Holy smokes, take a look at what Johnstone Metzger created!

Holy smokes, take a look at what Johnstone Metzger created!

Holy smokes, take a look at what Johnstone Metzger created!

Originally shared by Johnstone Metzger

OH HELLO

https://redboxvancouver.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/iruvian_blades_20170329.pdf

https://redboxvancouver.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/iruvian_blades_20170329.pdf

29 thoughts on “Holy smokes, take a look at what Johnstone Metzger created!”

  3. That is frikken fantastic!

    I especially love how this is not just a “reskin”, but changing the roles to suit a different culture and priorities.

    Beautiful!

    (I am now thinking about a Skovlander version…)

    Kristin Hunt – some ideas for Khara maybe?

  13. This is very cool, what is the city that these playbooks are implied to be in? I also like how the crafting abilities are distributed among the various character types. I really enjoy the Rakshasa in particular, but I must ask, why would a self respecting ghoul bother with a rifle when he could simply bite someone in the jugular?

  14. One word of caution here: This isn’t canonical Iruvia at all. Iruvia isn’t “fantasy arabia”, so many elements of Jonstone’s work (ghuls, rakshasa, etc.) aren’t part of the setting. Don’t expect any of this to appear in my own Iruvian materials in the future.

    I’ve asked Johnstone to include a credits page in his work so it’s obvious that this is his original material, not actual Iruvian setting material.

  15. Gorinich Serpant These playbooks are supposed to be set amongst a fake-Arabic-speaking cultural sub-strata in Iruvia and specifically Bright Harbour, so I just turned John’s fake words into fake Arabic words. And then, ha ha ha, I just kind of threw them into the document text and called Bright Harbour al-‘Idwarah when that’s actually Alduara, and I should have written al-‘Adhirah (for Eldira). And of course ar-Rafiyyah is Iruvia, al-‘Akurusiyyah is Akoros, and the Dwashahi are the people of ad-Dwashah (U’Duasha). The actual stuff in the playbooks isn’t entirely Arabic (rakshasa is an Indian thing) because the continent is supposed to encompass multiple cultures.

    (Not sure how to do the subscript dots for the emphatic Ds in gee plus).

  16. This shines a light on an interesting distinction between the way setting material is handled in the Blades canon vs. how it’s handled in this doc.

    In canon Blades, there are no references among the Akorosi to King Arthur or Medusa or Thor, because those are actual myths from western cultures on Earth, and so they have no point of origin in the Shattered Isles. There’s nowhere in the fantasy for those things to come from.

    In the same vein, there’s no Djinn or Oni or Hanuman in Iruvia, because those are actual myths from eastern cultures on Earth and so they have no point of

    origin in the Shattered Isles. You can’t have Djinn or Arabic without Earth.

    In “fantasy pastiche” gaming common among RPGers, everything from Earth cultures is available for remixing in the fantasy world. These playbooks fit perfectly into that mode.

    But the standard Blades setting eschews that approach, and avoids direct cultural referents from Earth (as much as possible — I mean, they still have pianos and top hats and stuff. But certainly no Latin manuscripts or Babylonian ruins).

    (“Demons” and “Vampires” are interesting edge cases which we could talk about some more.)

  19. John Harper I see how Demons get a pass from this as they describe a variety of creatures that generally fall under a negative light, Demon is almost as generic a term as monster for describing malevolent entities. Ghosts are also something that exist as a universal constant across various cultures. Vampires seem a lot more specific in that they pertain to specific tropes of western culture but they do have various interpretations across different time periods.

  21. Yeah, I dunno, John. I get the reasoning behind that distinction, but I gotta say, I don’t think it’s actually an accurate description of either my work or yours. I see tons of referents in Blades, some of them fairly specific. I’ve curated my materials differently, that’s true, but I’m not seeing the line between us as “from Earth” and not.

  22. To me it’s a language thing, maybe? If I see “Rafiq”, that places me firmly in a real Earth culture. For some reason, my whiskey inspired surnames in Blades (a specific Earthly reference) don’t do that for me in the same way. I dunno! We have different triggers probably for what causes that reaction.

  23. I think it is easy to take things for granted when they are familiar (not that you’d have to be familiar with whiskey to catch a reference in Blades because there are so many John SO MANY). Sure, a piano is an ordinary thing, it doesn’t conjure any specific images in your mind, or maybe it conjures so many they become individually meaningless. And as long as you’re not referencing a specific vampire story, that word can be loosely applied to any similar creature and you don’t think much of it. Right?

    This doesn’t really happen for me, I don’t think? Maybe it’s all the historiography training I did, but I tend to be acutely aware of the culture surrounding words, narratives, and technology.

    So, for example, consider this: I would say I intended to use the word rakshasa the same way you use the word vampire. Both reference a phenomenon or non-specific narrative that can be found in numerous cultures around the world. However, one is a common English word, the other not (and also more commonly used in English to refer to tiger-people). Whereas the word leviathan is a metaphor that references a specific literary character. It is not even a generalized “thing that happens sometimes.” So it is perhaps even more of-the-world.

    Or this: A piano is insanely culturally-specific. There’s no physical or biological determinism behind the intervals of the Western musical scale, it’s entirely a cultural product. As is the naming of those intervals, which determines the look and placement of the keys. And there ain’t much going on in terms of keyboard instruments outside the Western scale.

    Of course, pianos and vampires definitely support the stated aesthetic of a haunted industrial city. But again, here we have industry which, to me, is also culturally specific (actually, I think one of the reasons I like the Blades setting is that I get to use my 19th century industrial history knowledge).

    Now, I don’t have a problem with grab-bag fantasy at all, don’t get me wrong. Especially with the monster manuals I do, I’ll throw anything into those, man I don’t give a fuuuck. But in these playbooks I picked references pretty carefully (maybe not as carefully as I did in The Nightmares Underneath, but I did these a lot quicker). The real Arabic words, the fake words that look like they’re made from Arabic phonetics, and the other words, from India and Turkey, are all there to evoke a specific response in the reader’s imagination. Which includes making people think of the real world! So actually it kind of sounds like they are working as intended.

  26. Related to this John Harper, what language roots DO you use for Iruvian? Do you have a partial Conlan you use or do you make stuff up on the fly?

    I just saw ruku’etc as “the hand that meddlesome in the stew” or however it is given, and it set me off a wonderin’.

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