Bloodlust (roleplaying game)
Encyclopedia
Bloodlust is a French
sword and sorcery
role-playing game
. It was created by Croc
, the G. E. Ranne
duo and Stéphane Bura, illustrated by Alberto Varanda, and published by Asmodée Éditions
between 1991 and 1997. The covers of almost all the books of the series come from paintings by Frank Frazetta
.
In this game, player character
s are living god-weapons (armes-dieux) gifted with magical powers, and their human bearers. The inspiration of the game comes foremost from Michael Moorcock
's Elric of Melniboné
series, which relates the saga of prince Elric and his demon sword, Stormbringer
. The game also borrows inspiration from Robert E. Howard
's Conan the Barbarian
. The Helliconia
trilogy by Brian Aldiss
inspired Bloodlusts three moons, whose phases influence human passions.
is borrowed from real-world Antarctica, but it is shared by several ethnicities. Tanaephis used to host orc
s, elves
and dwarves, but they are now extinct and only humans remain.
The different people of Tanaephis are mostly inspired by real-world people, but their names come from the board game Freedom in the Galaxy.
. They live in a desert featuring great cities of white stone in the south-west of the continent. Their society is based on trade, especially the trade of magical spices, making them close to the Fremen
of Frank Herbert
's Dune series.
or Greece
. They were formed by the alliance of three local tribes and used to dominate most of Tanaephis. However, after the Vorozion and Batranoban rebellions, the Piorad and Sekeker raids, and especially the political and cultural decadence of the Derigions, the empire slowly crumbled. It is now restricted to the gigantic capital city, Pôle, and the neighbouring villages. Pôle, the greatest city of Tanaephis, was built by the dwarves for their elf friends long before the rise of the human empires. With the extinction of the elves, humans took control of it. The Derigion empire, decadent but scarred by corruption and military defeats, still maintains a great trading city where most of the artists and students of the continent gather.
that allows them to feel bits of a forgotten past. Some rare Ghadars can wield weak magical powers, which is an exception since magic normally only comes from the god-weapons.
s and Cimmerians
: they are barbarians who sailed from another continent and burned their ships to fight on the land and become excellent horsemen. Sometimes, a Piorad is born with red eyes: he is an œil-de-braise and will join an elite unit. Piorad warriors ride carnivorous horses called the chagars, and fight brutally.
, they hate men and the only males tolerated in their tribes are castrated
slaves. They are few in numbers and live in the plains of the middle of Tanaephis, from which their raid the neighbouring people and the city of Pôle. They do not breed, and need to snatch babies and little girls from foreigners. The Sekekers mutilate themselves through infibulation
and breast ablation, to reject their feminity. Only the prettiest little girls are not mutilated: they are instead raised to form an elite unit, the chrysalides, who fight half-naked to intimidate their male enemies.
. They are excellent craftsmen, and the only people in Tanaephis who know how to make plate armour
. The Vorozions dominate the farmlands in the east of Tanaephis, between the Piorad lands, the Ghadar jungles, the Sekeker plains and Pôle.
It is suggested that the player characters of Bloodlust play the wielders, or the god-weapons themselves. Another option is that half of the PC play weapons, and the other half plays their human wielders.
Like the characters of most roleplaying games, the god-weapons grow in power thanks to an experience
system. But the god-weapons earn experience by living their desires of prestige, sex, wealth, violence and reputation. These experience points allow them to grow stronger and earn new powers, but also to control their wielders better.
A particularly powerful god-weapon can manage to meld into its wielder. The weapon then disappears but its wielder earns its powers and immortality. Several different things can happen to the minds of the weapon and the carrier: they can meld into each other, exist together in one body, or one can destroy the other. In all these situations, the powers manifest themselves on the body of the wielder; the resulting creature is called a fusionned or possessed one
In a fight, every fighter choses on each round an action among six possible actions (brutal attack, quick attack, dodge...), which allows for several different tactics. Combat is usually quick and bloody.
A mass combat system is included in the core rulebook.
It was translated into German
by Truant
in 2001 under the name Hyperborea, Meister des Stahls.
As of 2008, the French version of the game is unavailable in print. However, scans of the game in .pdf format are available on P2P
networks, with the authorization of the game's publisher.
Another French edition is to be published in early 2009 by John Doe.
