Broken Swords & Battered Shields is a huge corebook/toolkit from new publisher visioNation Studios that retails for $16.00 in PDF and $25.00 in Print. It was written by Frank S. Van Camp, Michael L. Schall, Anthony Anderson, Steve Test, and Jodi Rennebu-Test. This is the first book powered by the Realistic Advanced Roleplaying Engine (R.A.R.E). The product is broken into twenty-one chapters, has chapter bookmarks, and a four page glossary. There is no index in the book.
According to the introduction BS&BS has many features that make it a different roleplaying experience:
- We eliminated all of the needless rules that seem to clog role-playing books these days.
- There is no one single correct way to run or play a Broken Swords & Battered Shields game. It is up to your Lorekeeper to make the choices when they create their world. It is up to you to make choices when creating your character.
- You can play the system barebones or fully maxed out. Either way you decide to play the system, we believe you will find the uniqueness that is embedded into it.
When testing, reviewing or buying a new system I typically read a bit of the world information and then jump into character creation. The world of BS&BS is Soluna, a young world populated by many intelligent (and playable races) and blessed with elemental magic. The history section is only a single page long, with much of the “world” detailed in the race information sections.
For character creation I’m going to have to turn to Chapter five on page 237. Character creation seems to be mostly a point buy system that is modified by some random elements or choices. All BS&BS characters have a birthsign (that grants a minor boon from the sun or moon deities), a birthright (provides a stat bonus) and a social background (provide background framing and a skill). Characters have 12 primary attributes (determined with a point buy) and a number of derived values. Attribute checks are done with % rolls and actions are handled with % rolls (roll under). I’m not certain that may initial character stats are correct, I think there are some errors with some of the derived attributes (misplaced brackets), but there was no character creation example to compare against. There is no summary of the steps for character creation so I need to assume that I should get a race and career next (later confirmed by Anthony Anderson – Director of Studio Concepts).
Next up, you’ll need to backtrack to chapter three to pick a race. There are tons of races in BS&BS, some are familiar like the Human races, Elfare, Sulshara and Dulklakan. Others like the empathic Gillanders or birdlike Aerion present new opportunities from your traditional fantasy game. Each race gets a couple pages of information including background and description, attribute modifiers, basic skills, racial knacks (three options, select one) and a mount. All the races, except one have specialized mounts and all players build a personalized mount. For my first character I picked the uncivilized polaren race from the artic reaches (thinking my campaign will be set in a northern borderland). My polaren has increased Might, Essence, Luck, and dimished Vigor. He’s got ice-glazed skin, elemental resistance and vulnerabilities, water scrying and an affinity with auryaks (as a mount). For his knack I took, water walking.
From there I headed over to find my Polaren’s first career in Chapter 4. There are seven main career groupings fighter, woodsman, thief, mystic, arcane, holy and special. Each career grouping has several paths (except special which only has the sidekick career path). There are over 40 career paths. Instead of class abilities, each career path has its own knack and set of skills that you can earn or improve select with development points as you adventure. For my first career choice, I chose my polaren to be a Spiritwalker (Witch Doctor), this gives me access to five spirit elemental spells as well as access to the first aid, tribal rituals, anatomy, literacy and spellcraft skills. I wrote down my career knack and calculated my base skills as based on Chapter six.
Chapter seven is used to help you flesh out your character, provide his vision or detail his background. The downloadable character sheet has a space for the background information, character traits and behavioural information. The chapter also has rules for advancing levels, knack development, and rules for advancing in new skills, knacks, spells, and battle stances.
Magic in the R.A.R.E. system is much more flexible that other scripted spell based systems. Spells are keyed to particular senses or elements – each which have particular areas of influence. Instead of having a set list of spells, you have a set of senses or elements you can affect. Then you need create the look and mechanics of your spells based a point buy system. There are tables for damaging effects, summoning effects, control spells, enhancing effects, restorative effects, travel effects, object effects and strategic effects. This area is filled with sample spells for each effect. Arcane magic draws essence away from the character whereas divine magic (powers) do not draw essence but you are limited in the number of times you can ask the gods a particular favour each day.
Combat is a second area that is different in the R.A.R.E. system. To make the most of the rules in the book you need to go to the website and download the free battleboard and combat cards. Combat basically works on a 60 second round (organized on the battleboard). Each action type (melee attack, movement, break off an arrow, draw weapons, drink potions) has a value that is added to your CSV (combat speed value) and this becomes your “cost” of an action. Each person has a position marker on the battleboard and anytime you take an action, you move you marker a number of positions counter-clockwise around the battle board. Each player also gets to place two combat cards on the ring, if a player or lorekeeper minion lands on a position with a card then the event on that card is activated. Beyond the ring and combat cards there is additional information for combat facing, bleeding, recovery, off-hand fighting, called shots, critical success, battle stances and mounted combat (which will be handy for my polaren witch doctor into auryak). Armour in R.A.R.E. systems reduce the amount of damage done. Weapons have minimum Might requirements and weapon speeds that make your weapon choice far more strategic. If you want better weapons or armour, you need to just find a craftsman with the time and enough money to pay them.
Chapter sixteen through chapter nineteen are filled with supplemental information for the Lorekeeper. In BS & BS characters advance in level when they earn enough reward called “motes”. You do not earn motes from killing monsters taking their stuff, instead earn motes for participating, combat, moving the story onward, bantering, providing entertaining moments, leadership and many other roleplaying aspects. Some awards are easily earning (like by showing up to the game), some are awarded by other players and some are award by the Lorekeeper and others by the group. I think the Motes System is my favourite feature of the R.A.R.E. system and by far the easiest thing to export to other games. Chapter seventeen covers advice to the Lorekeeper on running a games while Chapters eighteen and nineteen creature creation and sample creatures.
There is web support for the product at the visioNation Studios website including Character Sheets, Battleboards and Combat Cards and Community Forums.
Broken Swords & Battered Shields is a massive and ambitious book. I think there are some good ideas in here that are sometimes lost in the hugeness of the book and the organization. There are some aspects of the rules that were not clear to me on my review of the book (though Anthony Anderson very politely and quickly answered my questions) and something where I was unsure where to go next (character creation summary, sample characters, index). I think visioNation Studios partially met their design goals, as in that there is a lot of choice for players and lorekeepers and there is a lot of uniqueness in the rules, but I’m not sure their they have unclogged all the needless rules from the system. With some reorganization and clarifying, BS &BS will be an excellent toolkit for fantasy roleplaying.
