Blood May Rain TTRPG
A downloadable BMR
Blood May Rain is a prototype created during a several day long writing binge with minimal sleep and a state of mind I can only describe as a 15-year old playing DMC V for the first time.
It includes a narrative/semantic system which heavily relies on descriptions, specific intent and communication instead of balance (with a very clear inspiration being The Apocalypse and City of Mist, an amazing PbtA game).
I will try to make this something a person might actually enjoy reading eventually, but for now it is just a mess. If you want a quick rundown of the rules, read the Quick Reference document.
The game includes several Modules - packages which modify or add to the base rules to show what the system could be like. The Primary Modules are inspires by Berserk, Deep Rock Galactic and Monster Hunter respectively, with a Fighting Game Module currently cooking in my smooth smooth brain.
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This is pretty cool! The pdf is pretty hard to read with the constant dmc font but the docx seems to be more updated anyways? So not rlly an issue for me.
I might end up actually using this soon honestly, I was hooked when I saw there was something for DMC and you included a little monster hunter tthing also. I've been looking for something that can fill my extremely specific niche of "Monster Hunter but you also get the powers of the monsters as mutations" which this seems able to handle! I also have been interested in running some shonen stuff, specifically One Piece recently, this seems like it could handle it fine too.
I'm interested to see it get refined and smoothed out soon! Cause there is a handful of errors in the actual doc and such, or just things like Rank never being described in the main chapters until the mechanical overview at the very end lol (despite it being mentioned a ton. I could of just missed it admittedly though.) Do you have any more words on enemy 'balancing'? More so their hp and stuff, cause just looking at the example ones included I feel like the amount of hp u gave them might be too high? I haven't played yet though, maybe players can chew through 70 health pretty fast.
Hi, thanks for the feedback. If you want another system that does the MH with monster powers shtick than I reccomend Wilderfeast. Its a Kickstarter game so it might be a while before you can purchase it normally, but its whole gimmick is exactly what you’re describing.
Im currently working on two projects - this and a 40k FitD game, so honestly I have no idea when I’ll do a second draft. My absolute deadline would probably be Christmas, but in all honesty it could also be next week or tommorow night, I have a very sporadic work ethic.
Ranks are a system that I’ve strongly been considering taking out completely due to the game losing its “risk as many actions as possible” feel, and it’s the primárky thing I wish to adress in the next version ( most probably I’ll make it one Big section and make it optional).
The HP value of certain monsters is very much exaggerated because they’re meant for once the Players get some broken Abilities, like dealing double damage or just stacking a lot of “+2 Flow instead of +1 Abilities” (which sometimes function identically).
When it comes to balancing them out I’ve only managed to run this once so I unfortunately don’t have enough playtesting done to give you anything concrete. The only things I noticed during that session are:
1) A group of Demons that deal just a Potency 1 Neg Status can still be dangerous if your players overdo their offense. I had a group of Goblin Demons almost kill a Player 15 minutes in (they tried to kill the Goblins before the could do anything, whiffed their roll, and their reactive roll failed because they didn’t have any Tags left to defend)
2) Stronger Demons should get stronger every round to seem like a looming threat. I had a Troll King Demon who increased the Potency of his AOE every single turn and ended up killing two Players, but the last one finished him off.
Unfortunately, I really have to get more playtesting done, but I hope this helps a Little bit.
As a general piece of advice, this system was meant to be as free as possible, so if you want a good example of how this could be run ( with the main diferences being the Safe and Risky system and initiative) I reccomend watching a video of City of mist combat (there should be one on the official channel).
Oh shit Wilderfeasts seems sick, I'll def keep an eye on it! But yeah all that makes sense, I might run it soon, seems like a nice framework to just do whatever with. Would u still recommend using Ranks personally?
Ranks make the High higher and the lows as low as possible. If you want your Players to have a higher chance of doing cool stuff, and make failed rolls rare and impactful than ranks can work. I just think that the “use a rank to add” +1 system might be a bit too powerful. If you want to use a less powerful version, I reccomend just making it a +1 on Rank 1-3 and +2 if someone gets to Rank 4-5. The second draft will include an entire chapter on this, I have already started writing it
Alright, I'll probably wait for that to drop before I run my monster hunter thing with this. Excited to see it!
You still working on this? Realized this is probably the best system i have sitting around to run my campaign about killing demons. Was just curious on seeing if u still had interest in it.
Unfortunately I am pretty pre-occupied with school and work, so the next update will probably be finished during the Christmas holidays. The system should probably work somewhat with the current state of the doc, it’s just a bit clunky