Hello again!

Hello again!

Hello again!

Development of my Blood Red Blossoms project will take quite a while (doing a fantasy horror Japan game without making it look like some weird fetishist katana-party is harder than it looks :P), but I wanted to get this into your hands a.s.a.p. so that you can try it if you want.

There’s barely a setting in here, because it’s a huge work in progress, but the rules are pretty much complete. It requires familiarity with the core Blades rules, obviously.

As usual, tell me what you think (and if you have questions on the setting. design choices or artwork/layout, feel free to ask them). Looking forward to having a friendly chat with you people!

Love ya all!

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2bP0GsXwg9xZ1JsUWlWQ3JFNTA

51 thoughts on “Hello again!”

  6. Ben Wright I was not 100% sure I could pull off this kind of style… but I am quite satisfied with it (a weird feeling, since I’m generally not too proud of my work). The map for the game will be a key piece too, with locations, roads and such. What kind of art are you looking for? Maybe I know someone who could help!

  7. Blaze Azelski Drop me some feedback if you do! I suggest a quick and straightforward scenario for the first session, maybe a haunted road inn or troubled village. Check out the yōkai legends of Japan, there’s crazy stuff in there!

  8. I like it RoosterEma. I love the character generation through questions and ongoing development through the traits. It reminds me of Burning Wheel in that way. This would make a tremendous alternative system for Mouse Guard actually, with the location and travel phases.

  9. Adam Minnie Yes, the char gen through questions is very much influenced by BW. The failure to progress system is inspired by Failbetter Games 🙂

    And YES, I think it could work for Mouse Guard. But that’s mostly due to Blades‘ innate flexibility!

  10. Some other thoughts after completing a first pass read:

    —Great art and aesthetics as others have said.

    —A print-friendly character sheet would be super helpful!

    —There may be a typo on page 3 character sheet anatomy, on the line about Items: “You only take not of your two weapons and spiritual charm; the rest of your gear is abstract.”

    —This looks like a great system for shonen anime stories as well.

    —It looks like characters could reach a journey phase with 5 Blossom and 5 Wither for the same trait. What happens then?

    —It’s intriguing that it seems you can have infinite mastered traits?

    —When I run this, I think I could use some tips on how to help the characters become attached to the world (or each other) in satisfying ways when they’re always moving on from places and NPCs. Or maybe how to wrap activities in various locations into a satisfying metaplot.

    —Additionally, some guidance on how much to include in a location phase would help. In BitD I was often running two scores and two downtimes per session. Is that the pace you expect? Would you have tips to run longer arcs in a single larger location, like breaking a city into various locations with journey phases in between?

  11. Adam Minnie

    – yeah, it’s a typo. It should say “note”.

    – I guarantee you the Blossom 5 / Wither 5 is basically never gonna happen, but it’s actually something I forgot to include 😛 I leave the choice to the player, master or lose (they will probably keep it).

    – YES you can have infinite mastered traits. But they take a while (average of 1 mastered trait every 3 sessions).

    – Here’s the catch: PCs might very much not get attached to each other. They are bound by duty, and from session to session the group might split and meet again. For some, being a Red Hat was a choice; for others, it was the only way to avoid being exiled, imprisoned, forced into a marriage or occupation they didn’t want…

    When you create the PCs, take some time talking about what caused them to join the Red Hats. It’ll rarely be a happy story.

    I want to add that, in my experience, PCs will soon develop a sort of antipathy for the people. Yes, they are weak and in need… but they often got themselves into trouble because of selfishness, greed, or cruelty. And while Red Hats should never harm a fellow man, I guarantee your players will gladly earn some Wither in exchange for punching the face of some presumptuous aristocrat. Which will have consequences. But what can you do, when spirits and ghosts are often much more sympathetic than the living?

    In fact, you could say that while the mechanics are in favor of the PCs, the game puts them in a pretty awful position fiction-wise.

    – Don’t play anything you wouldn’t see in a single anime or tv show episode. We generally do one location + journey, which makes for quick, two to three hours sessions. The PCs get to the place, learn of a problem to solve, discover a solution, then are faced with a hard choice to make. That always works.

  12. Good tips RoosterEma. They’d be great to have in the text eventually. Likewise I’m guessing you’ll have a section describing various weapons for those less familiar with this sort of setting and its assumptions?

    Ah now I see why this was also reminding me of Dogs in the Vineyard, where the focus is on the increasingly hard ethical choices a given Dog has to make in a career.

    Could you say more about why you chose to remove all the crew/lair and factional metagame elements? I like the simplicity, I’m just curious.

  13. Adam Minnie Sure! As I said, the rules are the smallest part of the book. Setting, adventure tips and a discussion on what is Japanese and what isn’t (no Buddhism or Shinto for example, there’s a different while derivative religion). Same for weapons, currency, naming conventions and such. Point is, I am researching Japanese history and reaching out to others for help with the language and worldbuilding 🙂

    The stuff I removed simply wasn’t needed, and including it would have diverted the group’s attention from what is important: meeting grim situations in a supernatural land. What will be added is a map of the land with story hook generators – and perhaps the ability to generate “encounters” during the Journey Phase, such as with entanglements.

  16. Kyle Thompson thanks! The concepts of journey and extreme caducity are very strong in Japanese culture, that’s why I chose these mechanics for the game 🙂

  17. RoosterEma Yes I’ve lived in Japan for almost a decade so I’m familiar with it, just waiting to see the setting before I comment on the cultural aspect of the game ☺️

  18. Kyle Thompson most of the work to do is, indeed, researching the language and culture. It is not Japan, yes, but it is a world spawned by Japan’s nightmares (the Years Forgotten would be around Heian period). In order to warp a culture, one has to understand it before. This is what I’m more worried about, and the reason why I’ll try and share elements about the setting with people who are native and/or know the culture well.

