Salutation ! I’m Nvaet and this is Baroque & Bullets, my project for the Songs and Sagas Game Jam organized by FariRPG.

What you have here are a few words haphazardly thrown on the page in an attempt to document and share some of my contribution to the trpg community!

So, we have two months together, during which I will try to note down my thoughts as much as possible !

It is by no means any type of scholar or study, nor something that should serve as a step-by-step guide toward trpg design. Nothing that big I’m afraid, after all, I’m just someone who likes telling stories and writing about dice and how to throw them. Nothing more.

Rather, consider that as the somewhat organized rambling of an aspiring trpg designer !

The theme of this Game Jam is to use and modify the Songs and Saga system, which is using a D20 resolution system with some interesting twist (i.e. the usage of cards as a pacing tool, but I will cover that in another entry!)

Coincidentally I’m now entering a playtesting phase with my own yet unnamed and unfinished game system which ended up having a lot in common with **Stoneburner,** another of FariRPG work but with a widely different settings and some significant differences in terms of mechanics.

When this Game Jam started, I wanted to jump on this opportunity to contribute to another creator’s work. And I also wants to set some constraints for myself, both in time (two month only!), and in possibility. For this project, I want to keep the Songs and Sagas system as intact as possible.

Both those constraints should help me keep my focus on how best I could showcase the flavor of my universe and setting.

And since I also want to keep it as small as possible, (yeah, I won’t be writing a full rule book in just two month), that means that I have to find a smart way to convey what I need to convey.

But, the first step was to actually figure out what was the flavor I was looking for. What would make this project fun to work on and play with ?

So I sat down, and started writing. It led to this.

*Dragon Gods came from beyond the star, with them, they brought the power to shape reality, as well as their servant, the First Humanity.

But the Divine Beast-Lords did not kneel to those who claim to rule Land, Stars and Sea, and a most terrible war began, for it was the Age of Agony. Both Gods and Lords perished, and with them the world was scarred forever, the ground broken beyond repair, its soil corrupted by the clash of the miracles of the Dragons and the sorcery of the Beasts,

But, against all odds, Humanity survived. From the Blood Ashes that covered the world, they harvested the power of their gods, and claimed their miracles for themselves. In the millenia thereafter, they built citadels and cathedral, grew numerous and evermore ravenous for the Blood Ashes, the source of their power.

So they went to the Broken Land, for this is where the Divine War raged with the most ferocity, and here the corruption twisted everything, for the unreality of the impossible was made possible.

Fleshcrafters, Necronomes, Steelborn, Thorn-gears, they bore many names, but all are grotesque corruption of both Dragons and Beasts, made of blightened steel and dead-flesh made alive by the blasphemy of the Blood Ashes.

But such horrible guardian is not enough to quell the Greed of Humanity, as the Guild of the Last Republic sent more and more Ashen-bearers to venture far into the Broken Land and seek with God-Artefacts and Blood Ashes to bring home.*

And with this grandiloquent and somber prose, I had my vision.

I have…

<aside> <img src="https://prod-files-secure.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/906a2635-23c0-4f62-a75c-457144d6121e/4083c452-f622-498b-91f6-ea7d61a3105d/exclamation-w.png" alt="https://prod-files-secure.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/906a2635-23c0-4f62-a75c-457144d6121e/4083c452-f622-498b-91f6-ea7d61a3105d/exclamation-w.png" width="40px" /> Baroque & Bullets, a Grotesque adventure of Greed and Gods in a Dying Land

</aside>

But this, is only the start.