Hopefully faster next time
My review of Houses of the Blooded.
A woman and a man meet on a field at dawn. The woman's second offers a final opportunity for apology. Formality, rules of conduct.
Twin Swords gleam red in day’s first light. He forged them as a gift. Too late.
They loved each other. Perhaps still. And so.
A scream. Blood. Curtain closed.
This is John Wick's Houses of the Blooded, a fantasy game of passion and tragedy. In Houses of the Blooded you play young nobles in the waning years of the ven civilization. The ven, for those unfamiliar, were a pre-Atlantean people with a penchant for deadly politics, deadly Romance, and deadly Duels. Perfect material for a good role-playing game.
The Pitch:
As regards Houses itself, there are basically two ways I can pitch the game: one to players and one to GMs.
Hey, players! You know all those times when, right in the middle of a session, you have some awesome ideas for how a scene could play out? You know how tough it can be to actually get those ideas into the scene? You know how amazing it is when it works out, though? Well, in Houses of the Blooded the rules give you all the authority you need to shape and craft scenes as you play them.
Hey, GMs! You know all those times when your players give you fantastic ideas? You know those times when you're out of ideas, and a player's suggestion saves your ass? You know how great it is when your players give you a great story? Well, in Houses of the Blooded the rules continually engage your players' creative juices and coax them out into your game (trust me, that will be much less gross than it sounds).
The Fluff:
Houses takes a somewhat unorthodox approach in presenting its setting and other fictional elements. Given how little is concretely know about the ven, Wick can’t present a full, accurate history of ven culture, and he doesn’t try to. Instead, Wick explains some of the general history and takes a very impressionistic approach to the actual ins and outs of ven life. Wicks shows us how it feels to be ven, what the ven care about, how the ven think. We don’t learn the name of the ven capital city, but we do learn about the passions the underpin ven social life. We don’t get maps or lists of political leaders, but we do gain an understanding of the deep irrationality which drove the ven to self-destruction. Ultimately, Wick attempts to form a rich creative space in which players can understand the ven in a visceral, intuitive fashion while still having substantial room to interpret the setting and make it their own. This approach requires players to actively engage with the text, but it also ensures that players have substantial room in which to act.
The Rules:
Houses of the Blooded, at its base, uses a simple but ingenious system. Whenever making a Risk (the game's term for most dramatically significant actions) you roll a pool of six-sided dice and total the results. If the total is 10 or higher then you gain Privilege. This means that you get to narrate the outcome of the Risk. If you roll less than 10, though, the Narrator (GM) gets to say what happens. Ultimately, you aren't rolling to determine the success of actions, you're rolling to find out who gets narrative authority. Houses doesn't just hand out unlimited narrative control, though. That would be both boring and a clusterfuck. When a player gains privilege she may make a single, discrete declaration about the outcome of the Risk. To facilitate further player input, Houses has Wagers. Like in Legend of the Five Rings and 7th Sea, there are some choices players can make prior to rolling. For every die a player removes from his dice pool prior to rolling, he gains a Wager. If his roll still manages to total 10 or higher he can make a number of additional declarations equal to his Wagers. Otherwise the Narrator gets to direct things.
This basic process (assemble dice, make Wagers, determine Privilege, narrate) has a surprising amount of potential. It allows players to occupy a substantial amount of the play space usually reserved for GMs. Many players are used to having a limited form of narrative control. Some games (Exalted, with its stunts, comes to mind) provide this explicitly, and some GMs provide it as part of their play style. Houses does something much more substantial, though. Players can do more than dictate the contents of a scene. They can stipulate the contents of a knowledge roll, the motivations of an NPC, the clues to a mystery, and pretty much anything else you can think of. A lot of games say they put power in the players' hands, but Houses really does it. Kudos.
The system's other basic permutation is the Style Point. Style Points are fuel for awesome. You can spend them to make declarations about a scene, to invoke, tag, or compel character Aspects (those of you familiar with FATE will readily recognize Aspects), use Sorcery, and perform a number of other ven-appropriate actions. They form the game's basic economy, driving actions and powering important abilities. Style is a carrot to dangle in front of players and a tool for players to use once they have it.
