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Seth Skorkowsky
Seth Skorkowsky

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Righteous Blood, Ruthless Blades Early Access

Hey everyone, in preparation for the holidays where I'll be busy with all sorts of family stuff, and unable to record and edit, I've finished and loaded my next video up on YouTube early. It'll go live to the general masses sometime in the middle of next week.

This is a review of the Righteous Blood, Ruthless Blades RPG from Osprey. It's a cool little wuxia-themed game with brutal combat. We've been having a lot of fun playing it.


I should have Closed Captioning finished for it tomorrow or Friday.

From what I've been able to find, outside of some comment recommendations on forums and the like, I believe this will be the first review from someone who actually played the game. I understand all the reasons and benefits for Impression Reviews, but I confess a bit of pride in my Played What I Review policy as something that sets my channel apart (that, and the silly character skits and liberal use of on-screen images).

Hopefully I can now take the time to get the last 2 episodes of the Modern Mythos Podcast up on that YouTube channel. The last month has been non-stop work putting together the Dungeon design series and this review. It'll feel nice to get everything off my to-do list for a few days before it all starts again.

I hope you all have a safe and enjoyable holidays.  Thank you for all your support.


-Seth


UPDATE: Closed Captioning is now loaded in, for anyone who uses that.

Righteous Blood, Ruthless Blades Early Access

Comments

We've been having a blast. Outside of the normal Figuring Out Which Skill Does What, that happens with almost every new system, my biggest complaint is simply the sheer volume of Signature Abilities, Counters, and Weapon Abilities, that it's difficult to run without a LOT of organization (or a spectacular memory). It's very rare that I even look into games with lots of NPC special abilities for that reason. I'm cool with the players having to deal with their individual lists, but it starts buying me as the GM when all my badguys have their own unique lists of special rules.

This looks like it will have to be my first purchase of 2023. Looks like a rip roaring, tea house jumping, pole balancing, face punching good time!

Pre-ordered a physical copy (and then was impatient when it kept getting delayed). It's not Free League levels of absurd quality, but damn if it doesn't come close. Bonus tidbit: If you dig the art, check out Kagan McLeod's excellent comic Infinite Kung-Fu.

SamuraiMujuru

To you, as well.

Great review! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, Seth!

Rolling Thunder

Our wives have frighteningly similar behaviour...

The B&W wouldn't be an issue. But the physical size... you never really know how huge something is from internet pictures until you get it. I'd have to stand about a foot or more further away from the green screen to accommodate it, which would require sliding the camera back. Easy enough. But then, because it's further away, the green screen wouldn't fill the whole frame anymore, so either Jack wouldn't be able to move much because wide movements would be cut off once his hand or sword hit the edge of the green border, or I'd have to make a new greenscreen setup to hang it wider (the screen itself is wide enough, but the hanging method isn't). It's a lot of technical headache for a hat that didn't even look good on me. Though I might be able to use it for a quick shot or 2 when I get to reviewing The Obsidian Bat. So I'm holding on to it.

My copy is beautiful as well! I was so impressed when I received it. Top quality. Made me interested in other Osprey books once I held it.

Looks great, can't wait to watch. Have a good holiday and enjoy your well earned rest, many thanks for you hard work 👍

James P

I'd love is they added an optional companion book for some supernatural and magical creatures. Classically, wuxia has no magic at all... except for when it does. My wife has recently become addicted to all the chinese wuxia shows on Netflix. That's been her decompress entertainment for the last few months since we started getting ready to play RBRB.

You have the physical book? OK, one thing I wanted to mention in the video but wasn't sure if mine was some small-run author advanced copy Jeremy had or anything, so I didn't, but is the binding on your like REALLY good? I can't even properly describe it, but that little book opens better than any of my other RPG books, The pages are definitely held in there, but they lay flat when you open it. I don't know if it has to do with the 6x9 size, the paper, or the specific printer Osprey hired, or what, but the binding feels much higher quality.

My wife would love this, but if only there was a supernatural supplement for it. She got really hooked on the series, "The Untamed," and that's got a bunch of supernatural stuff in it.

So now you just have this big straw hat that didn't work out? Unfortunate but I can understand it being hard on the green screen especially in black and white

Grey Wolverine

Finding suitable wuxia miniatures is way harder than I'd have guessed. If you want Historic Japanese, there's thousands to choose from. If you want Historic Chinese (or at least passable as Historic Chinese) it's a serious hunt.

Excellent! I've been hoping for this ever since you said that you were playing it. Lovely little book with super little touches. Maybe this video will encourage me to get to table!

What to put on his head was the hardest part. I've been assembling the costume since May or so. I'd picked up one of those wide straw hats, but aside from the technical problems of lighting and it being so huge I'd have to stand even further from the greenscreen, it looked more like a joke than anything. I don't want Jack's outfits to be crappy. The joke is he still talks the exact same no matter what outfit he's in. The cool period hats that weren't the classic round straw are special-order and way more expensive that I'd have guessed (save for the beanie-style caps that I imagine would also come off more like a caricature joke). So I settled on a head band, but that didn't look great, either. Finally, on the day i recorded I remembered my wife had a huge clip-on ponytail. So I found that (had to brush the hell outta it because the cats had found it first) and it worked great.

Ooo, been looking forward to this since you mentioned it in the miniatures video!

SamuraiMujuru

And a happy new year to you 🎉

Cadence

Very cool, and hey, a new outfit for Jack!

Grey Wolverine


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