“in order to go through life everyone needs something apart from reality
Satoshi Kon
Human beings live their lives by transforming life into a story, and they play games to retell and embody that story. All religions are stories about which adherents play a game. Karma and Dharma, Sin and Penance, Suffering and the Noble Path. Saying that religions are stories is not to say that religions are false or fictional. And saying that religions are games is not to say that religions are frivolous and pointless. Religions are stories in the sense that they impose a narrative upon the world. Religions are games in that they are practices with sets of rules and objectives towards which one can work and against which one can succeed or fail to varying degrees.
And make no mistake: The Song of Seven is a religion. And Blood Red Dreaming is the game we play to enact the story which underlies the Song of Seven.
Giving Credit for Inspiration and Influence
There is no such thing as a new and original idea. Noting springs from nothing when it comes to creativity. Anyone who says otherwise is simply hiding their sources of inspiration and influences- or isn’t self aware enough to know what they are.
Blood Red Dreaming Draws heavily from many sources. Broadly speaking the game draws inspiration from other tabletop role-playing systems, from video games, from other tabletop card and parlor games, from film and literary sources to numerous to mention.
Some major influences deserve special mention. The Vajra system is inspired by the Dark Souls own Souls system. The Avatar concept is inspired by Hong Kong action Theatre and its star system. The accumulation of progress from outside the game is inspired by Pokemon Go and other ARG games. The story element mechanic is inspired by the Fate core system and its aspect mechanic. The playing card resolution system is inspired by Psychosis: Ship of Fools and its Tarot card resolution system. The Enemy phase system and the idea of exploiting weaknesses found in story elements for those enemies is inspired by Shadow of the Colossus and Legend of Zelda boss battles.
Additional game mechanics inspiration comes from the Role-playing games: Rifts, Wushu, Fudge, Alternity and probably others we didn’t notice we influencing us.
Story and sitting inspiration come from a myriad sources. Including Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, Dark City, The Matrix, the Invisibles, The Kalevala, dot hack, Neverwhere, Dies the Fire adn the other books of the Emberverse, Havamal, Stand Still Stay Silent, Digger, The Ramayana, the Discworld novels,The Satanic Verses, Dune, The Holy Mountain, In the Mouth of Madness, The Persona series, Bloodborne and Dark Souls, The Dhammapada, the work of HP Lovecraft, The Torah, Planetary, Star Trek V, The Mahabharata, Far Cry 3 and 4, Hyper Light Drifter, Ishmael, The Holy, Shadow of the Colossus, Legend of Zelda, Things Fall Apart, American Gods, 1984, Brave New World, Doctor Who, Mage: The Ascension and too many more to name.
We all started out playing Dungeons and Dragons and Legend of Zelda. As such it would be hard to estimate just how much of an influence both of these things were upon the game
Welcome to Blood Red Dreaming
INTRODUCTION
What is Blood Red Dreaming
“A man has an idea. The idea attracts others, like-minded. The idea expands. The idea becomes an institution.
(pause)
What was the idea?”
Top Dollar, The Crow
This is the game that the Moral Guardians warned you about: that evil devil bargaining, magick using, demon invoking vile brainsucking game that convinces you that the walls between reality and fantasy are thinner than you think. When Patricia Pulling founded Bothered about Dungeons and Dragons, it is this game that she was envisioning. A game that tells players that they can step into a fantasy world and that the two worlds can affect each other.
…but…
You already do this every day. You live in a fantasy world of your own design, drifting through a harsh and uncaring reality within this bubble of delusion. Every day you trick yourself and deceive yourself and believe your own lies about the nature of reality and the meaning of life. Every one of us lives inside a fantasy. What Patricia Pulling so feared, was that people might choose fantasy worlds of which she did not approve, and over which the dominant hierarchy and mythology held no power. These moral guardians feared that you might tell your own stories, that you might escape the judgement of bronze age storm gods and the moral oppression of nomadic goat herders who hadn’t yet invented toilet paper.
So this is a dangerous book. Clearly, a rebellious book now sits in your eager little hands. This book is a game, yes, but so is life. And, in fact, they are the same game.
So how brave to you feel?
How is this Different from other Tabletop RPGs
If you’ve played other Tabletop RPGs, you’ll be familiar with certain conventions of the games: multitudes of dice, character classes, experience points, storytelling by murder killing hosts of allegedly evil monsters. Well, Blood Red Dreaming doesn’t do most of that, and what it does do it does very differently.
Gameplay Resolution is done with a deck of cards rather than with dice. A Player’s Avatar in the Shadowlands can do whatever the player themselves is physically capable of doing. Anything beyond the capacity of the Player requires the expenditure of cards to accomplish. Attempts at success can be bolstered by points earned through activities in the real world, like a pen and paper Pokemon Go. Character death is not a major set back, with penalties being only that the player cannot participate directly for the remainder of the session. Stories last a single session, like an episode of a TV series. These sessions can and will be strung together to form a myth arc, but each session should be a complete story in itself.
Combat is no different that any other story/action resolution attempt. All conflict in broken down into Scenes and Phases to keep things rolling and prevent sixty seconds of in game combat to taken three four hour gaming sessions. Negotiations, or heists or research in a musty library are all viable grand finales to a session if handled well. Story points have mechanical value in the game’s systems, and negative consquences and penalties can be purchased to gain short term advantage now- and players will know when they risk major consequences nearly all the time.
If You’ve Never Role Played Before
Learning Blood Red Dreaming will actually be easier if you’ve never played another Tabletop RPG before. All Roleplaying games are basically collective story telling games. Most RPGs forget this for a simple reason. Most RPGs were built from the old miniature war games where old men moved civil war figurines across meticulously created dioramas. All really cool stuff, but if you just want to tell an amazing story then the baggage of this origin story needs to go. So sit back and relax. Think of this as improv, the storyteller is both audience and movie director and also plays all the extras, while the players are the lead actors and sometimes the villains (more often than many players would admit in many games). The rest will become clear in short order, sit back and relax.
Recommended Reading
- 33 Strategies of War, by Robert Greene
- Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard. by Chip Heath
- The Power of Positive Deviance, by Richard Pascale
Professor Harbinger's School for Villains 