Players earn Style Points in a number of ways, but it mostly boils down to a simple maxim: be epic and tragic. The more you emulate the tropes and values of ven literature the more Style you'll earn. Challenge someone to a duel? Get Style. Declare your wife is having an affair? Get Style. Say that your best friend secretly wants you dead? Get Style. Avoid danger? No Style. Play your politics safe? No Style. Apologize to your rival? No Style. Get out there and doom yourself. That's Style.
Subsystems:
Houses of the Blooded has quite a few specific subsystems based off its core mechanics, and, truth be told, this is where most of my issues with the game arise.
The ven loved to Duel. They drew steel at the drop of a very stylish hat. This has as much to do with the ven's lack of full-scale armies as it does their love of drama. Regardless of the reasons, though, Duels are a staple of ven poetry, theater, and Opera. Thus, we have the Dueling rules. Prior to any mechanics, Wick establishes the elaborate rituals surrounding ven Duels. He tells us why the ven Duel, how they initiate a Duel, and how they prepare for a Duel. There's even some historical information on Dueling's origins and how the practice changed over time. I came away with a solid impression of where Duels fit within Houses stories. Mechanically, Duels proceed as a series of contested Risks between the combatants. They can make Wagers like normal and apply those Wagers after determining Privilege. This is the main meat of the dueling system. Combatants can spend their Wagers to use a Maneuver against their opponent. Maneuvers are combat techniques, both offensive and defensive, which provide duelists with a number of tactical options; Parry, Lunge, Ripost, Bash, etc. Overall, the Dueling system has some very interesting mechanical functions and dramatic applications.
The Dueling system is also where my qualms begin. More than anything else, the system feels incomplete. Wick was obviously aiming for a mechanically simple, dramatically robust system, but he still came up short in several places. We're never fully shown how beats (essentially the Houses term for combat turns) proceed. The possible applications for Wagers get obscured under other rules. The interaction of certain Maneuvers with the rest of the system is unclear. Additionally, the entire Maneuver system, which forms bulk of combat tactics, suffers from questionable design and a plodding pace. Acquiring Maneuvers requires a lot of time and effort, so players interested in Dueling will have to divert substantial resources to unlocking the most interesting options. For the most part, though, these issues aren't insurmountable. Wick's intent is clean enough, so a few intuitive leaps can tie the Duel system into something functional and interesting.
As much as the ven love Dueling, they despise the Artless act of group combat. Whenever more than two combatants lock steel we enter Mass Murder. The Mass Murder diverges heavily from the Dueling rules. Essentially, everyone involved in a Mass Murder breaks into teams. Each team has a leader who does all of the rolling. Each leader undertakes a contested Risk with the other leaders, and the victor gets to use Wagers to inflict grievous wounds on anyone participating. This repeats until one team wins. As you might expect, Mass Murder is extremely deadly. One Wager can incapacitate a character, and a second Wager will finish the job. This can be countered, but it costs a substantial amount of Style. The rules do quite a bit to make Mass Murder an ugly event and a risky option at best.
I applaud the Mass Murder rules as a method to quickly resolve mass combat scenarios, but there is something about the rules that feels out of step with the rest of Houses. Mass Murder is deeply impersonal, and, while that makes sense in a certain way, I don't know why such a ruleset exists in Houses. Mass Murder strips away everything interesting in the base system and leaves a blunt conflict resolution mechanic. Wick does explain why these rules exist, though. At the end of the Mass Murder section he tells us that the rules are designed so as to discourage their use. Mass Murder, then, is a ruleset intended to punish players who use it. Bad form, John.
The ven weren't just into violence. Romantic intrigue fills at least as many pages in ven literature as backstabbing and Bloodshed. Love is a dangerous idea for the ven. It threatens traditional political power, the influence of the Houses, and the stability of arranged marriages. No self-respecting ven would shy away from danger, though. Almost all ven find themselves entangled in Romance at some point, so we have rules for Romance. Romance proceeds as a structured series of interactions between the participants. They make contested Risks to establish the Romance, and, once established, the Romance plays out for a set period of time. At first the relationship grows and flourishes. This provides the participants with bonuses to a variety of actions. Eventually, though, the Romance begins to decline. Boredom replaces passion, and resentment replaces love. Also, the bonuses decline. This creates dramatic and mechanical incentive for tragic Romance, especially since tragic events give you Style.
