Let's Talk Blue Rose

[Crothian]

creating NPCs like all games will vary mostly by how well you know the system. Blue rose makes skills pretty easy since they are either maxed out or no ranks in them, but feats are tougher since you get one every level and that's more to choose. The classes themselves are easy even if multi classing occurance since it is just bab, saves, reputaion, defnse...you just add them up.

so, basically once you learn and are familar with the feats it should get easy. The magic system is feat related so it does complicate that some.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I don't see how it is fair or accurate to decribe being disinterested in a specific setting as being closed-minded.

The comments he was responding to weren't people who were disinterested: People said they felt physically sick based on the setting, or that they "loathed" it.

I'm disinterested in NASCAR, but under no circumstances does it make me want to vomit.

It's fun to exagerate on the Internet, but at the same time, what one writes is all one can be judged on here -- taken at face value, people were absolutely not merely disinterested. They were overreacting, to put it mildly.

If someone had described themselves as nauseated because the Player's Handbook included some relatively light setting info on the World of Greyhawk, most ENWorlders would, rightly, look at them like they had two heads. Just because BR has a different baseline than standard D&D doesn't mean that the hyperbole is any more appropriate here.

We get it, folks. Girls and kissing are icky. Get over it.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

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.

Jarzon isn't the black. Jarzon is the gray. The black is the scary evil lich king.

 

[Arcane Runes Press]

The comments he was responding to weren't people who were disinterested: People said they felt physically sick based on the setting, or that they "loathed" it.

I'm disinterested in NASCAR, but under no circumstances does it make me want to vomit.

It's fun to exagerate on the Internet, but at the same time, what one writes is all one can be judged on here -- taken at face value, people were absolutely not merely disinterested. They were overreacting, to put it mildly.

If someone had described themselves as nauseated because the Player's Handbook included some relatively light setting info on the World of Greyhawk, most ENWorlders would, rightly, look at them like they had two heads. Just because BR has a different baseline than standard D&D doesn't mean that the hyperbole is any more appropriate here.

We get it, folks. Girls and kissing are icky. Get over it.

This is exactly right.

It isn't disinterest that bothers me - it's the passionate rejection, and outright derision of a setting and style that goes against the established norm.

Romantic fantasy isn't new, it's been around the fantasy literary scene for ages. So I think the level of vehement rejection I've seen here, and on other message boards, is pretty telling in regards to how hidebound gamers are about what is, and what is not to be gamer approved.

People don't even blink when Yet Another Realms Knockoff (tm) appears, complete with all the baggage and hoary cliches of 30 years of fantasy gaming tradition - but they line up to mock Blue Rose. And that frustrates me.

Patrick Y.

 

[arkham618]

Has anyone else noticed how well BR would work as an alternative ruleset for Star Wars?

 

[Akrasia]

The comments he was responding to weren't people who were disinterested: People said they felt physically sick based on the setting, or that they "loathed" it.

I'm disinterested in NASCAR, but under no circumstances does it make me want to vomit.
...

Well I do indeed loathe the genre of 'romantic fantasy' (or at least the samples that I have encountered in the past). Many apologies for actually expressing my opinion, and inquiring the extent to which I can ignore a genre that I loathe in order to get to the (what sound like fairly interesting) rules.

If someone really loathed R.E. Howard's work, but was interested in the mechanics of the Conan RPG, it would be perfectly appropriate for that person to make his/her dislike known, and inquire to what extent he/she could ignore the setting in order to get to the rules (or inquire to what extent he/she could use the rules for a non-Hyborian campaign).

(As for NASCAR, yeah, that does make me want to vomit.)

 

[WayneLigon]

Well I do indeed loathe the genre of 'romantic fantasy' (or at least the samples that I have encountered in the past). Many apologies for actually expressing my opinion, and inquiring the extent to which I can ignore a genre that I loathe in order to get to the (what sound like fairly interesting) rules.

Well, I think that the question has already been asked and answered a few times in other posts.

There is no real 'connect' between the rules and the setting save that Sorcery Arcana are indeed inherently evil and corrupting. Which you can get around by saying 'no it's not' and telling your players to ignore the Corruption rules. It's a really simple fix.

The mechanics take up the vast majority of the book, as has been said before.

If you start just after the 'world of Aldea' section and stop before you get to the adventure portion, you'll probably never ancounter the romantic fantasy aspect save in a few references to how some of the nations or races use the various Arcana, or the tiny section on descriptive racial differences between the countries. And maybe in the monster section, though I have not read that one very thoroughly at the moment. But you can drop all that. There is a d20 conversion section so you can convert d20 monsters over to using the toughness and defense rules.

If you like I can give you some page breakdowns tonight when I'm at a PC with the PDF on it. I think one of Crothian's posts does some of that, though. It's something like 'Pages 1-23 are setting, history, and background. Avoid those.' The rest of the 200+page book is rules, classes, skills, feats, arcana (the quasi magic/psionics system used) and monsters.

