Blood and Relics
Background
Blood
and Relics is a occult sourcebook for d20 Modern from RPGObjects and d20 Modern
guru Chuck Rice.
This is actually the revised edition, which revises and expands
the original. Since I don't have the original, I can't say what
is different, other than it's about twice as big. It's primarily
a PDF (which I'm reviewing), but also apparently available in print
form.
Nominally it's a setting, but only nominally - most of the rules
(the classes and such) can be adapted to regular d20 Modern with
no problem as far as I can tell, other than taking a different
approach to magic (aka FX in d20 Modern terminology) than normal.
The setting itself is fairly straight forward in it's basic
premise - it's set in the real world, except that there is an
occult (in both meanings, magical and hidden) war going on
between the forces of good and the forces of evil. This is called
"The Blood War" (somewhat unoriginally, but does fit
their naming scheme of their line of books).
One the evil side of the Blood War you have the Dark Powers,
apparently called the "Caeder". These are more or less
your stereotypical demon or "fiend" (in D&D/d20
terms). On the good side, you seemingly have most the
monotheistic religions, plus, in a twist out of the DaVinci Code,
Jesus's offspring and the Templars. (Really though, this theory
goes back ages, to at least "Holy Blood, Holy Grail"
(which apparently was in part the inspiration for this product,
though apparently it's been years since the author of this read
that book), possibly earlier, it just gets dusted off every few
years.).
Contents
The first chapter of the book, and what I think is the most
readily useful part, is on new character options.
First off is several new allegiances (basically the d20 Modern
version of "Alignment", basically the same thing but
vaguer), based mostly on the 7 deadly sins and virtuous virtues.
More interestingly is a whole bunch of new advanced classes. This
is really the best part of the product.
The first two classes are similar, but sort of opposites. The
Believer, which would be a follower of the good forces, while the
Cultist is a follower of the evil. The Believer doesn't get to
cast spells per se, but gets "Sacred Ritual Feats",
which can be similar to spells (more on that later). The Cultist
gets some "Profane Ritual Feats" which are similar, but
can also cast spells via a spell point system (ditching the
traditional d20 spell slot system).
There's a trio of thematically similar classes - the Grave
Robber, the Relic Seeker, and the Monitor. The Relic Seeker is
essentially Indiana Jones, both in terms of what he does (tries
to get ancient goodies for museums and such) and how he does it
(dodging and ducking and such). The Grave Robber is one who sells
the stuff or keeps it instead of putting it in a museum, and his
class abilities are more influence based - evil minions and the
like. (Pretty much all the bad guys in the Indiana Jones movies
are this). Monitors are secret guys that prefer to keep ancient
stuff away from others to keep them out of evil hands. (These are
the mysterious guys often found in the Indiana Jones movies. Also
The Mummy. They ride out of nowhere and shoot at everyone)
I think there probably was room for a class similar to Lara Croft
of Tomb Raider fame or Brenden Frasier's character from the Mummy, the
two fisted gun toting sort of treasure hunter, but this could
probably be accomplished by the Relic Seeker class along with
some multiclassing with some of the gun based classes in the d20
Modern rulebook.
Also, there's something called a "Dark Warrior".
Basically a person that makes a pact with dark forces for added
combat prowess. I think he would be someone like Lance Henrikson
from The Omen II
or Bill Romanowski from the Denver Broncos.
And though I don't think it quite fits the setting, there is also
a Witch class. Which seems more like a classical witch (say Circe
or Medea) than the Wiccan sort of Witch or the Martha
Stewart/Leona Helmsley/Elton John sort of witch.
Beyond the various new classes, there's a number of feats,
including feats that are magical rituals. The Cultist gets
"Profane Ritual" feats and the Believer gets
"Sacred Ritual" feats.
The rituals are something of a mixed lot. Some are ways of
gaining spell points for Cultists, generally by sacrificing
somebody, though some do bad things to people (like giving them
horrible nightmares). The ones for the Believer tend to be things
like turning a sword from a normal one to a flaming one, or
blessing or castigating things or people.
The second chapter introduces "Spiritual
Afflictions". Basically, they are ways a character can get
tainted or corrupted by evil. Most of the 7 deadly sins are
afflictions, plus a few more that seem more smurfly than evil.
