Mail Room: Blue Rose PDFs (Original True20 Game)

Today the Blue Rose Kickstarter PDFs came as a part of the backer rewards. Now, these are the original game's PDF files, the new game is going to use the system created for Green Ronin's Fantasy Age game.

Now, the original game is powered by Green Ronin's True20 Adventure Roleplaying, and it feels like an odd match to me. I had this instant reaction where a d20-based game is a poor choice for a narrative and storytelling style game focused on romance. The d20 nowadays is synonymous with D&D and Pathfinder style dungeon crawls, and even having a system remotely related to that play style just feels wrong for me with a game based on drama, soap opera style conflicts, and romance.

I pick up the d20 and I am thinking THAC0, CMB, DC, and armor class. For anything else but dungeon-crawling hack-and-slash, I can't do it. The d20 feels like a poisoned die for anything else, and when you use it in a game the question at the table feels like, "Why aren't we playing D&D with that?"

It is pop culture, and it is roleplaying dogma. The only game I saw that came close to breaking the D&D death-grip on the d20 was FGU's Aftermath, and that was a roll-under system.

So my gut reaction is d20 is a bad choice for dramatic roleplaying, just because of its stigma of being a dungeon crawling game. Add to this the d20-ish repertoire of skills and feats in the game, and you get a romantic roleplaying exchange like this:

Prince Charming: I pick the lock to Cinderella's room!
Referee: Okay, what is the level of your Disable Device skill?
Charming: 10, what is the DC on that?
Referee: 20, before you do that, give me a DC 15 Notice check.
Charming: Passed!
Referee: Okay, a tower guard is sneaking up behind you, and you notice his shadow creep across the wall.
Charming: Okay, remember I have Improved Uncanny Dodge, and I can't be flanked....

My desire to be romantic has just left the room, along with the target market for a game like this. Yes, there are gamer geek girls out there and I love their geeky pride, but really? And don't get me wrong, there are a good many male players out there too that enjoy the roleplaying and dramatic side of things too, so there is equal sides to this market. If you are going to go into this much d20 voodoo and rules fiddly-ness, you have lost me as someone who cares more about story and drama than character builds. If I want this type of game, honestly, I will play Pathfinder.

But the Fantasy Age system feels like a better fit. Characters are simple and self-contained and level up with focused choices. There isn't much in the way of rules-lingo to learn. You are not sitting at the table chanting arcane abbreviations, reciting rules like tax form instructions, and the sound of playing the game isn't something that would scare off a casual observer.

The dice rolls are simple. For the most part, they are add your ability score and a +2 for a focus, referee sets the target number, and that's it. You could sit someone at the table, hand them a character sheet, and have them roll the dice without having to understand attacks of opportunity, flanking, advantage, or any other concept. Sit there and roll the dice plus that number, and tell me if you beat this number. Let me know if you roll doubles, because that is when something good happens.

Conceptually, it is simple, and simple is great if you are trying to focus the game on something else but the rules. That line is so important, "something else but the rules." If you want your game to be focused on drama or horror or any other concept, you cannot create rules so complicated that playing the game and understanding the rules takes away all of the time from what you wanted to focus on in the first place. People only have so much "CPU power" to pay attention to a live event, and if you are requiring them to recite rules and modifiers and feat lists, you are taking the game's focus and putting it squarely on the rules.

Simple Fits Nicely

Fantasy Age gets it, and I feel it would be a great fit. The core rules for Fantasy Age and its sister game Dragon Age are only something like 12 pages long. The rest of the game is under a hundred pages, and you don't need to understand all of it to play. Yes, it is a great game for new players, but it is also a game that gets out of the way and lets you focus on the feeling and situation, rather than the rules.

Complexity is one of the huge problems we have in roleplaying today. Many games create gigantic temples to themselves out of rules complexity, and they become these monolithic and all-encompassing juggernauts that are designed to consume 100% of your mental acuity to play them. You don't have time to think about anything else or play anything else, because this one super-sized rules system is all you can handle. This was the game design and business model introduced with D&D 3, and it is a legacy of system design and support to this day with its descendants and other games as well.

Compare that to a simple game such as Fantasy Age, and I will throw in Basic Fantasy on the simple side of things as well. These are simple games. You can play them without needing to own a library, and memorize a shelf full of books in your head to understand them. You can use a simple set of rules to simulate a great many things, because you have the mental free time at the table to relax and focus on the story, not the rules. You can focus the game on a single activity, romance or reacting-to-the-referee dungeoning, and you can still have enough "me time" and mental freedom to have fun and be yourself.

I am looking forward to the finished Blue Rose game next year, and I hope the designers stick with the spirit I see in Fantasy Age, and keep the game simple and focused on the theme. It has been an interesting day in the mail room, and I am looking forward to some interesting gaming next August.

Is it really a whole other year away? Wow. We may just have to play this version and let you know how things go, The world and lore look fun, so there is a lot of other stuff in these PDFs to enjoy and soak in until the game is released, so I am still happy with the Kickstarter project and my support. More on this soon.