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Has anyone here done Bluebeard's Bride? Because I went through an experience reading that game and I think the weird frog-boiling transition from 'feminist gothic fairytale horror' to 'wait, this is just the author's fetish' should be shared with the world. (Though the corebook is fine, it's a supplement that gets into Magical Realm territory.) EDIT: Never mind, apparently I have deleted the Book of Rooms from my computer because lesbian fetish porn is perfectly fine but please don't give it to me and tell me that this is gothic feminist horror. t3isukone fucked around with this message at 21:38 on Dec 28, 2021 |
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Dec 28, 2021 21:30
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Joe Slowboat posted:As someone who's found the corebook an extremely interesting RPG, and has never read the Book of Rooms, what on earth First off, CONTENT WARNING FOR RAPE AND BESTIALITY, as well as everything else that goes with Bluebeard's Bride. Okay, so I don't have the book on hand, I just have my memories, but basically it was listing a bunch of hypothetical rooms in Bluebeard's castle and what story hooks/threats/objects they had. And it had, like...okay, so there were a lot of rooms. And a lot of the horror was in the sexual. But a really significant amount of the rooms were like...very shock value/sexual? I think sexual horror is fine, but there were so many rooms that were sexual that it became a really weird experience. Also, there were a lot of ghosts of Bluebeard's previous brides that wanted to have sex with you. And servants who wanted to rape you. One of the rooms was Bluebeard's kennels, and I think the two story hooks were, like, a servant putting a collar on you and telling you were a dog now and the Bride having a dog try to rape her. Yes, really. While I don't have the book, I did copy/paste some particularly horrible sections to my friends to scream WHAT THE gently caress about : The period hookah posted:A tiny coal burns at the top of the pipe and a fragrant tobacco rests in the clay bowl. The hose of the hookah is tipped with an intricate ivory mouthpiece depicting a woman tangled in and choking on her own hair. A dark liquid fills the azure glass base. And this, which is I think a good synopsis of why Book of Rooms, despite several actually very good bits, went from 'horror with sexual elements' to 'erotic horror where the author is into lesbian rape fantasies' to 'what the actual gently caress': quote:To your left you can see the sculpture of an Inuit woman with a fish where her hand would be. 
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Dec 29, 2021 17:50
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Quackles posted:Less poetically, Interstitial is a PbtA game that focuses on re-creating, in tabletop form, the experience of playing Kingdom Hearts. And arguably, it succeeds. But a good portion of its potential is wasted. My issues with Interstitial mostly come from the fact that the worldhopping media I imprinted on deeply as a teenager was Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle. Which was a fuckup in entirely different ways. That said, thinking about it Tsubasa's drastic genre shift could actually work really well in a PBTA game if you do something like Masks or Monsterhearts where you change the Moves. It's just that it would need to be part of a campaign and wouldn't really work as a pitch. JcDent posted:Just got recommender Dark Soul in Satanic Space Scifi After the End of the Universe, and just going by class descriptions, there is no way this thing will ever to out to not be a mess:  Excuse you, I think you mean Astro Inferno: A mythical odyssey in legendary Satanic space: ttrpg of legendary death. This is deeply funny to me and I'm strangely charmed by how dumb it is and its terrible capitalization. Not going to invest in the backerkit, not even for the SATANIC COASTERS('Satanic protection against spilled beverage') but it's really loving funny.
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Jan 5, 2022 18:38
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Quackles posted:As someone who knows nothing about Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle, I'm curious what you mean. Then they went to a world that was a post-apocalyptic hellscape and things got very, very weird and dark very quickly as it was revealed that our hero for the rest of the series was actually a clone created by the villain, who took control of his mind, and proceeded to rip out one of his party member's eyes before destroying the community the group was staying in and leaving for another dimension, and things got steadily worse and more confusing from there.
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Jan 5, 2022 20:04
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Doesn't it also have the main characters of Card Captor Sakura be their own parents or something They were clones of themselves and also their own parents, there were like 3 different Sakuras, maybe more.
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Jan 6, 2022 22:05
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Summon Skate is incredible. I think The Dark was what lost me on Interstitial when I looked through it? Like, I'm...honestly, fairly edgy in my interests, I like a lot of OTT dark stuff and villain protagonists, but I remember when I was reading the rules and I got to that playbook I was just '...but why are they with the heroes?'. It doesn't fit at all with the tone they're going for compared to the other PCs. Also, re: Mors, that's kind of their stylistic thing. Personally, I really enjoy it and feel like it's very informative.
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Jan 11, 2022 04:20
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I have now bought Summon Skate thanks to this thread, as it may be an actual work of genius.
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Jan 12, 2022 22:55
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The monster designs in Summon Skate are honestly just gorgeous. Hastur is straight up breathtaking. The Other...is not as good as The Twin in Pasión de los Pasiónes. But that might just be because that game is hilarious. (You got EXP when the players in the 'audience' were confused about what exactly your convoluted plans were!) I think there's a playbook in Masks that does something similar, where you build off another character? Was it called the Paired? I definitely recall that I didn't like it much.
