These are the basic rules for playing Blur. You'll find examples of play, optional rules, and more detail on character creation in the "Articles" section. Feel free to print this page and use it as a quick-reference sheet for new Blur players. We've tried to keep it short enough to fit on 2 pages, or 1 page front & back.

Traits

Characters are defined by their Traits, which can be skills (hacking, fortune telling), professions (investigator, assassin), or simple adjectives (clever, strong, vicious). All Traits are rated from 1-5, as indicated on the scale below. If a character doesn't have a Trait that's relevant in a given situation, the default rating is Two (2).

1 2 3 4 5+
Poor Default Good Excellent Incredible

Each character has a Trump suit that represents the types of things they're best at, or that are central to their concept. Cards of this suit are always Wild for that character, no matter what kind of action they're attempting.

The Bare Bones

This turn cycle is the core of Blur gameplay. It assumes that a character's action is being opposed by another character and is phrased in terms of combat, but the same system can be used for non-combat actions and situations where a character is opposed by inanimate forces ("played" by the GM, who assigns them a Trait rating based on how challenging they want the action to be).
  1. Each character in a duel draws a number of cards equal to their relevant Trait.
  2. The attacker describes a wickedly cool move that deals certain death to his adversary, and plays a card. If he has a set or a straight, he can play more than one.
  3. The defender has to meet or beat each card, playing as many cards as needed (she need not play a set or straight to beat a set or straight). If she can't, she's out of commission.
  4. If she does defend herself, both players draw back up to their Trait and the defender becomes the attacker.

The Tender Vittles

The real fun comes from embellishing the cards with colorful descriptions. The gimmicks below are intended to provide inspiration and help players stay creative throughout a game. If they ever start to constrain a players' creativity, feel free to ignore them.

Slams are sets of matching cards in different suits, also known as "X of a kind." They represent especially powerful moves: flying kicks, slo-mo uppercuts, cleaving sword thrusts, and bullseye shots to vital organs.

Combos are consecutively numbered cards of the same suit, also known as "straights." They represent, oddly enough, combinations of moves that work together to deal out even greater pain and suffering.

Banter happens between exchanges, when the players are drawing new cards. To avoid letting these pauses slow down gameplay, GMs and players should fill the empty space with the jibes and insults that pepper all spicy action movies.

Wild Cards can add interesting twists to an action is character's Trump suit doesn't match the action being performed, like a Hearts character in a sword duel. In this case, the player's description of their action must include one Hearts-related element per Wild Card played. (For example, if the player defends with one Spade and one Heart, they might "duck below the first swing, then yell 'What's that behind you!'" to distract their opponent and ruin his second swing.)

Karma

One of the best ways to encourage wild, creative stunts is to give players a safety net against bad luck. Karma points can be cashed in to give players limited control over the game: to give themselves lucky breaks (conveniently placed chandeliers, an extra ammo clip, whatever) or to recover from a hit in combat (ignore a gunshot wound through sheer will, land in a reflecting pool after being thrown off a roof, and so forth). Karma cannot be used to cancel someone else's use of Karma, nor can it change anything that's already happened in a game. (The GM keeps a pool of "Bad Karma" to use on behalf of the NPCs.)

At the beginning of a session, let players take up to 3 points of Karma on Karmic Kredit: For each point a player takes, the GM adds a point of Bad Karma to their pool. During a game, GMs should award Karma for particularly good role-playing (however your group judges such things), especially when it involves something that's to the players' disadvantage. (Conversely, the GM gets Bad Karma when players do things that deserve punishment or that unfairly victimize NPCs. Hence the name.)

Copyright Daniel Pond 2002