DVR Alert

This Saturday, 9 March, TCM shows Tyrone Power's Captain from Castile. The Michoacán locations and Lee J. Cobb's standout performance as the troubled adventurer Juan Garcia are my highlights of this epic swashbuckler.

Check your local listings for times, of course.

Wednesday Wyeth

Anything Goes!

Me: . . . [I]f you sat down to play a game of, say, swashbuckling adventure, why did you create a character who desires neither swashbuckling nor adventure?

TheBigDice: What if I want to play a Jesuit priest? Someone completely genre-appropriate. But that doesn't own a sword, has never had any training in swinging from chandeliers and has no intentions of ever personally killing a man. Of course, he's got political acumen, contacts and social skills. He's a completely functional character for the setting. He just needs a reason to adventure, a push out of the door.

Me: Then he's not genre-appropriate as a swashbuckling adventurer. He's suitable as a period-appropriate npc, not a player character.

TheBigDice: See, now we're getting somewhere. What you're actually saying is, in a swashbuckling adventure, everyone must play a swashbuckling adventurer, or the campaign isn't about what you as the GM wants it to be about. So we're not actually in a true sandbox here. It's probably got aspects in common with a sandbox, but given that you're saying no to a primarily social character in favour of action oriented ones, I wouldn't say that the "open world" ethos is really on the table. If you're unwilling to accommodate a character that talks his way out of situations rather than fights his way out of them, and aren't prepared to give what [Mike 'Old Geezer' Mornard] described as an unwilling adventurer the push the character needs, then are you really giving your players the freedom that a sandbox seems to demand?

There are things I don't write about because I know that can't do them justice.

I like forum discussions because they give me a chance to discuss games and gaming styles that I don't really understand, that are too far removed from my interests or experience for me to say anything I consider meaningful about them. While blogging as a medium works well for developing an idea, forums are a great place for asking questions.

I mention this because while I believe TheBigDice is sincere in his responses, I think the fact that he doesn't like sandbox game-worlds colors his interpretation of how they work in play, and in this instance I think it leads him to a pretty significant misapprehension.

Put simply, a sandbox game-world isn't the same thing as a kitchen-sink setting.

When I pitch my campaign, I believe I'm very clear about what it is and what it isn't: "Le Ballet de l'Acier – The Dance of Steel – is a swashbuckling adventure campaign set in 17th century France for the Flashing Blades roleplaying game. This is the age of D'Artagnan and Diego Alatriste, Gil de Berault and Percy Blakeney, Cyrano de Bergerac and the marquis de Bardelys, Lady Clarick de Winter and Madeleine de Maupin, an age of honor and intrigue, where a stout heart, a strong wrist, and cold steel could bring fortune or death."

In fact, I outlined the campaign premise before I settled on using Flashing Blades; one of the reasons I chose FB is that the chargen rules produce swashbuckling characters. It is a core conceit of the game. Sure, you can play a Jesuit priest if you like, but it's a game designed for you to play Aramis, not Fray Felipe, and that's one of the reasons I picked that particular game over the many other choices available to me.

The campaign I choose to run - the campaign I offer to interested players - is one of swashbuckling adventurers. It's a campaign which celebrates the genre; it doesn't attempt to deconstruct it. Within that core conceit, there is wide latitude. You can play a priest like Aramis, as noted above, or a courtier and saloniste in the mode of Francisco de Quevedo, or a doctor and surgeon in the style of Captain Blood or Doctor Livesey. You can play a character who is witty and attempts to use persuasion and guile to achieve his ends.

But if your first inclination on being invited to play in a game about swashbucklers is to make a character who is not a swashbuckler, then really, how engaged are you with the campaign?

A sandbox game-world isn't a featureless plain of sand. It has boundaries. It has conceits. And one of the referee's jobs is to sell those to his players, and one of the players' jobs is to accept them. There may be negotiation by all parties around those boundaries and conceits. Showing up with a character who ignores those conceits, however, and expecting the referee to acquiesce 'because SANDBOX!' reflects a fundamental lack of understanding about the way a sandbox game-world is prepared and run.

And if, as a general rule, you don't like something, you're probably not the best person to talk about how it's supposed to work.

TERCIO CREAT.IV.O's Online Store Goes Live

TERCIO CREAT.IV.O, producers of the skirmish minis game 1650, opened their online store to purchase their stunning figures.

