Tempted to Run Blue Rose backwards

[Nisarg]

I've said it elsewhere, and I'm sure I'll have to say again: The Blue Rose roleplaying game seeks to emulate the genre of romantic fantasy as it exists in fiction, including all of the themes and tropes common to the genre.

Green Ronin's only agenda is to promote the hobby of ROLEPLAYING to the already existing audience of romantic fantasy literature (and, perhaps, nine-year-old girls who spend their allowance on posters of kittens with wings and pink faeries...if my daughter's interest in the game is any indication).

Nikchick:

Good job on Blue Rose. I get the feeling it is excellent as an engine for running "art fantasy" in general (I could see a Thieves World game run with the BR rules, for ex).

The rules are great; and the setting is very fitting with the genre it was intended to emulate.

Well done.

Nisarg

 

[Crothian]

RPGs, sci-fi, and fantasy published to date suggest otherwise. It's very hard to write intelligent creatures that don't think like humans (and stereotyped humans at that), and even harder to do it well. It's darn near impossible to run such creatures as PCs or NPCs for any length of time.

creating them is one thing, but people have already done that. All people have to do is take the ones that were successful from literature and use them.

And running such a creature will depend on the DM. Not all DMs are made equal.

 

[Nikchick]

But, of course, to bring a new market to bear, you need to cater to their tastes. Quite naturally, a game aimed at fans of a type of fiction that has a pretty obvious agenda will reflect that same agenda. That doesn't mean that GR has that agenda, or even that the authors of the game have it either, but I think it's hard to claim that the game itself doesn't.

People seem to generally be skipping the "the game is only reflecting the genre, including the 'obvious agenda' contained in the body of fiction" part and going straight to "Blue Rose has an agenda! Green Ronin is using Blue Rose to promote an agenda !!".

Just making clear that Green Ronin does not have an agenda outside of promoting the hobby of roleplaying. My personal opinion of Blue Rose is that it merely postulates a "what if.." scenario common to the romantic fantasy genre; the game itself is a vehicle to introduce roleplaying to people willing to accept that "what if...". That's the game's agenda.

 

[barsoomcore]

Can a game HAVE an agenda? I mean, it's a bunch of words on a page. It can reflect the agendas of the people who created it, but it's not out there actively recruiting people to its cause.

Although that would be pretty cool, if it was. And I suspect Green Ronin would have the "Most Alarming New Product" award well-sewn up at GenCon.

 

[Gomez]

Very interesting discussion. It made me think. If let's say there was a "Honor Harrington" RPG would people complain about it's overt conservative agenda? (PS. I love HH BTW).

 

[Desdichado]

Can a game HAVE an agenda? I mean, it's a bunch of words on a page.

I had an agenda for a meeting here at work today. It was a bunch of words on a page.

It can reflect the agendas of the people who created it, but it's not out there actively recruiting people to its cause.

I suspect that whether or not something like a game can have an agenda or merely reflect the agenda of the authors is semantical nitpicking, though. A more interesting observation is the fact that Green Ronin do not specifically have the agenda to promote a certain type of society as the only "good" type of society (according to the claim here in this here very thread) but have adopted the trappings of it anyway to try an "outreach program" to meet the demands of a potential new audience.

Although in my completely unprofessional, untrained, and uninformed opinion, most buyers of Blue Rose will already be gamers who are interested in the game for its mechanics. But I'd like to be wrong about that.

 

[Nisarg]

Although in my completely unprofessional, untrained, and uninformed opinion, most buyers of Blue Rose will already be gamers who are interested in the game for its mechanics. But I'd like to be wrong about that.

Depends how well they advertise it.
Put an advert for Blue Rose in the back of a Mercedes Lackey or MZ Bradley novel, and they might just have the biggest RPG-gaming niche explosion since Vampire.

Nisarg

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Nikchick,

I applaud what sounds like some truly brilliant design work in Blue Rose, applaud Green Ronin's efforts to recruit new gamers, and don't mistake the fact that the setting reflects a certain agenda for GR actually possessing that agenda. I don't even think Blue Rose (unlike much of the source material) intends to promote the agenda it contains. I just personally despise said agenda, and wouldn't want to play it.

I think you may be pleasantly surprised at how many gamers buy Blue Rose for the mechanics and dump the dippy setting.

I hope I'll be pleasantly surprised at how many non-gamers buy Blue Rose for the dippy setting, fall in love with the mechanics and become life-long roleplayers.

 

[barsoomcore]

I suspect that whether or not something like a game can have an agenda or merely reflect the agenda of the authors is semantical nitpicking, though. A more interesting observation is the fact that Green Ronin do not specifically have the agenda (snipsnipsnip) but have adopted the trappings of it anyway to try an "outreach program" to meet the demands of a potential new audience.

But "adopting the trappings of" is a completely different proposition than "Possess the same agenda as".

And by not allowing people to make nonsensical arguments like "The game has an agenda" means you force them to say silly things like, "The people at Green Ronin have agenda X." Cause they don't, and we all know that. So the semantic distinction serves an important logical function, it seems to me.

A game that describes a world in which tall people are good and short people are evil doesn't possess an agenda against short people. Its author might, but anyone might reasonably read the game and decide that it in fact says short people are powerful and worthy of respect. And there's nothing to say they're wrong -- because works can't have agendas. The only reason to define a work as possessing an agenda is in order to promote your own agenda. Only people with an agenda care about other people's agendas.

Although looking at it, should that be "Only people with an agendum care about other people's agenda."?

Boy, that Blue Rose. Some game.

Remember, only YOU can prevent thread hijacking

 

[Desdichado]

Corey, as much as I hate to stooping to quoting dictionary.com, I disagree that a game cannot have an agenda, since an agenda is merely a listing of things to be accomplished. http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=agenda

A game (or novel, or even genre of novels, since that may actually be more appropriate here) that describes a view of a Utopian society and contrasts it with a Dystopian society where the Dystopian society strongly resembles real life organization(s) is promoting a simple agenda of abandoning or actively working against said real life organization(s).

You made an example of where an agenda can be unclear, or perhaps misconstrued, or misconstruable. In that case, I'd say such game/novel/etc. doesn't possess a clear agenda, and nobody would be talking about it. In the case of "classic romantic fantasy" and the game that emulates that genre, I don't think that's true, though. The agenda is painfully clear and its promotion is far from subtle.

Anyway, I'm not quite sure why I've devoted quite as many posts as I have to this topic to be honest with you (maybe I care more about postcount than I let on...) because I'm not so much offended by the "romantic fantasy" agenda so much as just actively disinterested. As Moog says; I bet a lot of folks (in fact everyone in my neck of the woods who plans on buying the game) are interested in the mechanics, but not the setting.