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Jan 19, 2022 20:36
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INFINITY in general bores me, but ALEPH as a faction is actually super interesting and cool. My eyes have glazed over a lot of the hacking/technology bits, but this is the first bit of INFINITY that's interested me-it's cool as hell! Also: re AOS(though this was a while ago I guess), I actually got into WH after the End Times and...I kind of like Age of Sigmar? As I've read more about the Old World, I think the Old World is a more interesting setting but AOS has, as many others have said, a lot more room for your dudes. Soulbound is really good, but WHFRP comes off better because it's had a long time to build up tons of really very good books while Soulbound has a lot less content in general. I think the end the problem with AOS is <s>cancelling the Hammerhal Herald, which was unironically some of the best AOS lore GW produced</s> characters on the tabletop. This doesn't really fit into the RPGs, but I do think it's the problem. Pretty much every significant, memorable character has been from the Old World. There's a lot of new named characters and army leaders, sure, but I can name...like, four of them off the top of my head? They pretty much get no focus and fade into the faction as a monolith and since Josh Reynolds left Black Library the novels have been...mediocre. Soulbound is fantastic and I really like a lot of the lore, but as it is AOS comes off as not feeling nearly as lived-in as Fantasy or even 40k. t3isukone fucked around with this message at 00:54 on Feb 27, 2022 |
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Feb 27, 2022 00:22
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Yeah, while the lore and mechanics aren't the most interesting I love random chargen and Infinity has that and it's pretty great about it.
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Feb 28, 2022 22:26
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By popular demand posted:I can't think of a way in which randomly adding a heavy topic to a game scene would help, even if everyone is up to debate said topic. Mors Rattus posted:Once again I would like to ban non-Jewish writers from stealing names from Kabbalah. (Except Project Moon. They're cool.) Seconded on general thoughts re: Voidheart Symphony expressed here. I like it, but it definitely is about things that I generally do stuff like play RPGs to not think about. But it's such a genuinely cool-seeming game that I almost want to play it anyway.
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May 20, 2022 23:57
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"and then the goblin says 'they keep us uneducated so they'll have cheap labour!'"
"C'mon Dave, this is the forth time you bring up the dehumanizing effect of capitalism in this session"
"we already spent like two hours IC discussion this"
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Now, I've put a considerable amount of thought into Bluebeard's Bride, and I have decided that: A-the rules are like, actually genuinely good and fun. I have my Issues with it-some which are just 'this game has a lot of elements I really like but some of it are not for me' and some of which are 'a significant amount of Book of Rooms is the author's fetish porn'. B-Due to this, I have actually bought Book of Rooms. Is this a good idea? Maybe not. It's a very pretty book, despite the, uh, elements, at least. I intend to do a writeup, but to begin that I'm going to have to summarize the corebook up. It's mostly fluff-based, but the game's premise and a few rules need to be covered, so... t3isukone fucked around with this message at 22:48 on Jul 20, 2022 |
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Jul 20, 2022 22:40
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So What Is This Bluebeard's Bride Thing, Anyway? Okay, let me begin with a blanket trigger warning. For...everything, really. This book deals with child death, child abuse, rape, misogyny, rape, spousal abuse, religious abuse, more misogyny, gore, even more rape, and lots of things which aren't as widespread throughout the book as all of these b welfarestateofmind began, and never finished, a writeup of this game. This is not a writeup of this game. This is a writeup of its sourcebook, The Book Of Rooms, though I'm probably going to be inevitably airing a few of my grievances with the game in general through this. I'll begin with their summary, and go on to a quick summary of the rules involved with Book of Rooms: welfarestateofmind posted:After several goings backwards and forwards, she was forced to bring him the key. Bluebeard, Like welfarestateofmind, I have not played the actual game. However, I have watched an AP that takes place in the rooms from this book and I think it basically confirms my biggest issues: the first is that the corebook specifically instructs you on how to improvise, where the players describe a key and the GM decides what room it unlocks. The second is that a significant amount of the horror in Book of Rooms is either just silly or really, really uncomfortable to talk about at a table with your friends because of the whole sexual violence thing. It's kind of impossible to talk about this game without talking about sexual violence. I think I'm quite apart from a lot of people here in that personally, I don't have any real problem with fictional sexual assault. Rape fantasies are common and perfectly valid to have. Fiction serves as a way to explore dark things in general, and I generally don't like censorship in any way. I think that, say, a personal ERP thing between two people where, say, one of them is a Lovecraft mecha pilot who's been captured by evil rapist serial killers and is being tortured, is perfectly valid. The issue with rape in RPGs is that, by the nature of tabletop RPGs, it's just kind of inherently awkward. Sex is a part of human life and so it should be a part of storytelling. This makes sense. However, the concept for this is that you are playing this in real life, with your real friends, presumably looking them in the eye. I'm sure for some people and some friend groups this works-but in general, in-depth sex RP with a tabletop group seems fundamentally a bad idea and even worse of an idea when it's rape. At various points, I am probably going to throw in ‘please imagine saying this to your friends who you are playing this game with’. Everyone posted:There's also apparently a Book of Mirrors, a Book of Lore and a couple of others as well. That's quite a few supplements for a game that I understood was basically "eventual female victim explores home/lair of her psychopathic killer." Book of Lore is mostly straight up a Bluebeard retelling. There is, of course, weird dubiously consensual lesbian sex and some pretty writing, but it's not really that interesting. I think that writing it as a story kind of takes away all of the actual gameplay of the interplay between the Sisters as the Bride's inner conflict, which from my experience is sort of the most interesting bit. Book of Mirrors is about alternate settings. Some of them don't really work, some of them do, one of them continually frustrates me because it's a really interesting idea(rather than the Bride, the players play the part of Bluebeard's estranged son who has been called back to his castle after his death) that is ruined by the fact that they didn't really change that much, so we have a lot of things that just don't really fit like Bluebeard's heir having a virgin and femme fatale in his head and a lot of text that is just genderswapped which doesn't really work when the whole thing is about gender. I'll actually possibly cover this more next time, because Book of Mirrors is the only sourcebook to actually provide expansions to the core rules, and I think they're actually quite good expansions. Next time, we cover: Mechanics, and the Four Types Of Scary Thing!
