Let's Talk Blue Rose

[Psion]

-Run a typical “misfit girl comes to town looking for friends and acceptance” adventure… Only to discover that there was a GOOD REASON this girl was an outcast!

Adapt the Witchfire trilogy to BR, maybe?

 

[Nomad4life]

not interesting no....ia failed attempt at irony is what I think you are going for. All you are doing is taking the things you don't like about the game and turning them 180 degrees.

Now, in a serious BR doing one of these things every now and agian could be good, but every time just looks like you are attacking the setting while playing the setting; and that doesn't make sense to me.

Ah, but you see, it IS attacking the setting without any attempt to “play the setting.” Since the first gut reaction of my players would be to attack such a setting, it seems that the best thing to do might be just roll with it and give them what they want. This way, I could use the history and organization segments within BR (some of which I would like to try) without forcing the players to swallow other aspects of the game that will not appeal to them. Obviously, I would explain this before hand, so they don’t get confused as to what the romantic fantasy genre normally entails.

 

[Nomad4life]

Adapt the Witchfire trilogy to BR, maybe?

Alas, not familiar with Witchfire... Is it any good?

 

[Psion]

The first adventure was pretty highly praised. I got the third, and found it pretty and moody, but very scripted.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Nomad's ideas are really inspiring me to want to run such a game.

As to the Witchfire Trilogy (from Privateer Press), it's classic Iron Kingdoms - clunky and poor mechanically, but gorgeous and packed full of fascinating fluff. IMO, it's not quite what you're looking for, though, since it does eventually wind its way back roughly to the typical ending you're trying to avoid and/or mock.

 

[CrusaderX]

As I continue to look over BR, I start to think that maybe, just maybe, the default romantic fantasy setting could work… If you TWIST it around a little bit.

Examples:

-An adventure where the environment is a danger to the common people (such as a festering swamp) but the “talking animals and neo-pagan girls” are dead-set on defending it anyway.

-Run a typical “misfit girl comes to town looking for friends and acceptance” adventure… Only to discover that there was a GOOD REASON this girl was an outcast!

-Run an adventure where the big-bad-prejudiced-male actually turns out to unexpectedly “save the day” due to his irrational suspicions.

You see where I’m going with this… Basically, keep the setting as it is, but remove the “objective” clear right/wrong element. Now THAT could be interesting…

All excellent ideas. I usually twist around most campaign settings anyway, so I love stuff like this.

If I played Blue Rose, I'd have the oh-so-tolerant "heroes" learn to be more tolarant of religion. Any notion that the church is "bad" simply stems from nothing more than intolerant anti-religious propaganda.

 

[WayneLigon]

If I played Blue Rose, I'd have the oh-so-tolerant "heroes" learn to be more tolarant of religion. Any notion that the church is "bad" simply stems from nothing more than intolerant anti-religious propaganda.

The main source of friction between Aldis and Jarzon isn't over the nature of religion, it's over (1) the Aldisian distaste for the repressive nature of the Jarzon state and (2) the Jarzoni distaste over how Alidisians use Arcana. Both have good reasons why each side distrusts the other. In other words this is the prime example of the much-touted 'how can two Good nations in D&D be at odds with each other?' trope AND the 'how can a Good god have bad followers' trope. Both nations have a lot going for them, both have equal reasons to dislike the other.

 

[CrusaderX]

The main source of friction between Aldis and Jarzon isn't over the nature of religion, it's over (1) the Aldisian distaste for the repressive nature of the Jarzon state and (2) the Jarzoni distaste over how Alidisians use Arcana. Both have good reasons why each side distrusts the other. In other words this is the prime example of the much-touted 'how can two Good nations in D&D be at odds with each other?' trope AND the 'how can a Good god have bad followers' trope. Both nations have a lot going for them, both have equal reasons to dislike the other.

I admitedly know nothing about this setting beyond what I'm reading on these boards. But based on this quote from above...

You basically have a perfect “open minded” utopian community threatened by thinly disguised right-wing conservatives. The goal in adventuring is to either “open the eyes” of these villains, or do away with them in the name of progressive thinking. All this while trying to save the environment with the aid of friendly talking animals

As well as this quote...

Like Star Wars, the game is trying to present absolutes for Good and Evil.

And this portion of a review...

Blue Rose is a setting and twist on the d20 system to make it a bit more rules light and to adapt it to the setting and structure of Romantic Fantasy. That begs the question of what is Romantic Fantasy? It is a genre that has really only been around for twenty of so years. It deals more with personal connections, character emotion and growth, and can tend to be rather black and white. The good guys accept all kinds of people and all kinds of life styles. Ones sex, race, religion, or personally beliefs does not matter as long as you are not making life worse for your neighbor. It deals with an almost utopian based society but it has its enemies. The bad guys are controlling and just evil. They live to destroy the good society and usually come really close but never succeed.

Everything I'm reading has so far screamed "this is a black and white setting", where, it seems, Aldis is clearly the white and Jarzon is clearly the black. If I'm wrong, please let me know. But you even describe Jarzon as being repressive in your post above, and I have a hunch that such repression isn't portrayed as being a good thing.

So is it black & white, or is it shades of grey? Does the setting really portray the "repressive Jarzon" as being "good"? Does the setting give examples of, say, having the heroes be from Jarzon, while having the villians be the Alidisians?

 

[Crothian]

it is both. There are places that are very good verse evil, but there are options for in the middle as well. The new alignment system they have is basically like good, neutral, evil but it uses different names.

 

[mmadsen]

First, you're seriously mischaracterizing the romantic fantasy audience, in the same way that those who say gamers are "fat virgin losers with dreams of grandeur" mischaracterize the D&D audience.

Um...nevermind. :\

Second, you're way off base with Buffy. It's a close cousin to romantic fantasy, through and through, even accounting for Joss Whedon's love of irreverence.

I think you misunderstand his issue with "romantic fantasy" -- which is not that it's romantic (or fantasy), but that it's laughably politically correct with a facile "tolerant" philosophy.