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The following review is that of the 1st Edition of Bloodlust, but since the 2nd Edition was merely a single-book reprint, there's not much difference. The game comes in a box illustrated by Frazetta and contains three booklets and a map of the continent of Tanaephis. The first booklet (78 pages) describes the game system and the setting. The second booklet (32 pages) describes character and incarnate god creation. The third booklet (64 pages) describes the powers of the incarnate gods and presents an introductory adventure that doubles as the hook to a long campaign spanning many of the game's supplements.
Setting
The Concept
So, what's this unusual concept that attracted so much interest to Bloodlust? Well, in the early days if Tanaephis, some of the Gods yearned to experience the lives of mortals, the violence, the blood, the lust, the thirst for power and all that makes humans what they are. They took physical form as various Weapons and went on to control mortals in order to satisfy their urges. Weapon Bearers (Porteurs d'Armes) play an important role in the society of Tanaephis, because they have access to potent abilities through their weapons. They are often war leaders, famous mercenaries or infamous criminals. They are, however, not always in charge: when a Bearer tries to go against a weapon's urges, a conflict occurs, which the Bearer doesn't always win… In other words, weapons have objectives of their own, and they view Bearers, on the whole, as vessels to reach their goals rather than partners. Not that the Bearers feel the same, most of the time…
How does this translate in game terms? Well, each player has two characters: his own human character, and the weapon character of another player’s human character. This allows for roleplayed conflicts between bearer and Weapon, with the latter having a real personality. The game’s default way of handling the weapons is GM control, but the dual-player option described here is by far the favoured one amongst players of Bloodlust.
The World of Tanaephis
Beyond the (not entirely novel yet never really used in an RPG) concept of sentient weapons that try to influence their bearer, the world of Tanaephis is a pretty interesting take on the S&S genre. It features most of its classic characteristics, from day-to-day brutality to the importance of races or ethnic groups.
All the races in the game are human, but elves, dwarves and orcs have existed in the distant past, and are deemed by the few who know of their former existence to have been human mutations wiped out by diseases or warfare. There are currently 9 races or ethnic groups spread out on the continent of Tanaephis :
- Derigions : The Derigion people has ruled over most of the continent for nearly 1000 years, but their empire is now crumbling and reduced mostly to the capital city of Pole and its proximity. They are decadent and somewhat disconnected of the harsh reality outside of Pole.
- Vorozions : The Vorozions were once subject to the rule of the Derigion, but they are now the main external cause of the empire’s decline. They have conquered back their ancestral territories and are now in the process of conquering the rest of the world.
- Batranobans : The Batranobans are a Berber like desert people who have also shrugged off the control of the empire over them, but with less violence than the Vorozions. They know the secret of the Spices that confer incredible powers to those who use them, and sell these goods for high prices everywhere.
- Piorads : A Viking like people, they control most of the North, although they are constantly at odds with the Thunks. On the battlefield, they use Chagars, a fearsome species of carnivorous horses, which confers a great advantage to them since their civilisation relies very much on warfare and pillaging.
- Thunks : A Mongol like people, they are cunning warriors who use small, fast horses and hit and run tactics. They also live mostly in the North and the Piorads are their sworn enemies.
- Gadhars : A Masaï like jungle people, they are considered primitive by the rest of the world. They live in the South and are feared in their own territory but despised elsewhere.
- Sekekers : Although not a race per se, the Sekekers have their own customs and traditions. They are amazons who have fled the society of men and live in hatred of males. They do not reproduce, obviously, but raid towns and villages to steal baby girls and raise them to despise men. They practice self-mutilation and can be of an incredible cruelty to men or women who follow men willingly.
- Hysnatons : Despite their lack of cultural identity, the Hysnatons are something of a race in the sense that they all share physical characteristics inherited from the ancient races. They are universally despised, and usually band together for protection.
- Alwegs : ‘Alweg’ is more a term of exclusion than a social body. It’s a generic term that regroups pariahs of all kinds. Races where pureness of blood is valued consider all those of mixed origins to be Alwegs. Amongst peoples who are by definition of mixed blood (Sekekers, Hysnatons) or less sensitive to pureness of blood, Alwegs are usually excluded on the basis of their behaviour. The proportion of deviants and nutcases amongst the Alwegs is therefore fairly high.
Another aspect that makes the world interesting and the weapon-bearers important is that there is no sorcery per se in the game. The powers of weapons and, to a lesser extent, spices, are the only form of ‘magic’ available on Tanaephis. This confers an important (if somewhat strange) social function to weapon-bearers, who often end up as leaders, especially in less civilised areas. This has had a number of side effects, like the continuous warfare, but also a virtual non-existence of maritime or fluvial trade on Tanaephis: God Weapons fear water. While they are virtually indestructible, they can’t bear the idea of being dropped at the bottom of a river or sea and spending eternity there lying in the mud (Remember the One Ring ?)
