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Message: <blockquote data-quote="trancejeremy" data-source="post: 2311216" data-attributes="member: 924">Blood & Relics 2 (Second Edition)Blood and RelicsThis is a review of the 2nd edition, which is revised and expanded.BackgroundBlood 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.). ContentsThe 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/LayoutThe 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 ThoughtsI 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+</blockquote>

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