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Jul 22, 2022 18:16
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The Lone Badger posted:So the goal is to explore rooms and get enough resources and lay enough traps to defeat Bluebeard on his return as he proceeds through the house towards you? Like a reverse dungeon-crawl mixed with Home Alone? Okay, this sounds loving awesome, but no. A BRIEF GAMEPLAY OVERVIEW OF BLUEBEARD'S BRIDE The way Bluebeard's Bride plays is this: The players are all different Sisters, parts of the Bride's subconscious. Bluebeard leaves the wife with the keys to every room in the house and tells her she can go into any room but the one, yada yada. The players pass a 'ring' around-every player can pitch in and do certain moves no matter what is happening, but whoever has the 'ring' has the ability to take certain unique moves and, most importantly, make certain important decisions. Once the decisions/moves are made, the player then passes the ring to whoever gets it next. With the Ring, the player has the options to caress the horror, cry for help, shiver from terror, dirty your hands with violence, or give the ring up in exchange for being immune from trauma(the damage in the game). While you have the ring, you also are the one who describes the key that the Bride selects to go into a room-the GM will build the room from your description of the key-and the one who makes the biggest gameplay thing in Bluebeard's Bride: decisions. The focus of the game is to figure out the story behind every room, ie. what happened to make it the way it is, and then to decide: is this or is this not Bluebeard's fault? Every player can pitch in, but whoever has the Ring is the one who makes the official decision and then passes it on. Once you have three tokens of Faithfulness(believing Bluebeard isn't at fault) or Disloyalty(believing Bluebeard killed whoever in the room), the Bride will go to the final door. If the Bride is faithful, she can enter the room and be killed by Bluebeard, or she can look through the keyhole and be trapped in an abusive relationship. If the Bride is disloyal to Bluebeard she can bring her findings to the town and be attacked for defaming Bluebeard who will get away with it and continue to murder women, or she can run away but Bluebeard will kill her family and then find her. The GM has moves which are all quite vague and mostly just suggestions for how to play, but there's a big mechanic about Rooms: every Room has a Theme which allows the GM to make certain moves in it. There are four themes: Sexuality, Body, Religion, and Motherhood, and if you think one of these isn't about how much it sucks to be a woman the Religion theme immediately has a subheading about that this is specifically about how religion abuses women. One of the reasons I mentioned why I like Book of Mirrors is that it has other Themes for rooms which, while they're also about gender, have in my opinion a lot more flavor and interesting options-like, the Trust theme, which is all about gaslighting, is great for horror and could probably replace some of these. A few samples of theme room moves(there are a lot more than these, this is just a sort of 'greatest hits'): Religion posted:-Educate her on how to be a pious woman Body posted:-Shame her by introducing a perfect woman Motherhood posted:-Tell her why she should be self-conscious of her body [ED: why is this under motherhood instead of body???] Sexuality(this one's a humdinger) posted:Advance on a woman with touch, words, or display Next time: We actually start covering the Book of Rooms with the East Wing.
