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Yora
2017-01-17, 01:17 PM
Blue Rose was first released way back as an earlyish d20 OGL game that introduced the True20 variant system. The idea was to make a fantasy RPG aimed at people with less interest in fighting and dungeon crawling and more into socially focused heroic drama. Or aimed at girls, if you want to look at it this way.
Back then people actually did get in quite a huff about that, but it certainly was an interesting different approach to what a fantasy RPG could be. Whether the execution really achieved that or not is a somewhat contested question. Now a new version is out that is based on the AGE system from the Dragon Age RPG.

I just got the pdf and at 23€ it isn't exactly cheap, but for 384 pages you really get a lot for your money. It has a 100 pages Player Rules section, a 140 pages Setting section, and a 100 pages GM section.

CowardlyPaladin
2017-01-17, 02:40 PM
So what makes it different than D&D proper? What is unique to Blue Rose. Roleplaying sounds fun, and if it is aimed at girls that means it is likely more feminist which I appreciate, what else?

Herobizkit
2017-01-18, 05:40 AM
I own the Original True20 Blue Rose setting/book and from memory:

* one of the player races is "intelligent animal" of various species (usually Medium-sized). They are treated as equals to everyone else in society.

* focus is on a storybook-style Good versus Evil. Like, fairy-tale style, but "romanticized" for YT.

* Homosexuality is legal and widely accepted in the world's culture, having its own cultural 'word' to describe the partnership, making it both sacred and bonding.

* BONDS. One of the feats you can get is to Bond with an intelligent animal, becoming a lifelong friend and partner.

* Good people are basically Good all the time. Very little internal strife among the races. Most of the strife is caused by the Evil side of things, usually by encroaching on Good's territory much like evil Fey (and, again, like Evil characters in fairy tales - kinda the Disney ones, but taken seriously, like in (fr'ex) the TV show 'Once Upon a Time', or 'Grimm').

* It's billed as being 'romantic fantasy'. Relationships with people are rewarded/celebrated, magic is more 'passive' (psychic powers and utility magic takes the fore vs. destructive combat magic).

* It's a Skills-Based system. I forget exactly how progression works in True20 but it's kind of a proto-Mutants and Masterminds with perhaps Archetypes to follow IIRC.

daniel_ream
2017-01-18, 11:45 PM
If you are familiar with Mercedes' Lackey's Valdemar novels, the Blue Rose setting is pretty much that, with some extra elements from Tamora Pierce's novels. How much you enjoy Blue Rose will largely depend on how much you like those books.

Most of the original controversy came from the fact that the game is pushing a very specific, currently trendy social agenda. If you don't like agendas in your gaming, this might not be the game for you. It's not subtle, and at times it trips itself up with internal contradictions that can be unintentionally hilarious.

Politics aside, my personal complaint about the setting is that it's incredibly twee and Utopian. In their quest to create a magical fairy kingdom where nothing mean ever happens to anyone, they seem to have forgotten to put in any believable, threatening bad guys to contend with. As an example, you can't fight against homophobia because the kingdom is so enlightened nobody thinks there's any thing wrong with being gay, so there's no homophobia to fight.

warty goblin
2017-01-19, 11:36 AM
If you are familiar with Mercedes' Lackey's Valdemar novels, the Blue Rose setting is pretty much that, with some extra elements from Tamora Pierce's novels. How much you enjoy Blue Rose will largely depend on how much you like those books.

Most of the original controversy came from the fact that the game is pushing a very specific, currently trendy social agenda. If you don't like agendas in your gaming, this might not be the game for you. It's not subtle, and at times it trips itself up with internal contradictions that can be unintentionally hilarious.

Politics aside, my personal complaint about the setting is that it's incredibly twee and Utopian. In their quest to create a magical fairy kingdom where nothing mean ever happens to anyone, they seem to have forgotten to put in any believable, threatening bad guys to contend with. As an example, you can't fight against homophobia because the kingdom is so enlightened nobody thinks there's any thing wrong with being gay, so there's no homophobia to fight.

