Today we have the pleasure of offering you the review of Blaze, a superpunk RPG. First of all, we want to thank the author Danilo Frontani for providing us with a copy. The one we reviewed is the limited edition that Danilo, with Putrid Games and Full Metal Games, created for the Modena event Play 2024; compared to the standard edition, there’s just a cover change, while the contents remain the same.
If you are interested in purchasing, Blaze is on sale on Amazon’s digital store. You can still decide to try the game in the meantime by downloading the free quickstart.
Review of the Volume of Blaze
The manual of Blaze It consists of 112 black and white pages. The manual is in pocket format with a hard cover, therefore very compact and easy to handle. Materials are resistant, and it cannot be denied that for this debut as an author, Danilo opted for quality work.
The pages are white with very few quirks, just a few geometric decorations which, together with the chosen font, contribute to giving a futuristic flavour to the manual. Only the section reserved for the storyteller, here called the CEO, has a black page frame; a good touch to differentiate it at a glance without compromising its readability. The choice of the double character sheet is very themed, in a more sci-fi version and in a more “comic book” version.
The illustrations by Laura Cellitti and Cristina Rotolone recall a comic style in several passages. Both are very effective in suggesting the “exaggerated” tones that Blaze wants to have and its dynamism. A perfect example of how aesthetics, setting and mechanics marry perfectly in this case, while maintaining a minimal style in all three sectors.
The Setting
The setting is in fact deliberately reduced to the essentials. In the first part of the manual, a quick historical overview shows us how Dermont Interstellar, one of the corporations that replaced governments in the management of politics, had identified enormous resources on the planet Styge. An investment that turned out to be a failure: the particular shape of the planet had deceived the scanners. The extraction plants have been converted into manufacturing industries, its terraforming has been interrupted and the planet has been abandoned to itself.
Currently, the inhabited part of Styge, the city of Arcologia 01, is divided into three different sectors. The few who can afford a comfortable life live on the highest level, within sight of the sky, where the executive offices are located. In the intermediate level, there are factories and production plants. Finally, the lowest strata are inhabited by those who try every day, with the most desperate means, to survive: the bulk of the population. PCs can come from any of these strata; it’s up to the gaming table, in a zero session, to find a square on everyone’s motives. The important thing is that each character was recruited by Victor Rack, the security manager of Arcologia 01, to be part of his investigative team anti-rebel.
Blaze: Game Themes Review
What upsets the “serenity” of Arcologia 01 is in fact the recent arrival of the Blaze. It is a new drug circulating on the streets, the peculiarity of which is that it gives those who take a dose real superpowers. This allows the Stygians, a rebel faction, to take control of the city’s lower strata. The characters are Rack agents called to investigate these events. Equipped in turn with doses of Blaze, they will enter a plot of conspiracies and double games animated by lethal clashes in which the substance will cause a lot of collateral damage.
For the rest, the setting is, as anticipated, very minimal. There are some background stories that can be exploited and certainly, the issues to bring to the table are very clear. The excessive power of corporations, the exploitation of the working classes, the police state, blackmail, and rebellion against the system. All intertwined with an underlying sci-fi of colonization and the use of substances that confer superhuman powers. Precisely by virtue of this, Blaze it is defined by the author as a “superpunk” role-playing game. The CEO is explicitly entrusted with the task of choosing how to articulate all these themes, exploiting and expanding the few but crucial underlying truths of the game.
Review of Mechanics of Blaze
The second section of the manual deals with the rules part of the game. As anticipated, also in this Blaze reveals simple and essential, but not without a certain elegance. Actions are resolved by rolling a pool of six-sided dice. The approach gives the basis of this pool used: one between Body, Mind and Senses, among which the points are distributed during character creation.
On this basis, the player adds a d6 for each Tag he manages to exploit in the action. Tags are a particularly quick and intuitive system with which the player can indicate the skills, characteristics, knowledge and equipment of his character, which are also detailed during the creation phase. Lastly, it is possible to exploit up to two Environmental Tags, situational advantages that receive the CEO’s approval.
Any roll of 3 or higher is considered a success; to pass a test it is necessary to obtain between three and nine successes, depending on the difficulty established by the CEO. There is some further specification on the weapons and wounds that can be suffered, but the core of the system is this; in its simplicity, it is absolutely functional. Furthermore, given that each die has more than a 60% chance of returning a success, it instinctively encourages players to take risks and get involved.
The Blaze
Some actions may have higher difficulty, requiring up to 15 successes. This is only allowed when the characters have taken over the Blaze, which allows them to undertake superhuman feats. It is the drug that gives the game its title. Basically it allows those who take it for the first time to acquire a series of superpowers, generated randomly through three tables.
The Blaze’s powers can only be used under its effect, and are among the Tags that the player can use. This allows you to increase the character’s dice pool, but an even more notable effect of the Blaze is that it allows you to count rolls of 5 and 6 as double successes. This it exponentially increases the chances of success and, in fact, allows you to carry out actions that would otherwise be impossible.
The Blaze is therefore configured as an element that players can shape with maximum narrative freedom, creating effects simply based on the Tag. Moreover it has an enormous impact on both the game setting and its mechanics. Obviously it demands a price, and a rather high one at that. Using this drug creates an addiction that can have decidedly impactful consequences.
Review of Blaze: the CEO Reserved Section
The potential of Blaze and its side effects are addressed in detail in the section of the manual we mentioned earlier, reserved for the CEO. It’s an unusual choice nowadays, which allows you to stage some big twists. Our reviews are strictly spoiler-free, so we won’t give any other details about them.
In any case, this section of the manual contains some fundamental background information on the setting. Also in this case these are narrative elements given at a very high level, to allow maximum freedom and flexibility to the CEO. There are also some variations both for the game mechanics and for the setting of the campaign itself, which is encouraged to be structured like a season of a TV series. Role and deployment reversals, or even shifting the focus of the setting, greatly increase the replayability of Blaze and the freshness of his ideas.
A Bridge Between Tradition and Innovation
As anticipated, in Blaze we can see all of the themes of the subgenres of punk fiction, especially cyberpunk. The mega-corporations, the exploitation of workers, the revolt, body modifications, and the identity of the citizens. It must be said that the game is not designed to go into so much detail about social issues.
Of course, they remain a fundamental element of the setting, and must necessarily be “breathed” into the game. But the narrative focuses on missions full of dramatic and spectacular action. Everything else is left to the “old school” method: interpretation. There are no specific mechanics, just as there are no specific descriptions of the setting. The CEO and the other players are left with the initiative in this regard, choosing how much and how to delve deeply into examining these themes.
Conclusions of the Review of Blaze
Blaze is a very interesting project. It manages to perfectly convey the concept of “superpunk” that it creates and around which it is developed. It is quite clear that the game collects the suggestions of a highly experienced player. The legacy of more traditional games, with a classic approach with a great deal of arbitrariness left to the narrator, is combined with extremely modern design solutions. Its Approaches and Tags system allows a composition of the scene in which the cinematographic narration reigns supreme; the marriage between mechanics, setting and editorial choices is perfect.
By its nature it does not lend itself to the classic long campaign; at least not in the traditional sense of the term, with a group of characters carried forward over the long term. But at the same time, it has various narrative solutions and a “season” structure that allows you to frequently change characters and game perspectives while maintaining the same plot thread. Blaze it is a simple but effective game, which stands in perfect continuity between tradition and innovation. If you love the cyberpunk genre, frenetic action and a gaming style that puts seriality before the character, while always keeping him as the “explosive” protagonist, this is a game that you absolutely cannot miss.
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