Next stop, the land of Aldis in Green Ronin’s Blue Rose. It’s essentially the “Valdemar/Tortall/Sacoridia with a piece of electrician’s tape over the serial numbers” RPG. You know the drill: the protagonists battle cultists, criminals, evil magicians, scheming courtiers, demonspawn, expansionist neighbor realms & more, while striking blows for freedom & acceptance at home & abroad.
The game was re-released in an AGE version in 2017, but I still cleave to the original 2005 edition that introduced the OGL-based True20 system. I’ll explain why a bit later.
Like any F20 game Blue Rose has the six basic stats. Like Talislanta, however, it skips over the raw numbers (which let’s face it, didn’t get used for much) in favor of just noting the modifiers. Starting characters get six points to divide among the stats however they like. You can get extra points by assigning negative values to one or more stats if you really want to specialize. I have a combative concept in mind, so let’s go with:
STR +2
DEX +2
CON +1
INT 0
WIS +1
CHA 0
If you’re reading this you know what each of those does, so let’s press on. The next step is to choose your nation of origin & people. There are seven choices for origin: Aldis (the UFP/Iain Banks’ Culture), Jarzon (Spain during the Inquisition except Calvinist & Teutonic), Kern (Orthanc/the Scoured Shire), Islanders (Polynesians), Rezea (studly riders of Lakota-Mongolia), forest folk (backwoods people), & Roamers (the usual Roma stereotypes). There are five peoples to choose from: humans, night people (genetically engineered shock troops of the Lich King of the Kern, designed to be scary looking but as capable as anyone else of choosing good over evil), rhydan (magically uplifted animals), sea-folk (seaglass green amphibious ocean dwellers), & vata (pale, spindly humanoids whose origins are lost in the mists of time).
My concept is a human from Kern, which determines which traits, favored skills & favored feats this character gets.
Human
Size: medium
Speed: 30 ft
Bonus skill: one at 1st level
Bonus feat: one at 1st levelKernish
Kerns descend from a hardy mountain stock, so they tend to be tough and wiry. Dark hair and eyes are common, as is pale skin, since many Kerns live and work at night and rarely see the sun even during the day, given the almost continuous pall hanging over their homeland.
Favored Skills: Bluff, Sneak, Survival.
Favored Feats: Diehard, Surprise Attack.
Blue Rose has only three classes, or roles as they’re called: warrior, adept, & expert. Warriors fight, adepts use arcana (the game’s name for the psionic/magic abilities commonly found in the genre), & experts depend on non-magical skill & cunning. All three roles begin with & progress in skill ranks & ability increases in the same way, but attack bonus, saves & skills are role-dependent. As I say, this is a fighty concept so we go with warrior. Each role has several paths that describe different approaches to the tasks of that role. Warriors can choose from Clan Warrior (noble barbarian), Crusader, Knight, Ranger, & Soldier. There’s a bit of luck; ranger was exactly what I had in mind, though with a bit of a different spin.
All roles have the same favored skill ranks, normal skill ranks, rate of ability increase, & points of Conviction (inspiration, bennies, whathaveyou).
1st Level:
Favored Skill Rank 4, Normal Skill Rank 2, Ability Increase – , Conviction 3
All members of a role get the same attack & save values & progression, but different starting skills & feats.
Warrior, 1st Level
Favored Skills: Choose any 6, plus Craft (any).
Known Skills: Choose 2 + Intelligence score (minimum of 1 known skill).
Favored Feats: General, Martial.
Starting Feats: Armor Training (all), Weapon Training, and choose 2 others.Attack +1, Defense +3, Toughness +1, Fortitude +2, Reflex +0, Will +0, Reputation +0
Ranger
Starting Skills: Sneak, Survival
Starting Feats: Armor Training (all), Point Blank Shot, Track, Weapon training
Where are the hit points, you ask? There aren’t any, & that’s a big part of what attracted me to Blue Rose in the first place. When an attack lands, the defender makes a Toughness save modified by their base bonus, CON & any other modifiers versus a target of 15 modified by the weapon & the wielder’s STR. Whether & how much the defender is harmed depends on the outcome of the Toughness save. It’s a brilliant solution to the “I have 5 hp & you don’t have a strength bonus so I don’t fear your dagger” problem. Anyone could be killed by anything if the d20 hates them at that moment.
