RPGPundit Reviews: Blood Games II

This is the RPGPundit's review of Blood Games II, by Clash Bowley and Wes Fornero.  The version I'm reviewing is the printed version, softcover by Flying Mice (printed by Lulu), 201 pages.

I should note in the interest of total disclosure that I have a connection to this publisher, as it is Flying Mice that published my own RPG, "Forward... to Adventure!". Also, Clash Bowley was the editor of the same.  As such, some might feel that any review I make of one of his products might be biased because of that relationship... on the other hand, I think the nature of this review might just put that suspicion to rest.  Hell, I just hope that I don't end up hurting Clash's feelings or harming our business relationship, but he sent me this book to review and I'll be damned if I don't review it.

And, as you might have guessed, my review isn't going to be very positive.  This game has confirmed yet again in my mind that Clash Bowley is the man on the spot you want for making historical games, alternate historical games, or hard sci-fi.  But it seems that for anything even vaguely fantasy, including the sort of "horror" game that Blood Games is, Clash just doesn't cut it.

What's worse, I was fairly disappointed by this game.  What I read in the introduction got all my hopes up, only to find that in the actual delivery the game was nothing like what it promised, and turned out to be just another hackneyed fantasy-horror RPG.

Before continuing with that, a few notes about the game's presentation.  The book is pretty well in keeping with the format of the other Flying Mice books, the chapter organization is good, the images are those pretty cool photoshopped picture images in the same style as you'll find in "In Harm's Way" or "Forward...to Adventure!", the layout is fairly good and organized, but nothing to write home about.  Like most Flying Mice games, I wouldn't call the book a thing of beauty, but I would say that its got good workmanlike quality.
In addition to the actual game system, the book is peppered with the kind of bad short-story fiction that for some reasons seems obligatory in most of these sorts of games. I always dislike game-fiction, unless its actual fiction that's been put into the text of some kind of a licensed game. All the others have, with virtually no exception, seemed amateurish to me.  Blood Games II suffers from this as much as most. Why game designers insist on wasting pagespace on this crap befuddles me.

Now, back to the essence of my issues with this game. The introduction, which comes right after the first bit of crappy game-fiction, tells you about how in the ancient past demons, vampires, werewolves and other monstrosities hunted a primitive and helpess mankind, until Enoch (or Prometheus, which would have been the more apt name for this figure) came to humanity and taught them the secrets of civilization. This force, civilization, allowed humanity to push back all of these dark forces that opposed it, and eventually the rise of Science (or more aptly, the rise of the Age of Reason), led to the near-total defeat of the monstrosities, as they had no defence against the rational human being.
However, the events of the 20th century: World War I and World War II, changed civilization again. Post-modernism and relativism became the cancerous byproducts of a society that had become disenchanted with the virtues of reason or science, and these doubts in things like progress and secularism have led to little cracks in civilization where the dark things can once more breed and work to worm away at human society, hoping to plunge humanity into a new dark age. Now, the only thing that stands in the way are the men who know of these dark creatures and how they thrive, and hope to work against their efforts to bring down the Ideals that hold back the darkness.

Now, if THAT had been Blood Games II, I would probably have creamed my pants. THAT setting, the one detailed in the introduction, would have been awesome! An RPG with philosophical undertones, a different kind of take on the same sort of thing Lovecraft was writing about, only more idealistic, where the cosmology of the game is one where the forces of barbarism are literal real beings out to tear away at our sense of reality, and defending human reason and civilization are the best weapons we have against these dark entities.  I was having happy visions, after reading the intro, of an RPG where you played mystics and skeptics alike who were fighting in a secret war against anything that works to take down human society, working to keep chaos at bay.

Unfortunately, the game itself is nothing like this at all.

What we do get from Blood Games II is the following: a kind of hodgepodge kitchen-sink fantasy-horror game where the Players can play characters who are Buffy-esque Vampire Hunters, religious mages, hermetic mages, Templar knights, Half-demons, "witches, magi and vodoun priests", Spike-esque "good guy" Vampires, or ordinary humans. And the point of the game seems to be... well, basically going around killing monsters.  So instead of a clever horror game of men of reason fighting against the collapse of civilization, we get a wierd mix of Buffy, Vampire, Demon, Mage; basically the whole fucking White-Wolf catalogue.

