Blue Rose

[Teflon Billy]

Based on the world's most popular roleplaying system, Blue Rose is a stand-alone game that gives you everything you need to play. The system is streamlined so you only require a single twenty-sided die and features a variation of the popular damage mechanics from our award-winning Mutants & Masterminds superhero RPG. Also included are complete and flexible rules for hero creation, with options to play rhydan as well as humans, sea-folk, the night people, or the mystical Vata. There is a complete new arcana system based on our popular Psychic's Handbook, action rules, Narrator advice, and an introductory adventure. Everything you need to begin telling your own stories in the magical world of Blue Rose.

The word has gone out, the land of Aldis needs heroes! Will you answer the call?

 

[Teflon Billy]

Now here we have an anomaly.

As anyone who has read my reviews here will quickly deduce, I am something of a “Setting Whore”. This is to say that unless a ruleset has done a truly exceptional job modeling a licensed setting (and barring incredible balance issues or mechanical catastrophes) I mostly think of them as a means to an end, and consider them a neutral element in the review. RPG Argon if you will.

Yet in Blue Rose we have a finely detailed, lovingly crafted setting so simpering and precious that I find it almost a laughable read; paired with a set of rules so robust, so flavorful, so packed with utility and flexibility that I am tempted to replace the stock D&D rules with them for the foreseeable future.

The world has gone mad. Flee to your shelters!

Allright. It is safe to say that “Romantic Fantasy” as it is outlined in the opening chapters of the book, the authors who inspired the product (Mercedes Lackey, Marion Zimmer Bradley and their ilk), and the presented setting itself are all pretty far outside my tastes. As such, I will preface my comments about the fluff in this product as I do the fluff in any product:

[bq]The opinions I offer are simply my opinions, and if they stand in contrast to yours, that’s fair on both sides.[/bq]

Mechanically, the presented setting gives a terrific amount of well-written detail on the gods, the countries, and the histories and the peoples of the world.

There are gods of light (good), gods of twilight (neutral), and the gods of shadow (evil). We are given a creation myth (reality?) and enough descriptions of facets of the world to more than get a handle of everything necessary to GM.

The game focuses for the most part on the country of Aldis, the “good” kingdom. We are given a lot to work with like education of the populace, functions and selection of government, law-enforcement, crimes and justice, customs, the function and acceptance of Magic in the society, religion and holy days…it is very complete.

And it is very, very chipper. It is described as a Monarchy, but comes closer to being a meritocracy where those with proven ability are promoted to the nobility. Everyone is presented as being “just fine” with most of our societies common sexual taboos (from homosexuality to transvestitism) and indeed with just about everything, including a dissolution of the common gender roles.

Reading through the extensive lists of terminology that people use for homosexuals, and descriptions of how everyone wears pants in day-to-day life, and wears gowns at festivals I get the feeling less of a faux medieval magical kingdom and more of an extremely modern and socially progressive leftist/feminist utopia (complete with an evil, neighbouring socially intolerant Theocracy as “The Enemy”), which—to be fair— I’m told is part and parcel of the “Girl with a harp on the cover” class of fantasy novel.

Certainly not to my tastes, but the care and craft used to create it is evident. It is an extremely well-done example of something I don’t care for.

Now, on to the ruleset.

Firstly, the character generation is a marked departure from, a great improvement over, stock D20.

Attributes are strictly bonuses (like in Ars Magica), so +0 is average +1 above average etc., instead of the standard 3-18 that D20 commonly makes use of to determine the bonuses (where odd numbers do nothing to affect the stats). Players get 6 points to distribute between their stats, and again, much like Ars Magica, they may lower stat bonuses to get more points. So to add a +2 to Intelligence, one may either pay from their pool of 6, or decrease say Wisdom by -2.

In a final nod to Ars Magica, no stat may be purchased above +5 or decreased below -5. All good. It’s small, but it makes things tidier. I wondered why they kept the 3-18 model for stats when D&D3.0 was released, and couldn’t think of one reason other than it was a sacred cow. I’m glad someone finally took the bull by the horns here.