I think the antagonists were supposed to come from the other kingdoms, aka the religious and intolerant one and the one run by an immortal and insane sorcerer lich king sorta guy. You could also have Ye Olde Evil Cultists stirring up trouble more locally, but yeah, the main kingdom was so sunshine and flowers there wasn't much to work with there. I mean unless you did something really against genre tropes, like go against the rule of the hereditary aristocracy and a monarch selected via Magical Deer.

Mostly though it just struck me as mechanically very eh. Not bad, just sort of flat and textureless, suffering from the unfortunate combination of a relatively high mechanical overhead and a lack of fun stuff you could do with the rules. I can see its value as a less crazily complicated version of D&D 3.5, but I really can't figure why I'd use it in place of 5E, which isn't any heavier, and a lot more interesting. Sure there was some unique stuff, like rules for playing as a psychic horse, but who wants to play as a damn horse? There's just a whole parcel of adventurous stuff a horse cannot do, on account of not having hands.

Yora
2017-01-19, 11:56 AM
I got it and have been browsing through it twice, and from what I've been seeing at first glance the player section looks and feels very much like the regular Fantasy Age rulebook, which is very generic and unimaginative with no real originality. (Which for a generic rules system is okay, I guess.)
The GM section looks like 90% standard stuff for the totally clueless that you get in any basic rulebook. Here I had been hoping to find something new.
I have not read the campaign setting section, but the monsters are again the most generic lineup of standard fantasy critters.

Overall my first impression at a quick glance is that this new edition feels much more generic than the True20 version did and it makes even less effort to explore new directions for fantasy roleplaying.
I think this really is a campaign setting book for people who want to run a campaign in that specific setting. It doesn't look like a new game.

CowardlyPaladin
2017-01-19, 03:12 PM
Speaking of which, what exactly is True D20?

Mr Beer
2017-01-19, 06:21 PM
If I wanted to play in this setting, I wouldn't use D&D mechanics for it. D&D has combat baked in to the design, everything else is just kind of added on top.

Jeivar
2017-01-19, 06:39 PM
Politics aside, my personal complaint about the setting is that it's incredibly twee and Utopian. In their quest to create a magical fairy kingdom where nothing mean ever happens to anyone, they seem to have forgotten to put in any believable, threatening bad guys to contend with. As an example, you can't fight against homophobia because the kingdom is so enlightened nobody thinks there's any thing wrong with being gay, so there's no homophobia to fight.

I actually found those aspects of it to be a breath of fresh air amidst !GrimDarkMurderEdgelord! entertainment. Yes, there are limits to what you can do with it, but I enjoyed spending some time in a setting that is unambiguously positive. There's plenty of awfulness in the real world, and the older and more jaded I become the more I appreciate escapism.

And as someone else said, there are external enemies.

icefractal
2017-01-19, 11:15 PM
There's plenty of threats, foes, dangers, etc. Not really any shortage of trouble. But it's utopian in that the nation which appears to be "good" ... actually is good. Not secretly evil, or hollowed out by corruption, or whatever. And while it faces threats, like a couple other nations that want it gone, it's not collapsing or about to collapse.

Which some people really hate, apparently. I remember when it first came out, there was a lot of complaints about how that couldn't possibly be plausible, and even a few people claiming that it "really" must be corrupt, despite what the authors claimed. :smallconfused:

daniel_ream
2017-01-19, 11:40 PM
[...]there was a lot of complaints about how that couldn't possibly be plausible, and even a few people claiming that it "really" must be corrupt, despite what the authors claimed.

I don't go that far, if only because I'm used to fantasy worlds being ridiculously implausible. Certainly one can deconstruct Aldea that way if one is so inclined (there's a lot of handwavery to patch over the inevitable less-Utopian consequences of some of the setting details).

For me it was more the sense that they'd spent a lot of ink on How Great Everything Is, and very little on What Do I Actually Do In This Setting That's Exciting. There's a couple of paragraphs on antagonists that are vague and not fleshed out. As an example, there are allegedly powerful organized crime bosses in the city, but you can't have organized crime unless there are lots of things the populace wants to do and will pay money for that the ruling class has decided should be illegal, which implies a level of class conflict that the game insists doesn't exist in Aldea.