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
sword and sorcery
Sword and sorcery
Sword and sorcery is a sub-genre of fantasy and historical fantasy, generally characterized by sword-wielding heroes engaged in exciting and violent conflicts. An element of romance is often present, as is an element of magic and the supernatural...
role-playing game
Role-playing game
A role-playing game is a game in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within a narrative, either through literal acting, or through a process of structured decision-making or character development...
. It was created by Croc
Croc (game designer)
Croc is the pseudonym used by a French creator of role-playing games. Croc's games are edited by Siroz , now called Asmodée éditions, French for Asmodeus...
, the G. E. Ranne
G. E. Ranne
G.E. Ranne is a pseudonym used by a pair of French authors who primarily write science fiction. They have written texts for role-playing games including In Nomine Satanis/Magna Veritas.-Science Fiction Novels as G.E...
duo and Stéphane Bura, illustrated by Alberto Varanda, and published by Asmodée Éditions
Asmodée Éditions
Asmodée Éditions is a French publisher of board games, card games and role-playing games . The company was founded in 1995 by former employees of the RPG publisher Siroz Productions. The company publishes its own games, as well as French language editions of other publishers' games...
between 1991 and 1997. The covers of almost all the books of the series come from paintings by Frank Frazetta
Frank Frazetta
Frank Frazetta was an American fantasy and science fiction artist, noted for work in comic books, paperback book covers, paintings, posters, LP record album covers and other media...
.
In this game, player character
Player character
A player character or playable character is a character in a video game or role playing game who is controlled or controllable by a player, and is typically a protagonist of the story told in the course of the game. A player character is a persona of the player who controls it. Player characters...
s are living god-weapons (armes-dieux) gifted with magical powers, and their human bearers. The inspiration of the game comes foremost from Michael Moorcock
Michael Moorcock
Michael John Moorcock is an English writer, primarily of science fiction and fantasy, who has also published a number of literary novels....
's Elric of Melniboné
Elric of Melniboné
Elric of Melniboné is a fictional character created by Michael Moorcock, and the antihero of a series of sword and sorcery stories centering in an alternate Earth. The proper name and title of the character is Elric VIII, 428th Emperor of Melniboné...
series, which relates the saga of prince Elric and his demon sword, Stormbringer
Stormbringer
Stormbringer is the name of the infamous black sword featured in a number of fantasy stories by the author Michael Moorcock. Created by the forces of Chaos, it is described as a huge, black sword covered with strange runes carved deep into its blade...
. The game also borrows inspiration from Robert E. Howard
Robert E. Howard
Robert Ervin Howard was an American author who wrote pulp fiction in a diverse range of genres. Best known for his character Conan the Barbarian, he is regarded as the father of the sword and sorcery subgenre....
's Conan the Barbarian
Conan the Barbarian
Conan the Barbarian is a fictional sword and sorcery hero that originated in pulp fiction magazines and has since been adapted to books, comics, several films , television programs, video games, roleplaying games and other media...
. The Helliconia
Helliconia
The Helliconia Trilogy is a series of science fiction books by Brian Aldiss, set on the Earth-like planet Helliconia. It is an epic chronicling the rise and fall of a civilization over more than a thousand years as the planet progresses through its incredibly long seasons, which last for...
trilogy by Brian Aldiss
Brian Aldiss
Brian Wilson Aldiss, OBE is an English author of both general fiction and science fiction. His byline reads either Brian W. Aldiss or simply Brian Aldiss. Greatly influenced by science fiction pioneer H. G. Wells, Aldiss is a vice-president of the international H. G. Wells Society...
inspired Bloodlusts three moons, whose phases influence human passions.
Tanaephis
The continent of Tanaephis is the main setting of the game. Its physical geographyPhysical geography
Physical geography is one of the two major subfields of geography. Physical geography is that branch of natural science which deals with the study of processes and patterns in the natural environment like the atmosphere, biosphere and geosphere, as opposed to the cultural or built environment, the...
is borrowed from real-world Antarctica, but it is shared by several ethnicities. Tanaephis used to host orc
Orc
An orc is one of a race of mythical human-like creatures, generally described as fierce and combative, with grotesque features and often black, grey or greenish skin. This mythology has its origins in the writings of J. R. R. Tolkien....
s, elves
Elf
An elf is a being of Germanic mythology. The elves were originally thought of as a race of divine beings endowed with magical powers, which they use both for the benefit and the injury of mankind...
and dwarves, but they are now extinct and only humans remain.
