Review: Blue Rose (True20 Edition) Poster here as well: http://theotherside.timsbrannan.com/2016/12/review-blue-rose-true20-edition.html

Blue Rose was published in 2005 by Green Ronin. The book is 224 pages perfect bound soft cover. Color covers and black and white interior art. Cover art is by Stephanie Pui-Mun Law and the book was largely written by Steve Kenson, Jeremy Crawford, Dawn Elliot, and John Snead

I am reviewing my softcover book I bought at Gen Con 2007 and the PDF. Full Disclosure in Reviewing: I bought these on my own and Green Ronin has no idea I am reviewing a 10+ year old product.

I printed out my PDF in 2008 so I could write on my book. I am inserting those notes and observations here. Most of those were written during my “Black Rose” campaign where I mixed elements of Gothic Horror in with my Blue Rose.

What is Blue Rose? Blue describes itself as a “Romantic Fantasy Role-Playing Game”. It starts off by telling us what Romantic Fantasy is, at least in this context. So. Romantic Fantasy. The premise is simple enough really. Instead of the works of Howard, Tolkien, Burroughs and (to some degree) Lovecraft we are going to base this game on the works of Mercedes Lackey, Tamora Pierce, and Diane Duane among others all listed on page 13. This is the Appendix N of Blue Rose. Also. I seriously don’t understand some other arguments brought about Blue Rose and Aldis in light of these books. I have the feeling that many of the critics of this game just don’t understand, or have read, this genre. Calling this SJW gaming shows a profound lack of insight to the source material. Aldis is Valdemar with the serial numbers filed off.

Now let me pause here and it will not be the first time. If this was 2005 I would feel the need to keep moving, but this is 2016, and a lot has been said about Blue Rose and I am not deaf to that. So I will add bits like this where needed. This is the first. Since I am giving over to retrospect we can also dispense with the notion of not knowing was True20 is/was. True 20 and Blue Rose is a very, very stripped down version of the d20 rules. All the dice rolls have been reduced to a single d20. Attack? d20. Cast a spell or use magic? d20. Sneak into a dungeon to free slaves? d20s all around. There are no hit points, only a damage track so no rolling for damage. Other games now do this. Both back then and today. This makes things move a bit faster in combat and can make combat very, very deadly. Sure if you are high enough level you might be fine. Unless your combatant is also equally skilled or greater.

Chapter I: World of Aldea As a campaign world we get a history of the World of Aldea, from the Mythic Age (when the Gods were created) to the Old Kingdom (the “Golden Age” of the world), the Empire of Thrones (or the rise of the evil Sorcerer Kings) to the present age in The Rebirth of Aldis. The history of the world is given from the creation of the world by the four greater gods and then into the creation of the lesser gods, demons, and mortal races. This history is compelling and does make you feel there is much more that is not written down. We can come back to this in the supplement book “The World of Aldea”. I rather liked the Exarchs of Shadow. It helps solves the age old philosophical question of "From whence comes evil?" It gives a good explanation of how good gods such as these would have created evil beings.

This chapter also covers that background of the world, the half a dozen countries/cultures you can encounter. We have Aldis, the country of the main heroes and the “good” land of the game. This is one that characters are most likely from. Jarzon, a theocracy that shares some history with Aldis but is a vaguely evil, or least intolerant, land. Kern, home of the Lich King Jarek, is a remnant of the old time before the great shadow wars.

Yes. This is the chapter that introduces us to the now infamous Golden Hart. You know what else it is? The last time you ever hear about it. Unless one of the characters is going end up becoming the next Sovereign of Aldis the Golden Hart will have no affect on the characters whatsoever. I never once cared how the Lord Mayor of Greyhawk or Waterdeep was elected or even who that person was. It has never affected anything in the last 36+ of gaming for me and neither does this. It’s really no different than the Lady of the Lake. Claims that the Golden Hart "tramples" on Role-playing also shows that the person complaining never actually read the book, or played the game.

