Blood and Relics

[PosterBoy]

Blood and Relics is an occult d20 Modern Campaign Model that brings gothic conspiracy in the modern world to life! Blood and Relics focuses on Europe, and the Blood War between the servants of light, the Sang Real, and those who serve Shadow, the butchering Caeder. A war fought since the dawn of the time that continues unnoticed by the bulk of humanity. A war not only over lost artifacts of power, but over knowledge, and the soul itself.

Blood and Relics gives you everything you need to bring the Blood War to life: 6 new advanced classes with a dark mystical slant, a Timeline of the secret history of the world, 22 Feats of Profane and Sacred Ritual Magic, and lost Artifacts and Relics of Power pulled from religious and mythological sources.

Whether you chase the shadows or prowl the dark of the crime-ridden underbelly of the modern world, your d20 Modern Campaign will never be the same.

 

[GameWyrd]

San Greal - Holy Grail. Sang Real - Royal Blood. Easy mistake to make.

The Holy Grail is a relic, a bloody relic since it was supposed to have contained the blood of Christ. Royal Blood is just blood, but religious blood. Blood. Relics. Blood and Relics is one of the very first supplements to support D20 Modern. It should already be pretty clear the angle the PDF takes.

Blood and Relics introduces gothic conspiracy to D20 Modern, it introduces demons, cultists and those who fight against the darkness. This is a theme that d20 fantasy players will be familiar with and it’s therefore a good idea for an early D20 Modern supplement.

At one point we’re told Blood and Relics focuses on Europe. It doesn’t really. It builds the conspiracy of darkness and light along the lines and development of the Old Testament. Blood and Relics is therefore interested in the history of Palestine and Israel, key events in Jewish history, the birth of Christianity, and the development of the Church, the Inquisition and its changing role. It just so happens that the geographical areas of interest are Europe and the Near East (Israel and Turkey both have standing applications to join the EU). The demons, new advanced classes, feats, allegiances and other mechanics can be used as easily in Canada as they can in Europe.

The PDF isn’t suited for real life religious zealots though.

I like the shades of grey the D20 allegiance system allows (as much as I like to poke fun at d20 fantasy’s alignment system) and Blood and Relics does well here. The Inquisition is a great example, how it began with good intentions, was corrupted (but many Inquisitors still have had good intentions) and then came around to the light again. Blood and Relics includes a few new allegiances. These new allegiances are central to the back-story, the game meal, that’s portrayed in the supplement. You can now have an allegiance to a Dark Power or Higher Power. If you like the idea of a modern inquisition operating in a secret world of demons and descendants of Christ – then Blood and Relics is for you.

We continue on safe ground with the introduction of new advanced classes – D20 Modern’s own version of prestige classes. The Believer comes with an illustration of a monk and if that doesn’t summarise the class for you then I need only mention the Turn Undead or Lay on Hands class features. Cultists are evil, not that we have Evil any more but this advanced class develops dark powers and gets a dark familiar. No prizes for guessing the Dark Warrior’s shtick. Grave Robbers are archaeologists’ eternal bane; they care nothing for preserving or recording ancient secrets and history and are just good at getting to the loot no matter what. Monitors are guardians, people who keep an eye out for the forces of light. The temptation to name your Monitor character either Giles or Wesley Wendham-Pryce will be there and it must be avoided. At least it shows you’ve got the idea of the class. Similarly you might want to call your Relic Seeker Sydney Fox. Relic Seekers are a good idea though, they’re one of those natural advanced classes that come complete with plot hooks.

A few new skills – Knowledge (Ritual), etc – lead us into a weightier section of new feats. Animal Sacrifice, Black Bargain, Black Mass, Brain Washing, Consecrate Ground, Prayer and Profane Ritual are just a handful of feats from the three and a bit pages. Just listing them gives a good summary of Blood and Relic’s flavour.

The PDF introduces new conditions. The health of the spirit will be as important as the health of the flesh in any Blood and Relic styled game. I’ve already dropped a clue to one: Brainwashed. Much of the rest of the chapter is busy with spiritually tainted conditions – such as unnatural doubt or hate. There’s possession too. There are stages of possession (and Blood and Relics goes for the projectile vomiting version) through to (hopefully) exorcism.

The following chapter is one long time line from 1500BCE to 20 years ago. We’re warned it’s not an historically accurate time line – so I’ll assume John Paul the 1st didn’t actually battle demons in the Vatican’s hallways – but there’s still plenty of real history there. Unless you’re allergic to dates, you shouldn’t find that this chapter puts you to sleep. It’s just a clean way to present the key points from a long background. I was disappointed, at first, by the lack of recent activity – nothing seemed to happen at the year 2000. It didn’t take me long to come around though and now I much prefer the idea of there having been something of a spooky lull, or a GM determined year 2000 event and even the chances of a new Pope in the next few years.

