Tuesday, January 17, 2017

New Releases Tuesday: Blue Rose AGE Edition

I always pictured her as a blonde
It's Tuesday. That means new releases all over the place.  Today at DriveThruRPG we have the new release of Blue Rose: AGE Edition.
I scooped this up before I even got to my second pot of coffee!

There will be a full review later, but right now I want to say this book is gorgeous! The art is fantastic and all 384 pages are in full color. It just looks so good.
But this is not a coffee table book, it is an RPG book.  Well for that it will take more detailed reading, but I love what I see so far.

Some highlights

  • The World of Aldea has moved forward in time. Some NPCs are gone, some are now married (!), and there are plenty of new and interesting NPCs to be had.
  • Blue Rose maps onto the AGE system so well that I might actually drop the True20 version.  In fact it seems (from my readings so far) it works BETTER.
  • A lot of the material from the True20 Blue Rose line made it to this book.  At 384 pages it is packed.
  • There are no True20 to AGE conversion rules that I have seen yet.  Personally I am taking the "Forgotten Realms" approach and having a particular event in the new book signal a shift in paradigm. Classes and levels though do convert on a one to one basis and so do many of the "powers".
  • The book is divided into a Player's Section, a World of Aldea Section and a Narrator's (GM) Section. 
  • The Narrator's section is the most expanded and updated.  Benefits of having 10+ years of game play.
  • The PDF is fully bookmarked (I know, that should be a given now-a-days, but you would be surprised how many I run into that are not).
  • Did I mention how gorgeous the art is?
Sea-folk, Human, Vata, Rhy-cat, Night Person, Rhy-wolf

Chances are if you liked the True20 Blue Rose you will enjoy this one even more.
I have both Fantasy AGE and DragonAge and there is a lot of material that would work well between all three books.  

The tone of this book is more swashbuckling adventure and acts of derring-do now. Not that it has moved away from Romantic Fantasy (far from it).  In fact the feeling is that Aldea is entering into a new age.  I would liken it to the reigns of Queens Elizabeth I and Victoria. The True20 version was the cusp of Queen Jaellin's reign and now this is a new Golden Age of opportunity and adventure. 

I can't wait to get into this book!

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Can you comment on the stunts? Are there new ones crafted for Blue Rose, or are they limited to the same ones from Fantasy Age and Dragon Age?

Timothy S. Brannan said...

I'll have to read it a bit more to know.

s7610ra said...

I am also interested in the stunts, which are such fun in Age games, but which have been a bit limited on non combat activities up until now.