Information is given on Aldis. Aldis is not just the idyllic land that some have depicted it. It is “enlightened” but there are still internal strife, crime, the odd sorcerer or even a leftover gates from the time before the Sovereigns, and the ever present threats from inside and outside. A number of threats to Aldea are detailed. Various unscrupulous merchants, a very effective criminal organization known as “The Silence”, fallen nobles, bandits, defective shadow gates, and the remains of various shadow cults. In a handful of pages we get plenty of ideas for characters to do.

Chapter II: Creating Your Hero Character creation is mechanically a breeze. Since it is d20 derived nearly everyone knows what to do here. The big difference is that instead of scores 3 to 18 you have just the bonuses. So -5 to +5. Everyone starts at 0 and you are given 6 points to divide up. In more “Cinematic” games I have given out 10 points. I also prefer players create their characters together. With backstories that would either augment or complement each other in some way. In Romantic Fiction we often have a single protagonist that joins up with others and soon new bonds are formed. Here we start out with potentially a lot of protagonists. So the dynamic is already slightly different. Now when I say created together I mean in cooperation with each other; the characters might not know anything about each other and even come from different parts of the world, but the players have a vision for what they want and should work on it together.

Races include human, vata (somewhat like elves), sea folk, Rhydan (intelligent animals), night people (likewise somewhat like half-orcs) and the human Roamers.

Blue Rose/True 20 only has three classes; Adept, Expert and Warrior. There are no XP advancement tables; characters level up after a set number of adventures. To borrow from D&D4, you could level up after 10 encounters, but really it is up to the Narrator. An aside...the Game Master for Blue Rose is called a Narrator. Personally I would prefer to call them “Chroniclers”. Seems to fit the feel of what I want in my games.

This chapter also introduces “Callings”, “Conviction” and “Reputation”. Callings are the most interesting of all. Each heroic calling is associated with a Tarot card major arcana. These are related to the alignment system in Blue Rose (Light, Twilight and Shadow) and to the Natures of the characters which are associated to a tarot minor arcana. While it can be used purely as a roleplaying device (as I have done) to guide your character. The mechanical aspect in relationship to Conviction. Conviction is more or less like “Hero Points” or “Drama Points”. A similar mechanic can be found now in D&D 5 with the “Backgrounds” and “Inspiration” systems. They are not 100% the same, but one could be used in the place of the other or used to inform the other. Personally I think it is a damn shame we never got a set of Blue Rose Tarot cards.

Chapter III: Skills This covers the skills the characters can take. Again in something that was new in the d20 times, and became more common later on is how Blue Rose does skill ranking. Skill check = 1d20 + skill rank + ability score + miscellaneous modifiers. Skills are grouped into Favored Skills (based on class), Trained and untrained skills. Need new skills? There is a feat for that (next chapter).

Chapter IV: Feats Like d20, Blue Rose has feats. The feats are your means of customizing your character. Want to be a classic thief? Taken the Expert class and the right skills and feats. Want to be a Paladin or Ranger, take the Warrior class with various feats. Unlike D&D the feats do not have ability score minimums. They do have class requirements and some have other feats as requirements.

Chapter V: Arcana The magic of the Blue Rose world. Magic is both ubiquitous and mistrusted. Nearly everyone has some level of magic. Either they are an Adept or they have a wild talent or two (taken by a feat). At the same time magic, in particular the form known as Sorcery, is mistrusted due to the wars with the Sorcerer Kings. Arcana is divided up into a few categories: Animism Healing Meditative Psychic Shaping Visionary and finally Sorcery.

You can make a number of different sorts of Adepts using the different types of Arcana. In particular I had a lot of fun making various “Benders” like those seen in Avatar the Last Airbender and Avatar the Legend of Korra. You can easily make Air, Earth, Fire and Water Benders. You can even make a “Spirit Bender” which has a lot of potential. Of course I have made many witches. This is not Vancian magic. Once you have a magical gift you can use it all you like...until you can’t that is. There is a fatiguing effect here. Makes magic really feel different than D&D.