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Jul 23, 2022 03:31
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TRIGGER WARNING: BLUEBEARD'S BRIDE HAS BASICALLY EVERY TRIGGER YOU CAN THINK OF BUT A WHOLE LOT OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE THE NORTH WING, PART ONE The Book of Rooms begins with a short explanation of what these rooms are. Every room has a description of what the Bride sees once she enters, four mysterious objects that she can investigate, the room threat, and the horrors behind two of the mysterious objects. The GM is supposed to improv the other two. Also, I apologize: the first chapter is the rooms in the North Wing. There are ten rooms-the first five will be covered in this post. opening chapter text posted:“A home as old as this demands its own penance,” he says THE MUSIC ROOM [img]music-room.png[/img] Every room has a full-page illustration, with the mysterious objects highlighted. The art in Bluebeard’s Bride is definitely one of its best elements, IMO. The music room’s door has handles shaped like the keys of a piano, and pressing the keys makes ‘a soft plinking’ that opens the doors. The music room has a tall, domed ceiling and is filled with musical instruments, including a theremin because Bluebeard can time travel apparently. The walls are decorated with frescos of musicians on parade, the floor is patterned with musical notes, and the theremin is surrounded by a circle of chairs, each one with a blue candle on the seat. The room’s threat is Religion-Underworld. (Every theme has subthemes, but they're more just sort of categories and not as 'what' as the theme moves'. I guess the chairs are a summoning circle? The horrors detailed are the theremin and the fresco. The fresco depicts musicians cheerfully running from men dressed as devils while parading and playing instruments. No matter where the Bride looks in the fresco, a bride in a nightgown whose ‘guts are strung up around her throat like the neck of a cello’ (direct quote because I can’t quite picture this) appears. I think the moving picture is nice and creepy, though. The Bride brings her hand near the theremin and it begins to play, as theremins do. there's a lot of instruments that look more like women's torsos, idk why you're having it transform from a box posted:As the instrument’s wail grows louder, crying out like a woman in pain, it contorts into the shape of a woman’s torso. Her breasts are mutilated, intestines strung up and tied around her neck, and crimson blood pours onto the floor and mats her flaming red hair. The musical notes laid into the marble floor take on an eerie glow. The screams intensify and a dark power surges through your veins. Insects fly from the instruments with a cacophony of sound, forming a swirling mass around you—the eye of the storm. THE FENCING ROOM quote:As you enter the room, your soft cheek presses against the cold silver of two swords carved into the polished door, one crossed over the other. Why the hell is the Bride pressing her face into strange doors? Anyway. The fencing room has a glass ceiling through which moonlight comes through and a row of fancy chairs with attached chains and shackles. Both are in disrepair, the ceiling is dirty and the velvet upholstery on the chairs is rotting. The central chair is decorated with carvings of wolves hunting deer. There's a row of rapiers over to one side of the room, and the other side has a bunch of training dummies and a portrait of Bluebeard, a woman, and a young boy. The theme for this room is Motherhood-Grief. The rapiers and the chairs are the ones detailed. The rapiers have their hilts carved with ornate carvings of beautiful women crying. If the bride touches a rapier, the edges are razor sharp and she will prick her finger. The wound from this is very small, but will never heal. All of the chairs are dusty and in disrepair except for the one in the center, which 'sits, perfectly clean, as if waiting for you to sit in it'. (WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT.) If, for some godforsaken reason, someone is dumb enough to do that, the shackles close around your wrists and ankles in a twist surprising to literally no one. The Bride is forced to watch two ghostly figures-one a 'shadowy terror of bones' and one a young boy who looks at her lovingly-fence with practice rapiers. The boy scores a lucky hit on the Totally Not Bluebeard's shoulder, and there is a tense silence before the creature breaks the rapier against his thigh, grabs the boy by the neck, and stabs him with the broken rapier. The Bride is consumed by a terrible grief that isn't hers. I actually like this room. It's creepy and it tells a story. Perfectly serviceable. THE GALLERY The door here is greenish metal and is exquisitely carved, but clearly neglected. The art gallery has 'canvases' hung all over the room, but they're barely visible at a distance because of the dying sunlight and the fact that they're covered in dust. The room smells like beeswax from a bunch of unlit beeswax candles in sconces, though one candle is on the floor. The room is filled with incredibly lifelike sculptures of women in the same greenish metal as the door, but they are apparently not a mysterious object. At the center of the gallery is an unfinished sculpture of a massive skeletal hand and a stand holding a picture covered by a stained blanket. The theme of this room is Body-Illness. Only the sculpture and hidden painting are detailed. If the Bride touches the sculpture, it crumbles into dust and something white that, if the Bride investigates, she will see are splintered bones. quote:'It takes you only a moment to recognize them as not only human, but as the thin, delicate bones belonging to a young woman, probably one around your age. The blanket is heavy and feels greasy-the Bride has to put in effort to get it off. It reveals a painting of an elderly, drawn woman with a face and eyes that are uncannily realistic. Looking closer will let the Bride see that the skin and eyes are real and extremely well preserved, over a rough sketch of an emaciated old woman. Like the Fencing Room, this room is perfectly serviceable. The painting in particular is creepy as hell. THE GAME ROOM The room we're covering last is actually before this one in the book, but I believe in saving the best for last. The door here is plain oak, and the doorknob 'shrills' and the door 'groans' as the Bride opens it. The room reeks of cleaning chemicals and the gaslight bulbs lighting it hiss. There is a 'wooden pool table with red cloth' that holds numerous pool balls of different colors. Behind it, three sofas face a cold, blackened stove which is in the game room for some reason. At the far end of the room is a crimson cabinet with an unhinged door that is almost closed. (In the