Tell me about Blue Rose

[Crothian]

but it does mean that they shouldn't be reviewing RPGs designed to emulate sub-genres they hate..

Perhaps perhaps not. Depends if they can view the work and not be clouded by their biasness. Some people cannot do that, other can. And those that can are able to write good reviews even on things they hate.

 

[takyris]

If you aren't talking about my review, then ignore all this.

Not specifically you. Parts of your review struck me as condescending, to the point where anyone who actually did like romantic fantasy might have been better served reading someone else's review... but as a review for people who don't read romantic fantasy and don't really have an opinion about it one way or the other, I thought it worked well. And I didn't think you were going after it with an ax to grind -- which differentiates you from the people I am currently wasting emotion disliking.

A good reviewer can look beyond their personal feelings about a topic to judge the book in front of them. But if you do critize a book becasue of a bunch of personal bias trhe reader will see it and not give your reivew much wieght.

I agree, and I agree. Blue Rose threads taught me how to use the Ignore User feature.

Depends if they can view the work and not be clouded by their biasness. Some people cannot do that, other can. And those that can are able to write good reviews even on things they hate.

Again, I agree. I did not intend to target the people who can work past their personal biases. And while I wrote my apparently inscrutable apple pie piece as a kind of review, I was attempting to write it as a "Hey, I just got BR!" post review-parody, not an official ENWorld review-parody. The ENWorld reviewers are generally good at owning and getting around their personal biases. It's the posters who feel that Green Ronin apparently conned or mistreated them by doing exactly what they said they were going to do from Day One that have me irked. In several cases, it seemed to me to get past "This isn't my thing" and into attacks on people who did like it, which is less an exchange of ideas and more a "peeing in someone else's pool" kind of post. Which, while not against the letter of the rules, is arguably against the spirit of the rules of conduct here.

 

[Teflon Billy]

...It's the posters who feel that Green Ronin apparently conned or mistreated them by doing exactly what they said they were going to do from Day One that have me irked...

Hmm...That's batty. Do you mean in this thread? or are there others you are referring to.

I never got the impression from any pre-release stuff that Blue Rose was supposed to be anything but a Romantic Fantasy game, and I was expecting it to not resonate with me as a product.

It got 5/5 despite a setting that I didn't care for.

 

[radferth]

Sorry to interupt the game reviewer shop talk, but I wanted to speak out in favor of the setting. I agree that Aldis as presented in the BR book is on the treacly side, but that does not mean that it has to be run that way. I remember playing in a (West-End Games)
Star Wars campaign where the rebels we were playing were a bit less good than those in the movies (we we engaged in smuggling and con-schemes, coluded with imperial figures, etc.). The GM was running on the paradigm that the movies (which actually existed as such in his world) were rebel propoganda designed to make them look good. One could run a Blue Rose campaign in which the info about the world given in the rule book is the version taught to young Aldens, the real situation might be much grayer. Maybe there are a lot of citizens who have feeling the Dennis in "Holy Grail" (Strange magical stags jumping out of windows and touching people on the head is no basis for a system of government). Maybe the stage test and the blue-rose-scepter test are just illusionary shows for the masses and the current queen was the compromise choice of various factions of nobles. Maybe some parts of Aldis are not as tolerant as presented, or maybe peace-loving Aldens are tolerant of different sexuallity, but look down upon the military (and thus the PCs). There are many countries throughout history that have thought of themselves a good and enlightened and loved by all, but that is never the whole story.

On an unrelated critique of the setting: why are all the gay men presented as girly-men? Where are the manly Richard-the-Lion-Heart style homosexuals?

 

[takyris]

Hmm...That's batty. Do you mean in this thread? or are there others you are referring to.

I'm mainly referring to other threads. I haven't seen much in this thread that merited more exploration of ENWorld's Ignore User stuff.

I never got the impression from any pre-release stuff that Blue Rose was supposed to be anything but a Romantic Fantasy game, and I was expecting it to not resonate with me as a product.

Well, you're an intelligent person with the ability to differentiate between "I don't like that" and "It's not good". If everyone were like you, apple pie and quiche would never have had to enter the picture. (And really, wouldn't that have been best for everyone?)

I feel odd rushing to BR's defense as much as I have (and that's less than many, I'm well aware), because my own interest in romance fantasy is borderline. I read Mercedes Lackey and finished it but didn't feel compelled to read a lot more, read Shark-Jumpers of Pern or whatever that series is, or at least the first four or five books and the side-books with the singers and drummers -- and liked them when I read them, but don't feel an urge to go back and reread now. I loved Kristen Britain's two books, and I think that if she could put out books more often than she does, she'd be a lot more well-known. I've read the first two books of Jude Fisher's Fool's Gold series, which is arguably romance fantasy, and I find it an interesting experiment in gender-role study by someone who, I'm guessing, didn't do a lot of gender-role study in college. (The books are good, but the feminist stuff is pretty simplistic -- although it's possible I'm biased because I've got a feminist-studies writer buddy. Still, I personally never took any feminist studies classes, so I shouldn't be noting the logical fallacies of someone writing a gender-role study book.)

