Houses of the Blooded
Jul. 2nd, 2008 02:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bluegargantuaHi,
So I just got a pre-order copy of Houses of the Blooded by John Wick (designer of 7th Sea and Legend of the Five Rings). It's got a premise that I just love to pieces: You basically play Elric.
Let's break that out a bit. You play a member of the Ven, elf-like beings who overthrew their vile creators the Sorcerer-Kings many years ago and now live in peace and love and harmony. Except for their passion for Revenge. So it's a bit like Elric meets Dangerous Liaisons. You've got courtly intrigue and duels and espionage and blood magic and romantic intrigues. Fun stuff. You've got large estates that you spend a little time improving and expanding. You've got a team of expert vassals to help you out (when they aren't betraying you). After doing a little Euro-game resource management and putting down restless peasants, you go into game mode and play out little adventure stories and hope to come out ahead at the expense of everyone else.
The system applies the Aspect system from FATE although they're used to build up die pools. Roll your dice and beat a 10. That's it. That's the only target number there is. So with 3 dice you're in range and with 5 or more dice it's pretty much in the bag. No biggie, right? Well, winning the roll means you get whatever the stakes were, BUT if you pull back some dice from your pool, you get one Wager per die you hold back. Each Wager allows you to add one more fact to your narration. So if you win a "search for clues" check, using all your dice means you find something, but holding back 3 dice means you get three additional facts or clues to toss in, anything you want. A slick set-up there. Also, when you compete with someone else and lose, you usually retain half your Wagers to use in the final narration (giving you a little spin control against the victor). So even when you fail you can still look cool.
As with most of Wick's games, he provides a very broad overview of Ven culture with just enough depth to give Players lots of things to build on. Just oodles of ideas to work from in there.
Hopefully I can give this a whirl sometime soon. I'm betting the Amber crowd will find a lot to like in this game.
later
Tom
So I just got a pre-order copy of Houses of the Blooded by John Wick (designer of 7th Sea and Legend of the Five Rings). It's got a premise that I just love to pieces: You basically play Elric.
Let's break that out a bit. You play a member of the Ven, elf-like beings who overthrew their vile creators the Sorcerer-Kings many years ago and now live in peace and love and harmony. Except for their passion for Revenge. So it's a bit like Elric meets Dangerous Liaisons. You've got courtly intrigue and duels and espionage and blood magic and romantic intrigues. Fun stuff. You've got large estates that you spend a little time improving and expanding. You've got a team of expert vassals to help you out (when they aren't betraying you). After doing a little Euro-game resource management and putting down restless peasants, you go into game mode and play out little adventure stories and hope to come out ahead at the expense of everyone else.
The system applies the Aspect system from FATE although they're used to build up die pools. Roll your dice and beat a 10. That's it. That's the only target number there is. So with 3 dice you're in range and with 5 or more dice it's pretty much in the bag. No biggie, right? Well, winning the roll means you get whatever the stakes were, BUT if you pull back some dice from your pool, you get one Wager per die you hold back. Each Wager allows you to add one more fact to your narration. So if you win a "search for clues" check, using all your dice means you find something, but holding back 3 dice means you get three additional facts or clues to toss in, anything you want. A slick set-up there. Also, when you compete with someone else and lose, you usually retain half your Wagers to use in the final narration (giving you a little spin control against the victor). So even when you fail you can still look cool.
As with most of Wick's games, he provides a very broad overview of Ven culture with just enough depth to give Players lots of things to build on. Just oodles of ideas to work from in there.
Hopefully I can give this a whirl sometime soon. I'm betting the Amber crowd will find a lot to like in this game.
later
Tom