Finally, another interesting characteristic of the game world is the influence of celestial bodies. The planet on which Tanaephis is set circles around two suns (Fey and Raz) and is circled by three moons (Oephis, Taamish and Naenerg). Fey is the sun on whose cycles the years are determined. Raz has a much longer cycle (21 000 years) that affects civilisations in the long term through climate changes (Think Brian Aldiss’ ‘Helliconia’). The cycles of the three moons are irregular and result in astrological months that are distinct from calendar months. These months (like the ‘month of conquest’ or the ‘month of happiness’) are named after their effect on people’s behaviour.
Desires
And that leads us to an important aspect of the game system. I know this is the Setting section, but since the two are very much intertwined in this particular respect, I thought I’d mention it now: besides their usual characteristics and skills, all characters in Bloodlust are defined by five ‘desires’ of varying intensity, Prestige, Wealth, Sex, Violence and Reputation. The three middle ones are fairly explicit; the difference between Prestige and Reputation is that the former is a general measure of how much the character is known, whereas the latter is purely linked to combat: it is the measure of fear you strike in your opponent’s heart.
The interesting thing about desires is that when they are very high (or very low), the character may no longer control himself when confronted to a temptation linked to his highest desires. When you consider that the weapons have their own desires that affect their bearers’ and that the astrological months influence these desires as well, it’s not hard to figure out that they play an important role in the game, and that bearers don’t always get to do what the player would want them to! In fact, this is one of the reasons why weapon bearers are feared by many: it is well known that their mood swings are frequent and their motives not always rational. The Derigion Empire has even banned weapon-bearers from accessing public office after a sorry incident a couple of centuries back…
System
In general, the game system is not considered to be the best side of Bloodlust. That being said, there are some interesting aspects to the system, particularly with character creation, so an overview is worthwhile.
Character Creation
As may be expected, there are two aspects to character creation: one is for human characters and one is for weapons. They are both point-buy, although for God Weapons, it’s a sort of randomised point-buy.
Human character creation is very heavily race driven. There are six characteristics (Strength, Endurance, Agility, Speed, Perception and Willpower) rating from 1-20. Each race determines the base score of the character in each characteristic, and the player then has 6 points to add wherever he wants, and can in addition reduce one characteristic by up to 2 points to increase another by the same amount.
The player then allocates points for skills. Skills are percentage based, and split between combat skills and secondary skills. Well, come on, you’ve read about the setting, you knew there was going to be an emphasis on combat! There are 7 combat skills (Brutal Attack, Normal Attack, Quick Attack, Dodge, Feint, Parry and Shoot) and 16 secondary skills. The score in each skill is calculated by adding a base level determined by race with a characteristic based modifier. The player then has 40 points to spend in Combat skills and 80 points in Secondary skills.
The player then calculates hit points, passions (determined by race with the possibility of changing each up or down by up to two points), Control which will be useful for conflicts between bearer and weapon, and Prestige (determined by exceptional skill and passion levels). Finally, Hysnatons get to roll for their mutation, which can be beneficial or not, and depending on race, the player can choose for the character to have belonged to elite troops, which is mostly beneficial but fairly inconspicuous.
Did I mention that human character creation was mostly race driven?
God Weapon (or Incarnate God as it’s also called) creation uses an accumulative randomised point-buy system: you roll on specific tables for powers that have varying costs, and once you go beyond 100 points, you stop. Anyone who has designed magic weapons using the random tables in any edition of D&D has a fairly good idea how this works.
But first of all, the player must choose the nature of the weapon. In theory, the more deadly the weapon, the more points it costs. I can’t quite figure out why the Main Gauche is in the most deadly section, but that’s the spirit anyway. Then you start rolling. There are five tables to roll on:
- ‘Main Powers’ cover things that affect combat or heavily boost characteristics
- ‘Secondary Powers’ affect non-combat skills or boost characteristics in a lesser way
- ‘Conditional Powers’ must be associated to another power and are general limitations of that power, like ‘works only on a Piorad’, ‘Necessitates a Command Word’ or ‘Requires human sacrifice’.
- ‘Exotic Powers’ are odd powers not related to the characters’ scores. Things like ‘Confers Invisibility’, ‘Protects from Aging’ or ‘Combat Precognition’.
- ‘Limitations’ are similar to conditional powers, except they affect the weapon in general. They can be weapon personality traits that are shared with the bearer, curses or limitations from the conditional powers table.
