The question is, is Blue Rose a fun game to play for the 5% or less of gamers who really want to try something in the genre of Mercedes Lackey and similar authors?
I wouldn't know. I haven't read any books by
Mercedes Lackey. Is Blue Rose fun to play? Yes! Do RPGers of the female persuasion like it? Yes, very much. It doesn't focus on combat like a wargame oriented fantasy roleplaying game like
Dungeons & Dragons, ...and
Warhammer, for example, do. It concentrates instead much more on magic, ongoing narratives, epic mythology, romance, and intrigue, and bills itself as the
Roleplaying Game of Romantic Fantasy.
In Europe there was an Age of Chivalry that began in the
Arthurian era after the Romans left Northern Europe. It evolved during the time of Charlemagne, and one of the clearest books that survived from that era was
Parzival by
Wolfram Von Eschenbach. It's a historical fiction book I like, actually, and it was written in the first years of the thirteenth century, just about the time the Crusades began in Europe. Described as a
Romance of the Middle Ages, the book is about a Knight, Parzival, and his quest to find the Holy Grail. In the years 1211-1212, When Parzival was finished, or near finished, saw Frederick the Great's election as Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, and his adventurous return to the fatherland from the First Crusade (where Jerusalem was reclaimed for Christendom) to claim his patrimony against his enemies. His coronation in 1215 at Charlemagne's ancient Capital at
Aix-la-Chapelle (Aachen) occurred very near the end of Wolfram's life. I thought
Blue Rose would be great to run games about this, as well as other stories like the French
Horn of Roland which is set in about the same timeframe, and I was right. Blue Rose is great for this sort of RPG Games.
Interestingly, about half the playtest group for
Blue Rose was composed of women, an amazing ratio for RPGs, so it's pretty safe to say that if a bunch of women got together to design an RPG,
Blue Rose would be it. Nice game, lots of fun to play, and the ladies find it very alluring.