Review: BMD - First Blood

Review: BMD - First Blood

These days, few TTRPG products spark any excitement in me. Aside from ACKS II, Brozer, and UMBROS, there were only two things on the horizon that I've been looking for - BMD and Mission X. While the latter remains on the indefinite horizon, the first version of the former has been released. So, what is BMD? It is a tabletop RPG that aims to be a proper, complete game, something akin to AD&D 1e or ACKS II. You get the book, you have everything you need to run the game in it. BMD is a game about galactic warfare between humans and aliens by RuleOfThule, the host of the Primeval Patterns substack (check it out, it's full of good stuff). The concept is very appealing to me. A few years ago I tried to wrangle GURPS into this with my semi-stillborn Galactic Havoc project, but I found that the system doesn't really work too well for that sort of stuff without some kind of abstracted combat (See? It all ties back to my current project). Thus, BMD is something that was on my radar. So, let's say #ThankYouRuleOfThule and read the actual book.

The book is 385 pages long, which is antithetical to the current rules-lite pamphlet paradigm. However, I am a GURPS player, so this hefty size doesn't intimidate me (huh-huh). As far as I know, the author strived to create a system from scratch, without basing it on any other system. To be honest, I just cannot imagine how difficult it was to create something so non-derivative, as I understand that mental inertia can be very difficult to overcome.

Chapter 1: Basic Elements of Play

The book tells you upfront what it is about, outlining the basic gameplay loop of acquiring, equipping, and training forces, and then leading them to assault alien bases, reclaim human cities, board space stations, etc. You will be playing a Knight Sovereign - a leader of a warband of the Sol Crusaders. Doesn't that sound great?

On the very first page I saw something that I have never seen before - there are three player roles opposed to the traditional two - player, referee, and campaign manager. Thus, the duties of the GM have been split - this is interesting.

The game uses dice pools, primarily with d10s, but sometimes d100s and d8s (or maybe more - I'm writing as I'm reading). For d10s, a 10 is a success, but bonuses can be applied to the rolls. This feels similar to some wargames (although, iirc, some RPGs also use dice pools, such as Shadowrun, but I may be mistaken). What I found interesting that aside from rerolls, you also have negative rerolls where you reroll successful rolls.

Characters have six attributes - Strength (STR), Agility (AGI), Toughness (TGH), Presence (PRS), Intellect (INT), and Grit (GRT), randing from 0 to 8. Then we have the concept of an Interaction Check where you make a check with an appropriate attribute to perform some kind of task where success and failure are possible. The same passage clarifies that you shouldn't require checks to cross the street, which reminds me of the same example from How to be a GURPS GM: Managing Expectations.

After that, we have mechanics for attacking and defending. I'll not explain them in great detail - read the book yourself - but I will say that they are rather simple and quick to resolve, which is appropriate for this kind of game. For the purpose of attacking, you've have Accuracy (ACC), Coverage (COV), and Lethality (LTH), with the latter two being properties of weapons, not characters. For the purpose of defending, you've got Protection (PRT), Toughness (TGH), and Hit Points (HP). Usually, characters have 1 HP. Overall, the mechanics remind me of miniature wargames.

Chapter 2: Getting Started

This is a very short chapter, but a useful one nonetheless. You have a step-by-step procedure for beginning a new campaign with references to other chapters. Isn't that nice? There's a common complaint about, for example, modern D&D that the book doesn't actually teach you how to run the game. Getting started is often the most difficult part of running the game, so I really appreciate the existence of this chapter. It also provides snapshots of things to come. The thing that piqued my interest is terrain generation for encounters and compiled intelligence.

Chapter 3: Knights Sovereigns

This is the chargen chapter. The character generation system that I found in BMD is a concept that I've heard about a lot, but something that I've never actually seen in action. You get starting characteristics scores, and then go through three "stages" along the most recent history, rolling on the appropriate tables. Thus, you know what your character was doing when the first contact was established, when the humanity joined the aliens, and when things went sideways. Yes, you can die in chargen. However, generating a character in BMD takes like two minutes at most, it seems.

There are three roles (read "classes") - warthane, hierophant, and armacogitar. The last two have special requirements - not everyone can become them. Essentially, they are the archetypical fighter/commander, cleric/crusader, and psion classes. What I like the most here is the list of deeds that are rewarded and penalized. Thus, each role gets a clear role that it must play (hence the name), and it is very reminiscent of AD&D 1e player grading, but much more clearly defined. In addition, it defines the gameplay loop for the classes, which reminds me of the gameplay loop substack articles by Bradford Walker.

Speaking of lifepath systems - I've seen many times people online saying that they will try to make one for GURPS but failing to deliver, and I believe that I understand why. Lifepath systems are not generic. While there are some generic lifepath-like character generation algorithms in the Central Casting books, they do not produce satisfactory results most of the time. To make a proper lifepath system, you need to tie it to a location, time period, and premise/goal of the game. Creating a generic lifepath system for GURPS is simply impossible, but it is possible, for example, to create one for "a band of adventurers in Waterdeep in 1279 AD".

Oh, by the way, there's no traditional XP in BMD - you progress by accomplishing Feats of War, which are clearly defined in a table.