Romance is by far the best of Houses' subsystems. There are a few parts of the ruleset which deviate from the base mechanics, but for the most part Romance proceeds elegantly and intuitively from the initial rules. The Romance mechanics also do a fantastic job of creating tragic narratives without negating player input; the structure is set, but players ultimately determine how events progress and how the Romance ends. Everything will end in tragedy, but it'll be your tragedy.
Given the ven's highly abstracted sense of time, Houses keeps its time management to a minimum. While days, hours, scenes and such do exist, there are very few rules which utilize them. The primary unit of time in Houses is the Season. The ven's Seasons, of course, are just like ours-Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter-and it is with the passing of Seasons that the ven really get things done. Houses utilizes Season Actions to determine what a ven character can accomplish during a Season. This is the system through which characters can carry out long-term actions and expand their sphere of influence, important things for any aspiring, young noble. Every character has a certain number of Season Actions to spend, and each expenditure allows the character to accomplish a single task. These tasks include developing a region in one's domain, researching a spell, improving one's vassals, learning a combat maneuver, quelling an uprising, and a substantial number of other actions which contribute to the noble's overall competence and capability. The Season Actions system is one part experience points (as it allows characters to expand their personal abilities) and one part resource-based board game (as it allows characters to manage territories and political capital).
I had to read the Seasons rules a few times to get a solid grasp on them. The system has a level of complexity and detail far greater than the other rules, so it requires some additional effort to really understand and appreciate. Ultimately, though, I have no idea why this system exists in Houses of the Blooded. The system functions just fine. Its rules are coherent and accomplish what they set out to, but they seem completely out of sync with the kind of play experience Houses aims for. Most of Houses' rules focus on drama between characters, but Season Actions are highly abstracted and goal-oriented rather than drama-oriented. All the mechanical crunch and resources management that Wick avoids putting in the rest of the system seems to find its way into Season Actions, and this makes for a damned hefty set of rules. Each type of Season Action has its own rules, very few of which use Houses’ base mechanics, and further rules tend to modify or add to those rules. The Season Actions are far from intuitive, and the chapter’s organization does little to help player’s learn the system. Again, the Season Actions function fine in themselves, but their complexity and emphasis on resource management just seems out of step with the rest of the game.
Houses has two systems which give characters special “powers:” Sorcery and Devotions. Sorcery is highly prized and highly illegal Blood magic. Sorcery holds an interesting place in the setting. Simultaneously ubiquitous and deeply secret, Sorcery allows ven to perform some very focused, powerful feats. These range from creating blessed swords, to binding a familiar, and forging and oath. All of the Sorcerey is very flavorful and fairly easy to implement; spill some Blood, do a ritual, have some magic.
Devotions fulfill a role similar to Sorcery but are distinct enough to be well worth their own consideration. All Houses characters enter Devotion to one or more Suaven, ancient ven who have entered the powerful sleep of Solace. In exchange for their Devotion and participation in cults which serve the Suaven, characters are rewarded with Blessings. Each Blessing allows a character to ignore or tweak a particular rule. Like Sorcery, the Blessings have a lot of built-in flavor and do a great deal to round out Houses’ mechanics and make each character feel unique.
Condensed Thoughts:
Houses is very interesting system which seems to need of some revisions. The game’s overall structure is very sound and has a lot of potential in play, but I think Wick needs to push his ideas a bit farther. Distributing narrative authority is fantastic, but I’m not sure if that’s enough to sustain play and propel the game. Wick wants a game about epic tragedy, but few rules actually carry the game in that direction. Romance, as I mentioned before, actually does this quite well, and I think Houses would benefit from more rulesets of that sort. The system needs to help players get to their tragedy, not just tell them to go there. I should note, though, that my impressions come just from reading Houses, not from actual play experience. There is a lot here I really like, but I think the game has potential which it hasn’t reaches yet.
Would I Play the Game As Written?
Yes. In spite of the reservations I have about some of Houes’s subsystems, I want to give this game a serious try. The narrative authority mechanic alone is intensely exiting, and I also want to see the Style Point economy in play. I’m even curious about what Duels and Season Actions can accomplish. Even if I’m not enthused about every part of Houses, there’s nothing in it that I can call boring. Wick has done nothing is not create a genuinely fascinating game.
I think I'll be doing Blood & Honor next to finish off my my Blood-based Wick reviews.