Backgrounds are up next, and are a combination of what stock D&D calls race, but includes a variety of human nations and cultures, intelligent animals and the magical and long-lived “Vata”. All provide some benefits and detriments in much the same manner as D&D races.

Next up are the “Roles” (classes) .There are only three classes, which are very adaptable to player concepts. The three base classes are simply Adept (Magic User), Expert (Skill User) and Warrior (Weapon User), but the book gives examples of how to make use the many choices you are presented with to create such concepts (amongst others) as the Ranger, Bard, Thief, Scout, Noble and a variety of “Flavours” of Wizard. I love this flexibility.

To my absolute delight, a lot of rules systems were lifted directly from the Author (Steve Kenson)‘s other famous work, Mutants and Masterminds, and added into this where appropriate.

Hit Points have been done away with in favor of the very fun Damage Save mechanic that M&M introduced. The M&M Hero Point system has been included and renamed “Conviction”. Conviction points allow players to act heroically when necessary in a variety of ways (including extra half-actions—which used to be a feat in M&M, and one which everyone took—nice to see it included in the Conviction point mechanic instead).

The skills and feats are where the PC’s get the lion’s share of their abilities. The skill list has been trimmed down to twenty five skills and still (thanks to more flexibility and customizability) manages to cover all bases.

The feat system is where the character’s real power lies.. There are feats for combat, skills, magic, psionic abilities and a category called “general”…a lot to choose from. There are some familiar feats like Precise Shot, Power Attack, and the brilliantly renamed Defensive Fighting…which is the old (and confusingly named) Expertise.

The Magic and Psionic Feats are the simple magic system I have been waiting for for ages. There are no spells or spell levels, no spell lists to waste time poring over and organizing, and no mana point system (the usual “fix” presented for D&D Magic).

Magic-wielder’s powers are kept in check by a simple fatigue system which works beautifully.

The magic system itself is skill and feat based. The effects have a difficulty and that difficulty rises depending on the familiarity the caster has with the target of the effect (“Arcana”). A target in visual range imposes no modifier to the check, but spells cast with out the target present (or well-known) can truly daunt the caster.

One of the truly innovative bits in the book (in my experience at least) are the rules for Corruption. It takes a bit of explanation, so please bear with me…

Firstly, all characters have personality traits called “Natures”. They are basically flipsides of the same quality, on positive (“light”) and one negative (“shadow”). So if you have a character whose light nature is, say, Bold, then his shadow nature would be Boastful (or somesuch). Light nature Exacting would give your character the shadow nature Petty…you with me?

These are important because Conviction Points (mentioned earlier) are incredibly useful and are recovered by acting in accordance with your nature...

Either Nature.

And as we all know, it is a lot easier to behave poorly than well. So the temptation is there to act Greedily, rather Generously to recover your Conviction points.

But characters who behave in certain evil ("Shadow", remember from earlier?) manners, or who mess around with Sorcery and dark powers, start piling up Corruption Points, and they are both difficult to divest your character of, and screw him up pretty badly.

But the option exists for your character to just embrace his corruption, giving in to the dark side, and turn the Corruption Points into a useful resource...at the cost of becoming permanently evil.

Hmm. “Giving into the Dark Side”...

The more I think about it, the more I think this looks like the best Star Wars RPG I have seen. Slap some Spaceships, Blasters and Droids in there and the corruption rules start looking a lot like The Force.

Interesting.

The game uses D20 Modern’s wealth system, which I don’t really like, but the equipment listed is largely identical to that in the D20 Core rules, so slotting out the Wealth System in favor of Currency would be trivially easy.

Anyway. This is an excellent simplification of the rules for D20 fantasy (which were always more complex and non-intuitive than I would have liked) with a lot of its own charm and flavour. The setting—though not to my taste—is true to its stated goals and well-crafted.

Green Ronin has belted another one out of the park.

