"Oh boy, isn't this GREAT!?!"

The Musketeers premiers on BBC America Sunday, 22 June.

Hopefully this fares better than Queen of Swords or Young Blades.

Thirty Musketeers

Yesterday Tim Knight at HeroPress posted pictures of parties of fantasy adventurers as seen in different movies and televisions shows.

That got me thinking about some of the many different film versions of The Three Musketeers . . .

Les trois mousquetaires (1921)

The Three Musketeers (1921)

The Three Musketeers (1935)

The Three Musketeers (1948)

Les trois mousquetaires: Première époque - Les ferrets de la reine (1961)

The Three Musketeers (1973)

The Three Musketeers (1993)

The Man in the Iron Mask (1998)

The Three Musketeers (2011)

Oh, and, of course, I can't leave out these guys . . .

Mickey, Donald, Goofy: The Three Musketeers (2004)

Swashbucklers on the Telly

Bayuca is the blog I hope RBE grows up to be someday - it's consistently one of my favorite reads on the intrewebs.

Today's post (in Spanish) contains some exciting news for fans of swashbucklers, with no less than four series in development for television: BBC is producing a new The Three Musketeers series for 2014: Starz is working on Black Sails, a prequel of sorts to Treasure Island featuring the exploits of Captain Flint and his crew, also for 2014; NBC is producing Crossbones, another pirate series; and a Captain Alatriste series is being prepared in Spain, with anticipated release in other countries as well.

I think I'm gonna need to upgrade my DVR.

The Pen and the Sword: The Three Musketeers

The hour having come, they went with their four lackeys to a spot behind the Luxembourg given up to the feeding of goats. Athos threw a piece of money to the goatkeeper to withdraw. The lackeys were ordered to act as sentinels.

A silent party soon drew near to the same enclosure, entered, and joined the Musketeers. Then, according to foreign custom, the presentations took place.

The Englishmen were all men of rank; consequently the odd names of their adversaries were for them not only a matter of surprise, but of annoyance.

"But after all," said Lord de Winter, when the three friends had been named, "we do not know who you are. We cannot fight with such names; they are names of shepherds."

"Therefore your lordship may suppose they are only assumed names," said Athos.

"Which only gives us a greater desire to know the real ones," replied the Englishman.

"You played very willingly with us without knowing our names," said Athos, "by the same token that you won our horses."

"That is true, but we then only risked our pistoles; this time we risk our blood. One plays with anybody; but one fights only with equals."

"And that is but just," said Athos, and he took aside the one of the four Englishmen with whom he was to fight, and communicated his name in a low voice.

Porthos and Aramis did the same.

"Does that satisfy you?" said Athos to his adversary. "Do you find me of sufficient rank to do me the honor of crossing swords with me?"

"Yes, monsieur," said the Englishman, bowing.

"Well! now shall I tell you something?" added Athos, coolly.

"What?" replied the Englishman.

"Why, that is that you would have acted much more wisely if you had not required me to make myself known."

"Why so?"

"Because I am believed to be dead, and have reasons for wishing nobody to know I am living; so that I shall be obliged to kill you to prevent my secret from roaming over the fields."

The Englishman looked at Athos, believing that he jested, but Athos did not jest the least in the world.

The Pen and the Sword: The Three Musketeers

"Come, gentlemen, have you decided?" cried Jussac for the third time.

"It is done, gentlemen," said Athos.

"And what is your choice?" asked Jussac.

"We are about to have the honor of charging you," replied Aramis, lifting his hat with one hand and drawing his sword with the other.

"Ah! You resist, do you?" cried Jussac.

"S'blood; does that astonish you?"

And the nine combatants rushed upon each other with a fury which however did not exclude a certain degree of method.

Athos fixed upon a certain Cahusac, a favorite of the cardinal's. Porthos had Bicarat, and Aramis found himself opposed to two adversaries. As to d'Artagnan, he sprang toward Jussac himself.

The heart of the young Gascon beat as if it would burst through his side--not from fear, God he thanked, he had not the shade of it, but with emulation; he fought like a furious tiger, turning ten times round his adversary, and changing his ground and his guard twenty times. Jussac was, as was then said, a fine blade, and had had much practice; nevertheless it required all his skill to defend himself against an adversary who, active and energetic, departed every instant from received rules, attacking him on all sides at once, and yet parrying like a man who had the greatest respect for his own epidermis.

This contest at length exhausted Jussac's patience. Furious at being held in check by one whom he had considered a boy, he became warm and began to make mistakes. D'Artagnan, who though wanting in practice had a sound theory, redoubled his agility. Jussac, anxious to put an end to this, springing forward, aimed a terrible thrust at his adversary, but the latter parried it; and while Jussac was recovering himself, glided like a serpent beneath his blade, and passed his sword through his body. Jussac fell like a dead mass.