    You know, whenever I read Legend of the Five Rings, I get chills down my spine. I don’t want people feeling the same way with Crimson Blossoms.

  19. RoosterEma I think that is the right way to go but don’t let it kill your creativity! Okami, Nioh, and Miyazaki’s films are also partial views of what the country means and some people will find fault with them. There will always be critics but I’m sure your interest and respect will show through.

  22. G. Whistler its core mechanic (action/reaction/fortune rolls; position/effect; stress as a PC resource to manage; simple but effective teamwork). It allows for the most disparate situations (fighting a band of brigands, riddling with a demon, hunting down a murderous spirit…) with extreme simplicity. The relief of having a player character wield a complex weapon (such as a kusari-gama) or perform a sorcerous ritual without getting bogged into endless weapon stats, spell lists, and such. Those things are fun and all, but the theme and setting of Crimson Blossoms thrives on simplicity and function.

    An elegant system for an elegant (if dangerous) world, basically.

  23. RoosterEma sorry for the delayed response! The type of art I’d be interested in doing is magical/spell stuff from a pseudo-sandal&sorcery type vibe mixed w/ Renaissance-era Constantinople meets Persia thing. Hence the need for visuals :-/ also, I don’t really have a budget to commission anything so its mostly looking for random concept art for myself. This got rambly. sorry.

  25. Hi. It looks great, even the little snippets of the setting are intriguing 🙂 What was your rationale behind doing away with devils bargains? They seem like such a great way to make interesting things happen in the the story.

  26. Lu Quade devil’s bargains are actually something that might make It back into the game. Depends in whether I’ll rework them or simply change their name! 🙂

  30. How come there’s an option to get Ki instead of a fleeting trait (which seems to be a bad thing as it stops you from picking your own) during character creation?

    Is it just a relic you missed from an older draft when that choice gave you attribute points instead, or is that your way of promoting the idea that knowledge and sorcery are powerful forces in the setting?

  31. Stephen Davey it is my way of rewarding the player character who thinks of spirits and otherworldly creatures in a balanced way. By the way, the fleeting traits are generally positive (except for Just a Child, which can be quite a hindrance). But yes, that step of character creation is not meant to be balanced.

  32. RoosterEma Hmm, that’s kinda cool – I guess it’s a bit like the starting attribute questions BW. After playing so much DnD lately it felt wrong, but I suppose in a more narritive game it isn’t such a big deal.

  36. This reminds of me of the video game Otogi: Myth of Demons, which had a very cool, dreamy historical fantasy setting. I really like this game so far. Only tweaks I would make would be to give the players more control over creating their own Fleeting Traits instead of them being predetermined.

  37. gancanagh25 well, I didn’t know Otogi at all, thanks for that!! 😀

    About the Fleeting Traits: Players do have the ability to create their own once they blossom or wither what was left of their former life, before joining the Red Hats; one could say the first two-three sessions are a “shared character creation during play”. The traits-as-questions are there to make for a quicker, friendly character creation (some people really have trouble coming up with five traits on the fly), though I do feel like:

    1) Game needs better questions.

    2) Might reduce the number of questions, or increase the fixed number of traits to always allow for at least one trait chosen by the player.

    3) An “expert” character creation option might be a nice idea, for groups familiar with the setting and/or people who have a clear character concept.

  38. By the way, everyone: I uploaded a slightly updated version of the Quickstart 😉 name changed to Blood Red Blossoms to avoid matching the upcoming second edition of Motobushido: Crimson Blossoms >___<

  39. Hey, I’m also thinking in a game where characters travel from town to town helping villagers and/or hunting monsters. But mine in a western dark fantasy setting. Your quickstart gave me some insight 😉

  41. We ran a single session and loved it! the questions to generate characters was easy to follow and really inspiring to the players. I gave them zero heads up about what we were playing other than a very general setting. I would love the list of questions to expand in future iterations, and to give the “young” player a chance to select a fleeting trait at character generation.

    Great job so far, love the layout of the sheet and especially the blossoming and withering of traits!!

  42. Tristam Johnson Many things have changed, and many will! As an example, the questions are going to be a bit different 🙂 and the young one will have a chance to customize themselves 🙂 Glad you had a good time with it!!

  44. Daniel Charlton not at the moment! Currently I am working full time on translations for the Silence of Hollowind Kickstarter, plus its conversions for D&D5e and Blades in the Dark! 🙂

  45. Not sure what you’ve got planned for the future iterations, but I thought I’d share a bit of our games. We’ve been starting every session with a flashback style world building discussion. We talk about one thing each character learned in their Red Hat training. This give a little more flesh to the Red Hat trait as well as developing some characters and legends to reference later during play. Training examples range from demon lore, to wilderness survival, to history of the Twin Rivers battle. It has been fun to collaborate on the world and gives everyone an opportunity to add to flavor of the game. We are having a blast. Thanks for a fun game!

  46. Tristam Johnson the joy of shared worldbuilding is something I definitely want to keep once I get to work on this project again (no, it’s not dead, just resting). There will be a map and lots of locations, but what you do with them is ultimately up to the group!

  47. Little update! I’m currently working on a second iteration of Blood Red Blossoms. Several things have changed, to the point it’s only partially a forged in the dark game. Here are some shots of the new character sheet! If you are interested in following the game’s development more closely, you can find details on my Patreon (patreon.com/roosterema – that’s where the game will initially be released). Stay tuned! 😃

    https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/zESPnFWQQsXWu3aSMvJ0OVGHx4Vj-AMhKyFaDy9I4oK_QrKXNSKKOEnCv_w6XoQWWV6Ly3T6uNZjSHCb0-PrG9KvYVpM1U6wbVU=s0

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