In addition to working on the rules for Wardens of the Blue Rose as adapted from the SAGE System (but with many other elements, especially for story generation) we’re taking a new look at Aldis itself. You might have noted a hint of it when we called it the “Commonwealth” for the first time.
Aldis and its world, Aldea, are over 20 years old, and haven’t been updated in a decade. There are a number of areas where we think, at least for Wardens of the Blue Rose, it’s time to evolve things a bit. But don’t fear! No Time of Troubles, Judgment, or Other Epic Event will happen. But here’s what’s going to happen:
Name Shifts: We’re going to rename a few things for clarity and atmosphere. Aldis has a whole lot of things called “councils,” for example, and a few places with unnecessarily gendered language. Note that no actual name changes have happened in Aldis! Instead, we’ve retranslated the original Aldin for clarity.
Aldis Is Not a Park: There’s a tendency to look at Aldis as a sort of golf course of a country with the odd problem spot, but the original intention was to emphasize that it makes up the former heartland of a Shadow-haunted technomagical empire. The Blue Rose setting isn’t just post-apocalyptic in the Shadow Barrens. Yet this is not Blue Rose 40K (but imagine, eh?); people live, love, thrive, and build better ways of living. For three centuries, they’ve turned ruins into homes.
Aidis Is Not Utopia: In the present time, in our real world, it’s relevant to remember that Aldis isn’t shallow liberal fantasy wish fulfillment where some magic doohickies keep people honest. Aldis is the state created by the winners of a revolutionary war against a literally soul-destroying enemy, and even while they shook off the blood and ash of their accomplishments, they were determined to never let the Shadow reign again. 300 years later, with the obvious remnants of the enemy in remote Kern, debates have arisen about what it means to be on guard against Shadow. Should adepts bear a special burden? What exactly might risk the rise of a new Shadow power? Aldins aren’t paranoid, but they’re the children of the Great Rebellion, and will never forget it.
Aldis Is Magical! Aldea is a world of spirits and arcana phenomena, of lost magic and dangerous secrets, sorcery, and Shadow. I want to make the “metaphysics” a bit more flavorful and cohesive without eliminating too much mystery.
General Updates: We’ve wanted to make some definitive changes to the Roamers, Night People, Vata, and other places where developers have long wanted to make some changes but didn’t want to be overly disruptive.
So, it’s not going to be much in the way of factual changes, but more in presentation. However, keep in mind that Wardens of the Blue Rose is a compact book, so this stuff will be described concisely compared to classic Blue Rose. For an epic treatment of Aldis, see the current AGE edition of Blue Rose, or think upon the possibility of games to come . . . .
By the time of the Backerkit campaign the game was basically designed but not composed or developed. That means we had the Blue Rose setting, notes, and setting development specific to Wardens, and most of the necessary mechanics to run a game, but these weren’t in a publishable state. The adventure generation system was, in fact, a series of strange cursive notes and arrows in my sketchbook.
So, in May the writing team met and talked about turning this into the coherent Wardens of the Blue Rose you’re going to get, with Sian on the Commonwealth of Aldis and Arc Meters, Steve on story generation, and Katherine on the Wardens themselves and a starting adventure site. My job in all of this is the character creation and core rules—SAGE rules, customized for Wardens of the BlueRose to include such things as psychic arcana, spirit dancers, the varied peoples of Aldis, and so on.
And of course, we released the Slice, with a very provisional oracle system. Here’s where I have to admit to a little bit of theatre. The oracle there is similar to a number of well-known solo RPG equivalents strictly to make it clear that solo play, as well as traditional and various types of collective play, are part of Wardens of the Blue Rose. We’ve since switched to the original oracle I had in mind, which uses the test and Drama Die elements of SAGE.
Now we’re all at our keyboards Getting It Done, and we look forward to sharing the results.
I originally wanted to do more updates myself, but last week I was called to deal with a serious family emergency. As we slide toward the end of the campaign, however, I’d like to talk a little bit about maturity and tone.
In my opinion, a lot of people confuse harshness with maturity, and maturity with a work’s worth, whether it’s a game, film, book, whatever. When we’re younger, we often look to extreme, dark stuff to explore the cultural world beyond what our families and other elders have provided for us, and for a while, we might associate seeking these things out with maturity. And certainly, there’s a lot to learn from dark themes. Most of my own work has been in dark fantasy and horror, and it’s a genre I plan to return to—but it isn’t the most mature or worthy.
I started playing around with the ideas that would coalesce into Wardens of the Blue Rose because I was fascinated with the simple proposition of the game’s subtext: What if the type of good in a fantasy world actually matched the values we want to see? And that raises this question: Why do we think that focus is less interesting or elevated than something darker? One reason is simple and value-neutral: Whenever you solve a problem, you prevent a conflict, and while we can have stories without conflicts, the ones we enjoy in roleplaying games usually have them. “But!” I said to myself at the battered coffee table where I do my work, “Conflict for a good cause is cool.”