A woman and a man meet on a field at dawn. The woman's second offers a final opportunity for apology. Formality, rules of conduct.
Twin Swords gleam red in day’s first light. He forged them as a gift. Too late.
They loved each other. Perhaps still. And so.
A scream. Blood. Curtain closed.
This is John Wick's Houses of the Blooded, a fantasy game of passion and tragedy. In Houses of the Blooded you play young nobles in the waning years of the ven civilization. The ven, for those unfamiliar, were a pre-Atlantean people with a penchant for deadly politics, deadly Romance, and deadly Duels. Perfect material for a good role-playing game.
The Pitch:
As regards Houses itself, there are basically two ways I can pitch the game: one to players and one to GMs.
Hey, players! You know all those times when, right in the middle of a session, you have some awesome ideas for how a scene could play out? You know how tough it can be to actually get those ideas into the scene? You know how amazing it is when it works out, though? Well, in Houses of the Blooded the rules give you all the authority you need to shape and craft scenes as you play them.
Hey, GMs! You know all those times when your players give you fantastic ideas? You know those times when you're out of ideas, and a player's suggestion saves your ass? You know how great it is when your players give you a great story? Well, in Houses of the Blooded the rules continually engage your players' creative juices and coax them out into your game (trust me, that will be much less gross than it sounds).
The Fluff:
Houses takes a somewhat unorthodox approach in presenting its setting and other fictional elements. Given how little is concretely know about the ven, Wick can’t present a full, accurate history of ven culture, and he doesn’t try to. Instead, Wick explains some of the general history and takes a very impressionistic approach to the actual ins and outs of ven life. Wicks shows us how it feels to be ven, what the ven care about, how the ven think. We don’t learn the name of the ven capital city, but we do learn about the passions the underpin ven social life. We don’t get maps or lists of political leaders, but we do gain an understanding of the deep irrationality which drove the ven to self-destruction. Ultimately, Wick attempts to form a rich creative space in which players can understand the ven in a visceral, intuitive fashion while still having substantial room to interpret the setting and make it their own. This approach requires players to actively engage with the text, but it also ensures that players have substantial room in which to act.
The Rules:
Houses of the Blooded, at its base, uses a simple but ingenious system. Whenever making a Risk (the game's term for most dramatically significant actions) you roll a pool of six-sided dice and total the results. If the total is 10 or higher then you gain Privilege. This means that you get to narrate the outcome of the Risk. If you roll less than 10, though, the Narrator (GM) gets to say what happens. Ultimately, you aren't rolling to determine the success of actions, you're rolling to find out who gets narrative authority. Houses doesn't just hand out unlimited narrative control, though. That would be both boring and a clusterfuck. When a player gains privilege she may make a single, discrete declaration about the outcome of the Risk. To facilitate further player input, Houses has Wagers. Like in Legend of the Five Rings and 7th Sea, there are some choices players can make prior to rolling. For every die a player removes from his dice pool prior to rolling, he gains a Wager. If his roll still manages to total 10 or higher he can make a number of additional declarations equal to his Wagers. Otherwise the Narrator gets to direct things.
This basic process (assemble dice, make Wagers, determine Privilege, narrate) has a surprising amount of potential. It allows players to occupy a substantial amount of the play space usually reserved for GMs. Many players are used to having a limited form of narrative control. Some games (Exalted, with its stunts, comes to mind) provide this explicitly, and some GMs provide it as part of their play style. Houses does something much more substantial, though. Players can do more than dictate the contents of a scene. They can stipulate the contents of a knowledge roll, the motivations of an NPC, the clues to a mystery, and pretty much anything else you can think of. A lot of games say they put power in the players' hands, but Houses really does it. Kudos.
The system's other basic permutation is the Style Point. Style Points are fuel for awesome. You can spend them to make declarations about a scene, to invoke, tag, or compel character Aspects (those of you familiar with FATE will readily recognize Aspects), use Sorcery, and perform a number of other ven-appropriate actions. They form the game's basic economy, driving actions and powering important abilities. Style is a carrot to dangle in front of players and a tool for players to use once they have it.