The mechanics use in the system are a variant of the typical "Flying Mice House System", the same one used in Cold Space, In Harms Way, or Starcluter II.  The major difference is that instead of percentile checks, the system works by rolling a number of D20s equal to your skill rank +1, and counting the number of successes (a success being any roll that gets equal or less than the attribute that governs the skill in question). I'm not sure what the rationale was for this change in the mechanics, but it works about as good as the percentile system, and requires less unusual fiddling with the mechanics, and makes the attributes more directly significant than in the system as presented in those other games.

This isn't a bad system, but I also don't think its nearly as good a fit in Blood Games II as it is in those other games, when it comes to character creation and advancement.  One of the big features of this system is that you generate your character based on the course of his education and employment experiences, generating new skills on a year-by-year basis.  After play begins, advancement happens the same way, with each game session supposedly taking place a year after the next.  In games with lengthy timelines where the goal is to work your character up the ranks of the British Navy (like In Harm's Way) or where you are trying to tell a long alternate-history story (like Cold Space) or even a Travelleresqe romp like Starcluster, this system is pretty damn good.  
But a game like Blood Games is more likely to be played as a modern-day campaign, with a group of PCs who are working on a regular basis to fight the monsters, and as such it would be far more complicated to use the "one adventure per year" format that the system requires.

Anyways, the character generation system is as complete as in Clash's other games, with some pre-made templates for speedier character creation, and long lists of different possible educational backgrounds, college experiences, and careers.

Then we get into the weirder stuff, the character options for all those different PC types we mentioned above.  Half-angels have flight, healing powers, celestial weapons and other heavenly powers.
Immortals are regular humans, except that any time they die they come back to life (GMs should probably allow this "background" only judiciously; they never advance after their first death, but it still sounds like a game-breaker in the hands of a mischievous player).
Hunters are Buffy-esque supermen created by witches or angels to fight Vampires. They have heightened stats and can do kung-fu acrobatic moves really well.
"Cambions" are a kind of half-vampire, created originally as slave-warriors for the Vampires. They have heightened abilities and feed on blood, as well as having blood-based special powers.
Witches are literally wiccans (argh!) who use new-agey wiccan magic to fight evil. They use incantations, charms, chants, and divination, working in covens against evil beings.
Esoterists are traditional hermetic magicians, who use spells from grimoires and can create relics.
Magi are a kind of magician that have a special connection to a given archangel to perform magic.  There's a list included of the different kinds of Archangels available and the powers they grant.
Templars are a kind of paladin, they are specially trained within a religious tradition to fight evil creatures. They have bonuses to their abilities, can perform miracles, can communicate telepathically with other Templars, and can heal themselves.
Vodoun Priests invoke elemental spirits (Loas) to gain their powers. They can create and control zombies, and summon elementals. They can also use voodoo dolls to inflict pain on a subject, and curse people, as well as perform divination with bones.  This "background" in particular seems an odd choice for a party of supposedly "good guys"; its stated in the game that many of the above powers would only be used by "evil" vodoun priests, but then why the fuck is this a PC class at all?! I mean, anyone playing a Vodoun priest as a good guy will really find their character very limited, as they'd be unable to use most of the powers that are actually any good.  Again, a long list of Loas is provided, with the different powers associated with each one.

In all, the game clearly uses at least the veneer of "real" occultism for the mechanics of the different paths.  Its clear that the author has actually bothered to read up a bit on things like Wicca and Vodoun, as well as hermetic/Ceremonial magic, in order to present these things in the game. I would imagine that any self-styled "wiccan priest/ess" or "hermetic magician" would probably feel pretty satisfied with how their "occult system" would be presented in the game; hell, the game would probably amount to some wish-fulfillment for them, a chance to pretend that their "magic powers" actually did the sort of things they wish it did.  I'm not too sure that a practitioner of afro-carribean religion/magic would be quite as impressed with the Vodoun priest, though its clear that the information on the Loas is pretty well-researched.

Magic in the game works by the expenditure of magic points and the temporary reduction of attributes.
The game also includes a lengthy section on religious beliefs, including Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Judaism and Wicca (but oddly, not things like Islam or Eastern Religions).  Included in the description are the major rituals and practices of each belief system, in the context of how they would be useful in the game (ie. to oppose the dark forces).

Did I mention that this game bears no fucking resemblance to what I was hoping to find based on the introduction?

