour -- I think it would work well for a Middle-earth campaign (given its different magic system, stuff on light/shadow, etc).

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I'm currently contemplating converting my Land of the Crane (oriental-flavored) campaign over to the True20 system. The "conviction" and "corruption" rules will map quite well to the concepts of "honor" and "taint" that feature pretty prominently in OA-type settings.

One of the big strengths of the True20 system that I can see is that you no longer need to create an entirely separate core class (or presitge class) every time you want to tweak the flavor of a character (not that you really need to now, but it's a trend I see in most of the books that come out). Since the three "roles" that True20 employes are based not on fantastic archtypes, but on character functionality, you can paint pretty much whatever flavor you want on them without too much trouble.

Akrasia said:

Well, I view as RPGs as 'friends' rather than spouses -- and one can never have too many friends.

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But you can have too little time, unfortuneatley. :\

I'm glad to hear people on EN World and RPGnet are excited about True20 Adventure Roleplaying. The speculation about the whens and whys and hows the project came about has been interesting, especially because people have been so impatient in their, er, vigorous requests (sometimes bordering on demands) that we jump in and "ditch" the setting of Blue Rose and provide True20 material in a different format.

I personally barely consider the two projects to be related. Green Ronin spent TWO YEARS developing Blue Rose (both the setting and the system that drives it). Not only that, but we fully expected you guys to hate it. We absolutely anticipated the vast majority of the people who spend their time hanging out on EN World or RPGnet or other game industry forums were not going to be interested in Blue Rose and its accurate emulation of romantic fantasy fiction. We did not expect you to want it. Flat out, we did not make it for you: we made Blue Rose to appeal to the thousands and thousands of potential roleplayers out there who equally aren't turned on by the Conan-style or Lord of the Rings-inspired roleplaying games that utterly dominate the market. We wanted to sell roleplaying to those fans of Mercedes Lackey or Tamora Pierce or people who love the idea of having an intelligent animal companion. Like my almost ten-year-old daughter.

Considering that it took us two years to put Blue Rose together and make it the product that we wanted, carefully crafted to appeal to romantic fantasy fans, I think we're doing pretty well to have put together and enacted a plan to simultaneously meet the desires of the traditional gaming community within five months of the PDF release of Blue Rose. Let me tell you, it's a delicate thing: I'm absolutely in favor of doing True20 Adventure Roleplaying, and I'm looking forward to the various things we have planned, but I'll also admit that I have mixed feelings about the "message" some might read into this decision.

I was quite personally disappointed when some people in the traditional gaming community were so downright hostile to the Blue Rose project, as if its mere existence as a game (always intended for others, never intended for them) was a personal affront, or as if the people who liked the product as a whole were automatically deserving of derision. It made me very, very sad to think that I may have gone to the trouble of attracting some young woman to the hobby through Blue Rose only to unintentionally make her a target of the misguided wrath of some He-Man Woman Hater's Club refugee. Not everyone who is interested in True20 as a rules engine behaved like a goon, of course, but I was still surprised at the number who did because there have been a few.

I'm so pleased that we have the ability to make games for ALL SORTS of people, I really am, but I'll admit that from the moment we agreed internally to the True20 Adventure Roleplay product plan I've been concerned about how that announcement would be greeted, especially by the vocal (and sometimes unkind) segment of gamers who have expressed such strong opinions about the Blue Rose setting (and in some cases its fans). I did not want to inadvertently send the message to Blue Rose fans that we are not every bit as behind the game a we were when we conceived and released it. I REALLY did not want to give the "I hate even the concept of the setting" group reason to speculate that Blue Rose had failed, or to second guess our motivations and assume that our plans for True20 was proof or validation of the objective "rightness" of their opinions.

I guess I just wanted to get that idea out there to you guys. You all have my heartfelt appreciation for helping to keep things positive and for your continued support for whichever of our D20, OGL, or True20 projects strike your fancies.