 

[Khur]

Blue Rose Review 04.28.05

Alignment
This review is of the print edition of Blue Rose. I received this book as a review copy.

Initiative Round
Based on the d20 system, Blue Rose is actually a maturing and streamlining of that structure into what the marketing people at Green Ronin call the True20™ system. The perfectbound book’s 224 pages are packed with a d20 game like you’ve seen before but perhaps not in this way. No surprise is that the game was developed under the guidance of Steve Kenson, having been written by him, Jeremy Crawford, Dawn Elliot, and John Snead. retails for $29.95.

That price is reasonable, given what we’ll see as the true value in this tome. Fitting the subject matter (romantic fantasy), the art is soft and delivered by skilled draftpersons such as Stephanie Pui-Min Law and Jennifer Meyer. Of particular note is the work of Elaine “Lilith” Bettocci. Disappointing, however, was that this flagship product for a truly innovative game wasn’t given better physical quality. It’s a paperback and monochrome. Though the art and design are good, none of it speaks of the love that was shown Mutants & Masterminds.

Reference to Mutants & Masterminds is important. Blue Rose owes much of its existence to the originality of Mutants & Masterminds. It evolves beyond its notable ancestor, however, to realm all its own.

The milieu of the game is novel in many ways. Aldea, the game’s world, has a complete and suitably mythic origin, with metaphysical reasons for everything from the physical world to evil to love between members of the same sex. Aldea itself is less complete, with only a region of the world being presented in Blue Rose. The world is home to peoples of varying ethics, but the primary focus of the game is the land of Aldis.

To say that Aldis has an egalitarian society would be like saying Monte Cook is moderately successful in the game industry. Things wished for, debated over, and accepted only marginally even in the free society of the United States are norms in Aldis, from truly merit-based achievement to interpersonal ethics to homosexuality. Aldis is utopian in its social aspects, even including intelligent animals as citizens. (The ethics of eating and domesticating lesser animals aren’t dealt with, and neither are particularly tense racial politics.) Only its enemies cast a shadow on this society in which everyone seems to get along just fine.

As one might expect, the main bad guys are geographically isolated from Aldis—one by mountains and another by a vast swamp. Kern, one of those enemies, is ruled by a lich, while Jarzon is an oppressive theocracy. Both adversaries are predictable but effective foils to Blue Rose’s themes of the high value of individual life and the importance of self-determination.

Aldis must also endure threats from within. Avaricious bandits and pirates, crooked nobles and merchants, wicked sorcerers and cultists, and dangerous relics and places all threaten the land’s harmony. It’s hard to see why a society such as Aldis’s would produce many criminals, except that banditry and corrupting sources of power are often easier than legitimate work or study. Besides, games need reasons for characters to clash as much as they need characters.

Characters and their creation are strong points of the Blue Rose rules. A streamlined approach is combined with a wide range of customizability, making for a system that could easily replace core d20 techniques.

To start, ability scores in Blue Rose are what other d20 games would call ability modifiers. Each character has a number of points to assign to ability scores, which can range from –5 to +5 for 1st-level characters. Negative ability scores can be taken to grant a character more points to allocate to other scores. The scores are also modified by a character’s background.

Backgrounds are essentially species and/or cultures. Humans choose a culture, while nonhumans are presented as having homogenous cultures or a society integrated with humanity. A human might be Aldin or one of the Roamers (much like the Roma of Earth). Nonhumans include the elflike vata, the goblinoidlike or orclike night people, the androgynous sea folk, and sentient animals called rhydan. These backgrounds provide benefits ranging from ability score modifiers to darkvision to favored skills and feats. These latter two features are important because they allow characters with the appropriate background to take a skill or feat normally outside those allowed by their role.

