Bastards and Bloodlines: A Guidebook to Drunk Sex Consequences Halfbreeds
Now you know.
Bastards and Bloodlines was written by Green Ronin Publishing in the magical era of Pre-Crackdown OGL, when WotC said "Hey, anyone want to use our money press?" and every game publishing company said "Hell yes." This is before Green Ronin took the press apart, and changed it just enough to be a distinct rules set they could own and stopped printing D&D books in favour of True20 and Mutants and Masterminds. Given that GRP is one of the few Third Party Publishers still around, obviously they did something right.
Now, I mentioned "Pre-Crackdown OGL" above. Around September 2003, WotC got it's knickers in a twist about the Book of Erotic Fantasy and said "Ok, no sexy stuff if you want to put the d20 System logo on your book." This of course didn't prevent the BoEF from being printed, since the OGL was separate from use of the d20 System logo. So it was just a branding thing.
I don't know how relevant that is to Bastards and Bloodlines. It was published in March of 2003, and so far as I know does not get any more explicit than the core books. I do, however, wonder if WotC would have been leery of B&B post-BoEF.
Anyway, Bastards and Bloodlines was part of Green Ronin Publishing's "[Blank] and [Blank2]" Races of Renown series, which also covered Planetouched (uncreatively "Aasimar and Tieflings"), Vampires ("Fang and Fury"), Drow ("Plot and Poison"), and Orcs and Half Orcs ("Wrath and Rages"). Because everyone knows alliteration sells D&D books.
Now, the table of contents is actually really important here. You could be forgiven for thinking this book was about the existing Half-X stuff in D&D--half-elves, half-orcs, half dragons, etc. Bastards and Bloodlines tells you straight out that's not the case. Hell, the cover shows an orcish guy with small goat horns swinging a pick at a dusky skinned chick with face tentacles throwing off some sort of fire spell.
The table of contents lays out four chapters-- "Half-breeds in your campaign," talking about how to use them, "Specific Half-breeds," giving new race writeups, "Making More Crossbreeds," not a Xenophilia Kama Sutra, but rather a chapter of templates and a short bit on "making your own half-breeds" which I'm sure is full of mediocre at best advice, and "Using the blood," which has feats, four PrC's (including one called "Changeling." I bet you could play a Changeling Changeling/Changeling if you looked hard enough for a base class called Changeling), spells and "relics" which are probably magic items. It also tells you it has an appendix of Reference Tables and an index.
The next page is the OGL, with a giant "RACES OF RENOWN" logo in the middle, because they had room to spare, or something. After that is an introduction that's basically serving as a mission statement or explanation for existence for the book. It gives a good line about how while a game world needs limitations, those limitations should be based on what's "appropriate and playable, rather than what's believable or realistic." It explains that D&D worlds have gods and magic which interact with the worlds with some regularity, and would logically occasionally produce odd results, such as the content of Bastards and Bloodlines.
It cites polymorph magic, natural shapeshifting, teleportation magic, rituals of power, and reality-defining deities as possible explanations of various half breeds, then talks about a bunch of classic "a god did it" monsters showing "every sign of being the offspring of normally incompatible races," such as centaurs, chimeras, griffons, harpies, hippogriffs, "medusas" (sic, and fuck you GRP, they're called gorgons, Medusa was an individual), minotaurs, and sphinxes "just to name a few."
Now, my mythology may be rusty, but only one of those was "offspring," the minotaur. The rest were divine creations and punishments. It'd be nice if they'd used that fact to support the first half of their paragraph were they basically say "Hey! It's not just about freaky sex!" They seem to want to use the term "crossbreed" to describe "monster part mash up," even though the use of the word "breed" in that word pretty much relegates it to describing the product of sexy times. In fact, one of their cited monsters has become a term to describe these monster part mashups--Chimera. Oh well, maybe they were math majors (hint- if the LAs in this book are any indication, they weren't).
It then has a "how to use this book" section, which doesn't just say "read it." It doesn't need to say anything else, but it does. Whatever. Then there's an About the Author, as if anyone gives a shit what Owen Kirker Clifford Stephens has done. Actually, I do find the first thing interesting, but not because some guy with a name like a gnome did it. Owen here attended "the TSR Writer's Workshop held at the Wizards of the Coast Game Center in 1997," ie, the seminar that WotC had TSR give when it bought the rights to D&D so they didn't need to rely on TSR writers. The fact that that happened is hilarious to me. He's got a wife and three cats, worked for WotC for a while, and then went back to freelance. Whoop. Then he has a special thanks, which is kind of cool for the people he thanks, I'm sure.