subheading on mysterious objects, UNHINGED is repeated again in semi-transparent spooky font below this.) The theme is Sexuality-Humiliation. Examining the pool table reveals scratch marks disguised by a recent layer of fresh paint. There are bite marks at the edges and the pockets are filled with a 'dark, thick substance'. For some reason, the book proceeds to explain what happens if you touch the liquid for some reason. red, viscous substance posted:f you touch the liquid, the whole table trembles as if possessed. The pockets start spewing their viscous red substance, and the pool balls—made of human bone—fly at you with vicious accuracy, as if thrown by a powerful arm. I THINK this substance is blood in very purple prose and needlessly written around but I'm honestly not sure. The cabinet is in perfect condition except for the unhinged door and some 'ruby' stains on said door's handle. If the Bride pulls the door off, the contents(which are not detailed any further) fall on the floor with a loud crash and we're starting to have to go heavy on the quoting because Sexuality. quote:Before you can do anything, a female form emerges from them. She is made of leather and latex; her head is a whole head mask with no eyes; she has whips for arms and high-heeled boots for legs. She mumbles as she gets closer and closer to you. When she is a breath away, you finally understand what she has been saying all along, “I shall give you pleasure.” Then she strikes you with her whips and tries to stab you with her heels. Honestly, the fact that she tries to stab you is kind of a weird twist because...well, you'll see in our next room. THE TEA ROOM The door to the tea room is a double door with a white oak frame and glass interiors 'decorated by straight and sinuous lines in a seductive composition', with glass handles that must be handled carefully if you don't want to break them. It's a suffocatingly close room with 'very feminine' blue floral wallpaper and cabinets of delicate, hand-painted china everywhere. All the space that isn't a china cabinet is taken up by a massive blue silk sofa, with a small wooden table besides it that has a teapot with a gleaming gilt lid and a golden teacup. The room's theme is Sexuality-Sexual Violence. You should be afraid right now. The teapot's lid cannot be opened. When investigated, tea pours out of the spout and the top and forms a puddle on the floor. A woman rises from the tea and tells the Bride to relax and stop being such a tease and tries to rape her. If the Bride sits on the couch then the couch comes to life, traps her, and orally rapes her. I am not joking. This is, literally, what happens. quote:The sofa’s back closes in, trapping you in its embrace. The blue fabric ripples, caressing the Bride’s body even as the sofa tightens its grip until you can’t breathe. The silk forces its way past your lips, pushing into your throat in a rush. The silk takes on warmth until it feels like skin, and the part inside of you pulses as if alive. Next time: the Ballroom attempts to one-up the couch rape in the Tea Room with even weirder sexual violence.
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Jul 23, 2022 19:18
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Xiahou Dun posted:Yeah, I'd actually really like to know at least some of the mechanics, and I'm not finding much in the older, fragmented review? The way the mechanics work is that each player/facet of the Bride's personality has a Trauma track. When spoooky things happen in the rooms or the Bride decides Bluebeard is to blame for something, it causes trauma. Some of the player moves can heal trauma, as does remaining faithful to Bluebeard. When Trauma gets to 5, the facet of the bride's personality 'shatters' and the player effectively becomes a co-GM-they can no longer dictate the Bride's actions, but they can add details to the house and what's going on and they can say what happens when the Bride fucks up a roll. The Ring Moves are the only real way the Bride defends herself-dirty yourself with violence is exactly what it sounds like. On a success the Bride chooses to silence, disable, or mutilate whatever she's fighting against, so I guess she's stronger than she seems. The 'caress a horror' move makes the horror 'direct its attention to another victim in the house', and Cry for Help has the Bride call out for a servant. All of these are stat moves you have to roll for. How exactly dealing with horrors works isn't I think really established. I don't think they can leave their rooms. The Examples of Play in the core don't really show any 'combat', but the game has no combat system. Bluebeard's Bride is a Gothic, not a 'things jump out and stab you' horror, so why the fetish woman even exists is an open question. That said, the Witch playbook has the single most OP move I have ever seen in a PBTA, which can probably deal with your enemies. Slight diversion here, but seriously, the Witch's Face(every playbook, instead of 'moves', has three Faces) of the Viper is hilariously broken. Which doesn't really work for the game's atmosphere. The Viper posted:When you care for a servant by poisoning them with your lies, they choke on your words and die. Care for someone is not a Ring move. The Witch can freely use this at any time. Not only that, but there are no restrictions or drawbacks. You don't even have to Roll. There isn't even something about whether the Servant is willing to let you care for them! You just lie to someone and they die. It's a very flavorful move but it kind of kills the tension. So the answers to the 'what do you DO in the rooms in Bluebeard's Bride' question is that the Bride fights back, distracts them, gets someone's help, or, if it's a servant, just loving instakills it with magic.
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Jul 24, 2022 17:25
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Xiahou Dun posted:I think I’m with Joe on this so far. I’m not convinced yet that BBB is doing a particularly good job at being agency-denial sex/relationship horror, but a lot of the reactions in this thread read less like identifying and trying to fix those problems and a lot more like people just don’t dig the premise. Yeah, this is overall my POV too. I think it's very valid to not dig the premise because, well, it's a pretty alienating premise, but a lot of the judgement is kind of OTT. It's a very flawed game, but I think there's a lot of genuine potential and I wouldn't even say it's bad, even if I do mock it. With this discussion, maybe we should give the corebook a try? Because Book of Rooms is...well, it's a supplement and not a very good one. It doesn't exactly engage with the themes of the game. Though it's not all bad-and the art is gorgeous-it's not exactly the best way to make an opinion about the game.