In addition to their specific powers, all God Weapons share a number of basic powers: they are indestructible, they confer (at will) armour-like protection to their bearer, and can communicate telepathically with the bearer and with other God Weapons.
God Weapons although have desires, which are determined randomly and apply as modifiers to the bearer’s own passions. The more powerful the weapon, the bigger the penalty to control it in case of a conflict of interests between weapon and bearer. If said conflict concerns a passion that is already unusually high or unusually low, control will be even harder.
Finally, God Weapons have Prestige and Reputation just like human characters.
Resolution and combat
The resolution mechanic is fairly simple: roll a d100 under your skill. A success that ends with a 0 is critical, a failure that ends with a 1 likewise. Contested rolls that are both successes are won by the roll with the highest unit digit. That’s roughly it.
Combat is as complex as the basic mechanic is simple. I’ll try and stick to the salient points here, or it would take pages. If you remember from character creation, characters have scores in six melee skills. As may be expected in a game where weapons are so important, each weapon has a number of stats, one of them being a skill bonus to one of these six skills. So a shield has a +20% bonus to the Parry skill and a two-handed sword has a +10% bonus to the Brutal Attack skill. Weapons also have an Initiative bonus or penalty, a Damage rating (from A to Q), and a Hardness score.
At the start of each round, each participant secretly decides (by choosing a number on a D6 hidden by his hand) which action he will take, each action being related to one of these skills. There are four attacks: brutal, normal, quick and feint. There are two defences: dodge and parry. This choice of action is confronted to the opponent’s choice of action on a table which determines a bonus or penalty for each of them. For example, if Zeb does a brutal attack on Todd, and Todd a quick attack on Zeb, Zeb has no modifier and Todd has a 10% bonus to his roll.
Then the order in which actions are solved is determined by adding the character’s Speed, his weapon Initiative modifier and modifiers pertaining to the nature of the attack, the higher the faster. Success on either or both of the opponents’ rolls has consequences determined by the nature of their respective actions.
When damage occurs, a table is consulted. The rows are a random figure from 1 to 0 based on the unit digit of the successful attack roll, the higher the better. The columns are the damage ratings of weapons. Attacks can be shifted by one or more columns right or left depending on the nature of the attack, critical rolls, character strength and distance (for ranged weapons). The result is a number of hit points lost, from which the armour protection may be subtracted. If you go below zero, you lose conscience and are likely to die.
There are a number of additional rules to handle either specific actions (like mounted combat) or specific damage situations (enduring wounds, sudden death, etc.) Again, note that apart from Weapon Powers and rare Spices, there are no ways to heal wounds quickly…
Experience
Character skills increase with critical successes. Each critical success increases the score by 5%, but as the skill increases, more critical successes are required. Combat skills are harder to raise than Secondary skills. Characteristics can also increase with the critical successes of the skills related to them, but in a much slower fashion. Passions may be changed slightly by the player each in-game year, based on what has happened in the game. Prestige increases based on results of duels, participation in wars, spectacular successes or failures in front of many witnesses, bravery, expertise, political influence, etc.
God Weapons gain new powers when they assuage their desires. For each desire, there are set conditions which grant the weapon experience points, and the higher their score in each desire, the higher the number of experience points related to this desire. For each 50 points thus earned, the player may roll on one of the power tables. The accumulated power points affect the weapon’s control level, of course, and when the weapon reaches 500 points, it may fuse with the bearer, turning him into a Living God Weapon… if all goes well.
Packaging
You now know most of what there is to know about Bloodlust. In order to fit the traditional rpg.net review format, a few additional comments on the physical aspects of the game and the game line may be needed. The game was originally released in 1991 and, despite the gorgeously appropriate cover by Frazetta, it shows. The layout is fairly ugly, with fonts that are too small for proper legibility, three columns of text on each page, many orphaned lines and very little art. What little there is is usually of reasonably good quality, with a few very evocative pieces. Between each chapter, you get short one or two pages fiction pieces that are not particularly well written but do set the mood of the game nicely.
One thing that deserves a mention is the fact that the game is definitely, and probably deliberately, not politically correct. The whole racial angle is played up and very stereotypical (the ‘Arabs’ are wily merchants, the ‘Africans’ are primitive savages, etc.) Another, possibly more disturbing fact is that the setting and system make it likely, if played as intended, that characters will partake in horrendous acts including rape. That’s what loss of control in conflict with a sex crazed weapon is likely to result in. Although I know that some games handle these things in a serious fashion as a way to explore difficult issues, I personally don’t feel comfortable in confronting most of my players with these acts, especially if performed by player characters. This can easily be played down, but I thought I’d warn you that it’s in there. I don’t think the game aimed at being deliberately offensive (indeed, the inclusion of the Sekeker amazons tends to suggest otherwise), but knowing the reputation of the authors, I suspect that they refused to tone down these aspects for the sake of political correctness.