There are really only a few entries in the Secret Societies chapter. There could have been much more in here; all the Hermetic orders, for example. You have the Knights Templar instead – and they’re always popular – and the current form of the Inquisition.

There are a few items of legend; bits of the sword Excalibur, the spear used to stab Christ on the cross, nails from the cross, scrolls with powerful rituals on them and others. Treasure and relics for those relic hunting games.

There are monsters, demons, actually, powerful lords and smaller minions. The most powerful of these arch-villains in the Blood and Relics setting has a CR of 14. The servitors tend to have a CR of around 4 or 5. The fiendish vessel template is a great asset; allowing GMs to introduce fiendish hounds, raven spies or other suitable genre animals.

The 44-paged PDF concludes with Gamesmastering advice. I found the chapter to be more like GM reassurance. I thought I’d detected fantasy vibes from the PDF and this chapter reassures me about that. I’d noticed the supplement paying heed to D20 Modern’s own flavour and mechanics and this chapter explains why. I thought the Sang Real would only work as extremely rare encounters and possibility only as plot devices. Again, the reassurances required to steady that assumption are here.

The PDF product is good. The default page slow is set to continuous. There are bookmarks and internal hyperlinks. The layout is easy to read, the illustrations are frequent enough and the text is formatted around them nicely. There’s a sidebar free, low resolution, still with touches of colour, version that is there to be easy to print.

I like Blood and Relics. It doesn’t grab me, shake me about and stuff inspiration down my throat – but if I was going to run an occulty D20 Modern game, or an Indian Jones style game, or a Relic Hunter style game or even a supernatural noir then I’d want to have Blood and Relics.

* This Blood and Relics review was first published at GameWyrd.

 

[trancejeremy]

Blood & Relics 2 (Second Edition)

Blood and Relics

This is a review of the 2nd edition, which is revised and expanded.

Background

Blood and Relics is a occult sourcebook for d20 Modern from RPGObjects and d20 Modern guru Chuck Rice. This is actually the revised edition, which revises and expands the original. Since I don't have the original, I can't say what is different, other than it's about twice as big. It's primarily a PDF (which I'm reviewing), but also apparently available in print form.

Nominally it's a setting, but only nominally - most of the rules (the classes and such) can be adapted to regular d20 Modern with no problem as far as I can tell, other than taking a different approach to magic (aka FX in d20 Modern terminology) than normal.

The setting itself is fairly straight forward in it's basic premise - it's set in the real world, except that there is an occult (in both meanings, magical and hidden) war going on between the forces of good and the forces of evil. This is called "The Blood War" (somewhat unoriginally, but does fit their naming scheme of their line of books).

One the evil side of the Blood War you have the Dark Powers, apparently called the "Caeder". These are more or less your stereotypical demon or "fiend" (in D&D/d20 terms). On the good side, you seemingly have most the monotheistic religions, plus, in a twist out of the DaVinci Code, Jesus's offspring and the Templars. (Really though, this theory goes back ages, to at least "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" (which apparently was in part the inspiration for this product, though apparently it's been years since the author of this read that book), possibly earlier, it just gets dusted off every few years.).

Contents

The first chapter of the book, and what I think is the most readily useful part, is on new character options.

First off is several new allegiances (basically the d20 Modern version of "Alignment", basically the same thing but vaguer), based mostly on the 7 deadly sins and virtuous virtues.

More interestingly is a whole bunch of new advanced classes. This is really the best part of the product.

The first two classes are similar, but sort of opposites. The Believer, which would be a follower of the good forces, while the Cultist is a follower of the evil. The Believer doesn't get to cast spells per se, but gets "Sacred Ritual Feats", which can be similar to spells (more on that later). The Cultist gets some "Profane Ritual Feats" which are similar, but can also cast spells via a spell point system (ditching the traditional d20 spell slot system).

There's a trio of thematically similar classes - the Grave Robber, the Relic Seeker, and the Monitor. The Relic Seeker is essentially Indiana Jones, both in terms of what he does (tries to get ancient goodies for museums and such) and how he does it (dodging and ducking and such). The Grave Robber is one who sells the stuff or keeps it instead of putting it in a museum, and his class abilities are more influence based - evil minions and the like. (Pretty much all the bad guys in the Indiana Jones movies are this). Monitors are secret guys that prefer to keep ancient stuff away from others to keep them out of evil hands. (These are the mysterious guys often found in the Indiana Jones movies. Also The Mummy. They ride out of nowhere and shoot at everyone)

I think there probably was room for a class similar to Lara Croft of Tomb Raider fame or Brenden Frasier's character from the Mummy, the two fisted gun toting sort of treasure hunter, but this could probably be accomplished by the Relic Seeker class along with some multiclassing with some of the gun based classes in the d20 Modern rulebook.


Also, there's something called a "Dark Warrior". Basically a person that makes a pact with dark forces for added combat prowess. I think he would be someone like Lance Henrikson from The Omen II or Bill Romanowski from the Denver Broncos.