The different people of Tanaephis are mostly inspired by real-world people, but their names come from the board game Freedom in the Galaxy.
Alwegs
The Alwegs are not really an ethnic group: it is a derogative term that applies to all the pariahs and half-breeds of the other ethnic groups. Each nation has a different definition of what an Alweg is. They usually are treated as second-class citizens, and many become mercenaries.Batranobans
The Batranobans, who resemble real-world Arab people, were historically the first human empire and the first humans to create an alphabetAlphabet
An alphabet is a standard set of letters—basic written symbols or graphemes—each of which represents a phoneme in a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it was in the past. There are other systems, such as logographies, in which each character represents a word, morpheme, or semantic...
. They live in a desert featuring great cities of white stone in the south-west of the continent. Their society is based on trade, especially the trade of magical spices, making them close to the Fremen
Fremen
The Fremen are a group of people in the fictional Dune universe created by Frank Herbert. First appearing in the 1965 novel Dune, the Fremen inhabit the desert planet Arrakis and are based on the desert-dwelling Bedouin and Kalahari Bushmen. In Herbert's novels, Arrakis is the sole known source...
of Frank Herbert
Frank Herbert
Franklin Patrick Herbert, Jr. was a critically acclaimed and commercially successful American science fiction author. Although a short story author, he is best known for his novels, most notably Dune and its five sequels...
's Dune series.
Derigions
The Derigions are a decadent people, akin to those in Ancient RomeAncient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
or Greece
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
. They were formed by the alliance of three local tribes and used to dominate most of Tanaephis. However, after the Vorozion and Batranoban rebellions, the Piorad and Sekeker raids, and especially the political and cultural decadence of the Derigions, the empire slowly crumbled. It is now restricted to the gigantic capital city, Pôle, and the neighbouring villages. Pôle, the greatest city of Tanaephis, was built by the dwarves for their elf friends long before the rise of the human empires. With the extinction of the elves, humans took control of it. The Derigion empire, decadent but scarred by corruption and military defeats, still maintains a great trading city where most of the artists and students of the continent gather.
Ghadars
The Ghadars are a black-skinned people who share their jungles in the south-east of Tanaephis with monsters and dinosaurs. The jungle keeps them apart from other people. They have a limited genetic memoryGenetic memory
Genetic memory may refer to:*Genetic memory , present if the state of a biological system depends on its history in addition to present conditions*Genetic memory , a memory present at birth that exists in the absence of sensory experience...
that allows them to feel bits of a forgotten past. Some rare Ghadars can wield weak magical powers, which is an exception since magic normally only comes from the god-weapons.
Hysnatons
The Hysnatons, like the Alwegs, are not really an ethnicity. Instead, all the humans showing characteristics of an extinct race (elves, orcs or dwarves) are called Hysnaton. This word actually means Übermensch, coined by a Hysnaton intellectual out of irony to mock the discrimination the Hysnatons suffer. Despite this racism, some Hysnatons can be more efficient than normal humans in some domains thanks to their particularities. For instance, many elf-blooded Hysnatons work as expensive prostitutes. On the opposite, special mercenary units called the scorias are made of extremely hideous Hysnatons.Piorads
The Piorads borrow from the VikingViking
The term Viking is customarily used to refer to the Norse explorers, warriors, merchants, and pirates who raided, traded, explored and settled in wide areas of Europe, Asia and the North Atlantic islands from the late 8th to the mid-11th century.These Norsemen used their famed longships to...
s and Cimmerians
Cimmerians
The Cimmerians or Kimmerians were ancient equestrian nomads of Indo-European origin.According to the Greek historian Herodotus, of the 5th century BC, the Cimmerians inhabited the region north of the Caucasus and the Black Sea during the 8th and 7th centuries BC, in what is now Ukraine and Russia...
: they are barbarians who sailed from another continent and burned their ships to fight on the land and become excellent horsemen. Sometimes, a Piorad is born with red eyes: he is an œil-de-braise and will join an elite unit. Piorad warriors ride carnivorous horses called the chagars, and fight brutally.
Sekekers
The Sekekers are wild raider women. They were founded by Batranoban oppressed women. Like the AmazonsAmazons
The Amazons are a nation of all-female warriors in Greek mythology and Classical antiquity. Herodotus placed them in a region bordering Scythia in Sarmatia...