- The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas

"In the Age of the Three Musketeers and Captain Alatriste!"

This month's RPG Blog Carnival topic is Running Games in Established Settings.

Why do we play in settings others have created? What are your favorite? (sic) Why is it that we are continually drawn to them? Are they a crutch? Do you modify your established setting to match your game? I’d love to hear any and all thoughts on the matter.

My current campaign, like many others I've run before it, is set in the most accessible and heavily supported roleplaying game-world ever: our own. Entire libraries of books, movies, music and other media present this game-world in lavish, unequaled detail, unlocking its secrets, hinting at its mysteries.

One of the main advantages of using any established setting is that many of the players around the table may begin the campaign with some of familiarity with the game-world. This can be particularly relevant to sandbox settings as it reduces the effort asked of the players to get up to speed at the beginning of the campaign. Games set in the our own world may have the lowest barrier to entry of any established setting, despite the richness and complexity.

But real-world settings also offer another advantage, the interplay of fact and fiction. Campaigns set in the real-world, past or present, may also draw from popular fictional tropes, providing more avenues of familiarity for the players.

The tagline for my Obsidian Portal campaign wiki, frex, reads, "Swashbuckling Adventure in the Age of the Three Musketeers and Captain Alatriste!" Though I've gone to some lengths to get the history right, my game-world isn't strictly historical; it's a blending of the 17th century with the fictional universes of Alexandre Dumas, Arturo Pérez-Reverte, Robert E. Howard, Rafael Sabatini. the baroness Orczy, and others. In the campaign so far, the adventurers fought a duel alongside Gil de Berault, from Stanley J. Weyman's Under the Red Robe, and were enlisted to seize a castle from an alleged Spanish spy by his half-brother, Marius de Condillac, from Rafael Sabatini's Saint Martin's Summer. Along similar lines, I've also pulled in many of the 'canon' characters from the Flashing Blades adventures, such as Beinvenu, the ambassador from The Ambassador's Tales, and the vicomte de Praz-de-Lys, from, "The Great Marksmanship Tourney."

One of the challenges of blending fact and fiction is reconciling the historical record with the romances. Frex, M. Dumas based many of the characters of The Three Musketeers on historical figures, but he wasn't faithful to the historical timeline in doing so. The real-life Treville, for instance, didn't become captain-lieutenant of the King's Musketeers until more than a decade after the events of the first novel, but in order to take advantage of the players' familiarity with the tales, the fictional characters took precedence over their historical counterparts in my campaign.

Another challenge is deciding whether or not the actions of the players' characters can change the established setting. This is a particularly pertinent question when dealing with a campaign set in our own past; historical fiction, in particular cape-and-sword romances, may have the characters participating in historical events and interacting with historical figures, but is less likely to have them changing events in ways which significantly deviate from the record of the past. In many cases, the characters of the stories occupy the interstices of history.

Roleplaying games are different from stories, however. In sandbox settings in particular, the players are not constrained to follow a particular narrative by the referee, so the inevitable question is, 'Can my character change history?' In the case of Flashing Blades, where the rewards system is such that characters may, though their careers, reach positions of influence - bishop or cardinal, general and marshal, royal minister, master of a knightly order - which potentially allow them to alter the course of France, this is an especially pertinent question. With this in mind, I make clear on my campaign wiki that the answer is yes, they can change history by their decisions and actions. As such, part of my preparation for the campaign is considering what happens should such world-altering events come to pass. Frex, one of the most obvious and sweeping is, what happens if Cardinal Richelieu dies prematurely? Who is his likely successor, and what effect could the change have upon the future of France? There are few better ways to let the players know their characters are movers-and-shakers than allowing the 'metaplot' of the setting to change as a direct response of their choices.

DVR Alert

On Thursday, 23 August, Turner Classic Movies is screening The Three Musketeers and The Pirate as part of its tribute to Gene Kelly.

Then on Saturday, TCM honors Tyrone Power with a lineup which includes Captain from Castile but leaves off, unfortunately, The Mark of Zorro, Prince of Foxes, or The Black Swan.

Check your local listings for times.

Honor + Intrigue + Barbie

The title really says it all, courtesy of Rob at Vargold: The Wolf-Time.

And as another "nerd father of a young girl," I, too, bought the movie for my daughter as a gateway to swashbuckling adventures.

Cinematic: The Three Musketeers

Unfortunately I can't embed this clip from Richard Lester's The Three Musketeers, but clicking on the picture will take you to it.

You Never Forget Your First

My father took me to see The Three Musketeers when I was nine years old.