So I feel like I'm kind of in the boat of "I'll read good romance fantasy, but I don't have time for the bad stuff," whereas with swords & sorcery or lighthearted swashbuckling-fantasy (if you can find it, because there's not really a great sub-genre for it yet, I think), I'll pretty much read even a bad one and enjoy it. If I read a bad romance fantasy novel, it's because I have no other books, and I've stopped reading for enjoyment and started reading as an exercise in what I'd do differently as a writer. I don't have Blue Rose and don't feel a huge need to get it, since it's not a game I'd be likely to run in the near future -- I'd be into it, but my geek-buddies would not. (And the one particular bit of crunch I'd have loved -- a more in-depth look at Diplomacy, Bluff, Intimidate, and good rules on how those can be used on players or how players can use those on each other, so that you can actually have a Dangerous-Liaisons kind of double-cross with banter across the ballroom and lies within lies and all that good stuff -- isn't addressed.)

(Ironically, an editor at Tor's paranomal romance department (which handles SF, Fantasy, Horror, Space Opera, Cyberpunk, whatever, as long as it has a strong love story in it) just asked to see the complete manuscript for my most recent novel. Maybe I'm more into romance fantasy than I thought.)

 

[Skywalker]

On an unrelated critique of the setting: why are all the gay men presented as girly-men? Where are the manly Richard-the-Lion-Heart style homosexuals?

I don't think that is the case but may be the impression you get from the overall art style. Romantic Fantasy (and shoujo) tends to present men and women in a more androgynous (sp?) manner. This is probably to reinforce the idea of transcending one's sex.

There are only a very few homosexual NPCs presented in BR. Out of those that are, Braniel is relatively manly - he is called Green Beard, which has a vague pirate ring to it . Also, Sharit Ranith (pg36) has a husband and he is practically an elderly James Bond.

 

[radferth]

Also, Sharit Ranith (pg36) has a husband and he is practically an elderly James Bond.

Oops, I forgot about Sharit. I take back the girly-man thing. I guess the adrogenous art was affecting my view of the setting. I have a distaste for androgenous art that goes back to the character illustration for TSR's Treasure Hunt module (N4 I believe) in which all pregen characters (except the gnome) had doe eyes, afros, and indeterminate gender.

 

[arscott]

Interesting. I remember Mercedes Lacky as being pretty fluffy -- or at least, the good guys were, for the most part, pretty fluffy. The bad guys could be evil and nasty and all that, and I believe that the bad guys in Blue Rose are evil and nasty and all that, but the good guys were usually pretty noble and virtuous and anachronistically progressive and good (unless they get drugged and hypnotized by curtains into being evil for plot-purposes briefly). So it's not like nothing bad ever happens -- it's just that, if I understand it, the Blue Rose people are trying to set up at least one country as straightforwardly good and reliably trustworthy. That doesn't mean that you get to stay there the whole time. Things might not be so wonderful as you try desperately to reach the border of Aldis with necromancers trying to get hooks into your soul to drag you back.

I don't think that Lackey was that fluffy. Valdemar wasn't some mystical land where everybody was benevolent and progressive. The Heralds were benevolent and progressive. The rest of the people were just people: sometimes smart and good, somethimes stupid and evil. and more often than not, a bit of both. In fact, even some of the heralds weren't particularly tolerant of Homosexuality in the earlier books, IIRC.

From reading the comments and reviews on this board, I get the impression that Aldis is too flat and one-dimentional, even for a romantic fantasy setting. To me, Romantic fantasy is like diskworld: It's not a place where the problems of opression, bigotry, and stupidity don't exist, It's just a place where some enterprising hero can overcome those problems. Whether that hero is a spunky girl on a white horse or a film noir parody with a boyscout for a sidekick.

 

[Psion]

From reading the comments and reviews on this board, I get the impression that Aldis is too flat and one-dimentional, even for a romantic fantasy setting.

I think you pretty much nailed my feelings. I expected a game with more depth when it comes to personal interaction -- and got it. But I was also expecting a setting with more depth to support that, and I got something more, um, typically D&D plus some progressive highlights with regards to attitudes towards sexuality.

 

[Varianor Abroad]

Great essay! I got a true chuckle out of it. I understand exactly what you're saying about apple pie and quiche. Maybe a few others will get it.

The debate about Blue Rose reminds me of the first days of Arcana Unearthed. People who don't own or even fully read the product form half-baked opinions in order to post for a little attention and glory on message boards. (Others do read it and give a fair opinion - such as TBs review - that may be overshadowed by taking some of the rhetoric out of context.) That said, the controversy was ultimately good for the product because it got more people interested, even if on a personal level its draining.

I have Blue Rose and am reading it with interest. I will be starting a game for my nine year old daughter and wife soon. This looks like it may work better for my purposes than regular D&D - cleaner and simpler, less combat emphasis, etc. I haven't finished so I haven't formed my opinion of the product yet of course.