tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8935997561931650289.post7436301543313874876..comments2024-03-28T02:56:48.844-04:00Comments on Tower of the Archmage: Blue Rose Review Part 1 (again)David The Archmagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11649391406526258069noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8935997561931650289.post-47881047005688661552015-03-26T06:50:16.424-04:002015-03-26T06:50:16.424-04:00I'm glad to see so many recent posts about Blu...I'm glad to see so many recent posts about Blue Rose (I presume because of the Kickstarter Campaign, but I myself have been revisiting the game recently). <br /><br />Aldis is indeed a boring world, which is its chief sin. I have no qualms about unusual philosophies being presented in a setting, or even that setting itself being somewhat tame. One could have made a Shoujo-manga style setting that focused on young female knights with a religion based on Sailor Moon where no one ever really dies and it could still be (potentially) a lot of fun to play. But Aldis is not merely egalitarian or non-violent--it presents a utopia in which all meaningful human conflicts have been "solved" by methods that are presented as objectively perfect. Like that bit about criminals undergoing counseling rather than prison; they do not conceive of a situation where counseling would not work, or where someone would be convicted and sentenced to brainwashing without having committed a crime, or where Aldins would naturally presume that certain people were disposed toward criminality, etc. It is not a world built for three-dimensional characters, and perhaps this is the flaw in all utopias. <br /><br />I am not familiar with the books of Mercedes Lackey or any of the others, but I have read Swordspoint (which presents a society where homosexuality is fully accepted, and yet is just as violent and classist as any other and therefore interesting). A quick perusal of the Wikipedia page on the Valdemar universe already provides a more interesting world than Aldis, and even though it is still relatively tame, one could easily imagine more interesting adventures there. I look forward to your thoughts on the subject. <br /><br />One final thing: Blue Rose presents "belonging" as a central theme of the setting, where finding a society and integrating oneself into it is a chief goal. It is a shame that the creators ignored the fact that "belonging" to one group often occurs as a result of being opposed to others, and that the complex web of connections and oppositions that form between cultures in our own world speak to the legacy of belonging and rejecting. War itself is occasionally motivated by species of "belonging" such as Nationalism, where an "us vs. them" attitude creates a sense of great purpose and can motivate great atrocities. Societal assimilation can also present great complications and confusions of identity. If they had remained true to their theme, then a whole universe of loyalty and identity could have been explored. But instead, they ignored the reality of human attachment to one another and presented a world in which the only meaningful way to belong was to be a part of a society like Aldis. And that has never actually been true for any human, ever. Rant over. Anathematahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03459426255827443025noreply@blogger.com