Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nomad4life" data-source="post: 2029558" data-attributes="member: 28645">Blue Rose RPGI’ve just looked over the Blue Rose roleplaying game and wanted to share a few thoughts. I can pretty much sum up all of my sentiments towards this game in one sentence:   “Never in fifteen years of gaming have I seen such an aesthetically brilliant system of mechanics paired with such an awkward setting.”     Rules-wise the Blue Rose RPG is a “masterwork” of the D20 system. Table-top has been polluted with Playstation-esque “roll playing” for far too long. This system encourages a refreshing return to dramatic social interaction and character development. When the time comes to dispense with formalities and get to the kicking of posterior ends, this is also handled with gratifying sublime beauty. Almost all of the “clunky” conventions of standard D20 products have been replaced by slick, cinematic, enjoyable alternatives (much like the Mutants & Masterminds gameline.) For example, I never realized how much I hated ‘attacks of opportunity’ until now. Although I cannot express how happy I am to finally see conventions such as level-based defense modifiers, reputation scores, and semi-custom classes, I was somewhat astonished to learn that there was no traditional system for gaining experience points in TBRRPG. The players simply express that they believe their character has developed enough to obtain the next level, and the gamemaster (narrator) either agrees, or explains that more playing is required. It will be interesting to see how this concept works out. On one hand, I worry about the potential for abuse from bad players or inexperienced gamemasters. On the other hand, I will shed no tears to see all those CR charts and calculators go.   Unfortunately, all this is offset by the romantic fantasy setting. Just as I feared, The Blue Rose RPG might as well have been entitled “Liberal Propaganda: The Role Playing Game.” Personally, I wish that Green Ronin had handled the distribution of this gameline differently. It would have been nice to buy the game mechanics as a separate “core” system, and then sold settings as supplementary material. However, this is a purely subjective matter, and I find it phenomenal that the ONLY thing I can really find “wrong” with this game comes down to personal taste. That says a lot in itself.   If you share my personal tastes in this matter, then I’m afraid you’re still stuck in your current dellema: Should you buy the game only for the system mechanics for use in an alternate setting?   The answer comes down to economics- If you have the extra money, DO IT NOW. It is really worth it, and the default setting is not in any way an integral part of the design- From what I can tell, even a moderately experienced gamemaster would have no trouble lifting the parts that they like (and there is a great deal to like) and incorporating them into any other published or homebrew D20 game. However, if you’re tight on money, I would say wait. A system this inspired is destined to find its way somewhere else… Eventually.</blockquote>

Verification