Chapter VI: Wealth and Equipment Since the accumulation of wealth and the killing of things is not as important here there is an abstract wealth system. Instead of gold you have a Wealth score. If you want to buy something less than that, then you can. If it is greater, well you will need to roll for that. The system is very similar to what was found in d20 Modern. As expected there are plenty of lists of goods and services. Aldis is a civilized place. Additionally there are arcane items that can be bought, not a lot mind you, but some.

Chapter VII: Playing the Game This includes the very typical combat and physical actions found in every game; especially one based on the d20 rules which has D&D in it’s ancestry. There is good section on social interactions. If run properly a good Blue Rose game will include people that can talk or socialize their way out of problems as much as fight their way out.

Chapter VIII: Narrating Blue Rose This is the GM’s section. Again, I much prefer the term “Chronicler” to “Narrator”. “Chronicler” also implies that the characters are doing something worthy of Chronicling. The chapter has the very pragmatic “Assigning Difficulties” which works well for any d20 derived game, which includes D&D editions 3, 4 and 5. It covers Blue Rose’s particular form of level advancement. There are guides for roleplaying situations like Romance and Intrigue. Again, while situated in the Blue Rose and True20 systems, they could be used for any game. What is particularly useful is the very old-school like table of 100 Adventure ideas. Need an idea? Roll a d100. Each one of these can be expanded into an adventure. This flies in the face of any notion that Blue Rose is a limited game. Equally useful is the section on “About Evil” which gives advice on how to handle evil NPCs. They suggest avoiding using “mustache twirling evil stereotypes” or “evil for evil’s sake” NPCs. Though I will point out that some of their source material does exactly that. They favor a more nuanced approach to evil, reminding the reader that no evil person thinks of themselves as the bad guy.

Chapter IX: Bestiary There are some familiar names here, but don’t automatically assume you know what these creatures are about. Griffons for example are given more emphasis and intelligence here than in their D&D counterparts. This is completely due to how they are treated in the Romantic Fiction novels, in particular the novels of Mercedes Lackey. Also, unlike the books, there are a lot more creatures here than what I recall reading. So there are plenty of creatures that can either guide, beguile or challenge the characters. There are about 70 or so creatures here. Adding more would be easy, really TOO easy to be honest. Most creatures need have a good reason to be in the game/world. For example there are no Manticores here. You could make a very good reason for them to be there as something like anti-griffon or even a magical race the bred true to fight griffons. Maybe they were created during the Shadow Wars or even before in the Empire of Thorns. They are rare now since most were killed.

Introductory Adventure: The Curse of Harmony What it says on the tin. An introductory adventure featuring some of the different aspects of this game.

Appendix: D20 System Conversion Of course you know I loved this. The ability to mix and match from d20? Hell yes. In fact I did just that for my own Blue Rose/Ravenloft mash-up. I found that it works best to convert to Blue Rose than trying to convert Blue Rose to some d20 system.

And True20 True20 came out after Blue Rose and offered some improvements on the base system. For example Toughness no longer increases with level. This is a good change. As my gaming in Blue Rose increased I found I used more and more True20. In particular anything with a horror, supernatural or magic bend to it. Plus the True20 system, as published,

Normally at this point I make a case as to why you should buy this book. I figure most of you have made up your minds about this game long ago. So instead I am going to say give this game a try. It is fun. It is different that most of the Murder-Hobo games out there. Even if you don’t like the game there is the setting. If you don’t like that then there are plenty of mechanics and ideas that can be used in any other game. If nothing else check out the Quick Start version of the game that Green Ronin still gives out for free.

There is a lot here that could easily be added to a D&D5 game. Indeed, some of the roleplaying ideas in D&D 5 share at least some history with Blue Rose and True20. Maybe a D&D5 version of Blue Rose is in order.