Players earn Style Points in a number of ways, but it mostly boils down to a simple maxim: be epic and tragic. The more you emulate the tropes and values of ven literature the more Style you'll earn. Challenge someone to a duel? Get Style. Declare your wife is having an affair? Get Style. Say that your best friend secretly wants you dead? Get Style. Avoid danger? No Style. Play your politics safe? No Style. Apologize to your rival? No Style. Get out there and doom yourself. That's Style.
Subsystems:
Houses of the Blooded has quite a few specific subsystems based off its core mechanics, and, truth be told, this is where most of my issues with the game arise.
The ven loved to Duel. They drew steel at the drop of a very stylish hat. This has as much to do with the ven's lack of full-scale armies as it does their love of drama. Regardless of the reasons, though, Duels are a staple of ven poetry, theater, and Opera. Thus, we have the Dueling rules. Prior to any mechanics, Wick establishes the elaborate rituals surrounding ven Duels. He tells us why the ven Duel, how they initiate a Duel, and how they prepare for a Duel. There's even some historical information on Dueling's origins and how the practice changed over time. I came away with a solid impression of where Duels fit within Houses stories. Mechanically, Duels proceed as a series of contested Risks between the combatants. They can make Wagers like normal and apply those Wagers after determining Privilege. This is the main meat of the dueling system. Combatants can spend their Wagers to use a Maneuver against their opponent. Maneuvers are combat techniques, both offensive and defensive, which provide duelists with a number of tactical options; Parry, Lunge, Ripost, Bash, etc. Overall, the Dueling system has some very interesting mechanical functions and dramatic applications.
The Dueling system is also where my qualms begin. More than anything else, the system feels incomplete. Wick was obviously aiming for a mechanically simple, dramatically robust system, but he still came up short in several places. We're never fully shown how beats (essentially the Houses term for combat turns) proceed. The possible applications for Wagers get obscured under other rules. The interaction of certain Maneuvers with the rest of the system is unclear. Additionally, the entire Maneuver system, which forms bulk of combat tactics, suffers from questionable design and a plodding pace. Acquiring Maneuvers requires a lot of time and effort, so players interested in Dueling will have to divert substantial resources to unlocking the most interesting options. For the most part, though, these issues aren't insurmountable. Wick's intent is clean enough, so a few intuitive leaps can tie the Duel system into something functional and interesting.
As much as the ven love Dueling, they despise the Artless act of group combat. Whenever more than two combatants lock steel we enter Mass Murder. The Mass Murder diverges heavily from the Dueling rules. Essentially, everyone involved in a Mass Murder breaks into teams. Each team has a leader who does all of the rolling. Each leader undertakes a contested Risk with the other leaders, and the victor gets to use Wagers to inflict grievous wounds on anyone participating. This repeats until one team wins. As you might expect, Mass Murder is extremely deadly. One Wager can incapacitate a character, and a second Wager will finish the job. This can be countered, but it costs a substantial amount of Style. The rules do quite a bit to make Mass Murder an ugly event and a risky option at best.
I applaud the Mass Murder rules as a method to quickly resolve mass combat scenarios, but there is something about the rules that feels out of step with the rest of Houses. Mass Murder is deeply impersonal, and, while that makes sense in a certain way, I don't know why such a ruleset exists in Houses. Mass Murder strips away everything interesting in the base system and leaves a blunt conflict resolution mechanic. Wick does explain why these rules exist, though. At the end of the Mass Murder section he tells us that the rules are designed so as to discourage their use. Mass Murder, then, is a ruleset intended to punish players who use it. Bad form, John.
The ven weren't just into violence. Romantic intrigue fills at least as many pages in ven literature as backstabbing and Bloodshed. Love is a dangerous idea for the ven. It threatens traditional political power, the influence of the Houses, and the stability of arranged marriages. No self-respecting ven would shy away from danger, though. Almost all ven find themselves entangled in Romance at some point, so we have rules for Romance. Romance proceeds as a structured series of interactions between the participants. They make contested Risks to establish the Romance, and, once established, the Romance plays out for a set period of time. At first the relationship grows and flourishes. This provides the participants with bonuses to a variety of actions. Eventually, though, the Romance begins to decline. Boredom replaces passion, and resentment replaces love. Also, the bonuses decline. This creates dramatic and mechanical incentive for tragic Romance, especially since tragic events give you Style.