Marrying the world to a game system that's fundamentally about physical conflict didn't help; I tend to think that FATE or possibly Cortex Plus Dramatic would be a better fit to the setting as written.

CowardlyPaladin
2017-01-19, 11:59 PM
I don't go that far, if only because I'm used to fantasy worlds being ridiculously implausible. Certainly one can deconstruct Aldea that way if one is so inclined (there's a lot of handwavery to patch over the inevitable less-Utopian consequences of some of the setting details).

For me it was more the sense that they'd spent a lot of ink on How Great Everything Is, and very little on What Do I Actually Do In This Setting That's Exciting. There's a couple of paragraphs on antagonists that are vague and not fleshed out. As an example, there are allegedly powerful organized crime bosses in the city, but you can't have organized crime unless there are lots of things the populace wants to do and will pay money for that the ruling class has decided should be illegal, which implies a level of class conflict that the game insists doesn't exist in Aldea.

Marrying the world to a game system that's fundamentally about physical conflict didn't help; I tend to think that FATE or possibly Cortex Plus Dramatic would be a better fit to the setting as written.

Going off the organized crime thing a bit more, generally speaking that comes up normally if
A) There is a substance that is either illegal or controlled and going around the law is really profitable, like liquor in Prohibition or smuggling during Mercantilism
B) They are some local rebel group that basically entrenches itself as the people in charge of gambling
C) Some oppressed minority group uses organized crime as a way of protecting themselves (see the Italian mob in in the US)

If those conditions exist I don't see crime getting that organized, its just less risky to make money legally


I will say though, a society where the rules have to be good means that creating conflict requires a little bit nunaced than "Bad thing, go kill", it kinda reminds me based on what people tell me about the Ultima Games, and how being good in its own context is more interesting than just being good in opposition to evil.

Also is TrueD20 any good?

Yora
2017-01-20, 01:50 AM
True20 is a variant of the d20 system that Green Ronin developed for the first edition of Blue Rose and later released as a generic RPG system, similar to GURPS.
True20 is actually pretty similar to Fantasy Age, but also Star Wars Saga Edition. There are only three classes (Fighter/Rogue/Mage) that don't have fixed class features but are developed almost entirely through feats. It doesn't really have spells like D&D but mages have feats that give them control over certain things like water, mind, or plants with relatively open ended powers. At least that's how I remember it. The Blue Rose AGE magic system kind of emulates that.

The system does have some fans who praise it, but it never really got any major popularity from what I can tell. (I think partly because the rulebook was really unattractive.)

CowardlyPaladin
2017-01-20, 02:33 AM
True20 is a variant of the d20 system that Green Ronin developed for the first edition of Blue Rose and later released as a generic RPG system, similar to GURPS.
True20 is actually pretty similar to Fantasy Age, but also Star Wars Saga Edition. There are only three classes (Fighter/Rogue/Mage) that don't have fixed class features but are developed almost entirely through feats. It doesn't really have spells like D&D but mages have feats that give them control over certain things like water, mind, or plants with relatively open ended powers. At least that's how I remember it. The Blue Rose AGE magic system kind of emulates that.

The system does have some fans who praise it, but it never really got any major popularity from what I can tell. (I think partly because the rulebook was really unattractive.)

I've never actually played Fantasy Age or Star Wars Saga Edition, that is kinda interesting. Maybe I should start a whole thread on it, i'm curious about the mechanics.

daniel_ream
2017-01-22, 01:51 AM
True20 is very...bland. It seems very fantasy heartbreakerish to me; it's a very stripped down to its basics form of 3.0, but it still embodies all the design assumptions. For instance, the three "classes" are Has Good Combat Stats, Can Use Spells, and....Lots Of Skill Points. So everything that isn't fighting or spellslinging is lumped into "other". If you want to do a very stereotypical D&D and want something about as simple as B/X it might be all right, but it's not a very good generic system. I don't think it's a good fit for Valdemar.

Baeraad
2017-01-24, 06:06 AM
I agree that the writers of the first edition didn't seem to be able to make up their minds whether Aldis (the main kingdom) was perfect in every way or whether there were tons of problems that needed Valiant Heroes (TM) to deal with them. The organised crime issue is a great example - if the government is really so great at rehabilitating thieves, why are there still enough thieves left to form a kingdom-spanning secret society?