Blue Rose is subtitled "The Roleplaying Game of Romantic Fantasy." What's romantic fantasy, you ask, and how is it distinct enough from regular fantasy to have its own name? Well, I could easily answer that with "Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar series" and be more than half right, but there are a few more specific commonalities: magic is an innate force that comes from within, tolerance and acceptance of differences are definite virtues, there's a focus on relationships and social contexts instead of tomb-delving and monster-slaying, the villains are frequently either the intolerant or simply the morally monstrous, the world is usually populated by intelligent talking (or psychic) animals and animal-people instead of the standard elves/dwarves/orcs, and community and belonging being depicted as inherently important.

All those are the kind of things I could get behind. I have read almost all of the Valdemar books, after all.

--Setting--

Okay, let me get this out of the way--Blue Rose is pretty much Valdemar as an RPG. The main country of Aldis is Valdemar, with its HeraldsSovereign's Finest traveling the country and righting wrongs, the CompanionsRhy-horses, KyreeRhy-wolves, and other intelligent animals, and the ruler chosen by divine fiat; Jarzon is Karse, including the theocracy in a harsh land that covets the neighboring country's rich lands, the priests burning people who exhibit "unnatural" powers, and the refugees who live just inside Aldis's borders but who are insular and suspicious of Aldis's tolerance for gay people or outre displays of magic; Kern is Hardorn, including the constant invasions of their neighbors, the use of mind-controlledzombified peasants as shock troops in battles, and the rule by a power-mad wizard king; and Rezea is the Shin'a'in, though admittedly here the resemblance is pretty small and mostly about how both the Shin'a'in and the Rezeans are kind of inspired by Native American plains tribes, with some additional Mongol inspiration in the Rezeans' case.

The history is one of the standard fantasy setting backgrounds. In the past was the Old Kingdom, where everyone lived in harmony, magic provided a high quality of life and easy transportation, humanity lived in harmony with the Rhydan (intelligent psychic animals), vatazin, and sea-folk, and everything was totally awesome. At least, it was until unscrupulous adepts delved too much in the mysteries of Sorcery, were corrupted by the power, and overthrew the Old Kingdom with their armies of summoned darkfiends and magically-twisted shadowspawn. These sorcerer-kings instituted a reign of terror and blood, wiping out the vatazin, persecuting the Rhydan, and wasting thousands of lives in petty wars against each other or experiments into the darker aspects of magic. This continued until the remaining rhydan hooked up with some rebels and managed to overthrow most of the sorcerer-kings (except the king of Kern) and re-established their own kingdoms, listed above. What happened to the rest of the world is unknown, and while long-distance communication still exists, long-range travel does not.

One of things I really like are the deities. It's the relatively fantasy-standard idea of elder gods who are more associated with natural processes and younger gods who are more associated with human ideals, but there are several things I really like about this particular implementation. For one thing, even their existance is in doubt. They might answer prayers, they might be behind the Golden Hart that chooses Aldis's ruler, but they might not. There's no proof either way, and that allows for a lot more plausible religious tension than, say, the Forgotten Realms.

For another, the gods actually have relationships. Some of them are married (or dating, or whatever applies to deities) to each other, which shows up all the time in real-world mythology but rarely in fantasy RPG backgrounds. The divine relationships are also where the in-universe terms for gay and straight people--caria daunen and cepia luath, respectively--come from.

(I'm not sure I'd ever use those terms in an actual game, because there's always a tension between immersion from using game-based language and sounding pretentious and silly, but I like that they're there.)

I've seen complaints that Aldis is unrealistically benign, but I think the background supports its ability to be a place people from the real world might actually want to live. For one thing, they can replicate a lot of modern technology using magic, so santitation, communication, psychological care, criminology, and other fields aren't really medieval in mindset, even if the means they use to get there are different--telepaths or telegraphs, you can still send long-distance messages. For another, the background establishes that the ruler may be divinely chosen for their benevolence and purity of heart, and the nobility is an examination-based mandarinate where part of the examination is determining that the candidate is genuinely dedicated to working for the good of Aldis at the moment of the exam (thus leaving the possibility of corruption later). Despite those, there's still veniality, there's still corruption, two rulers have had to be removed due to evil or insanity, people are still poor, etc. There are plenty of opportunities for adventure even if the setting isn't very suited for the typical D&D game of rootless murderhobos, and the assumption that the characters are going to be members of the Sovereign's Finest, with the attendant duties and perks, gives plenty of opportunity to go around righting wrongs.

