One of the interesting things about working on Wardens of the Blue Rose is that I get a chance to take another look at Blue Rose’s magic system. True to its inspirations, magic—the arcana of Aldea (not to be confused with those of its sibling game, Fantasy AGE) are broad areas of magic adepts grasp through intuition. Magic is like artistic ability: a talent that is unevenly distributed through the world, but which still requires effort to develop. It resembles the modern conception of the psychic in some paranormal fiction.

I was initially concerned compacting the rules would be a problem, but it turned out we had already mostly designed a magic system suited for just this sort of thing, possibly because I was prototyping rules-light Blue Rose stuff before we even thought about this project.

Instead of listing possible magical effects, we’ve adopted a more freeform system where each arcana provides broad ability over its domain. Arcana have set limits in the rules, but broad areas to play around within them. In Wardens, we have connected it to the Ability, Bonds, and Fortune systems. Fortune—the power of your story—fuels magic, which reshapes the story of the world. Your Arcana Bonds measure your potential, while Abilities measure your skill at shaping any power you can call forth.

One difference between Wardens of the Blue Rose and past Blue Rose games is that we don’t really emphasize the potential to use arcana. In the setting, magical potential is innate, but we don’t have any rules that say whether you have that potential or not. Instead, we assume that if you learn magic, you have that potential.

Oh, and do we have spirit dancers, seers, and shapeshifters? Yes, we do! I can’t wait to show you. Work proceeds apace, as some systems and setting chapters begin to shape up. In fact, that just reminded me of a new concept I’m debuting, which I’ll describe in a future update. Cheers!

~Malcolm Sheppard, SAGE Developer