Roles are classes. Blue Rose only has three roles—warrior (fighter), expert (rogue or skill-user), and adept (spellcaster). As with a class, a role is a package of general attributes limited by the role’s strengths and weaknesses. A warrior character, for instance, can only choose general and martial feats and is more limited than an expert in the number of skills he may know when beginning play. Each role also comes with a number of sample paths that show how a role might be shaped into a traditional fantasy roleplaying character. Besides the use of mutliclassing, tailoring a character to a specific concept is easy since players can choose a characters favored skills and pick a new feat at each level (four at 1st level).

Feats in Blue Rose play the part of class features, from rage to spellcasting, and normal feats, such as Power Attack and Deflect Arrows. This piece of game design, and the plethora of character concepts it allows, is so elegant that it even eliminates the need for prestige classes while still leaving space for them. Most of the feats are familiar to the D&D crowd, but the arcane feats are a new concept, even though many resemble D&D spells.

Magical ability is acquired through judicious attainment of arcane feats and the skills those feats allow a character to access. A healer could be built by focusing on Healing Talent and Psychic Talent, along with Arcane Training focused on skills relevant to the healer. However, a necromancer might begin with similar feats and skills but take other attributes such as the Flesh Shaping skill and Imbue Unliving feat. But dabbling in such perverse arcana carries a price—corruption.

Corruption is the inevitable slide into darkness caused by giving in to evil and selfishness. A translation of Taint from Wizards or the Coast’s Unearthed Arcana, corruption is cleverly used in Blue Rose to make the misuse of arcane talents costly. Summoning fiends, reading minds without permission, and using magic to kill in unnecessarily brutal ways are all among varied paths of corruption. Corrupt places and items can lead to a character’s fall into Shadow as well.

Other reviews have stated that corruption makes the system viable as a Star Wars system, and that’s true. Unfortunately, the corruption mechanics maintain one of the taint system’s worst flaws. Gaining corruption immediately lowers a character’s Constitution and Wisdom scores, meaning the “Dark Side” has no soft allure that lures a character in and kills her softly with a quick route to power. No, corruption will be something every player will seek to avoid at all costs because the price is too high.

No doubt, corruption could have been engineered to be a snare with more effectiveness, but Blue Rose wasn’t created to be Star Wars. So, maybe corruption as presented is for the best. It leaves the focus is on the heroic and romantic and not the draw of subtle wickedness.

Speaking of such dichotomies leads other cool aspects of Blue Rose—a character’s alignment, calling, and nature. A creature’s alignment can be Light (good), Twilight (neutral), and Shadow (evil). All characters also have a calling, which is an overarching purpose to the character’s life, such as toppling the lofty or exploring everywhere possible. Supplementing the calling is a character’s nature. Nature has two parts, one of which is Light and the other Shadow. One’s Light nature might be generosity, while the Shadow nature might be envy. These parts play into each other, but they also make way for another of Blue Rose’s mechanics.

That mechanic is Conviction. Working as do Hero Points in Mutants & Masterminds, Conviction is a pool of points that may be spent to alter outcomes in the game. Much like White Wolf’s willpower system in the World Of Darkness rules, a character can regain Conviction points by acting according to one of his natures in order to answer his calling. Light-aligned creatures try to pursue their Light natures, while the Shadow-aligned lean toward their Shadow natures. (Corrupt Shadow-aligned creatures can’t regain Conviction by acting according to their Light natures.) See how this all works together?

Synergy is the word with Blue Rose’s rules. It uses simplified d20 mechanics to keep the focus on the story and roleplaying. To this end, Blue Rose includes a version of the Mutants & Masterminds damage save system. It also has rules for reputation and uses a wealth statistic, both somewhat like d20 Modern’s mechanics.

Also like d20 Modern, Blue Rose contains a chapter devoted to the art of Game Mastering. (The GM is called a Narrator.) Blue Rose diverges from d20 Modern in that its GMing techniques focus on the emotional and interactive sides of roleplaying rather than cinematic action. Interpersonal dynamics and intrigue are more of Blue Rose’s focus.

That doesn’t mean this standalone game doesn’t include rules for derring-do or worthy adversaries. It has both. In addition, the book is topped off with a beginning adventure and conversion notes for other d20 material.