The Rest

All right, it's time to change the approach. If I write about every chapter in detail, this review will not be finished this year. Instead, I will write about my general impressions and things that stood out to me.

I like that the rules for mustering, training, and equipping your force comes before combat rules. This puts a greater focus on the fact that this is not a game about a group of four soldiers, but that entire units and armies will be fighting. There are rules for organizing figures into units and writing them up in a concise way.

Figures in a unit can attack in three different ways - standard, parallel, and solo - and the order of resolution is in reverse, because solo and parallel attacks reduce the unit's cohesion and impose a penalty on standard attacks. Here, a standard attack is when everyone in a unit is using one weapon against one target. Parallel attack is when one or multiple figures in a unit target the same target, but with a different weapon. Solo attack is when one or multiple figures in a unit target a different unit. I don't think I've seen this clear of a distinction in other games, and this is definitely something that can be borrowed.

Encumbrance is a combination of mass and ergonimics, which is how ACKS II does it. What immediately stood out to me was the Gravity & Encumbrance table. Existence of such tables tells you that this is not a game played out on a generic physical table with miniatures, but that you will battle on different worlds with different environments that aren't purely cosmetic.

Weapons are not generic. You don't have things like "Laser Rifle" on the weapons table, but have "ESA G3-LR" with its description given in the text. On one hand, this makes the setting feel more real, but on the other hand, it may take a while for a new player to learn what is what. The entire Terran equipment section is quite comprehensive, covering a very wide variety of weaponry, armor, and other equipment.

Vehicles is something I'm very interested in, especially because GURPS 4e doesn't have a vehicle design system (Yes, I'm still mad). In BMD, each vehicle is a unit, but one that doesn't have HP. Instead, vehicles have components with Durability. Each weapon of a vehicle acts separately.

The combat resolution system that was quickly described in the beginning of the book, it described in Chapter 8 is much more detail. There are some interesting mechanics that deal with scale of the engagement. Overall, the combat sequence feels AD&D-ish, with orders given first, and initative determination and order resolution coming later. Morale, of course, is an important factor, and the rules are more complex than in most wargames, with morale degradation having three stages.

After that, the book delves into another interesting topic that is rarely explored - faction/domain management. This is doubly interesting because this is a sci-fi game - there's plenty of domain rules for fantasy games, but very few for sci-fi games. The rules aren't actually very complex and do not involve a lot of what people call "bean counting." When I was reading the rules, I thought "Huh, that'd work great for a Braunstein," and then the book itself began describing how to play out different sides vying for control of a contested territory in all three Braunstein types (well, with UMBROS out, now there are four types, but this book was written before UMBROS). It also seems that these domain management rules could even be used for GURPS games with relatively few adjustments.

The chapter on running campaigns describes what is necessary to start a campaign (how to generate a starting star sector and populate it), and then talks about player roles - something few other systems devote much attention. While the first chapter mentioned three roles (as opposed to the traditional two), Chapter 10 lists four roles - campaign manager, referee, advocate player, and canonical player. The campaign manager's primary role is to provide a coherent interpretation of the content and events generated by gameplay. In addition, he must see if the campaign is becoming stale or stuck, and run Braunsteins to fix that. He is responsible for the management of diffusion and convergence. The advocate player is basically a patron/faction player. This isn't even intrinsically tied to BMD - you can try this structure in any other system! Of course, the book advocates for Jeffrogaxian timekeeping as well.

After that, the book details the antagonists, their forces, their weapons, tech, etc. What follows is a list of various random generation procedures - starting from star sectors and celestial bodies and ending with creatures. The final chapter talks about intel - gaining and using information as something of an abstract currency. This is something I've never seen before, and some people might be interested in getting this book just for this chapter alone.

Overall, what can I say? I cannot say how well it plays until I actually play a game. I can definitely say that the book is dense - the book is full of information, and I don't think I've seen anything I'd classify as "useless" or "filler." To describe what I feel about BMD, I'd like to tell you about my experience with Warhammer 40k of all things. My only experience playing 40k is via VASSAL and Tabletop Simulator, and it was... underwhelming and frustrating. While I can understand the collecting/paining part of the hobby (but I don't want to take a mortgage), the actual game felt awful, especially when compared to what you read in the codices/rulebooks. You expect a grand struggle between various factions, with armies clashing together, ground trembling under the tank treads and legs of titans, but end up with something closer to a skirmish with five or so squads. Want to decrease the scale? Sorry, you need another ruleset for that. Want to increase the scale? Sorry, you need another ruleset for that (that also, afaik, isn't supported anymore). Want to play out space battle? Oh, another ruleset. But what's worse is not the issue of scale, but the issue of consequences. You throw some miniatures on the table, play out a battle, but none of it matters. The battles are absolutely detached from the campaign and the world, because there is no campaign. Sure, there were suggestions about narrative play, and there were even attempts at adding campaign elements (Planetary Assault or something like that) which was a step in the right direction, but not enough. So, I simply had no investment in what was happening on the table - I did not care. BMD, however, seems that it supports exactly the kind of game that I wanted, where action happens at different scales, and where everything is tied into an actual campaign. If you want to experience that - be sure to get this book! Even if you don't, I'm sure you will find something useful in it.

I still have one more question. What does BMD stand for?