It's basically fantasy Scandinavia with magic. And honestly, it's more nuanced than the Valdemar novels, so there's that.

--System--

Blue Rose's system is essentially a stripped-down version of D20, and it was actually pulled out and repackaged in a settingless version called True20 for people who liked the mechanics but didn't like or were indifferent to the setting.

Most of the system is pretty much the same as d20 with small or cosmetic tweaks. For example, ability scores are just rated by their bonus (-5 to +5) instead of the raw score, which is honestly a change that they should have done in d20 anyway. Instead of tracking individual coinage, Blue Rose abstracts it all away into a Wealth score that is rolled to acquire new equipment. There's still skill checks, being flat-footed, DCs, rolling 20-sided dice, an action economy (full-round, move, standard, free), savings throws, and most of the other familiar elements of d20. The biggest changes are in the classes, damage and healing, and in the magic system, so I'll deal with each of those in turn.

Rather than the ever-expanding plethora of d20's classes and prestige classes, Blue Rose has only three classes: Warriors, Experts, and Adepts. This is still somewhat problematic--Experts' focus as the class that uses a lot of skills isn't really a good focus in a more skill-based system like d20, and there's no mechanism for Warriors getting multiple attacks beyond feats like Whirlwind Attack--but it's much more open than d20 is. There's also options to dip, like a Warrior taking Wild Talent and being a latent psychic, or an Expert picking up a couple levels of Warrior to represent training in formal dueling.

Attacks and so on are calculated normally, but an entirely new mechanic is used for damage: the Toughness Save. Damage is always 15 plus the appropriate ability score bonus plus the weapon damage, and is opposed by a rolled Toughness Save. Failing the save by variable amounts causes different effects, up to and including jumping straight to bleeding out on the ground for failing by 15+. Lower-level injuries also stack up, so a Wounded character who is Wounded again becomes Disabled. Even the smallest injuries also cause penalties to later Toughness Saves, so everyone will run out of luck eventually.

This is great. It completely undercuts the standard farmer to ubermensch trajectory that D&D characters usually undergo, which is good, because one-man armies work against the communitarian themes of romantic fantasy. It also makes sure that the threats do not need to scale much. A knife in the dark is always dangerous and an enemy army is always a threat, even for high-level characters.

The magic system, called arcana, is entirely feat-based, and as such it is much less unwieldy, less prone to abuse, and impossible to make a CoDzilla. Learning to use one of the six types of magic takes a feat, every two new magic powers takes another feat, and every character gets the same number of feats, so while Adepts probably will be a bit more powerful than Warriors or Experts just by virtue of having supernatural powers, they're unlikely to be able to comepletely outclass them in every possible way because they'll always have weaknesses and blind spots.

Also, magic is fatigue-based instead of Vancian. This is personal preference, but I really don't like Vancian magic and would prefer basically any alternative. Adepts can cast all day long if they're lucky, but three failed Fatigue Checks will knock them out if they don't rest. There are also options to push powers to higher levels in exchange for taking more fatigue. Any power that lets the Adept Take 20 almost always adds 20 to the Fatigue Check, which will almost certainly cause them to fail.

Sorcery--Shadow-aligned arcana--is where the problems with the arcana system come out in force, though. Alignment has never made sense in D&D, and Blue Rose is no exception. Sorcery seems to be similar to the Dark Side of the Force, with a specific note that it comes from negative emotions and a Corruption mechanic in place for its use.