I can report, though, that I think the second edition does a lot to fix that. For a start, it's more clear that while the heartland of Aldis might be sickeningly twee and wonderful, it's got vast, lawless borderlands where pirates and warlords run amock, and that while the nobles are almost uniformly well-meaning, they all still all very much think that their own ideas for how to improve the country are better than other nobles' ideas, and aren't above a bit of underhanded scheming to get them implemented - all for the good of the kingdom, of course. Add a few cults, hauntings, scheming demons and dangerous ancient talismans just waiting for some schmuck to find them, and Aldis starts seeming a lot more viable as an adventure setting.

Also, the organised crime organisation now seems to occupy themselves mainly with smuggling. So I guess while Aldins are nice people generally, they are as reluctant to pay their taxes as anyone else? :p

I should also point out that there's no shortage of support to set the game outside of Aldis. I've run one long campaign in Kern (the dark evil undead kingdom) dealing the resistance movement there, and I'm currently running another one in Jarzon (the uptight over-religious kingdom) featuring a group of refugees trying to survive during a demon invasion. I like a darker shade to my romance, and Aldis' less-perfect neighbours supplies plenty of opportunities for that.


True20 is very...bland. It seems very fantasy heartbreakerish to me; it's a very stripped down to its basics form of 3.0, but it still embodies all the design assumptions. For instance, the three "classes" are Has Good Combat Stats, Can Use Spells, and....Lots Of Skill Points. So everything that isn't fighting or spellslinging is lumped into "other". If you want to do a very stereotypical D&D and want something about as simple as B/X it might be all right, but it's not a very good generic system. I don't think it's a good fit for Valdemar.

I don't think it's a good fit either. In fact, that's probably something that should be noted - True20 is a lot grittier and more detail-oriented than what you'd expect if you went in looking for something out of the stated source material. AGE loosens up a little, but it's still rather more... swashbuckly than Valdemar, where true heroes tend to overcome all adversity just by virtue of their true heroism (sometimes by making a heroic sacrifice, admittedly). I think that that arguably makes it a more fun roleplaying game, but it does remove it somewhat from the genre it's supposed to emulate.

CowardlyPaladin
2017-01-25, 08:09 PM
True20 is very...bland. It seems very fantasy heartbreakerish to me; it's a very stripped down to its basics form of 3.0, but it still embodies all the design assumptions. For instance, the three "classes" are Has Good Combat Stats, Can Use Spells, and....Lots Of Skill Points. So everything that isn't fighting or spellslinging is lumped into "other". If you want to do a very stereotypical D&D and want something about as simple as B/X it might be all right, but it's not a very good generic system. I don't think it's a good fit for Valdemar.

DIdn't Green Ronin make classes for True D20, like Spellmaster or Spellweaver or somethign from the advanced Players handbook?

kyoryu
2017-01-25, 09:14 PM
Speaking of which, what exactly is True D20?

It's the version of d20 played by True Scotsmen.

I'll be here all week, tip your server.

daniel_ream
2017-01-25, 10:03 PM
I can report, though, that I think the second edition does a lot to fix that. For a start, it's more clear that while the heartland of Aldis might be sickeningly twee and wonderful

Well, that's good to hear, I'll have a look then. I don't have a problem with a more fairy tale sort of kingdom than a traditional blood & guts sword and sorcery one, I just want there to be some point to the game other than sitting around for three hours musing about how wonderful everything is.


I should also point out that there's no shortage of support to set the game outside of Aldis. I've run one long campaign in Kern (the dark evil undead kingdom) dealing the resistance movement there, and I'm currently running another one in Jarzon (the uptight over-religious kingdom) featuring a group of refugees trying to survive during a demon invasion. I like a darker shade to my romance, and Aldis' less-perfect neighbours supplies plenty of opportunities for that.

This, I think, speaks to some of the problems with the setting: if you have to leave the core of the setting to get a campaign that's interesting and dangerous, what are you paying for?


It's the version of d20 played by True Scotsmen.

