A Couple of Swashbuckling Blogs to Check Out

A Danish gamer named Christian, who goes by the handle Battle_Mad_Ronin at Big Purple, started a Tumblr of actual play reports for his The Queen's Cavaliers campaign, The First of Their Names. There are five "sessions" described so far, in abundant detail; I'd like to see more about how the rules work, a 'behind the scenes' view of the actual play reports. I think this is really helpful for a new game with novel mechanics.

Tom, who goes by the handle BluSponge at Big Purple, blogs at . . . and a Brace of Pistols, a blog "dedicated to swashbuckling, fantasy, and horror gaming." Tom plays Witch Hunter: The Invisible World, and includes some great game-specific materials for that game, but he also writes about gaming and refereeing; his post, "The Art of Letting Go," is a good read.

Please show these guys some love and some clicks.

Aboard the Grim Cutlass

Jack at Tales of the Grotesque and Dungeonesque posted about his pirate campaign recently - watch for the TMNT reference . . .

Letters to Isabel, Redux

Marcello recounts a game played by the adventurers in his latest missive to his dear Isabel.

I love this, integrating another game played by the players into the context of their characters and the game-world, in this case the board game The Resistance. It's one of those things I've done for many years, and it never ceases to make for a fun game-day.

Added bonus: The campaign now has an Obsidian Portal wiki going for it.

Letters from Isabel, Redux

Jedediah at Book Scorpion's Lair channels a little Ricky Nelson for the latest installment in the continuing adventures of Marcelo and friends.

This whole campaign is awash in swashbucklery goodness, and I'm so glad that Jedediah is posting them as a resource for the rest of us - I have to add that I really enjoy the personal letter format as well; I like Marcelo's voice as a correspondent.

Backswords & Bucklers Actual Play Report

Supplanter at Big Purple posted an actual play report after running Backswords & Bucklers - the first OSR game to really capture my attention - as a pick-up game at a con. Here's a little excerpt -

Rafe calls an alert to Sondra, but has to concentrate on the fight he's in. Now Sondra knows the spies are escaping, and the spies know she knows they are escaping. They row like hell and Sondra tries to pick them off with her trusty sling. She actually manages to conk out the other bravo, and when the Spymaster himself finally seizes the oars, she even smacks him one. But she doesn't take him out before darkness swallows the little skiff. "Of course Sondra hit both of them in the dark at ever-increasing range," we agreed. "She's a Wise Woman!"

Rafe gets in a serious hit on his opponent, who has no interest in fighting to the death, so he turns on his heels and flees. Rafe chases after him. There are no explicit mechanics for attacking a fleeing but aware opponent, so I just flipped B&B's -4 penalty for attacking invisible opponents around and made it a bonus to hit. It does take two rounds before Rafe's strikes did enough damage to puncture the bravo's leather jack, so it will be that much longer until he and Sondra reunite to deal with the fleeing boat. He of course searches the corpse too, because Scoundrel.

Good times.

Check it out, both the game and the post.

Letters to Isabel, Redux

The title of the post says it all: courtly intrigue.

I'm often left at more than a little bit of a loss when referees complain that all their players want to do is hack-and-slash. I mean, I get it, but it also leaves me a little sad, because this right here is a very big part of what makes roleplaying games fun for me. Manipulating friends and outwitting and outmanoeuvering enemies is something I fall into naturally at the game table, which is why it was no surprise to be at all to find out my Bartle test profile was Socializer.

It's also why one of my favorite skills in a roleplaying game is Bribery.

I know this is one of the reasons the cape-and-sword genre appeals to me so much for gaming. My predilection to turn everything I run into a spy caper and my passion for the endgame are both perfectly at home in swashbucklers.

Letters to Isabel, Continued

The latest installment of Jededian's 7th Sea actual play reports find Marcello confronted with his comrades' discomfiture over being too good a scoundrel.

Marcello continues to be a character after my own heart.

Gaming is Good

Pop quiz, hotshot. What do Santa Claus, Vito Corleone, and Emperor Palpatine have in common?

I channeled all of them while roleplaying Cardinal Richelieu on Saturday night.

This was the first chance I had to first-person roleplay His Eminence in our campaign, and wow, what a rush! First came Santa Claus. Riordan O'Neill, King's Musketeer, spotted a tail following him shortly after his return to Paris, and the next day he and his travelling companion, formerly Huguenot but recently converted doctor Guillaume Sébastien were rounded up by a contingent of the Cardinal's Guards and escorted to the Louvre for an interview with the Cardinal. The prelate sat, stroking a cat in his lap - which got a laugh for its Blofed-ness - as he first offered the doctor a commission as a médecin ordinaire du roi, one of the king's physicians, which the doctor accepted quickly. Next it was the soldier's turn, as His Eminence dangled an ensign's commission in his Guards. Riordan was sorely tempted but in the end he turned it down, even in the face of blackmail over a duel he fought a year ago in a Parisian alley.

