I Read Games reviews are me reading games when I have nothing better to do, like read a module or write or play a game. I don’t seriously believe that I can judge a game without playing it, usually a lot, so I don’t take these very seriously. But I can talk about its choices and whether or not it gets me excited about bringing it to the table.

My wife and daughter are trapped searching for birthday presents, and instead of walking for 45 minutes I’m reading Rosewood Abbey. Rosewood Abbey is a “Carved by Brindlewood” game, meaning it is based on Brindlewood Bay, a game I was very excited by but (as I have written here), I found horrendously disappointing. When I saw Rosewood Abbey, a game adapting the concepts and structure to something inspired by the Name of the Rose and Hieronymous Bosch, my eye cocked, and I just had see if this was the game I wanted from the original. It’s by “Kalum” and perhaps the Rolistes (in addition to Kalum, if they aren’t just a pseudonym), so I might be putting too much pressure on a one-person project. But I’m excited.

My excitement, however was tamped by an 80 — yes eighty — page example of play that fronts the book. It’s actually pretty well written, but there was – point about 15 pages when there was a chapter break and I started to wonder when we’d get to the game. I’m all for examples of play, but it just feels strongly like this approach is best taken with a running commentary. I can see where the author was going with this — Name of the Rose is a deep cut of a pitch. But having an example of play as a left hand column throughout the book, with the right hand column explaining the rules as they come up, is genius design that we doing see here. This, instead, is sluggish design that requires too much of me in my opinion. There is some rules explanation in here, framed as the referee explaining to the players, but without the context of the book, it doesn’t really make sense. I know I’m not reading 80 pages of play report thoroughly, and right now I’m literally trapped in a room with nothing to do but read that report. I can’t imagine many people will ever utilise those 80 pages of example — sadly a lot of transcribing and editing will go to waste.

The game proper begins on page 90, and introduces the conceits proper: You’re a member of a group of friends analogous to the Murder Mavens, (potentially) up against an evil force called the Ancient. The premise is colourfully “about levelheaded scholars surrounded by people increasingly caught up in their exaggerations, lies, and misguided beliefs”. It then goes on to explain our Powered by the Apocalypse basics, with two additions: Vignettes and the Rumour Mill. I don’t recall Vignettes in Brindlewood Bay, but I’ve wiped my mind of that game in frustration. Vignettes occur for flashback moves or when transcribing rumours, and are basically monologues. The text itself identifies them as problematic, and there’s a whole section on how to make them work without running the game. The second addition, the Rumour Mill, drives the whole game, and I’ll get to it in a moment.

Rosewood Abbey follows Brindlewood Bays annoying habit of naming moves non-descriptively. This time we have Pious and Profane for moves in and out of Abbey grounds, replacing Day and Night. For me, at least, all the basic moves face this problem of being unclearly titled, even if they’re secretly a reference to monk fiction somewhere. The Friar Moves however are all given a patron saint, which is cute and flavourful, and are clearly inspired by that fantastic chapter in Brindlewood Bay with ask the pop culture moves in it. Love them.

Providence moves are the core of the game, but to me they’re clumsily explained. In Prick of a Thorn, a friar takes a thorn to change the outcome — either indulging in sin or being so pious as to inspire a negative reaction. These inspire rumours, and as rumours mount up, things become increasingly ludicrous and blamed on the Ancient. This builds up rumours randomly that point towards this heresy in the town. The structure that rumours develop by is the rumour mill, and it’s a very fun innovation in my opinion. You track the rumours as they become increasingly bizarre, and whether they’re a sin or virtue, and how bad it’s getting, which gives the game momentum and a clear endpoint that everything points towards, and binds all the mysteries together. It’s very cool, very thematic, very flavourful, the kind of clever mechanic I love seeing.

At the pinnacle of this heresy, someone you care about is blamed for it all, and church hierarchy shows up, with the Canonise/Excommunicate moves. First, the friars attempt to prove or disprove certain rumours, and then an outcome for the friars turbines is rolled in response. This doesn’t work for me at all, but largely through lack of clarity. The judgement rolls use the Librete pattern, but it’s not clear what stats we’re using to boost it — it’s entirely random if there are none , so I’m not sure what it means to overshoot your mark here, or how to manipulate the proceedings in order to do so. You need to be able to choose how high you roll, to make pushing your luck structures make sense. The Final Judgement relies on these random results, so while you could theoretically guide this result according to the first set of moves, in reality your outcome is set with a small amount of randomness. It’s definitely possible I’m missing something, but if I am it’s because the text is fairly unclear in its explanations — I read this section a few times, and even went back to the example of play and word searched the terms. Perhaps this is a problem with playtesting only happening with people involved in production, or perhaps this complexity is why the author felt the need to open with an extended example? But, the example of play doesn’t include an example of the final moves of the game, although it indicates that the proven and disproven judgements may occur during play rather than in an extended scene prior to Final Judgement. Which just confuses me further, as it appears to contradict the actual rules. Overall, while I find the concepts in Rosewood Abbey compelling, the rules are frankly confusing to me.

Which is disappointing, because there’s interesting referee side tech here. You’re instructed to always keep 3 mysteries on the go, adding new mysteries as they’re solved, resulting in a fairly dense play area. Sessions go through a fairly structured selection of beats, that coincide with the canonical time that I recall being confused at being included earlier in the game. I really like this stuff, but honestly it should be player facing as well, taking cues from Blades in the Dark, given the players are supposed to participate in them and are given specific instructions. I’d honestly have loved canonical time being simplified to game structures instead of selling it as verisimilitude, too. The game ends with three mysteries to get you started, and shows handily how you can have overarching more complex mysteries to make a kind of modern police procedural style of gameplay. Very cool, but again, it’s not fully supported by referee chapter that I can see. Like, make this stuff explicit!

Well, Rosewood Abbey is a mixed bag for me. The rules text isn’t very clear at all to someone coming in blind, and perhaps it would’ve made more sense to someone who’s played enough Brindlewood Bay to write a medieval monk hack of it. I don’t think the example of play works as it needs annotation, and is far longer than can be reasonably expected to read without all that context, despite there being some rules explanation built in. I see this alot in games borne from this legacy: A lot of assumptions underpin the games texts, that result in an incompetent game to those who aren’t in the community itself. On the other hand, I find the whole concept and structure to be deeply compelling, the themes of conflicting rumour and truth in the context of an interesting religion that will take the events and use them to destroy someone’s life disturbing and interesting, and I really want to love this game even more than I hoped to initially, because if these factors.

Luckily, the book itself claims that this is an unfinished product — and so hopefully as development continues, some of these structural barriers to my actually bringing a game to game will be addressed. Certainly though, while more mysteries and support would be appreciated, it’s the core of the text that needs rethinking in my opinion. If you’ve already got a lot of Brindlewood Bay under your belt, or you have friends so keen on the themed they’re happy to stumble through the climactic sections a few times to figure out the rhythm, Rosewood Abbey is for you. For me, I’ll have to continue to wait for a Carved by Brindlewood game that includes all the necessary rules to play.

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