The game line consists of about 10 supplements released between 1991 and 1997 and a screen. The first five formed a campaign called ‘Moon Shard’ that fans of the game describe as the French equivalent of Warhammer’s ‘Enemy Within’. Opinions all-round are somewhat less positive, and I have only read the first of these supplements, so I can’t judge on the whole. All of the supplements also feature additional information concerning the races, geography, fauna and flora, spices, etc. In France, they are all rare as rocking-horse shit and fetch insane prices on Ebay, so I doubt I’ll be pursuing them, although I am curious about the reputation of ‘Moon Shard’…
General Opinion
First of all, even though this is implicitly stated in the fact that this is a ‘capsule review’, I have to insist here that I have not played or GMed the game. Despite the fact that it’s over a decade old, I’ve only acquired it recently at a car boot sale. So the opinions below are based solely on the contents of the core book and discussions with various people who have played the game.
On the whole, I feel that Bloodlust is an excellent concept (if you’re into S&S) unfortunately marred by an overly complex system. In an attempt to design a brutal and realistic combat system, the authors gave birth to a labyrinth of tables, modifiers, rolls and more modifiers that make the reader shiver. Admittedly, at the time of the game’s first release, such complexity was the norm rather than the exception, but it doesn’t seem helpful to roleplaying swift death very well. Furthermore, the apparent realism pales in comparison to more recent systems (no would effects until you drop, etc.)
Another potential issue concerns the effective lethality of the combat system. Despite their added powers, Weapon Bearers are very likely not to last many sessions, which means that the game revolves solely around the God Weapons. While that’s not a bad idea per se, and quite in the spirit of the setting, it seems fairly annoying from the point of view of the gaming experience: There’s quite a bit of effort that goes into human character creation, and if, as suggested in the game, you use the default system of GM-controlled weapons, then the game would break down really quickly. It would be nice if the Bearers were a little bit more powerful, without making them invulnerable, so that the game didn’t focus exclusively on the God Weapons.
The rest of the game seems fairly sound to me. Although there’s not much detail on the geography in the core book, the genre is popular enough that it’s fairly easy to find things for the players to do.
So, what’s the point?
And now you ask again: what was the point of reviewing this 13 year old out of print game that’s not even written in a decent language? If you’re like me, and if I’ve done my job well, you’re now feeling like this is worth checking up, even if it’s far from perfect. So you’re frustrated.
Well, see, I had an ace up my sleeve : despite the fact that Hogshead Publishing never released the rumoured English version and never will, there is currently an English language edition in the works. It’s in the hands of a Danish company headed by one Magnus Nygaard. Although there’s no set date for the release, it’s rumoured to be either late 2004 or early 2005. You can find their website here . It’s not very up to date, but more information can be found in the dedicated section of the ‘Mois des Conquêtes’ forum. Also, for those who didn’t know, there is also a German language edition released under the name Hyperborea by Truant Verlag.
So, for those of you who read French or German, there are other options than waiting for the English language edition. The game in French isn’t impossible to find and comes up regularly on ebay.fr. Although it usually goes for the price of a new game, that’s not too expensive compared to some other RPG rarities I can think of. The German version is still in print. But would you want to use the system as such? Probably not. Here what I’d do:
- If you’re into rules-light systems, you could fairly easily convert the game to Sorceror. After all, the concepts are similar, and the issues explored could be as well.
- If you’re into more crunchy systems and wanted to remain faithful to the intent of the French edition, you could probably convert the game to The Riddle of Steel. In fact, Spiritual Attributes in TROS could easily be used as a basis for the passions, although the conflict aspect would need to be addressed.
- If you’re into d20/OGL, you could probably use Mongoose’s Conan, although, like anything d20, it would most likely require a lot more work than the above options, especially regarding the handling of desires.
In all three instances you’d have to map out the powers to fit the new system, but that doesn’t seem too hard a task for any of the games mentioned.
In conclusion, I feel that Bloodlust is a game whose concept deserves to live on. Furthermore, I think it could best be described as Sword and Sorcery with a twist. Considering the current popularity of S&S settings and systems, I’m sure it can give many people here some inspiration or maybe an idea for a cool and unusual campaign! I hope you enjoyed the review despite a possible level of frustration, and I’ll be sure to review the new edition of Bloodlust if and when it’s released.