For example, summoning darkfiends is Sorcery, as is erasing someone's memories, or assaulting them with your mind. All makes sense, right? The problem comes in when using Flesh Shaping to alter a transgender person's sex with their permission is Sorcery even though it's entirely beneficial, and the text even calls out this very example in an earlier chapter as something for which the benefit might be worth the cost, so it's not an error (though the actual description does say that such uses may be able to avoid a Corruption check). Furthermore, magically influencing people to do things isn't Sorcery unless it's, "used to cause deliberate harm," but setting someone on fire with your brain or freezing them solid is never Sorcery even though it always causes deliberate harm. Reading someone's inner thoughts is always Sorcery even if you're doing it in a multiple murder trial to determine the accused's guilt.

The main principle seems to be that Sorcery is based on evil intent, except when it's not, which doesn't say...well, anything about anything, really. Whether something is Sorcery or not seems pretty arbitrary to me, except that greater priority is placed on the sanctity or one's mind than one's body, which would be cold comfort to people drowned by adepts using Water Shaping. At least the newly-deceased can be confident that they weren't killed by vile Sorcery.

Other than that minor quibble, I really liked Blue Rose. It's good to see a version of D&D that's both thematically and mechanically focused on social connections, promoting modern values, and finding non-violent solutions to problems when possible, and even if the system is still a bit too d20ish for my liking, it's much more palatable to me with the changes they've made. I may never run this as written, but reading it gave me a ton of ideas for other things.

This is a good game thanks for the stuff lets do it again sometime

I have to admit that I bought this to see what the Mutants & Masterminds system would look like doing a fantasy game. I does a very nice job, but frankly I'm not into romantic fantasy and so didn't ever use this product at the table (I bought True20 when it came out instead). Even though I don't really know much about romantic fantasy and so have a hard time judging whether this game prodives everything a fan would expect I do feel I can say that the game is well written and put together. The setting seems very nice, nothing too radical, but a good solid base to tell stories in. Good art the fit the feel (I assume) they were going for. Good game, even if I haven't really played it.

This is a game I have fell in love with by bits, little by little. The beauty of its simplicity, the setting, concrete enough to play, but vague enough for the enterprising GM I am to develop, is a master work of creativity.

The organization is OK, but is tailored for the eager player who has just bought the game and wants to have fun immediately, and not so much for easy reference (however with a 4 rings binder, or your local equivalent - that's not a problem).

I bought this one for two reasons:

One. I've been toying with the idea of using the three generic classes as a system base for a while, heard of this and thought I could save myself the work.

Two. I thought it might make a better system for running a Dragonlance campaign.

<br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: The True20 system is a nice variant, but although it is meant to be simpler it actually comes across as more complicated than d20, mainly due to the wider array of choice at character creation. I admit a guilty liking to the slightly twee nature of the setting too.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: It's interesting but ultimately not that different to standard d20 to make me really sit up and take notice. This could be that there are few feats (beyond the magical) that aren't the same as d20, or class abilities turned feat. Something a bit more individual to the Blue Rose setting might have been nice.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Disappointing<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>

Something for those of a romantic persuasion, Blue rose is designed around romantic roleplying. the True20 System is pretty unique in that you ave no hitpoints just a 4th save against damage. Great setting in my opinion.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>

A great roleplaying with innovative rules and a great system that really one me over.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>

Have a significant other that is interested in RPGs but doesn't like all the hack and slash? Maybe they read some Fantasy, but their interests run to Romance novels or general fiction? You might want to take a look at Blue Rose.

I purchased it for two reasons: I have two non-gamers in my house (wife and 9 year old daughter) that I wanted to play a game or two with, and I had read about their stripped down set of d20 rules (now known as True20). Haven't run a game yet, but I enjoyed reading the setting and the rules.