Now we're getting to the actual meat of the book, and I have to dock it points. The first non-logo illustration inside the book shows a pair of beholder-headed troll/ogre things (yes, seriously) attacking a trio of adventurers. Actually, I'm docking it two points, because it's "crackling energy around the hands guy," "sword and board guy" and "horny helmet dwarf guy." It's a wizard and two fighters. Goddamnit, really? The other point is because "Half-Beholders" don't show up until chapter three.
So, chapter one starts with a bit about introducing half-breeds, saying that you could just concentrate certain mixes in certain areas, and if you want, they could be full races rather than the results of drunken sexings. Certainly the Aeller (Elf/Giant Eagles) would probably make better Sky Elves than the official sky elves. It also talks about how the prevalence of half breeds is something you have to decide for yourself based on your players. I'd say thanks for the complete lack of help, but there are totally people who don't have that much common sense, so whatever.
It suggests not dropping new half races into areas the players have already been too, which is good advice, and again, not so common common sense, and suggests instead using it as an excuse to send players somewhere new, and gives some waffling talk about how existing half elves and half orcs can use some of chapter four's crunchy bits but maybe it's not good to let them do a rebuild (protip, it's probably a better idea to let them do a rebuild. No one will care, and anyone who does needs the stick removed from their ass and used to beat them). It also talks about using the stuff in character fluff--"Oh yeah, my dwarf is actually the legitimate heir of a clan of gargoyles, my great great grandpappy was half gargoyle on his mother's side." Or the elf wizard is asked to help clear undead out of their unicorn/elf ancestor's tomb. Not a bad thought, I'm behind it.
The next section of the chapter is called "Mommy, where do half-dragons come from?" and made to address the question of where all these walking sex misdemeanors come from. It presents a few options:
- Fecund Humans Humans can fuck anything and breed true. It talks about the "there are human/elves and human/orcs, maybe that's it, but maybe there could be elf/orcs, but maybe that's just a human" thing, then goes on to talk about it being reasonable to believe that humans can just fuck anything they want and make kids. Honestly, I like that line of thought, and there can be interesting things done with that. It suggests this as the "maybe you only want to add a few more half-breeds to your game" option.
- Mix and Match Orgy in the Wizard Party Coat Room. Here it suggests that any two sapient races can interbreed. Maybe it requires special circumstances, maybe it just requires good old fucking. Then it kind of suggests that maybe centaurs and minotaurs came from humans fucking horses and cows, respectively. Yeeepppp..... It cautions you that if you go this way, you need to think carefully, and maybe explain why there aren't quarter derro/drow/dragon/blink dogs running around.
- Somewhere in between the usual setting.
Which makes me think about how the writer is trying to do a good and worthwhile thing here--using fantasy to examine real world truths is always good, but it's a bit clumsy here where you're equating halfling/blink dog kids to black/white kids.
It does a bit of a turn around on the usual D&D assumption, saying that half elves "commonly fit into human societies with little prejudice." Which I've actually never really seen. If the half-breed nature of a half-elf is brought up at all, it's because people do discriminate against them, even though elves and humans are usually not enemies or such.
It also broaches the subject of godly created half breeds, saying that those created by "well-regarded" gods may be treated well, and we'll talk about their example when we get to chapter two. Preview-the example is the Blinkling, a mix of Halfling and Blink Dog. That's right, the well received half-breed is the product of the ultimate doggy style, while half orcs have to scrounge for money.
The chapter has two suggestions for campaigns centered on half-breeds--the game where all the players play siblings, and the game where it's post apocalypse and everyone is screwing everyone because civilization has collapsed. One of these days I do want to do a fantasy post apocalypse game, but it seems that for what they're suggesting, you want a bit more of a mix and match system.
The chapter ends with 13 trite and self-explanatory archetypes for half-breeds:
- Brooder
- Builder (want to make something in your life)
- Explorer
- Gentle Giant
- Gruff Faker
- Hear of Hate
- Hunter
- Killer
- Lone Wolf
- Simpering Cur (make yourself look harmless, so that you can take people by surprise)
- Survivor
- Warlord
- Wide-eyed Innocent
That's the chapter. Chapter two is the one where most of the horrible mental images will come in, so get your booze/brain bleach ready if you are of weak mental constitution.