No, that's a fallacy.

Sith_Happens
2017-01-25, 10:17 PM
Speaking of which, what exactly is True D20?

It's Green Ronin's attempt at a generic system, based on Mutants & Masterminds' core mechanics.

Baeraad
2017-01-25, 11:44 PM
This, I think, speaks to some of the problems with the setting: if you have to leave the core of the setting to get a campaign that's interesting and dangerous, what are you paying for?

For the non-core parts of the setting...? I mean, life in Jarzon and Kern does get a good amount of pagecount devoted to it, and of course many parts of the setting - the rhydan, the arcana, the surprisingly effective system for creating characters with two-dimensional personalities in a hurry - are universal.

But it's true that the first edition, in particular, spent altogether too much time gushing about how wonderful Aldis is, to the point where not only was it hard to imagine how a campaign would work there, but it also felt terribly bland to me. Hence my off-center campaigns. Second edition improves that to the point where I'm at least toying with the idea of giving Aldis another try, but I still like Humourless Puritan Land and Dark And Dreary Undead Land better.

CowardlyPaladin
2017-01-26, 02:22 AM
So True D20 is different from the Green Ronin stuff from liek Advanced Player's Handbook and what not?

Kobard
2017-01-26, 08:21 AM
Speaking of which, what exactly is True D20?True20 was a generic roleplaying system that originated from the original Blue Rose game during the d20 OGL 3.x era. It reduced classes to three incredibly broad classes: adept, expert, and warrior. Classes were essentially feats and talents, similar to d20 Modern, which preceded it. A d20 was the only die used. No hit points. Spell fatigue system. It was an incredibly flexible and mechanically transparent system. There was even a book that showed you all the math behind everything so you could customize new classes, races, and such yourself. It still suffered from a lot of 3.X assumptions and mechanics (e.g. good/bad saves, skill points, multiclassing, etc.), but it felt somewhat liberating as someone who came into roleplaying with 3rd Edition D&D but also increasingly found 3.X somewhat cumbersome. There were some great fan-made setting ideas that Green Ronin published in some of their books and supported.

In terms of the setting, at the time, Blue Rose True20 was a pretty good fit in terms of genre emulation. Nowadays, however, I would probably opt for running the Blue Rose setting with Fate, possibly with either the Atomic Robo, Venture City, or Jadepunk rules modifications.

I have mixed feelings about Blue Rose AGE. On the one hand, BRAGE reads like errata to FAGE. It expands, improves, and corrects a number of minor problems with the FAGE system. It provides some additional flexibility to the surprisingly stiff FAGE class-role system. I prefer the magic system of BRAGE over the incredibly simplistic, if not underwhelming, magic system of FAGE. It gives magic far more utility. On the other hand, the writing for BRAGE is also incredibly sloppy and lazy. There is too much copy-paste from both the original Blue Rose book as well as the Fantasy Age Book. Instead of adapting Blue Rose for FAGE, BRAGE at times feels like FAGE shoe-horned into Blue Rose or Blue Rose shoe-horned into FAGE. The transition is far from seamless, and there are the occasional places where you can see holes in BRAGE where the the Blue Rose T20 rules once were (e.g. familiars).

If anything, I would love for an update to True20 with lessons and mechanics learned from the experiences of 4th and 5th edition D&D, 13th Age, Fate Core/Accelerated, etc.

Elderand
2017-02-08, 08:12 PM
BRAGE has some serious mechanical problems when it comes to magic. There is a stupid amount of redundancy or outright obsolecence between arcana. Some are clear trap option or are differentiated by tiny details that really don't justify making them different arcana.

Here's how I'd fix it.

Arcane Strike and Arcane Weapon are one arcana and are meditative only: Why were they even separate arcana in the first place? What weapon you can use is already going to be limited by your class/concept. It's not overpowered to fold them together. Meditative only because only you or weapon you personally wield are affected anyway and meditative doesn't get a single arcana to call it's own, sharing all of them with other disciplines. And shaping gets way too many good stuff.

Cold shaping is fatiguing: Why wasn't it fatiguing in the first place? I can only assume it was a mistake. Making it not fatiguing means it is the single best way to deal damage for an adept and make every other damaging arcana useless or near useless.