Honestly, I'm not sure I like this, since the 7 sin stuff never
appealed to me, plus as an existentialist, I think man is free,
but, it really does fit the source material.
There's also 3 pages of rules for demonic possession and
exorcism.
The third chapter, about 25 pages or so, is on secret societies.
Basically, you get a history and description of that secret
society, where they fit into the "Blood War" and a
prestige (or is that advanced?) class.
Two are basically different offshoots of the old Catholic
Inquisition. One from the Spanish branch and one sort of
reformed.
There's a secret occult force of the Israeli Government, the
Isayet Omega.
And of course the Templars. Gotta have the Templars in a setting
like this. This product takes the tack that the Templars were
actually more or less Cathars, and in fact, founded by the
Cathars. (This is one of those murky areas, while there were
apparently some connections between the two groups (at least some
of the early members of the Templars came from that Cathar
section of France), they do seem to have different outlooks on
life which makes me find this to be somewhat unlikely. )
It does have one very new twist. There's a group called the
"Salem Seven". In this setting, it seems that the Salem
Witches (from the famous witch trials) were actually agents of
the Templars.
Any setting has to have villains, and in this, the Teutonic
Knights take that role. Which fits them pretty well, I think.
The last chapter is a "Campaign Guide". It explains the
background of the setting, including a timeline of important
occult events in it. Somewhat amusingly, for a setting that
basically revolves around the children of Jesus, the Common Era
dating system is used for the timeline.
Beyond
that, it contains writeups for various legendary artifacts.
Excalibur, the Shroud of Turin, Longinus (aka the Spear of
Destiny, the spear that pierced Jesus's side), Nails of the True
Cross, etc. And there's some very interesting rules for creating
holy or blasphemous books, including a few sample tomes.
And
there's a writeups of various supernatural nasties/beings (mostly
evil ones, for good ones you might want to check out the old
Encyclopedia of Angels from the now defunct Fast Forward). The
Lord of Vermin, the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse (woohoo, finally
d20 Modern stats for Rick Flair!),
and some generic fiends.
Rounding
out the chapter and PDF is a series of tables for the new feats
in the game.
Looks/Layout
The PDF itself is solidly done up to RPGObjects usual high
standards. Everything is bookmarked nicely. And there are 2
different versions, one for the screen and printing. I did notice
that that the Cultist seems to have a web address in his Class
skills. (Apparently they are web designers, like the Heaven's
Gates people).
This is actually funny, the font they used for headings has a
really weird looking "M" and in fact it took me quite a
while to realize it was an "M", not a "ITI".
I thought some of the things were written in latin or something.
Heh. Like "Exorcisiti", instead of
"Exorcism". And I was confused as to what a
"Horseitian" was.
Half the art is by Marcio Fiorito, whose stuff I always liked.
I'm not familiar with John Longenbaugh, the guy who did the rest
of the art, but I like his art a lot, too. So it's a nice looking
pdf.
Final Thoughts
I have mixed feelings about this. I think the rules part is very
good, and it certainly gives writeups of a whole lot of secret
societies and real world relics and such, and is useful for a
general real world occult sourcebook for d20 Modern. But on the
other hand, I think the setting has some internal contradictions.
I mean, basically, it's pretty much based on the concept of
the Apocalypse - the anti-christ is coming and all that stuff.
Which is fine as far as that goes, but then you have all these
groups which have a completely different sort of theology sort of
shoe-horned in. For instance, you have a group of Israelis
hunting down the anti-christ by the orders of the Israeli
government. But that doesn't make sense, because pretty much by
definition, Jews don't happen to believe in the antichrist.
Otherwise they wouldn't be Jews. In fact, their whole concept of
"messiah" is completely different than the Christian
one.
Or Jesus's children. In this, they are protected by the
Cathars (or their descendants). But the Cathars were basically
docetic, that is, they didn't think Jesus had a real physical
body. And they generally frowned on children in general. So I
find it hard to believe they would found a group to protect said
children.
Still, most of the contradictions reflect the source material
(like Holy Blood, Holy Grail) and the genre in general that it's
trying to emulate. At least it doesn't have Tom Hanks in this. B+
Review Summary