It was the Richard Lester film, with Michael York, Oliver Reed, et al., still perhaps the most faithful movie version of the tale. During the first duel, in the convent amid the laundry drying on the lines, I was literally on the edge of my seat. I take my love of reading from both my parents, but my love of movies comes very much from my dad. He introduced me to The Adventures of Robin Hood, Quentin Durward, and The Crimson Pirate during Saturday afternoon matinees on our black-and-white Sears television. Seeing swashbucklers on the big screen - in Technicolor! - was utterly breathtaking.

We used to visit our local bookstore in downtown Montrose regularly - every other Friday, on mom's payday, I could purchase two Hardy Boys books, which I would usually end up finishing by Sunday night. Prowling the stacks one Friday evening, I spotted The Three Musketeers on the shelf. It was the Signet movie tie-in, an abridged version of the original tale, and my parents let me get it along with my bi-weekly Franklin W. Dixon fix. Up to that point, Treasure Island was my favorite story, but that abridged TTM soon sat on the shelf beside it. I read it again and again.

The following year, browsing the Revell and Monogram model kits at Michael's Toy Store in the Glendale Galleria, I discovered wargames - Tobruk, from Avalon Hill, was the first, and with each birthday and Christmas - and any payday I could wheedle a parent successfully - my collection of games, then metal miniatures, expanded.

And at the tail end of 1977, I was introduced to roleplaying games.

Like many gamers, I started with D&D and its pseudo-medieval fantasy of knights in chainmail and wizards in pointy hats. From my pervious incarnation as a tabletop warlord, the tactics the game rewarded seemed intuitive. I backed up my characters with men-at-arms wielding polearms effective against both charging horses and evil warriors in plate mail - yes, I'm one of those rare gamers who used the weapons versus armor class modifiers - and archers to harry magic-users. My tactical acumen would make William Marshall proud.

I still enjoyed board games as well, of course, and in 1980 I found an unusual game, Swashbuckler. Whereas Avalon Hill had its 'bookcase games,' Yaquinto Publishing offered its own line of 'album games,' roughly the same size and shape as the cardboard slipcovers of vinyl LPs. Billed as "a game of Swordplay and Derring-Do," it offered me the chance to play the pirates and musketeers who captured my imagination as a young boy on the living room couch and in a darkened theatre with my dad.

Swashbuckler's fidelity to the genre remains remarkable to me. Sharing written orders like those of En Garde! the players choose not only to attack or parry with rapier or cutlass, but to kick, shove, throw a dagger or sword, flip a table, toss a chair, throw a mug of beer - and slip on the drink and get cut by the broken shards - yank a carpet, jump from a balcony or poop deck, swing on a chandelier or a rigging line, and wave a plumed hat in an opponent's face.

Players could choose cutlass-armed pirates or rapier-wielding musketeers for their characters in the game - my friend John and I played mostly musketeer games in the tavern half of the game-board, but perhaps our most epic games were the ones which began with a fight in the tavern and then spilled onto one of the pirate ships to claim a treasure chest or two.

The game includes rules for the players' swashbucklers to improve with experience, and we soon had our stables of characters. Mortality would claim them periodically, but one of my characters, a musketeer named André, came to outlast them all, surviving tavern brawls and boardings at sea, against rapier and cutlass and dagger and beer mug. André became nigh unstoppable - in fact, he never lost a fight in three years of dueling. His prowess legendary, I decided he needed his own character portrait, and I found the perfect picture for him, which I sketched freehand onto a custom character record, reversing the image to put the sword in his right hand where it belonged.

I took the image from the cover of my abridged paperback movie tie-in of The Three Musketeers.

I graduated high school in 1983, and John and I slowly drifted apart - I don't think I played Swashbuckler more than a couple of times after graduation. But I noticed a change in my roleplaying game tactics. I tended to use improvised weapons more often, tried to distract and befuddle my enemies rather than simply outmaneuver or overpower them. I ran a high Dexterity fighter in an AD&D game with a short sword in one hand and a spiked buckler in the other; my thieves nearly always had a dagger in their off-hands and fought from whatever high ground could be found. I became less William Marshall and more Percy Blakeney.

And in 1984, I saw a new roleplaying game, Flashing Blades, on the shelf at The Gamekeeper in the same mall were I discovered Tobruk.

My inner nine year-old remains thrilled to this day.

The Three Musketeers: The Animated Series

In 1968, Hanna-Barbera produced a Three Musketeers animated short series which aired as part of The Banana Splits show, along with an Arabian Nights cartoon and the live-action serial Danger Island.

Thanks to the miracle of the Intewebs, The Three Musketeers cartoons can be found online, in their entirety, at The Big Cartoon Database. Each runs about eight-and-a-half minutes and features the four Musketeers plus a young wannabe named Tooly in a variety of adventures.

They are surprisingly well-written, and I gleaned a number of ideas for my Flashing Blades campaign.