 

[Akrasia]

Well, I think that the question has already been asked and answered a few times in other posts.
....

Yes, I know.

I was just replying to the claim that it was somehow inappropriate for people to express their feelings about the genre in question.

Sorry for not being clearer.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

It isn't disinterest that bothers me - it's the passionate rejection, and outright derision of a setting and style that goes against the established norm.

If you think the fact that the Blue Rose setting goes against the established norm is why I dislike it, you obviously don't know what I like.

Romantic fantasy isn't new, it's been around the fantasy literary scene for ages. So I think the level of vehement rejection I've seen here, and on other message boards, is pretty telling in regards to how hidebound gamers are about what is, and what is not to be gamer approved.

You're right, romantic fantasy isn't new. We've had plenty of time to become familiar with the basic gist of it, and we despise that gist. The whole "hidebound" thing might have worked when the genre first came out, and with a different objector.

I'm thrilled whenever I see steampunk fantasy, science fantasy, cyber-fantasy, alignmentless-gritty-fantasy, anthropomorphic animal fantasy, anime fantasy, spellless-gritty-fantasy, horror-fantasy, super hero fantasy, gritty-super-hero-fantasy, oriental fantasy, african fantasy, or any combination of the above. Eberron I liked, until I realized it didn't go nearly far enough. Spelljammer was my holy grail in 2e. Dark Sun was number 2. Conan is my cup of tea today. The Iron Kingdoms and Rokugan are my prime alternates. d20 Modern I prefer over D&D. Call of Cthulu d20 is my favorite magic system.

If that's hidebound, I'd hate to meet open-minded.

I have very specific complaints about Blue Rose's setting and the genre it's based on, and, yes, they do turn my stomach. Or make me bust out laughing.

People don't even blink when Yet Another Realms Knockoff (tm) appears, complete with all the baggage and hoary cliches of 30 years of fantasy gaming tradition - but they line up to mock Blue Rose. And that frustrates me.

Yet Another Realms Knockoff... I seem to recall tossing basically that accusation at quite a few products, particularly those that target D&D nostalgia, and finding them quite distasteful.

I see a lot of new ground that I like, setting-wise. Blue Rose is most emphatically not among them.

Anyway, who's producing Yet Another Realms Knockoff these days? Arcana Unearthed is too standard fantasy for my tastes, but it's certainly not much like the Realms. Iron Kingdoms? Conan? Midnight? Slavelords of Cydonia? Black Company? Warcraft? Eberron?

About the closest I can see are the old skool products, Blackmoor and C&C, and those are more knockoffs (or in Blackmoor's case, a resurrection) of the setting(s) the Realms was something of a knockoff of in the first place. And they're quite different in their own respective rights.

 

[The_Warlock]

How do...So I've been reading Blue Rose, and I've been reading this board. I'm not going to get into the setting, it's great for a framework for simple/identifiable evil setting, and the concept of defending a utopia (real or perceived) is a good one for beginners, and sometimes for jaded elders, but I'm not here to convince anyone to like what they don't like for setting, as I believe that's impossible in a venue such as this (or at all, since it does seem to get a little bickersome after awhile - though at least EN World makes it moderately entertaining Victorian england bicker). But I digress...

Arkham618, I agree the baseline system seems perfect for Star Wars, replace corruption with the dark side, and make a feat or two to connect the psychic weapon abilities to physical/energy weapons for Jedi and light sabers.

I am blown away by the simplicity and flexibility of the basic role classes and feat system to replicate most of the core classes of D&D. If I hadn't just done a MASSIVE house rule rewrite for my home FR campaign, I would've jumped on this system. That said, the underlying system I can see being just the kind of flexible you need with alternates feats/arcana to do modern psychic investigators, as well as standard medieval fantasy and far future psi-war-esque things. I am thrilled with the system, and can see a great ability to simple add and subtract arcana/feats to tweak this to any genre very easily.

Here's the thought though that really kicked me in the brain - I also just finished reading HARP by ICE. One of the things they have are training packages - groups of related skills that you can get at a discount price. I can see a concept like that applied lightly to Blue Rose. Under each of the 3 core roles they list basic applications of skills and feats to make "bards", "rogues", "rangers", etc, etc. What I would want to do with this system is come up with packages like they have suggested which have fewer skill/feat choices as you progress (ie already mostly chosen), but give such packaged roles an extra bonus every few levels, while retaining the ultimately customizable core roles for people who wanting to be raging roguing telekinetic psychics...my initial thought is to take say, an AU magister and see how I could make him in Blue Rose to test it.

As for NPC creation - it actually looks fairly easy for the average folks, just choose one of the predefined role concepts listed under a role, and max their level, and whammo, skill and many feat choices are somewhat preset. Any major NPC would require more time, much like any other system, but with the mostly pre-maxed system it's really just the feat choice that can slow you down from what I've read so far. I hope to get through combat and such today at lunch.

Anyone have any other interesting ways they think they could use/re-interpret the rules?