Calm and Heart shaping are one Arcana: You can already use heart shaping to duplicate calm's effect and if you do it shouldn't be sorcery if calm isn't sorcery.

Mind reading and mind reading are one arcana: Seriously....the two arcana aren't really different enough to justify having two of them. Having separate arcana over tiny differences while shaping gets very versatile arcana is really poor design.

Manipulate object and move objects are folded into one: the one time they give us two shaping talents that are basicaly the smae thing, only separated by small details. So yeah, just say you can have precise manipulation if you make move object fatiguing.

Harm: What the fudge is this? Why is this the only arcana that works weirdly using special stunt rules to deal more damage when everything else depends on outcome? You know what Harm? From now on your base damage depens on outcome like everything else. 2d6 penetrating +1d6 per 2 outcome. But keep the stunt part, harm need something to make it better or different than other damaging arcana. And yes the way it rolls damage in RAW makes it different and perhaps more likely to do hgher damage than other arcana, but it also has no range and requires an attack roll to do it and is always sorcery. This makes harm powerful but also a high risk high reward arcana.

Sorcerer's grip: Lets make that one maintenable with total concentration. I mean, you get to use it on people you are in psychic contact with, which means it's very useable at range, but it deals half damage on a save. The two balance out but I don't think the range is good enough to justify sorcerer's grip not being as versatile as cold shaping.

Suggestion: TN is 9 + familiarity....why? No, this should be on opposed willpower like every other mind affecting arcana.

Psychic blast: Oh god....poor psychic blast....same range as sorcerer blast, same damage....but you're affected by psychic shield even at line of sight, if the target save they take 0 damage. Psychic blast is the redheaded step child of the arcana. There is no reason to ever take it, other arcana do the same thing but better in every possible way. So let's give the poor sucker some love. Forget the no damage part on a save, you now deal at least half damage on a save, because you deserve it. Also....I think you should be an AoE. Yeah...anyone you can perceive should be a target. There is no AoE damaging arcana, this give some incentive to pick you up, even with the extra resistance.

Cluedrew
2017-02-08, 09:44 PM
This is a very small and kind of off topic thing, but what is the Jadepunk Kobard mentioned?

Actana
2017-02-09, 02:27 AM
This is a very small and kind of off topic thing, but what is the Jadepunk Kobard mentioned?

Jadepunk is a Fate Core setting book which combines the genres of wuxia and steampunk into a gritty underworld rebellion setting in a a large metropolis ruled by a corrupt and autocratic council. Instead of steam, the world's technology runs on five different colors of jade, each with their own unique and mystical properties, leading to things like unbreakable green jade swords to explosives made out of red jade, white jade airships and all other kinds.

I'm quite a fan of the setting, as it's both unique and evocative.

Cluedrew
2017-02-09, 07:39 AM
Yes, both unique and evocative are words I would use from that first impression, thank-you.

GungHo
2017-02-09, 10:11 AM
This is one of those that I liked the idea of (saccharine Disney fantasy a-la Once Upon a Time) a little better than the execution, but that may be because I think the Evil Queen is hotter than Snow White.

daniel_ream
2017-02-09, 12:42 PM
I think there's probably a niche for ahistorical fairy tale European fantasy as a setting, but to the best of my knowledge no one's done it yet.

Max_Killjoy
2017-02-09, 02:12 PM
It's the version of d20 played by True Scotsmen.

I'll be here all week, tip your server.

Someone already tipped the server, that's the problem.

E: damn, wrong thread, joke makes no sense here...

daniel_ream
2017-02-10, 02:56 AM
BRAGE has some serious mechanical problems when it comes to magic. There is a stupid amount of redundancy or outright obsolecence between arcana. Some are clear trap option or are differentiated by tiny details that really don't justify making them different arcana.

And people call me crazy when I say you can't balance point buy.

The problem here is that most RPG magic systems start with kewl mechanics and then work back to the metaphysics, instead of deciding how magic works and then creating mechanics that match the fictional model. Or worse, they just give you a pick list of quantized effects magic can do because that's how D&D did it.