Critical Hit
Blue Rose is an out-and-out critical hit insofar as its mechanics go. It’s also a critical hit in its openness about social issues and focus on roleplaying.

One aspect that really stands above the other great parts of this game is the arcana system and its Shadow facet, sorcery. Magic is at once familiar and unique in Blue Rose. Arcana require training and dedication (feats and skills) and some have an element of chance in that a die roll determines the magic’s efficacy. Some arcana are fatiguing, made more so by the rapid use of tiring effects. But judicious use of magical skill means a character can more easily accomplish tasks as a magician than the typical D&D wizard can, particularly at low levels. Lack of wisdom in the use of arcana can lead to a worse fate than not having a critical effect when it’s needed. Misuse of magic, called sorcery, corrupts. All these elements serve to make Blue Rose’s magic system an exciting part of the game and a winner for integration into other OGL works.

Another intriguing part of the game is the frankness with which societal customs are dealt. While the inclusion of “taboos” such as homosexuality and transvestitism may be beyond the tastes of some, opening the doors to such themes is at least as good as the inclusion of interracial tension, religious corruption, and brooding paranoia in Eberron. Blue Rose, with its romantic overtones, is also a good segue into more open, adult roleplaying as might be offered by the addition of Book of Erotic Fantasy or Naughty & Dice (though this is not an endorsement of either volume).

Critical Fumble
In a game this carefully constructed, the little things stand out. While hardly critical, Blue Rose has a few fumbles.

The skill system is rigid and limiting compared to the rest of the options available in character creation. Slotting the traditional d20 skill point mechanics in may work, but is likely to throw off game balance when players no longer have to select the Skill Training feat. How skill points would work with arcana skills is an added question.

The wealth system also seems incongruous with the world. It’s designed to handle a financial system that would require more bookkeeping than it’s worth in a game, such as our modern world of credit, investment, and debt. Lack of any concrete way to give wealth as a reward is another problem.

Similarly, Blue Rose does not have an explicit method of rewarding characters with experience, despite level-based character development. Related to this is the absence of any guidance in creating encounters suitable for characters of a certain level.

Emotional and romantic roleplaying doesn’t mean such rules are unnecessary. Further, an inexperienced Narrator needs such direction.

Coup de Grace
Green Ronin has done it again—Blue Rose is a winner and especially so for those among us gamers who want the focus on story, character development, and romance (in a literary and literal sense). Its mechanics underpin these concepts in nearly every way possible, without leaving out the “adventurous, heroic, or strangely beautiful” (1) aspects of romance. The romantic-fantasy genre has never been treated so carefully in the roleplaying industry, and that fact alone would be enough to ensure Blue Rose’s originality. Only the inclusion of traditional fantasy species, though under different names, really stands opposed to this point. Blue Rose shows the flexibility of d20 without sacrificing playability—would be game designers could learn a thing or three from this book. If only as much concern was given to Blue Rose’s physical quality, which, while not bad, certainly doesn’t match the book’s content. Many gamers would surely have paid more for this book if its appearance matched that of Mutants & Masterminds, albeit in its own romantic-fantasy sort of way. As it is, Blue Rose could be seen as a bit pricey for its production values (compare to Mutants & Masterminds at $32.95). Then again, the content is worthwhile just for the read, especially from a game writer’s standpoint. Actually using the system just adds value. Taken as a whole, Blue Rose lives up to its name. Like an actual blue rose (2), this roleplaying game is a unique creation specifically engineered from another form with the intent to enhance novelty and overall enjoyment.

(1) A quote from the romance entry in The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition.

(2) Blue roses are normally white roses with a blue solution introduced through the plant’s water uptake. Thanks to biotech, however, now we may be able to get an actual breed of blue roses.

Final Grade: 4.65 (rounded up to 5 for playability, innovation, and integration)


This review originally appeared at d20 Magazine Rack.