After the Musketeer was dismissed, I got to pull out Vito Corleone - 'I may call upon you for a service' - and Emperor Palpatine as I broke down the doctor's resistance to spying at court for the Cardinal. Guillaume is genuinely conflicted over his character's religion and sincere in bridging the divide between his former and present co-religionists - and this produced some truly inspired roleplaying - and the Cardinal used this to insure the doctor's submission.

I also got to see how well one of my house rules worked in actual play as well as put 'rulings, not rules' into action. Player characters in my campaign may earn gloire (glory) dice, which are applied to openings and promotions in the various career paths open to the characters. Riordan earned two gloire dice, one for being decorated on campaign, the other for participating in the cavalry duel with Imperial soldiers at Casale. A roll of 10+ on 2D6 is normally required both an opening and a promotion from sergeant to ensign in the Musketeers in my campaign, so Riordan's player got to roll three dice instead. He cruised on the first roll with a fifteen, but only managed a nine on the second; after thinking about it for a moment, he asked if serving as cornet in Challons' company was worth a bonus, and I agreed that his brevet rank was worth a +1 to the roll, so he got his commission. This was something I'd contemplated as a house rule previously, and now I'm going to make it so, but with a slight twist - more about that another time.

I left my iPad at home, so I ran the game wiki-free for a change. I'm a little startled sometimes at how good my memory for the campaign background is - the only npc name I couldn't remember was Riordan's old landlady, and I improvised a pair of random encounters on the road home.

Finally, this was the first time in over a year the three of us were in the same room together to play. Playing over Skype is good enough, but face-to-face is better.

Now the two are off to Fontainebleau, to join the Musketeers' company and the king's court, respectively.

Gaming is good.

Letters to Isabel, Redux

"Dear Isabel,
You may find parts of what you are about to read sickening and I apologise for that. But I'm not in the habit of lying to you and you know yourself fully well what a dark place this world can be, so I am not going to sugarcoat what has happened."

The stakes of Marcello's game rise precipitously in Jedediah's ongoing 7th Sea campaign.

Addendum (11/4/12): Part 2 of Marcello and friends' adventures include a dangerous duel.

Breaking Balls

Last Friday, pitcher Barry Zito became an unlikely hero to the baseball fans of San Francisco when he pitched 7 2/3 shutout innings and saved the Giants' season in beating the Cardinals, staving off elimination in the National League Championship Series, and bringing the final two games of the series home to AT&T Park. Zito, the 2002 AL Cy Young winner with the Oakland A's, came to the Giants in 2007 as the highest paid pitcher in baseball and promptly proved to be a bust, turning in end-of-the-rotation outings while drawing an ace pitcher's salary. This season saw him turn things around a bit, going 15-8, but even the regular season resurgence didn't really prepare anyone for his Game 5 gem.

In a league where most of the pitchers can hit the low to mid-nineties with their heaters, Zito beat a good-hitting Cardinals lineup with a fastball that never clocked over eighty-six miles per hour, and that only twice. What made it work was a remarkably sharp curveball that he consistently pitched for strikes. The beauty of Zito's curve, which travels in the low to mid-seventies, is that hitters have to adjust their timing to be ready for it, and when they do, an eighty-three mile-per-hour fastball suddenly looks rocket propelled by comparison.

I watched the game, and I honestly have to say it was one of the best pitching performances I've seen - including King Felix's perfecto earlier this season - in recent memory. He snapped off breaking ball after breaking ball that dropped through the zone, and when the Cards' hitters went after it, he shut them down with a high fastball. This is what it must've been like watching Sal Maglie pitch.

I was reminded of great curveballs by the cheese my players threw at me this weekend. After returning from Milan on their mission to located and perhaps ransom the vicomte de Praz-de-Lys, they received word that the king's grace was granted to them and they were free to return to Paris, their exile ended. However, with rumors of the long-delayed English fleet on its way to the Mediterranean at last swirling around Turin, and their new commander dangling the prize of sacking Genoa before them when the ships arrived, they decided to blow off returning to France, to remain in Turin in anticipation of the spring campaign against the Genoese and the Spanish.

What the adventurers did not and could not know is that the English warships, soundly defeated by the Spanish during a raid on Cadiz, and that the French were pursuing a separate peace with Spain which culminated in the Treaty of Monçon in March 1626. There never was going to be a resumption of the campaign against Genoa.

And that's perhaps why I didn't expect the players to opt to stay in Turin. From our previous game-day, it sounded like they were ready for their characters to head back to Paris. I planted the rumors of the English fleet and the spring offensive more for reasons of historical interest - this is what was being discussed in the courts of Europe in December 1625 - but I didn't really expect them to bite.

And rather than following through on their plans to go home, they opted to stay for the fireworks instead.

Meanwhile, Riordan O'Neill, the King's Musketeer, has been carrying on an affair with a lady-in-waiting to the princess of Piedmont during his time in Savoy, and I got another curveball there - he was actively pursuing a way to marry his mistress, despite their differences in social standing, even to the point of hoping he would get her pregnant before she was married off to a Savoyard soldier.