Romance is by far the best of Houses' subsystems. There are a few parts of the ruleset which deviate from the base mechanics, but for the most part Romance proceeds elegantly and intuitively from the initial rules. The Romance mechanics also do a fantastic job of creating tragic narratives without negating player input; the structure is set, but players ultimately determine how events progress and how the Romance ends. Everything will end in tragedy, but it'll be your tragedy.
Given the ven's highly abstracted sense of time, Houses keeps its time management to a minimum. While days, hours, scenes and such do exist, there are very few rules which utilize them. The primary unit of time in Houses is the Season. The ven's Seasons, of course, are just like ours-Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter-and it is with the passing of Seasons that the ven really get things done. Houses utilizes Season Actions to determine what a ven character can accomplish during a Season. This is the system through which characters can carry out long-term actions and expand their sphere of influence, important things for any aspiring, young noble. Every character has a certain number of Season Actions to spend, and each expenditure allows the character to accomplish a single task. These tasks include developing a region in one's domain, researching a spell, improving one's vassals, learning a combat maneuver, quelling an uprising, and a substantial number of other actions which contribute to the noble's overall competence and capability. The Season Actions system is one part experience points (as it allows characters to expand their personal abilities) and one part resource-based board game (as it allows characters to manage territories and political capital).
I had to read the Seasons rules a few times to get a solid grasp on them. The system has a level of complexity and detail far greater than the other rules, so it requires some additional effort to really understand and appreciate. Ultimately, though, I have no idea why this system exists in Houses of the Blooded. The system functions just fine. Its rules are coherent and accomplish what they set out to, but they seem completely out of sync with the kind of play experience Houses aims for. Most of Houses' rules focus on drama between characters, but Season Actions are highly abstracted and goal-oriented rather than drama-oriented. All the mechanical crunch and resources management that Wick avoids putting in the rest of the system seems to find its way into Season Actions, and this makes for a damned hefty set of rules. Each type of Season Action has its own rules, very few of which use Houses’ base mechanics, and further rules tend to modify or add to those rules. The Season Actions are far from intuitive, and the chapter’s organization does little to help player’s learn the system. Again, the Season Actions function fine in themselves, but their complexity and emphasis on resource management just seems out of step with the rest of the game.
Houses has two systems which give characters special “powers:” Sorcery and Devotions. Sorcery is highly prized and highly illegal Blood magic. Sorcery holds an interesting place in the setting. Simultaneously ubiquitous and deeply secret, Sorcery allows ven to perform some very focused, powerful feats. These range from creating blessed swords, to binding a familiar, and forging and oath. All of the Sorcerey is very flavorful and fairly easy to implement; spill some Blood, do a ritual, have some magic.
Devotions fulfill a role similar to Sorcery but are distinct enough to be well worth their own consideration. All Houses characters enter Devotion to one or more Suaven, ancient ven who have entered the powerful sleep of Solace. In exchange for their Devotion and participation in cults which serve the Suaven, characters are rewarded with Blessings. Each Blessing allows a character to ignore or tweak a particular rule. Like Sorcery, the Blessings have a lot of built-in flavor and do a great deal to round out Houses’ mechanics and make each character feel unique.
Condensed Thoughts:
Houses is very interesting system which seems to need of some revisions. The game’s overall structure is very sound and has a lot of potential in play, but I think Wick needs to push his ideas a bit farther. Distributing narrative authority is fantastic, but I’m not sure if that’s enough to sustain play and propel the game. Wick wants a game about epic tragedy, but few rules actually carry the game in that direction. Romance, as I mentioned before, actually does this quite well, and I think Houses would benefit from more rulesets of that sort. The system needs to help players get to their tragedy, not just tell them to go there. I should note, though, that my impressions come just from reading Houses, not from actual play experience. There is a lot here I really like, but I think the game has potential which it hasn’t reaches yet.
Would I Play the Game As Written?
Yes. In spite of the reservations I have about some of Houes’s subsystems, I want to give this game a serious try. The narrative authority mechanic alone is intensely exiting, and I also want to see the Style Point economy in play. I’m even curious about what Duels and Season Actions can accomplish. Even if I’m not enthused about every part of Houses, there’s nothing in it that I can call boring. Wick has done nothing is not create a genuinely fascinating game.
I think I'll be doing Blood & Honor next to finish off my my Blood-based Wick reviews.