Sworn Vengeance

I really don't like projecting conflict into a campaign during character creation.

I am a hard-core Develop-in-Play sorta gamer who favors minimal backstory and maximal goals to create friction in actual play. I want to make allies and rivals and secrets at the table, not noodling around with my character sheet.

I recognize I'm also, outside of certain circles, an outlier in this, a rather antiquated exception to the rule.

By the early Eighties, as I remember it, creating a character backstory complete with motives for adventuring and conflicts enmeshing the adventurer before the first die is rolled in anger was already becoming the normative expectation in tabletop roleplaying, and Flashing Blades was no exception to this.

To add more color to the game, characters may have various special advantages and personal secrets. These are designed to allow many typical swashbuckling adventure themes to come into play. - "3.6 ADVANTAGES AND SECRETS," Flashing Blades core rules, page 9

An FB character could begin the game with a Contact or a Secret Loyalty, a Double or a blackmailer, a noble Title or a compulsive gambling habit. Mark Pettigrew wasn't wrong: these are indeed "typical swashbuckling adventure themes," and if my own preference is to let these come about in actual play, his approach in FB is reasonably restrained: most Advantages and Secrets are a resource to be utilized - Favor, Wealth, frex - or a trait embodied by the character - Don Juan, Code of Honor - useful for pursuing goals or for generating the aforementioned friction, rather than an outright conflict involving the player character.

Now, Blackmailed was an exception to this, postulating an existing and on-going conflict. So was Sworn Vengeance. Few of the players with whom I played over the years took Blackmailed, but more than a few chose Sworn Vengeance.

Which is hardly surprising.

Inigo: My father was slaughtered by a six-fingered man. He was a great swordmaker, my father. When the six-fingered man appeared and requested a special sword, my father took the job. He slaved a year before it was done.

The Man in Black: I've never seen its equal.

Inigo: The six-fingered man returned and demanded it, but at one-tenth his promised price. My father refused. Without a word, the six-fingered man slashed him through the heart. I loved my father. So naturally, I challenged his murderer to a duel. I failed. The six-fingered man left me alive, but he gave me these. [strokes the scars on his cheeks]

The Man in Black: How old were you?

Inigo Montoya: I was eleven years old. And when I was strong enough, I dedicated my life to the study of fencing. So the next time we meet, I will not fail. I will go up to the six-fingered man and say, "Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die."

In my experience, for most players Sworn Venegeance was almost always expected to lead to a Duel to the Death.

Which honestly, to me, is kinda boring.

Vengeance as a motivation for dueling is expected in swashbuckling games and stories, of course; Honor + Intrigue includes Vengeance in the suggested list of potential character Motivations ("Motivation," H+I, page 17) tagged to gain Fortune Points, which are used as a metacurrency for various character abilities. But vengeance can be so much more than an excuse to cross steel - this becomes particularly relevant in a game like Flashing Blades where the adventurers may embark on careers granting them vast temporal power in the setting.

So my advice is, be Terry Benedict.

Linus: The last guy they caught cheating in here? Benedict not only sent him up for 10 years, he had the bank seize his house and then he bankrupted. . .

Rusty: . . . his brother-in-law's tractor dealership. Yeah, I heard.

Linus: He doesn't just take out your knees. The guy goes after your livelihood and the livelihood of anybody you ever met.

- Ocean's Eleven

'cause Terry Benedict, well . . .

Reuben: This sort of thing used to be civilized. You'd hit a guy, he'd whack you, done. But with Benedict . . . at the end of this, he'd better not know you're involved, not know your names or think you're dead, because he'll kill ya, and THEN he'll go to work on ya.

- Ocean's Eleven

What I'm saying is this: if you make vengeance one of your character secrets or motivations, stop thinking in terms of The Duel and start thinking of Humiliations Galore! Make your vengeance a wellspring of friction.

For starters, consider that tractor dealership. The object of your vengeance derives part of their income from smuggling? Rob their smugglers. Burn down their warehouse. Pirate their ship. Or if you're one of those honorable sorts, present the evidence of their misdeeds to an equally honorable magistrate - and collecting that evidence may involve sneaking into that warehouse for goods and ledgers instead of burning it down, and taking the logbook before the pirate sails away with their ship.

In a swashbuckling setting, the best villains may be out of reach of your character, socially and even physically. The Scheming Prelate is surrounded 24/7 by some of the best guards in the realm, but they also have a clientele of supporters and lackeys, so go to work on them first. Get the goods on one of their allies and blackmail them, or simply expose them to calumny. Seduce your rival's lover - seduce their sibling, hell, seduce their MOTHER! If you can't duel the object of your character's venegeance directly, then fight their lackeys, their right-hands - the real ending of Road House isn't Dalton fighting Wesley and his henchmen, it's Dalton fighting Jimmy, the "captain" of Wesley's "guard," then dragging Jimmy's body into the river and floating it downstream to Wesley. Everything after that is just tidying up loose ends.

Use your character's power in the setting - again, this is another singular strength of Flashing Blades. Use your character's influence as a clergyman to sway public opinion about your rival - and if you're a Bishop or a Cardinal, EXCOMMUNICATE a few of their followers! If your character is a Magistrate, toss someone in jail, and if you're a City Mayor or a Provincial Governor, what's the point of having troops at your beck and call if you can't use them to knock down a door and drag someone off? And never forget the awesome powers of the Royal Ministers: prison, assasination, reducing Social Rank - seriously, ruining them at court could be worse than sticking a handspan of steel in their guts. If you don't want to be Terry Benedict, then be Khan instead.

Khan: I've done far worse than kill you, Admiral. I've hurt you. And I wish to go on hurting you.

- Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

What this comes down to is, in choosing an object for your vengeance, give your vengeance breadth. Make killing the six-fingered man secondary to bringing down the entire bloody-handed House of Rugen. Their titles, their lands, their offices, their place in society all become fair game for the truly vengeful. In this you can generate a campaign's worth of friction and swashbuckling action galore!