The book itself gives you enough to run the setting and includes a sample adventure. I wish though that they would make the TOC available in RPGNow to give you a better idea of what you get.<br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: Setting was interesting and I think it's one that you can use to get people interested in RPGs that are more into role-playing than roll-playing.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: The feeling that I should probably purchase the other BR books to flesh out some of the ideas in this first volume.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>

This is an intriguing product, more for the possibilities in the True20 system than in the setting itself. Indeed, until Green Ronin announced that they were going to sell True20 as a separate project, I feared that a good system was going to disappear due to prejudice against the setting.

I love the notion of stripping down the rules the bear essentials. There are only three classes (combat, skill-using, magical), each open to free interchange between the three. Characteristics are no longer on the 3-18 level, but are presented as modifiers; think simply of the modifier attached to the score, instead of the score itself.

Even the magic system works and all of combat on the single D20. Spells work like skills, which means that they can fail. Damage is done on the same die roll as the attack, comparing the attack roll, the defense, and the weapon modifiers to come up with a quick resolution. This means that almost everything moves more quickly and smoothly, without having to rely on minis and battle boards.

This is not a game for power-gamers. It is not for people who prefer combat first and foremost. It is not for people who want to keep all the core material of D&D without alterations. Conversely, if you are more interested in adding in greater flexibility to and emphasis on social interactions, a notion that magic is able to fail.

I recommend this system highly! Give it a shot, even if the setting is not entirely to your tastes. <br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: A re-envisioning and simplification of D20, this is really a massive breakthrough for the system. Only 1 die is used or needed. The over-complication of combat is stripped down to the interesting elements. Magic feels like an organic part of the system, rather than an entirely different series cobbled onto the core.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: Like many other people, I am not overly fond of the setting. I'm just not that enamored of Mercedes Lackey, and other similar writers, and this can be off-putting, including the whole animals-as-characters part. <br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>

Great introduction to d20, or a great alternative for those who prefer a more streamlined set of rules.<br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: Great degree of customization of PCs.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>

The system is escellent, the layout is excellent, the graphics are amazing. If you've looked at the teasers and are at all interested in the setting as presented you should check it out. If you're a fan of the Mutants and Masterminds system, you should look at how they modified it. If you want to see a very different take on d20 you should also think about getting it.

However: be warned, the setting is not everyone's cup of tea and it runs deeply through the presentation. <br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>

This review covers Blue Rose the PDF but the content will be the same as the print book that comes out hopefully later this month. Blue Rose is a setting and twist on the d20 system to make it a bit more rules light and to adapt it to the setting and structure of Romantic Fantasy. That begs the question of what is Romantic Fantasy? It is a genre that has really only been around for twenty of so years. It deals more with personal connections, character emotion and growth, and can tend to be rather black and white. The good guys accept all kinds of people and all kinds of life styles. Ones sex, race, religion, or personally beliefs does not matter as long as you are not making life worse for your neighbor. It deals with an almost utopian based society but it has its enemies. The bad guys are controlling and just evil. They live to destroy the good society and usually come really close but never succeed. In that regard it reminds me a lot of the pulp stories from the 1930?s. The book recommends the following authors for a better feel of romantic fantasy: Kristen Britian, Diane Duane, Mercedes Lackey, Elizabeth A Lynn, Robin McKinley, and Tomara Pierce.

<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>

I bought it for its innovative rules system, but this can now be purchased separately as the True 20 system.

Its a game of romantic fantasy, so should provide a good change of pace from the usual hack and slash of many d20 system games - if you can find people willing to look beyond the word "romantic" (my regular role-playing group win't even consider it, unfortunately).

It does a good job of introducing romantic fantasy, and centres around 3 countries - the utopia the players are assumed to be from, the realm of the evil sorcerer and the nation of misguided zealots.<br><br><b>LIKED</b>: The tone and style; its very different from the other games I own.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: I woul have liked more detail about the world, rather than just having 3 nations.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>

The world itself is a wonderful change. For those of us who enjoy good guys vs. bad guys this is the place. We are launching our first BR campaign tomorrow. One thing that needs improvement is the character creation chapter. It needs to be cleaned up and ordered. There is too much jumping from section to section to build a character. But the setting is beautiful and creative.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>