Sometimes, you’re looking for a game that scratches a specific itch in terms of genres and tropes at play. Sometimes you get even luckier and a game designer has had the same itch you have and that game already exists for you to find. That’s the experience I had reading through Blazing Hymn by Peach Garden Games. I wanted a game that did mecha fighting against overwhelming odds and winning but sometimes at great cost, and it delivered.
Blazing Hymn is a game in which extraterrestrial and possibly extradimensional beings that have been named Angels are attacking humanity. In response, humanity has created battle armor called Hymnals which are powered by the music of their pilot. It also turns out that teenagers have especially potent emotions with which to power hymnals so all the laws against child soldiers have gone out the window.
Inspirations for Game
Blazing Hymn is an homage and a pretty straight adaptation of a couple of animes: Neon Genesis Evangelion and Senki Zesshou Symphogear. I wasn’t familiar with Symphogear walking into this, so my own understanding is that the tropes that come from there are what my players termed “Heavy Metal Bard Mecha Pilots.”
Mechanically, the game uses the LUMEN system by Spencer Campbell of Gila RPGs to resolve conflicts. The system allows for some quick resolutions that give your players the freedom to try, as my players kept referring to it, “anime bullshit.”
Mechanics
Speaking of those LUMEN mechanics, in Blazing Hymn, each Hymnal has three approaches with which to attempt actions: Volume, which represents brute strength; Tempo, which represents speed and precision; and Harmony, which represents contemplative or deliberate actions. The stat assigned to the approach being used controls how many d6s are rolled for the action. The outcome is based upon the single highest die rolled: 1-2 is a failure with consequences, 3-4 is a success with consequences, and 5-6 is a full success. So two-thirds of the time, your players will get to do what they want, they just might not like the stuff that happens along side that.
Turns are split into a PC phase, in which all the players can take their turns in whatever order they please, and a GM phase. Players also have powers available to them which are not actions and can be used at any time, even during the GM turn. Like was said above, this is the anime “oh no you don’t” trope that they can play with.
On a player’s turn, they can spend Gain which refreshes each turn to use powers, they can also move anywhere on the battlefield once and use an action to do things like attack or evacuate civilians from a battlefield.
Once all players have taken their turn, the GM Turn begins. The GM gets a pool of actions equal to twice the number of players, which can be spread among the angels on the field as the GM wishes. Once the action pool is spent, the GM also gets to make a major change to the battlefield. Things like “oh, that building full of civilians is going to collapse if no one does anything.”
Impressions from Play
I had a lot of fun running this one for a couple of players from my group. They created Hazzard, a polearm wielder, and Berserker, who used rocket boots and punching. The character generation went pretty smoothly, with only a couple of hiccups from trying to use the premade Excel formatted sheets on a spreadsheet reader on one player’s tablet.
My players then jumped straight into the introductory adventure included in the Blazing Hymn book where they have to try and protect a transit station from Angel attack. The first turn went pretty smoothly. Hazzard leaped from the transport helicopter to immediately destroy two Angels while Berserker threatened and intimidated a transit station full of people into an orderly evacuation plan. Like you do.
Everything was going well until the train and the exploding Fifth Chorus Angels showed up. Suddenly, Berserker found himself having to not just attack angels but also first move them so that the civilians wouldn’t be caught in the blast afterward. He threw one completely across the battlefield, where it promptly landed right next to Hazzard.
Then the human-angel hybrid Nephilim showed up and Berserker took the fight to it. And got punched right in the chest. Berserker needed to spend Gain to get more Health. But only had one. So Berkserker is standing at one Health and no Gain in front of the only enemy they’ve faced that has withstood a hit.
Immediately, once the player turn returned, the train was stopped, the nephilim was rocket punched into a frozen river to run away and live to fight another day, and everyone lived.
This was a fun one. Jokes were had all night, everyone got to create their own signature attacks pretty much on the fly when a cool idea they got worked. Hazzard started dropping his poleaxe on anything he could and Berserker was flying around the field punching things. I would love to run this one again and continue the adventures.
Where to Buy
Blazing Hymn can be bought from Peach Garden Games’ page on Itch.
- $15.00 PDF on itch.io
- Free Quickstart Available
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