, they hate men and the only males tolerated in their tribes are castrated
Castration
Castration is any action, surgical, chemical, or otherwise, by which a male loses the functions of the testicles or a female loses the functions of the ovaries.-Humans:...
slaves. They are few in numbers and live in the plains of the middle of Tanaephis, from which their raid the neighbouring people and the city of Pôle. They do not breed, and need to snatch babies and little girls from foreigners. The Sekekers mutilate themselves through infibulation
Infibulation
Infibulation is the surgical modification or mutilation of the genitals in males and females, particularly the foreskin, labia minora and labia majora...
and breast ablation, to reject their feminity. Only the prettiest little girls are not mutilated: they are instead raised to form an elite unit, the chrysalides, who fight half-naked to intimidate their male enemies.
Thunks
The Thunks are inspired from the real-world Inuit and Mongol people: they are pony-riding nomads who survive in icy mountains in the far north of Tanaephis. They are mostly pacific, unorganised and sexually free, but they will defend themselves vehemently against their sworn enemies, the Piorads. They prefer to ambush their foes with bows rather than fight them in hand-to-hand combat.Vorozions
The Vorozions are in their golden age: they have rebelled against the old Derigion empire, and have conquered most of it. They oppose the slavery of the Derigions and see themselves as liberators, but their empire is still dominated by a rigid bureaucracyBureaucracy
A bureaucracy is an organization of non-elected officials of a governmental or organization who implement the rules, laws, and functions of their institution, and are occasionally characterized by officialism and red tape.-Weberian bureaucracy:...
. They are excellent craftsmen, and the only people in Tanaephis who know how to make plate armour
Plate armour
Plate armour is a historical type of personal armour made from iron or steel plates.While there are early predecessors such the Roman-era lorica segmentata, full plate armour developed in Europe during the Late Middle Ages, especially in the context of the Hundred Years' War, from the coat of...
. The Vorozions dominate the farmlands in the east of Tanaephis, between the Piorad lands, the Ghadar jungles, the Sekeker plains and Pôle.
God-weapons
The god-weapons are the main specificity of Bloodlust, compared to other fantasy roleplaying games. They are close combat weapons and shields in which a god has incarnated. They therefore have a mind, a memory, an intelligence and passions, as well as magical powers that their wielder can use. These arms are wielded by humans (and sometimes other creatures) with whom they have a symbiotic relationship. The weapon gives magical powers to its wielder in exchange for the sensations it feels. Without a wielder, a weapon is inert. Without a god-weapon, a man cannot be as powerful and respected.It is suggested that the player characters of Bloodlust play the wielders, or the god-weapons themselves. Another option is that half of the PC play weapons, and the other half plays their human wielders.
Like the characters of most roleplaying games, the god-weapons grow in power thanks to an experience
Experience point
An experience point is a unit of measurement used in many role-playing games and role-playing video games to quantify a player character's progression through the game...
system. But the god-weapons earn experience by living their desires of prestige, sex, wealth, violence and reputation. These experience points allow them to grow stronger and earn new powers, but also to control their wielders better.
A particularly powerful god-weapon can manage to meld into its wielder. The weapon then disappears but its wielder earns its powers and immortality. Several different things can happen to the minds of the weapon and the carrier: they can meld into each other, exist together in one body, or one can destroy the other. In all these situations, the powers manifest themselves on the body of the wielder; the resulting creature is called a fusionned or possessed one
Game system
The game system is rather simple: each character has six traits that can go up to 20, and a number of skills that can go up to 100. One must roll less than these skills with a percentile die to succeed at a task. The result of the second die shows the breadth of a success or failure.In a fight, every fighter choses on each round an action among six possible actions (brutal attack, quick attack, dodge...), which allows for several different tactics. Combat is usually quick and bloody.
A mass combat system is included in the core rulebook.
Reception
On its publishing in 1991, the Bloodlust gamebox was one of the biggest successes of French roleplaying games. Publication of new supplements has stopped in 1997 with the Vengeance book, which is blamed as being so bad it contributed to the game's end.It was translated into German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
by Truant
Truant (disambiguation)
Truant may refer to:* HMS Truant , a T-class submarine* truANT, Alien Ant Farm's second album...
in 2001 under the name Hyperborea, Meister des Stahls.
As of 2008, the French version of the game is unavailable in print. However, scans of the game in .pdf format are available on P2P
Peer-to-peer
Peer-to-peer computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads among peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the application...
networks, with the authorization of the game's publisher.
Another French edition is to be published in early 2009 by John Doe.