The rulebook includes a section for creating quick NPCs, which is fairly useful.  It also has a lengthy section on creatures, devoting particular attention to Vampires (and keeping in mind that Vampires are also another possible "background"; you can play a "turned" Vampire seeking to redeem him/herself by fighting against the forces of darkness).  Vampires have all sorts of Kewl powerz, and there are special rules for creating a vampire PC (with different skill tables based on more ancient careers if you're playing a centuries-old being).

After this, and a good list of weapons, you get to the section on how to GM Blood Games.  There we are told that "Blood games takes place in the real world", and that its a cool idea to use real life setting elements, like place and people you and the other players know, current events in the news, etc. Flashbacks and Foreshadowing are encouraged, and you are encouraged to play the game over several years/decades (again, probably due to the inherent difficulty of the advancement system for playing games restricted to the modern day).

So here are my conclusions:

The Good: You certainly get all you need to play in the book itself.  If what you're looking for is to play either Buffy or White Wolf's games, but hate those systems or publishers, this might be the kind of game for you. It has a lot of ties to real-life ideas about the occult, if that sort of thing turns you on.

The Bad: On the whole, there's little that's truly original about this game. The whole thing feels like a big hodgepodge, and there seems to be little to it other than going around fighting supernatural creatures. Again, there's nothing particularly wrong with that, but there's nothing about this game to make it stand out from various other RPGs that have done the same.

The Ugly:  This game could have been so much more.  If it had been even a little like what it was presented as in the throw-away introduction, it would have been something really original that had not really been done in any good way in RPGs before. It would have been a kind of flip-side to a game like Unknown Armies (that brilliant tribute to postmodern occultism), a game that could have had all the action, but much more depth to it than Blood Games ends up having. As it is, the game just feels cheesy to me.

Ultimately, I can't say I recommend Blood Games.  But hey, again, if what you were looking for was an unpretentious game where you could do a lot of what White Wolf's games do without all the angst and goth posturing, this game might be of some use to you.

RPGPundit

 

Thanks for the Review, Pundit! As usual, a very well written review. There were a couple of factual errors and mis-emphasises in the review, which I put down to a combination of my inability to express the concepts correctly and your distaste for the subject matter, or rather what Wes and I did with the subject matter.

You mention several times the use of player character vampires, "Spike ' good guy' vampires," etc. While playing vampires as PCs is possible, we went to considerable length to discourage it, because in the game, Vampires are by definition not good. A creature which feeds on people is, if not totally evil, then at best horribly selfish. A group can never trust a 'turned' vampire, as eventually, they will turn back. Literally, the only good vampire is a pile of ashes.

Cambions were not created by vampires, but by witches. A small point, but confusing.

Relics created by Esotericists are merely temporary repositories for magical energy, not the traditional powerful magic items.

Magic does not work by the expenditure of magic points, except for the Magus. All the other Paths use magic points to hold a magical effect in operation over time as opposed to a transitory effect, and the points are returned to them as soon as the effect ceases.

Also, immortals have no potential to be game brealing. They cannot - as you quite rightly pointed out - get any stronger than they were at the time of their first death. They can die, like any mortal creature, but they eventually, after three days, come back to life - weak as kittens and barely alive. Combine that with the fact that they cannot be Path characters, and the game-brealing potential is nil. They are just normal people who cannot permanently die until their appointed task is complete.

The Paths are also just one way to run the game. You don't need any Path characters at all. In fact, playing a purely non-path party in company with a strong Skeptic or two would be pretty much what you were looking for, actually.

The direction I wanted to go with this game was a game where religion was real, where all religions had evolved magics to deal with the creatures of darkness in different ways. Aside from the esotericists, all the Paths are religious in nature. All the Paths can be good or evil, as religion can be perverted to evil ends. The fact that a good voudon priest voluntarily chooses to be weaker than the evil Bokor is a testament to the will of the priest to do good despite the fact that they could be much stronger if they chose to do what they want. The temptations to be free of the voluntary limits of the Paths should be strong. All of the paths face similar temptation.. If they turned to evil, they would be free to do whatever they wanted. Some of these alternate Paths are in the game book descriptions, and some are described in the supplement Paths of Darkness.

-clash

BTW, Pundit - I never take criticism personally, nor would it ever affect our business relationship in any way. I look to good criticism as a way to learn a better way to do things, and you give good criticism.

-clash