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Jul 25, 2022 04:34
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Joe Slowboat posted:E: Which is to say yeah, Book of Rooms does feel like it expects you to reverse-engineer the thematic content or complexities the room has to offer, which I suspect also corresponds to some of them just being spooky bullshit the authors wrote when they ran out of ideas and they're hoping that you'll figure out your own thematic answers for it. Book of Rooms would be so much better if every room had like, a core question along the lines of 'this wife died because X, do you blame Bluebeard for that?' Because like... organize each of them explicitly around the questions that go into loyalty/disloyalty, and suddenly example rooms would be way more illustrative. This is a really good idea of how to fix Book of Rooms, Everyone posted:I wouldn't mind you taking us through the rest of the Book of Rooms, but I think it'd be better to do the Core rules first to understand the rules/Moves/options. I mean right now we have Sofa Rape and... how is this supposed to work in the game? Is it just maybe me as the (theoretical) GM (uncomfortably) trying to describe the Bride getting raped by a sofa while the (theoretical) players (probably also uncomfortably) sit there and listen? The thing about Book of Rooms is that the 'themes' are the only gameplay guidance. Even the descriptions of what horrors the room is hiding aren't actual answers about what answers you'll get from certain moves. I'm fairly sure I'll do the core now, because as a lot of people have said it does seem to be the foundations for a lot. Book of Rooms is however a genuinely bad supplement-I think Tarot of Servants was vaguely useful and the Book of Mirrors supplement was actually cool because of the new settings it introduced. But....Book of Rooms was a mistake. But yeah. Core before we finish the North Wing, probably.
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Jul 25, 2022 20:35
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BLUEBEARD'S BRIDE CORE-INTRODUCTION Bluebeard’s Bride begins with a brief ‘what is this’ explanation. This is a retelling of the story of Bluebeard, where the players each take the role of a ‘Sister’, an aspect of the Bride’s psyche, which you roleplay as to decide what actions the Bride takes and direct her through the house. The players are expected to disagree and have their own agendas-after all, difficult choices cause a lot of inner conflict. The GM plays the horrors and the servants, and mostly does the house but the players take their own roles in defining that as well. quote:The rules of this game involve some negotiation and a bit of chance. Sometimes you wear Bluebeard’s wedding ring and directly control the Bride’s actions; other times youroll dice to determine what happens next. It then begins with what you need. The game is usually a one-shot and the core recommends you set away three or four hours. It also suggests you have spooky music and dim the lights and do a whisper. The list of absolute necessities: Players-one Groundskeeper(GM) and three to five Sisters; playbooks for the Sisters; the ring the Sisters will pass around; the play materials printed out; pencils; an X-Card; and….for some reason d6s are requested even though this is a PBTA game and uses d10s? The next bit of the introduction is what everyone is wondering. Why play this game? On the subject of why this is a TTRPG-which many people have asked here-the authors have this to say: quote:Tabletop roleplaying games allow you to explore horror directly, and to collaborate on a terrifying tale with your friends. Watching a movie allows you to passively engage with monstrosity—the storyline is fixed and unmoving, not tailored to you or your Bluebeard’s Bride is collaborative horror, and that makes it unique. There’s also a lot about unleashing the dark parts of your imagination. The last section of the introduction is on playing safely. It clarifies that this is a game you very much need to clear with your group beforehand: first, the atmosphere requires at least some amount of buy-in from the players, and second…it’s Bluebeard’s Bride. A lot of people might not want to play a game all about violence against women and a lack of agency. This game doesn’t work for every group, and that’s fine. It then discusses tools for dealing with upsetting content, like the X-Card-the next section is entirely about the X-Card(tinyurl.com/x-card-rpg). quote:We have found that anything that gets X-Carded during play can be replaced by something equally horrific, twisted, and troubling that does not push our group to bad places. The introduction ends with some pretty, pretty art. Seriously, the art for this game is amazing. 