And though I don't think it quite fits the setting, there is also a Witch class. Which seems more like a classical witch (say Circe or Medea) than the Wiccan sort of Witch or the Martha Stewart/Leona Helmsley/Elton John sort of witch.


Beyond the various new classes, there's a number of feats, including feats that are magical rituals. The Cultist gets "Profane Ritual" feats and the Believer gets "Sacred Ritual" feats.
The rituals are something of a mixed lot. Some are ways of gaining spell points for Cultists, generally by sacrificing somebody, though some do bad things to people (like giving them horrible nightmares). The ones for the Believer tend to be things like turning a sword from a normal one to a flaming one, or blessing or castigating things or people.

The second chapter introduces "Spiritual Afflictions". Basically, they are ways a character can get tainted or corrupted by evil. Most of the 7 deadly sins are afflictions, plus a few more that seem more smurfly than evil.

Honestly, I'm not sure I like this, since the 7 sin stuff never appealed to me, plus as an existentialist, I think man is free, but, it really does fit the source material.


There's also 3 pages of rules for demonic possession and exorcism.


The third chapter, about 25 pages or so, is on secret societies. Basically, you get a history and description of that secret society, where they fit into the "Blood War" and a prestige (or is that advanced?) class.

Two are basically different offshoots of the old Catholic Inquisition. One from the Spanish branch and one sort of reformed.

There's a secret occult force of the Israeli Government, the Isayet Omega.

And of course the Templars. Gotta have the Templars in a setting like this. This product takes the tack that the Templars were actually more or less Cathars, and in fact, founded by the Cathars. (This is one of those murky areas, while there were apparently some connections between the two groups (at least some of the early members of the Templars came from that Cathar section of France), they do seem to have different outlooks on life which makes me find this to be somewhat unlikely. )

It does have one very new twist. There's a group called the "Salem Seven". In this setting, it seems that the Salem Witches (from the famous witch trials) were actually agents of the Templars.

Any setting has to have villains, and in this, the Teutonic Knights take that role. Which fits them pretty well, I think.


The last chapter is a "Campaign Guide". It explains the background of the setting, including a timeline of important occult events in it. Somewhat amusingly, for a setting that basically revolves around the children of Jesus, the Common Era dating system is used for the timeline.
Beyond that, it contains writeups for various legendary artifacts. Excalibur, the Shroud of Turin, Longinus (aka the Spear of Destiny, the spear that pierced Jesus's side), Nails of the True Cross, etc. And there's some very interesting rules for creating holy or blasphemous books, including a few sample tomes.

And there's a writeups of various supernatural nasties/beings (mostly evil ones, for good ones you might want to check out the old Encyclopedia of Angels from the now defunct Fast Forward). The Lord of Vermin, the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse (woohoo, finally d20 Modern stats for Rick Flair!), and some generic fiends.
Rounding out the chapter and PDF is a series of tables for the new feats in the game.

Looks/Layout

The PDF itself is solidly done up to RPGObjects usual high standards. Everything is bookmarked nicely. And there are 2 different versions, one for the screen and printing. I did notice that that the Cultist seems to have a web address in his Class skills. (Apparently they are web designers, like the Heaven's Gates people).

This is actually funny, the font they used for headings has a really weird looking "M" and in fact it took me quite a while to realize it was an "M", not a "ITI". I thought some of the things were written in latin or something. Heh. Like "Exorcisiti", instead of "Exorcism". And I was confused as to what a "Horseitian" was.

Half the art is by Marcio Fiorito, whose stuff I always liked. I'm not familiar with John Longenbaugh, the guy who did the rest of the art, but I like his art a lot, too. So it's a nice looking pdf.



Final Thoughts

I have mixed feelings about this. I think the rules part is very good, and it certainly gives writeups of a whole lot of secret societies and real world relics and such, and is useful for a general real world occult sourcebook for d20 Modern. But on the other hand, I think the setting has some internal contradictions.

I mean, basically, it's pretty much based on the concept of the Apocalypse - the anti-christ is coming and all that stuff. Which is fine as far as that goes, but then you have all these groups which have a completely different sort of theology sort of shoe-horned in. For instance, you have a group of Israelis hunting down the anti-christ by the orders of the Israeli government. But that doesn't make sense, because pretty much by definition, Jews don't happen to believe in the antichrist. Otherwise they wouldn't be Jews. In fact, their whole concept of "messiah" is completely different than the Christian one.
Or Jesus's children. In this, they are protected by the Cathars (or their descendants). But the Cathars were basically docetic, that is, they didn't think Jesus had a real physical body. And they generally frowned on children in general. So I find it hard to believe they would found a group to protect said children.

Still, most of the contradictions reflect the source material (like Holy Blood, Holy Grail) and the genre in general that it's trying to emulate. At least it doesn't have Tom Hanks in this. B+

 

[Waylander the Slayer]

The review was great! love the humor...