Review: Bloodshadows

- originally published in Serendipity's Circle

Since launching this publication, I have acquired a large number of new games to see what is available and which game systems I could design scenarios for. After reading the rules for a dozen or so games, they all began to blur together, which makes any game that stands out exciting.

Bloodshadows, by West End Games, is such a game. I will address the playing system first, then explore the setting at length, as it is the game's setting, rather than its playing system, which caught my fancy.

The system for Bloodshadows is West End's Masterbook System, also used with their World of Indiana Jones game. It is a non-specific, multi-genre system which requires a general rule book (the Masterbook, which covers all of the basic rules, generic character generation, the magic/technology system - both covered by the term "Special Effects" - and the combat resolution system) as well as the specific Worldbook for the setting in which you wish to play. This makes some things, like generating characters, a bit confusing at first, as you will need to consult back and forth from one book to the other, using the Masterbook for the basics of character creation and the Worldbook for the specific background details, the character races, and the specialized advantages available in the Bloodshadows game, but it also means that each individual Worldbook is almost entirely devoted to the setting, with a minimum of rules to bog it down. I like this, as I hate having the same rules hammered at me over and over again. This also leaves the Worldbook available to the game master even when the players need to consult the rules in the Masterbook for some reason. In fact, you can keep the Worldbook away from the players entirely, should you want to keep the world something of a mystery to them. Also, you can use other Masterbook based games from West End Games without having to teach your gaming group a new set of rules and rolls each week.

There's also a deck of cards which comes with the Masterbook. These cards are dealt to the players at the beginning of the game and are replenished at intervals as they are used and discarded in play. The cards represent everything from a single-use boost to a specific skill (generally played during a melee sequence) to severe plot twists such as a Mistaken Identity or a Nemesis. These last can keep the Game Master on her toes, as she is the one who has to twist the plot according to the cards the players put down.

The setting, however, is the real thrill for me. Bloodshadows is set in the world of the film noir, a genre of movies from the 1940s and 50s. Films noir include the original hard-boiled detective stories as well as such noir classics as Sunset Boulevard and Double Indemnity.

However, the world of Bloodshadows, called Marl, is not merely a planet of noir cliches. Its ambiance is similar to that of the U.S. in the 1940s and 50s, but in addition to modern technology, there is magic. Picture the cop (or Sentinel, as they are called) on the beat who has a pain-spell embedded in his nightstick, or the waitress who can warm a cup o' joe in the palm of her hand. Everybody uses it.

There are also monsters, in the form of unnaturals. Ranging from the traditional forms of undead such as vampires and shapeshifters to various other creatures, this game has some of the most original non-human races I have seen in a long time. You can even create player characters using any of the various unnaturals. (Some aren't very appealing, though - who'd want to play a zombie?)

More than anything else, I love the atmosphere they have managed to give the game by adding a page of ongoing story to introduce each chapter of the Worldbook. They have managed not only to capture the style of old hard-boiled fiction, but to convert it effectively into what could be called "fantasy noir".

One significant difference between Earth of the noir film and the world of Marl is the fact that the cities on Marl are not merely psychologically isolated, but literally isolated by near-impenetrable Wilderness. There is some commerce but not much, because the Wilderness between the cities is inhabited by tremendously dangerous monsters. In mechanistic terms, this is to encourage players to face their troubles rather than running from them, and to give the GM the option of running an occasional hack-and-slash road trip to change the pace in a campaign.

And finally, there is the Godwar, a major (but still optional) plot device/story nugget. Marl, it seems, is the scene of an ancient conflict between Chaos and Order, a war which has just begun to escalate again after a thousand years of non-aggression. The Godwar can be used to great effect whether the characters are directly involved in the conflict, get sucked in on one side or the other, or even if they know nothing about it (which is true of the average man on the street) and discover they are being used as pawns.

The optimum number of players for Bloodshadows (not counting the GM) is no more than four, since the genre of film noir lends itself best to small groups.

Bloodshadows is available alone or packaged in a boxed set with the Masterbook and a deck of cards. Character generation is performed using a system of points allocation, with optional dice rules. The task resolution system uses two 10-sided dice modifying an attribute or skill score to generate a number which must meet or exceed a difficulty number.