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Jul 25, 2022 20:53
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Bluebeard’s Bride begins with a brief ‘what is this’ explanation. This is a retelling of the story of Bluebeard, where the players each take the role of a ‘Sister’, an aspect of the Bride’s psyche, which you roleplay as to decide what actions the Bride takes and direct her through the house. The players are expected to disagree and have their own agendas-after all, difficult choices cause a lot of inner conflict. The GM plays the horrors and the servants, and mostly does the house but the players take their own roles in defining that as well.quote:The rules of this game involve some negotiation and a bit of chance. Sometimes you wear Bluebeard’s wedding ring and directly control the Bride’s actions; other times you It then begins with what you need. The game is usually a one-shot and the core recommends you set away three or four hours. It also suggests you have spooky music and dim the lights and do a whisper. The list of absolute necessities: Players-one Groundskeeper(GM) and three to five Sisters; playbooks for the Sisters; the ring the Sisters will pass around; the play materials printed out; pencils; an X-Card; and….for some reason d6s are requested even though this is a PBTA game and uses d10s? The next bit of the introduction is what everyone is wondering. Why play this game? On the subject of why this is a TTRPG-which many people have asked here-the authors have this to say: quote:Tabletop roleplaying games allow you to explore horror directly, and to collaborate on a terrifying tale with your friends. Watching a movie allows you to passively engage with monstrosity—the storyline is fixed and unmoving, not tailored to you or your Bluebeard’s Bride is collaborative horror, and that makes it unique. There’s also a lot about unleashing the dark parts of your imagination. The last section of the introduction is on playing safely. It clarifies that this is a game you very much need to clear with your group beforehand: first, the atmosphere requires at least some amount of buy-in from the players, and second…it’s Bluebeard’s Bride. A lot of people might not want to play a game all about violence against women and a lack of agency. This game doesn’t work for every group, and that’s fine. It then discusses tools for dealing with upsetting content, like the X-Card-the next section is entirely about the X-Card(tinyurl.com/x-card-rpg). quote:We have found that anything that gets X-Carded during play can be replaced by something equally horrific, twisted, and troubling that does not push our group to bad places. Some notes on the X-card: the X-Card is just drawing an X on an index card and presenting it if things get uncomfortable. No judgement. When the X-Card is presented, whatever was objectionable will be 'edited out' and the game will continue as if it never happened. This ends the introduction. Next update, we'll begin Chapter 1.
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Jul 26, 2022 14:45
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Bluebeard's Bride: CHAPTER ONE Bluebeard's Bride's first chapter begins with a discussion of the story itself. There are many variations, and there is no definitive version-fairy tales change with every telling. The narrator claims that the reason this story has such longevity is because of its themes of violence, sexuality, and death(all of these are repeated in CREEPY TEXT) in the background. The story, like most old stories-the narrator claims 'like any good story'-has a moral, but the exact nature of the moral is up for debate. Is it a story from women for women meant as a warning about abusive men, or is it about how women's curiosity is bad for them? quote:As you read and play out your own telling of this haunting story, allow yourself to connect to this feminine horror. It belongs to you, dear child. Your burden and your thrilling dare. There is no flinching away from it. The horror you unlock will be what it will be, and you must find your own meaning in respect to your own life. And ask yourself how that tale reconciles with your hopes, your dreams, and your darkest fears. We then spend the next few pages with the actual story of Bluebeard, which I assume everyone knows. If you don't, here it is, or at least this version: Once upon a time there was a lord named Bluebeard, who was rich beyond imagining and had a splendid palace, but his beard was a distinct blue, so much that everyone forgot his original title and called him Bluebeard. He had been married many times, though no one knew what exactly had become of his wives, since there never was a funeral-the wife would simply vanish and he would marry again. One day Bluebeard was out hunting, and at noon, tired and thirsty, he came across a poor farmstead. He entered to rest a while, and the farmers were eager to please the lord. They had their beautiful young daughter serve him tea and bread, and he was smitten with her beauty and decided to take her as his wife. For a week he entertained her and wooed her, dazzling her with his wealth and grandeur before proposing. The young woman was frightened of Bluebeard, but she didn't want her family to remain in poverty. They were married in a lavish ceremony. The next morning, the young woman awoke alone in her bed, with no sign that the marriage had been consummated, which both made her anxious and relieved her. A servant escorted her to the dining hall, where Bluebeard was eating breakfast. He told her that he had received urgent news and had to leave immediately, and he would likely be gone for some weeks. He kissed her goodbye and gave her the keys to every door in the house, telling her to amuse herself while he was gone-on one condition. She could open every door and go anywhere in the castle, except for the closet at the end of the grand gallery locked by the smallest key. He then left. Of course, the Bride was curious and wondered what could possibly be hidden behind that door. She strove to distract herself, and explored all of the magnificent palace. But she couldn't stop from being anxious-didn't her husband trust her with his secrets? In the dead of night, she finally gave in and went to the closet door in the gallery. She was frightened of what it might contain and what her husband would do if she disobeyed, but she was too curious to not give into it. When she opened the door, she saw that the floor was covered in blood and the room was lined with the headless bodies of Bluebeard's previous wives. She screamed and dropped the key in the floor in her fear, but picked it up and rushed out of the room, locking it behind her. The next day, she could have thought it was all a dream, except that the smallest key was still stained with blood. She washed it and cleaned it again and again, but the blood would not come off. That evening, Bluebeard returned and told her that he had received news that his business had already been dealt with. The Bride acted happy to welcome him back, but in her heart she was terrified because she knew he would ask for the keys back. The next