Houses of the Blooded questions

[Lorin]

Ok, so our party's DM is feeling down recently and wants to play something... "different". Well, he is an avid fan of Dungeon Keeper, classic Sword and Sorcery books and thus i wanted to do something Dungeon Keeper-y to cheer him up and Houses of Blooded looked perfect for that. So, can anyone share with me their experience in playing this and maybe you have some suggestion about making it a little more Dungeon Keeper-oriented?

[CarpeGuitarrem]

That's certainly interesting. I could see the core engine used for a Dungeon Keeper-esque setup, but HotB is not set up to be like that. In my opinion, it can be hard to get your head wrapped around it, because it has so many diverse and totally disparate subsystems: buildings, resources, trade, duels, magic...etc.

On the other hand, John Wick also made a game called Blood & Honor (http://johnwickpresents.com/blood-honor/) (print sold out, but PDF is available) that moves the core mechanic to samurai tragedy. The rules system is also massively streamlined, and I understood it right off the bat. He essentially learned a lot from HotB, and applied all of that to the rules presentation.

So I'd suggest that as a starting point for the hack. Let wagers declare that heroes are advancing against other players' sections of the megadungeon, or that your forces are valorously fighting, and instead of using katanas as weapons, color it as each character's special attack or spell (the rule is: if you're hit, you die, no damage or HP needed--which totally reframes the context of conflicts).

[Lorin]

Looked it up. Intriguing, VERY intriguing. I think i mix and match both of them. For example artifacts with quality weapons. And left hob's injury rules. We are talking about powerful evil beings after all. Any other ideas?

[CarpeGuitarrem]

None at the moment...I haven't actually played it. But good luck! It'll require a bit of work, but I love the wagers system.

[Lorin]

Well, after some pondering i think i have decided about flavor of the setting. It goes something among these lines: long time ago, when world was still young, it was ruled by two most powerfull beings that this world have ever seen: dragons and gods. Dragons were ruthless, cunning and greedy, while gods were righteous, virtued and noble, sometimes to a fault. Both forces were quite antogonistic to each over and thought for many centuries for dominance, until something happened and they have just... dissappeared. But their heirs, their children - did not. And so we have our setting: heroes and dragonblooded. Heroes - are humans with god's blood in their veins and our refluffed vens - creatures with dragon's blood. They are the only creatures on earth who can still practice blood magic, which is, of course, a forbidden art. There are ruins: remnants of the lost culture of gods and dragons, so we are left with current artifact mechanics (with DOOOOOM!). And we have adventuring parties of heroes, too, who would also like to take a dip from ruin's cup. Heroes and dragonblooded not necessarily antagonistic to each over, but they quite often are. Dragonblooded are thought as a some kind of a demon, after all. They are rebels, and quite often not in a good way. Well, or something like that.