Shameless Consumer Facilitation
Blue Rose has its own website. It is available at the ENWorld Store (print) and RPGNow (PDF).

 

[Psion]

[imager]http://www.greenronin.com/images/product/grr1701_200.jpg[/imager]Blue Rose is a “Roleplaying Game of Romantic Fantasy” by Green Ronin. I initially anticipated “romantic fantasy” to refer to a play style that would include greater attention to personal interaction. While some attention is paid to the topic, in this context “Romantic Fantasy” refers to the style of fantasy characterized by several novel series by authors like Mercedes Lackey, Diane Duane, and Tamora Pierce. The book is written by Jeremy Crawford, John Elliot, Steve Kenson, and John Snead, and published by Green Ronin.

Blue Rose is an OGL product based on the d20 System Reference Document, but not bearing the d20 logo. As such, it has (and uses) the liberty to include variations in fundamental character design details, and does not require a d20 core book to play; the book is effectively stand-alone.

A First Look

Blue Rose is a 224-page perfect bound softcover book priced at $29.95. It is also available at RPGnow.com as a PDF document.

The cover bears an attractive watercolor painting by Stephanie Pui-Mun Law (the book cites her as Stephanie Pui-Min Law) depicting a woman (presumably the Queen in the book’s setting) bearing the titular blue rose scepter standing in front of a deer. Miss Law has long been one of my favorite fantasy artists, and it is nice to see her talents turn towards RPGs again.

The interior is black and white. The book is nicely laid out, with eye catching border art and background patterns in sidebars. For interior art, the book enlists Elaine “Lilith” Bettocci, Elizabeth Danforth, Eliza Gauger, Jonathan Kirtz, Stephanie Pui-Min Law, Leo Lingas, Jennifer Meyer and Lisa Wood. Law and Meyer (who has illustrated prior Green Ronin d20 books) have a similar, “natural/fey/angelic” style, and their illustrations really set the tone for the book. The other artists all have good contributions. In particular, Leo Lingas, whose work I have not seen before, provides several eye-pleasing illustrations with bold looking characters and lavish city-scapes.

I noticed no immediately apparent grammatical or formatting errors.

A Deeper Look

Blue Rose is divided into 9 chapters, plus an introduction, introductory adventure, appendix (covering conversion of d20 system material) and index. The first chapter is an introduction to the setting, chapters 2-7 are rules material, chapter 8 provides advice on GMing… er, narrating (a term that makes me nervous), and the 9th chapter is a bestiary (collection of creature statistics.)

The setting of Blue Rose is Aldea. The history of Aldea is not all that unlike the typical fantasy RPG setting, with a cosmology explaining the nature of magic and the afterlife and divine conflicts, a history including shattered empires and sorcerer kings that brought a dark time upon the land, and a current-day situation including sympathetic and villainous nations.

The central such sympathetic kingdom which PCs are apparently expected to hail from is Aldis. Aldis is depicted as an enlightened nation that embraces diversity, and its nobility are educated and pulled from educated and benign folk. The ruler of Aldis is chosen by an enchanted creature, the Golden Hart, and the sovereign wields a relic called the Blue Rose Scepter which magically confirms the character of would-be nobles.

This all makes Aldis seem like too idyllic a place for adventure, for adventure requires conflict, after all. The book suggest a number of possible sources of strife, including bandits, fallen nobles, shadow cults, and shadowgates (remnants of the ancient sorcerer kings that are a path for allowing darkfiends into the world.)

The world of Aldea does not feature the same assortment of races as typical d20 fantasy. It features humans but the mechanics of even humans differ, taking into account cultural differences, granting them favored skills and feats (allowing more choices in these areas.) Other races also feature favored skills and feats and include nightfolk (brutish results of sorcerous experiments of the past), Rhydan (animals with intelligence and arcane abilities), sea-folk (androgynous creatures at home on land or sea) and vata (humanoid creatures with arcane talents, of the mixed blood of humans and a now extinct race.)