And conflict doesn’t need to be lethal or otherwise catastrophic. In real life we have very meaningful struggles and reconciliations without gods, monsters, and death. Wardens of the Blue Rose probably wouldn’t exist without slice-of-life narratives finding a place in genre media, because that makes people used to exploring fantasies where the goal isn’t to satisfy a prophecy, bring things back under a good deity, or whatever, but to be good to people, and help them solve their problems. Sometimes we’ll find the fight for goodness goes to dark places, but whether it’s about a fencepost or something from the Shadow, these are worthy stories, because they offer us more than hope for an imaginary land. They remind us that we can take up goodness—real goodness instead of a fantasy metaphysics of gods and magic—and it can drive us to communicate, join together, and make the world better. I think I decided on younger adult protagonists both to appeal to all ages and as a reminder that we can renew ourselves, even our tastes.
I’m hardly claiming that this game is a social good, but it is valuable to remind us, in play and work, that we can do that, and it can be as fascinating as a dark lord on a lonely throne.
~Malcolm Sheppard, Wardens of the Blue Rose developer
We have another update from developer Malcolm which talks a little more about the SAGE system, and how it differs from our other AGE games. But first...
🎉 STRETCH GOAL UNLOCKED! 🎉
The Meeting Manual is a 24-page guide to the people and creatures you might meet on the road, expanding the possibilities in the core rulebook. Some might be called “monsters,” but you’re not there to fight—you’re there to meet!
Now let's see if we can hit that next one for the short adventures and scenes anthology!
Take it away, Malcolm!
Hi folks,
I’d like to chat a bit about how the SAGE System we’re using in Wardens of the Blue Rose came to be, and why we’re using it instead of the classic Adventure Game Engine (AGE).
SAGE’s basic ideas were first described by Steve Kenson, in a mid-pandemic design document. At the time I was doing intense work on Fantasy AGE, Modern AGE, and Cthulhu Awakens, all classic AGE games, but for a long time we’ve been interested in adding shorter games to our repertoire than Big Book Games. I love those games, and I will be making more—SAGE isn’t a replacement for classic AGE. But I did like the idea of shifting gears a bit.
So, I took Steve’s design document and basically added ideas from classic AGE I thought would be cool or add depth to characters, working up the Bonds and expanding the core mechanics a bit. At the time I was working on Engine, the AGE System magazine, and I realized I could put a whole SAGE system in there, and due to the small wordcount and modest production costs, I could use it for some really interesting settings, so I got four writers to work on settings, including Sian and Katherine, who are working on Wardens with me.
It was a compelling test drive, so I did two things. First, I designed a book-length implementation of SAGE, revising some things and adding options instead of complexity. That’s in layout now. Second, I started experimenting with applying SAGE to Blue Rose, in response to some of what I experienced promoting Blue Rose, which I talked about in my previous update. A light, character centered system seemed like the best way to support solo and GMless group play along with traditional play. That triggered the first story generation notes, and the desire to give those a compelling direction led to…well, the very premise of Wardens of the Blue Rose: Young heroes on the road, meeting people, solving problems, and maybe falling in love.
So, this game stands on some sturdy shoulders. There’s Chris Parmas, who designed the original AGE System, Blue Rose and SAGE designer Steve Kenson, and Blue Rose developer emeritus Joe Carriker—and that’s before looking back at other great writers and designers. I can’t wait to show you the result.
We've gotten some questions about adding stretch goals to the campaign and so we've added a few items that will give every backer a little something extra. Your support can help us unlock these great expansions to the Wardens of the Blue Rose base game!
At $25,000 we’ll produce a 24-page guide to the people and creatures you might meet on the road, expanding the possibilities in the core rulebook. Some might be called “monsters,” but you’re not there to fight—you’re there to meet!
At $35,000 we’ll create a 32-page anthology of short adventures and scenes to spark and enhance a Narrator’s imagination and open new stories for Wardens, whether in the middle of a generated campaign or through traditional adventures.
At $50,000 we’ll create Deluxe version of the map, either in cloth or as a foldable trail map. Format will be decided by a poll of backers and included with all pledge levels that include a physical reward.
At $65,000 we’ll send your Wardens into real danger! Only a few Wardens are called to travel to the Theocracy of Jarzon, a land of strict tradition bound to religious zeal. Where Wardens travel Aldis openly, they crawl through Jarzon by stealth, rendering aid in secret. Discover new story generation tools and arcs, as well as an overview of this land beyond Aldis in this 56-page supplement.
We might have another thing or two up our sleeves for Wardens of the Blue Rose if we start knocking these down, so keep an eye out for future updates!
Also, be sure to check out Thursdage today on Youtube for more information about Wardens of the Blue Rose and the Wardens Quickstart!