At this point we fill in the usual details – name, gender, general appearance & so on but we also make a few more game-important choices. Each character has a Calling, an Alignment, & a Nature.
Calling is the character’s overarching goal in life; it’s represented by one of the Major Arcana from a standard tarot deck. Our ranger’s aim is to effect radical change, so her Calling is Death. (As with the real world tarot that doesn’t mean literal death, but total transformation. The gloomy symbolism does suit her grim demeanor, though.) Acting to further their calling is how characters regain Conviction points.
Alignment is Light (Luke), Twilight (Han), or Shadow (Vader). Our ranger is Twilight aligned.
Nature describes a character’s two primary personality traits. Every character has the potential to go over to either the light or the dark side; these traits describe the main ways in which the character demonstrates that they’re listening to their better or worse angels. The traits are represented by the Minor Arcana, so I open up a random card generator & get Page of Cups & Ten of Swords. The ranger’s Light Nature is “expressive”, her Shadow Nature is “cold”. (That’s a bit on the nose with the whole “duality of nature” thing, but we’ll run with it.)
The big time sink is picking skills so I’ll spare you the agonizing over that & jump straight to the finished product:
Tanda Pellar
Warrior 1 (Ranger)
Alignment: Twilight
Calling: Death (radical change)
Nature: Expressive (Light), Cold (Shadow)STR +2 DEX +2 CON +1 INT 0 WIS +1 CHA 0
Attack +1, Defense +3, Toughness +1, Fortitude +2, Reflex +0, Will +0, Reputation +0
Melee +2, Ranged +2, Grapple +2, Initiative +2
Favored Skills: Acrobatics, Bluff, Craft (mason), Sneak, Survival.
Known Skills: Climb* +2, Sneak +4, Survival +4Favored Feats: General group, Martial group, Diehard, Surprise Attack.
Starting Feats: Armor Training (all), Diehard*, Point Blank Shot, Surprise Attack, Track, Weapon Trainingskills & feats marked with an * are the bonus ones Tanda gets for being human; there’s no in-game effect, I just wanted to make it clear they weren’t extras included by mistake
Equipment: padded jack (Def +1, Armor Penalty 0), scimitar (Dam +2, Crit 18-20/x2), handaxe (Dam +2, Crit x3), longbow (Dam +3, Crit x3, range 100 ft) & arrows, grapnel, 50′ hemp rope, 7 days’ rations
Tanda Pellar was born into slavery in Kern & raised in a filthy, deadly mining camp in the Icebinder Mountains. At the age of 15 she escaped during an earthquake & lived by herself for nearly a year in the high country, surviving on what she could gather & trap. It was her good fortune to encounter a column of refugees headed for freedom in Aldis, led by three of the Sovereign’s Envoys. Impressed by the natural talent for wilderness skills the young girl had demonstrated, the Envoys arranged for her to receive formal training. Upon induction into the Ranger corps, Tanda immediately requested to be sent back to the mountains.
Unlike most rangers, who specialize in deep woods living, Tanda is a master of survival in the cold, stony terrain of the highest mountain peaks. It’s her goal to undermine the Lich King’s rule little by little, sometimes by helping others escape across the Icebinders & sometimes by executing daring raids on Kernish border patrols, striking like lightning & vanishing as quickly as she had come, leaving only a wake of slain soldiery behind her. A realm that lives by the labor of slaves & maintains itself with terror & violence has a tipping point. Tanda Pellar is going to find that point & give the whole Kingdom of Kern a good shove. She’s willing to employ some morally questionable means to achieve that end, too, hence her Twilight alignment.
There was little time for talk in the camp, but rather than becoming taciturn like her fellows, Tanda learned to pack an astonishing amount of meaning into a few words. She still speaks less than most, but when she does she uses such unique turns of phrase & constructions that a few sentences from her can hit like a recital of epic poetry. But the sheer brutality of her upbringing also inured her to suffering – not just her own but that of others. Though she’s struggling to unlearn it, her reflexive response to misery or pain is to shrug & say “splash some cold water on it, walk it off.”
Rummaging In The Junk Drawer 
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