Other aspects of the rules system are more extreme in their variation from the core d20 rules. The first thing to note is that there is no 3-18 ability score scale. Your ability scores are 0 average and are added directly to rolls as the ability score modifiers are in d20. Players are allotted 6 points to split between their skills, and PCs are allowed to gain extra points by taking negatives in scores.

There are still classes and level progression despite this, but this is altered quite a bit from the d20 standard. Ability scores progress slowly (but are actually quick if you consider that they are twice as significant as in standard d20), but feats progress very quickly, at one per level. These feats must be chosen from a favored list for your characters role (class). Characters also have a role-independent progression in conviction (see below).

The Blue Rose system (which has been dubbed “True20” and is now available sans setting) only features three roles (classes): adept, expert, and warrior; these classes are good at magical, mundane, and martial skills, respectively. The roles are very general “classes”. A character’s role and level define progressions in a number of areas. Characters receive the traditional attack bonus and three saves; Blue Rose rolls also have a Toughness save bonus (in lieu of hit points, see below), a defense bonus (similar to d20 modern), and a reputation bonus.

Characters of a given roles can only select feats from their favored lists (which consists of the general list and a class-specific list). Since the roles do not get class abilities, but feats come at every level, feats take over the role of class abilities.

In addition to these basic characteristics, each class has a number of “paths”; these paths are basically starting packages for common character types of the given role, with defined starting skills and feats. Paths do not influence a character after 1st level and are more or less example starting characters; paths can help speed up building characters of certain concepts, though. Overall, the heavily feat-driven nature of Blue Rose roles give the player a lot of PC design flexibility.

Skills are simplified a bit from standard d20. Instead of allocating ranks, characters receive the essential equivalent of only having maxed out skills, whether they are favored (class) or normal (cross-class). A character can still expand their skill repertoire by selecting a general feat that gives them more known skills.

This is an adequate simplification for most purposes, and one that I have used myself when running d20 games for my daughter. It does run into some problems when you make multi-role characters since you can’t simply allocate points from your new role level to new skills; if your new role doesn’t have more known skills than your old, you get no skills corresponding to your old role without expending feats (and if your new role does have more skills, you get “credit” for all of your old role levels.)

The alignment system is replaced by one that in simpler when it comes to defining fundamental ethical outlook (replaced by Light, Twilight, and Shadow), but the system provides an avenue to address subtler aspects of a character’s personality. All characters receive a calling (a goal in life) as well as two natures. The list of natures is split into pairs of generally contradictory character qualities; a character selects one “light” and one “shadow” nature. The lists of callings and natures also has a correspondence to the cards of a tarot deck, allowing you to randomize results with such a deck.

Calling is more than just a character personality detail. It playing into the conviction mechanic. Conviction points operate a bit like action points or similar mechanics; conviction points allow characters to reroll dice rolls, recover damage, emulate feats, and so forth. A character gains conviction by level, and slowly recovers used conviction.

A character can also recover conviction by following their calling through one of their natures. So if a character has a calling to gain wealth and has a cruel nature, if they gain wealth by inflicting cruelty, they may regain conviction.

The apparent idea here is to dangle mechanical carrots in front of the players to get them do things that have in-game consequences. I normally disdain intrusive personality mechanics. This one is sort of limited in scope, which may keep it from being too intrusive, but it also seems like that very fact makes its inclusion questionable.

The skills themselves are simmered down a bit from the standard d20 skills breakout. Balance and Jump are combined into Acrobatics, and Hide and Move Silently are combined into sneak. Spot and Listen are combined into Notice, which also covers the other, formerly neglected, senses. This is a functional and logical take on the d20 fantasy skill selection, but is one of many design decisions that make Blue Rose / True20 less compatible with other supporting d20 products.

