Tell me about Blue Rose

[Nisarg]

Man, you are my hero. I loved that book when I read it as a kid. When I was in London for Spring Break, I found it at a book store and bought it .
Jon

Port Blacksand, the simplicities of the Fighting Fantasy system aside, is a really really great city setting, that holds up very well for serious roleplay. Its got a really good vibe going, with a lot of interesting personalities you can play with living in the town.

I added a few elements inspired by Thieves World and the Lankhmar novels, a big shantytown just outside the city walls, and a bit of planar travel elements, and I was ready to go.

Nisarg

 

[sinmissing]

Yeah, BR can work for any setting where your primary objective is rules lite d20.
I'm working on adding some Space Opera stuff to make it more like "Vacuum Roses"

For those of you not convinced yet. . . BR as a ruleset is as tied to the Romantic Fantasy setting presented in the rule book as 3.0 is tied to the Greyhawk setting. (although there is a *much* higher page count regarding the actual setting in BR)

 

[Maliki]

Get martial arts training.

Thats an idea!

 

[Maliki]

Oh, and if people would point or punch if they saw the cover - don't worry, it's a available in PDF. Print it out, remove the romantic fantasy setting section and put it in a blank binder - you'll be fine

If I hadn't just started playing (C&C which I love) This may have been an option, the mechanics sound great.

 

[jeff37923]

I've read through the Blue Rose book and can only find some nitpicky faults with it - the main two being that the graphic designer who did the back page added a fuzzy effect to the text that makes it look like the ink ran and that I cannot tell what one of the artists last name is because it is spelled differently in places throughout the book (the one who signs her work "Lilith"). Otherwise, it looks great. The rules are clear and concise, although I have a slight odd feeling about the rule that the Narrator will decide when you will advance in level instead of the usual XP system. The setting is just detailed enough and well thought out. All in all, a good product. If I had the money to spare, I'd probably buy it.

Now, the stumbling block that I have is that most of the games that I run already focus on social interaction instead of combat. I'm currently running T20 and the last four game sessions have been pure role-playing, no combat and we hardly even had to do skill checks because I adjucated that the role-playing took precedence over die rolls. With that in mind, I don't see why it is necessary to buy a whole new game to justify running adventures that involve more social interaction than combat. It seems that the focus of the Referee just needs to be shifted in the game. YMMV.

 

[Nahat Anoj]

Now, the stumbling block that I have is that most of the games that I run already focus on social interaction instead of combat. I'm currently running T20 and the last four game sessions have been pure role-playing, no combat and we hardly even had to do skill checks because I adjucated that the role-playing took precedence over die rolls. With that in mind, I don't see why it is necessary to buy a whole new game to justify running adventures that involve more social interaction than combat. It seems that the focus of the Referee just needs to be shifted in the game. YMMV.

Well, "just roleplaying it" can be a pretty good way to do things. However, some players don't like leaving everything up to the GM's judgment, so they may prefer to follow the rules more closely. Personally, as both a player and GM, I like the randomness introduced by dice.

Because it seems like your style, the next time combat comes around, consider running fights in a manner similar to roleplaying social encounters. If it works for social interaction, why not for physical interaction? There are many games that do this, such as Amber.

In any case, I don't really feel that BR is significantly more interaction-based than normal d20. There's, like, maybe a couple more pages about how to do intrigue and run social encounters than "standard" d20 games. The rest is pretty much d20 as usual, although streamlined and a little quicker.

Jon

 

[arscott]

THIS LINK explains what Blue Rose means by "romantic fantasy."

Wow. This almost reads like a condemnation of the Genre. It was never quite as "Hit you over the head with liberal and feminist Ideology" when I was actually reading most of the books.

Romantic Fantasy definately goes beyond being just "chick flick". 'Romanic' comes not from simple love stories, but rather the artistic and literary movement of the 18th century Spawned by revolutions in America and France, Romanticism focuses on idealized nature, idealized morality, and the idolization of the individual. Alexandre Dumas and Victor Hugo were famous romanic novelists, and William Blake and Lord Byron were famous romantic poets.*

As far as modern geek culture goes, Star Trek is probably the most obvious example of
Romantic Fantasy, with the inclusion of prominent female and minority characters, enemies who were misguided as often as they were evil, and the glorification of the individual so evident in James T. Kirk.

The societies evident in romantic fantasy reflect the fundamental optimism in the romantic philosophy. Liberalism stems from both optimism regarding human nature and the tendency to escape the imposition of yesterday's laws on tomorrow's society. The talking animals and respect for trees stem from the idealization of nature. And the feminism is a result of romantic empowerment of the individual combined with the prevelence of female leading characters.

If you want to read romantic fantasy books that are definately not chick flicks, I reccomend some of the following:

the Farseer Trilogy, by Robin Hobb
Bedlam's Bard Series, by Ellen Guon and Mercedes Lackey
Shadow of the Lion and This Rough Magic, by Mercedes Lackey, Dave Freer, and Eric Flint.
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*Can you tell somebody has his theatre history miderm tomorrow?

 

[jeff37923]

Because it seems like your style, the next time combat comes around, consider running fights in a manner similar to roleplaying social encounters. If it works for social interaction, why not for physical interaction?

Jon

I'd go back to dice for combat I think, keeps the tension up at that point. The lack of die rolls for social interaction was justified by good roleplaying by the players. If the guys had just wanted to gloss over it, then I would have left it to the dice for the PC - NPC interaction.

 

[The_Warlock]

Yeah, BR can work for any setting where your primary objective is rules lite d20.
I'm working on adding some Space Opera stuff to make it more like "Vacuum Roses"

Doing a similar thing myself, setting up a "any genre" house rule book for myself, and converting in skills & feats from modern, future, and some other third party sources.

 

[sinmissing]

Doing a similar thing myself, setting up a "any genre" house rule book for myself, and converting in skills & feats from modern, future, and some other third party sources.

PM me if you want to collaborate.