day, he did, and saw that the smallest key was stained. Bluebeard asked his wife how the key had become bloody. She responded that she did not know, but he told her he did-she had done as he had forbidden, and now she would take her place in the room she had been so curious to see. The Bride pleaded with Bluebeard, but he showed no mercy. With no choice, she descended the tower to meet Bluebeard in the tiny room. He ordered her to kneel. She did so, and so Bluebeard chopped off her head and put her body in with the other wives. All right, that's over. The story is called Bluebeard, but this game is explicitly about the Bride. There is much at stake for her if she makes the marriage work and she may ignore warning signs to preserve a chance at a better life-just the same, she might try to resist the pretty lie and find evidence. This all depends on the players. quote:You may be wondering how all of you are supposed to play as the Bride at one time. Frankly, my dear girl, you are going to have to share. The psyche of any person is complex, and the Bride no less so. Think for a moment about all of your inner voices. Is there a part of you that may be a little naïve, maternal, or deeply sexual? In Bluebeard’s Bride each of these aspects are called Sisters. Some actions may lead the Bride to be harmed, which deals Trauma either to one Sister or to all the Sisters. If a Sister receives too much trauma, she Shatters and the Bride loses that part of herself to madness. Every Sister may view the evidence differently, and they probably will. The Bride has complex and contradictory feelings about what she encounters. The book informs us this will be explained in more detail later so don't get ahead of yourself, missy. (Exact words.) The last section of Chapter 1 is about the House itself. quote:The house doesn’t have to be a house at all. It can be a palace, a mansion, or an estate. It begins with something basic-Bluebeard's Servants. They are the NPCs you'll encounter in this game. The Bride is in name lady of the house, but many of the servants have served Bluebeard for a long time over many wives and will have little respect for her. Others, however, are victims trapped in the house just like she is. The next section, Keys and Doors, inexplicably discusses the supernatural elements of Bluebeard's house. You can enter a room on the first floor and exit on the third, a window may actually be a mirror, and many other strange things will happen. The keys to the doors are just as strange and fantastical. There is an example of play where a player describes an Aztec-themed key, and the GM describes the door it unlocks in response. The last is tokens of faithfulness or disloyalty. These are small mementos of what takes place in a room. This we've gone over in quite a bit of detail in the Book of Rooms review-there's an ambiguous story in each room, the Sister with the ring decides what the token she takes is and whether it supports Bluebeard as a killer or not. If you think Bluebeard is the killer, you take a token of disloyalty, if not, you take a token of faithfulness. There's an example of play about a kitchen with a Bride who gave birth to birds repeatedly and made them into pies which she served to guests, where the players debate what happened. The chapter finishes off with pretty, pretty art.  Next update, we get into Moves and more examples of play!
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Jul 30, 2022 19:07
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The condescension is just for the players. The GM's section is...well, I'm pretty sure I'm going to quote the entire first section as it is the second-weirdest introduction to a TTRPG I've ever seen(weirdest is probably Comrades and its bit about 'WHERE ARE THE BOMB-THROWING ANARCHISTS', which is directly contradicted by most of the book which makes that intro even weirder).
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Jul 30, 2022 21:12
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disposablewords posted:I tried the novels and got through... I think the first two? I know definitely the first one. Nobody had enough of a personality for me to really remember outside of the absolute broadest strokes. And at least one baffling time skip right in the middle of it all - if I remember, the novel just kind of skipped over what was obviously some major dungeon crawl adventure and this one-armed blacksmith very suddenly had a magic metal arm that let him make dragonlances. Just jarring pacing and meh storytelling otherwise.
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Sep 27, 2022 15:17
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I really like the idea of Sumun. It's cool to see Gilgamesh played for horror-it also fits right in with the concept of Ravenloft as horror with heroic fantasy tools. But you're right that it really doesn't actually go in on anything. There's all sorts of hosed-up stuff in Mesopotamian mythology, Tiamat had all those kids for a reason! Sikaga is super cool too. Huh, has no one done the 5e Van Richten's Guide here? I have little interest in traditional D&D stuff but Dark Sun and Ravenloft are both really cool. I quite liked Van Richten's, especially some of the Darklord domains-Dementlieu is kickass.
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Oct 11, 2022 19:30
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I have strong, negative feelings about The State Of Modern D&D and really dislike 5e, but this digression is weird and there's no problem with D&D/sword and sorcery saving the world and dungeon delving qua itself. It's not even like a big mac-like, I wouldn't even say it's unhealthy? It's just a thing that's a little annoyingly popular but that's what life's like sometimes. Also elves are cool.
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Dec 15, 2022 14:03
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Mirage posted:A lot of modern RPGs specifically address the whole stodgy "every elf has darkvision" D&D paradigm, but this comes at the cost of having to redefine a race/heritage/subspecies every time you jump campaigns. "So in OUR world, elves have blue skin, live under the sea, are experts at building split-level houses, and poop ham sandwiches." "Aww. I wanted to jump as tall as the trees and shoot magic sparkles from my fingers, like the other campaign I was in!" "Hmm ... well, nobody's made a halfling yet ..." Is this not literally just Fellowship, though?
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Dec 16, 2022 16:07
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Catching up and 4e artificers were good-mostly because of how 4e worked meaning that you couldn't get stuff that breaks them like in other editions, and it's just 'they do this thing, but they do it with constructs'. I'm genuinely really fond to this day of D&D 4e. It had its flaws, sure, but it was fun. I wish Wagadu chose a different system/not 5e/was at all accessible because moth elves! Moth elves! Moth elves!
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Dec 31, 2022 23:55
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