And then, when his hopes were dashed, he made sure the break was clean by trying to seduce her maid.

Running a sandbox means being prepared to handle the breaking balls the players send my way. Instead of rushing back to Paris with the vicomte's coded message to 'PROTECT WIFE' in their minds, they decided to pursue fortune and glory and settled for a chimera instead.

In practical terms for me as the referee, this advances my timeline considerably. Rather than arriving in Paris in January, they will arrive in April. I need to consider how the passage of four months affects the machinations of different non-player characters and their complex web of intrigues. What happened to the vicomte's family in Paris, for example? The players' original determination to aid the vicomte disappeared when presented with the chance to fill their saddlebags with Genoese loot. Now the fates of the vicomte and vicomtesse may take a very different turn.

These sweeping 11-5 curveballs that buckle the knees are what make running a sandbox so much fun for me. I'm spending the next couple of weeks figuring out what happens now, how the social landscape of the game changes as a result of the players' and characters' choices.

I'l probably work on it tonight, with my laptop on my knees, as I watch the Giants battle the Cards in a win-or-go-home Game 7 to determine who goes to the World Series on Wednesday.

I hope Matt Cain's curveball is as sharp as Barry Zito's.

Letters to Isabel, Redux

FIGHT!

Lazy Saturday Link Dump

FXR's Honor + Intrigue campaign, De cape et d'épée, is underway - check out the adventure logs, and if your French isn't up to the task, remember that Translate is your friend.

The campaign starts in the midst of a trip to the market, a duel interrupted, the king thrown from his horse . . . and the assassination of Concino Concini!

If you're on Obsidian Portal and you haven't added this campaign to your favourites . . . well, why the heck haven't you added it yet?!

Beedo recounts a Gencon seminar on historical roleplaying, which he summarises thus: "The overarching advice that came out of the seminar, a guide to solving all problems that arise when running a period game, is to use common sense, don't be an ass, and have a clear understanding what everyone at the table wants from the game." This is a topic I've thought about a bit, and I always like to read others' take on it.

Daystar Eld has a great piece on offering meaningful choices to the players and their characters. Hint: tough choices are good, and knowing they're tough choices is better.

Letters to Isabel, Redux

Marcello's impersonation takes a seductive turn in the latest actual play log of Jedediah's 7th Sea campaign.

I hope we're not heading down a path toward Fifty Shades of Don Gabriel.

And I get the feeling we'll be hearing more about the dangerous M. du Doré.

I appreciated the behind-baseball commentary, but I really like seeing the campaign through Marcello's eyes, at least as much of it as he's willing to share with Isabel.

The Saga Concludes

Sean B at Wind and Savages concludes his pictorial history of his last campaign, bringing the saga of Vivienne de Malbec and Girolamo de Sangiovese to a hilarious close - seriously, I laughed out loud at the alchemist Dom Perignon and "poisoning" Rousanne.

Links to parts 1 through 3 can be found here. The whole thing is inspired, particularly the tongue-in-cheek names, which put some gamers teeth on edge but I love.

Now with More Pictorial Adventure Log!

So apparently I linked Part 2 of Sean B's adventure log a week or so ago; over the past week Sean posted Part 1 and Part 3 as well.

You'll laugh, you'll cry . . .

Letters to Isabel, Reprise

The plot thickens in Jedediah's latest 7th Sea update.

I really like Marcello's decision to impersonate Don Gabriel - very clever.

More importantly, I like that the characters have a plan more involved that, Come in hard, rapiers blazing. Intrigue is, to me, just as fundamental to cape-and-sword tales as dueling.

Now THAT's an Adventure Log!

Sean B at Wine and Savages gets it done.

Bonus points for including a picture of Sophie Marceau, with bonus bonus points for a picture of her as d'Artagnan's daughter.

Letters to Isabel

Jedediah at Book Scorpion's Lair has another post on his 7th Sea campaign up, and that Marcello is a nasty piece of work.

This is a campaign after my own heart.

Field Test

During the course of our game today, the adventurers found themselves on the road, travelling from Turin to Milan, so I decided to give the event table I created a couple of months ago a try.

First, the adventurers were stranded for a few days at a Milanese inn when their horses took ill from some bad feed (26), then they were hit by a sharp snowstorm (66) which forced them to find shelter and cost them another travel day at least - and probably more as the roads turn to mud when the snow melts. The delay at the inn also resulted in one of the adventurers seducing the innkeeper's wife and a near-brawl with the woman's brothers.

The players realized that their characters are unlikely to be crossing the Alps on their way home to France after their mission to Milan is done.

So, event table actual play field test? Success!

The Cat Out of the Bag

Jedediah at Book Scorpion's Lair has another actual play log from his 7th Sea campaign, in which the intrepid adventurers learn something interesting about El Gato.