Magic and psychic powers, or Arcana operate by a skills-and-feats system fundamentally similar to the one presented in Green Ronin’s Psychic’s Handbook (see my review here.) The character can select Talent feats corresponding to the six arts: animism, healing, meditative, psychic, shaping, and visionary. Having the appropriate talent feat gives the character access to a number of associated arcana skills. These skills perform functions similar to spells in core d20 fantasy, but higher skill result totals allow the character to perform greater feats of magic. Unlike the Psychic’s Handbook, saving throws stem from the character’s adept class level rather than the skill ranks in the arcana skill. This makes the arcana system a bit more class/role dependant.

As there is no nonlethal damage in the game, but damage rolls, there must be a different mechanic to limit the use of arcana than that presented in the Psychic’s Handbook. As you might suspect, this is translated to a saving throw as the damage mechanic is. However, it does not translate to a Toughness save, but instead to a will save; certain fatiguing arcana, if this save is failed, result in a fatigued (or worse) condition for the character.

A special subset of the arcana mechanic is the sorcery and corruption mechanic. Some arcana are defined as sorcery when used for certain purposes (primarily harming others, making this very similar to the nature of darkside force usage in Star Wars). Uses of sorcery have the potential to corrupt character (some corrupted places or items can cause corruption if a character performs evil (ahem, shadow natured) acts while in a corrupt place or in possession of a corrupt item.)

In situations like this, a character is required to make a saving throw or accumulate corruption, which applies as a penalty to their wisdom and constitution score. A player may choose to have their character embrace this corruption, which lets them use their corruption score in the place of all of their ability scores for arcana, but changes their alignment to shadow. This is a very moody and mechanically compelling magical corruption mechanic, better than those that appear in Star Wars and Rokugan.


As alluded to earlier, Blue Rose does not use a hit point mechanic for damage. Instead, it uses a Toughness save mechanic similar to the damage save mechanic of Mutants & Masterminds. A character who is struck by an attack must make a toughness save with a DC whose severity is determined by the damage modifier of the attack. A damage track is used to track the effects of hits; higher rolls result in more severe effects.

A N arrating chapter provides advice and GM-related rules for running the game. As with the rest of the book, there are some stark differences between Blue Rose and standard d20 fantasy. The most significant of these is the advancement system, which can be summed up as “advance characters when you feel like”. Advice sections discuss romance and intrigue, topics neglected in the core d20 rules.

A bestiary chapter provides statistical translations of many standard d20 creatures appropriate to the setting, such as hags, animals, and will-o-wisps, stirges, ogres, and vampires. A few new creatures are featured, including rhydan (intelligent animals) and darkfiends.

The book features a standard d20 conversion appendix, an index, and a character sheet.

Conclusion

The Blue Rose game system is an intriguing take on the d20 system. The roles are very flexible, but still provide the player with a good degree of guidance in creating characters. The major drawback I see in the Blue Rose character generation is the simplification of the skill system; while it does simplify the task of advancing character skills, it removes flexibility from the system where other changes acted to improve it.

The arcana system is interesting. I feel that the system stands better on its own than alongside the core d20 magic system as was the case in the Psychic Handbook. Adapting the system to the Blue Rose system also improved the system, making casters more reliant on their will save instead of the somewhat odd dependance on physical toughness in the prior system that used nonlethal damage (and thus caused a strange synergy with physical classes.) The sorcery mechanic is also a valuable component of the magic systems, a compelling take on the concept of magical corruption.

The setting left me less impressed. Though the backstory is interesting, it’s not at all nonstandard for a fantasy setting; it features an idealized enlightened monarchy surrounded by less sympathetic foes. Considering the depths that some other parts of the book go to in emphasizing roleplaying and intrigue, I would have thought that a more morally complex tapestry of nations and locales (something that settings written to more tradition d20 fantasy have accomplished.)

Fortunately, the system is available seperately as the True20 system (unfortunately, I understand it lacks the sorcery system.) The Blue Rose system could be used to support settings more like fantasy literature (and not just the ones listed in the inspiration), an ability that the d20 system is commonly lamented for lacking.

Overall Grade: B+

-Alan D. Kohler