I've been following the development of the 1650 line with interest. The sculpts are beautiful and the characters fanciful and original - something like Asmodée Edition's Helldorado line, but without the magic and monsters. My favorites so far are el Sargento (pictured at right), Irene Vioque, la Guardia, and el Mochilero.

It appears that they will ship worldwide, though there's no mention of cost - I haven't yet created an account to test the store. The figures themselves are pricey by my ridiculously cheap-ass standards, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't be willing to slap my hard-won shekels down for figures I like - it just makes me choosier.

I've dipped from the 1650 and Helldorado figure well several times for inspiration when creating non-player characters for my Flashing Blades campaign.

The Pen and the Sword: Black Vulmea's Vengeance

He set about reloading the pistol he had fired, with quick sure hands in the dark. It consumed the last grain of powder in the flask. The white men lurked like phantoms of murder about the doorway of the stair, waiting to strike suddenly and deadly. Time dragged. No sound came from above. Wentyard's imagination was at work again, picturing an invasion from the ravine, and dusky figures gliding about them, surrounding the chamber. He spoke of this and Vulmea shook his head. "When they come I'll hear them; nothing on two legs can get in here without my knowing it."

Suddenly Wentyard was aware of a dim glow pervading the ruins. The moon was rising above the cliffs. Vulmea swore. "No chance of our getting away tonight. Maybe those black dogs were waiting for the moon to come up. Go into the chamber where you slept and watch the ravine. If you see them sneaking in that way, let me know. I can take care of any that come down the stair."

Wentyard felt his flesh crawl as he made his way through those dim chambers. The moonlight glinted down through vines tangled across the broken roofs, and shadows lay thick across his path. He reached the chamber where he had slept, and where the coals of the fire still glowed dully. He started across toward the outer door when a soft sound brought him whirling around. A cry was wrenched from his throat.

Out of the darkness of a corner rose a swaying shape; a great wedge-shaped head and an arched neck were outlined against the moonlight. In one brain-staggering instant the mystery of the ruins became clear to him; he knew what had watched him with lidless eyes as he lay sleeping, and what had glided away from his door as he awoke-he knew why the Indians would not come into the ruins or mount the cliffs above them. He was face to face with the devil of the deserted city, hungry at last-and that devil was a giant anaconda!

In that moment John Wentyard experienced such fear and loathing horror as ordinarily come to men only in foul nightmares. He could not run, and after that first scream his tongue seemed frozen to his palate. Only when the hideous head darted toward him did he break free from the paralysis that engulfed him and then it was too late.

He struck at it wildly and futilely, and in an instant it had him-lapped and wrapped about with coils which were like huge cables of cold, pliant steel. He shrieked again, fighting madly against the crushing constriction-he heard the rush of Vulmea's boots-- then the pirate's pistols crashed together and he heard plainly the thud of the bullets into the great snake's body. It jerked convulsively and whipped from about him, hurling him sprawling to the floor, and then it came at Vulmea like the rush of a hurricane through the grass, its forked tongue licking in and out in the moonlight, and the noise of its hissing filling the chamber.

Vulmea avoided the battering-ram stroke of the blunt nose with a sidewise spring that would have shamed a starving jaguar, and his cutlass was a sheen in the moonlight as it hewed deep into the mighty neck. Blood spurted and the great reptile rolled and knotted, sweeping the floor and dislodging stones from the wall with its thrashing tail. Vulmea leaped high, clearing it as it lashed but Wentyard, just climbing to his feet, was struck and knocked sprawling into a corner. Vulmea was springing in again, cutlass lifted, when the monster rolled aside and fled through the inner door, with a loud rushing sound through the thick vegetation.

- "Black Vulmea's Vengeance," Robert E. Howard

Okay, This Is Fun

Paul at Quickly, Quietly, Carefully put together a random pulp adventure name generator.

Here're my results -

• The Clouds Adept
• The Gods of Zamzig
• Chitterer in Shadow
• Crystal of the Lady-Hellion
• The Lurking Dimmet
• In the Acropolis of Zib
• The Three Kings
• The Aries Gulf
• A Fiend Shall be Born
• Vampire in the Pendulum
• The Thunder Mistress
• Dusk Into Middledon
• In the Keep of Nâl
• The Tentacle of Yim-qiz
• Beneath the Cimmerian Reaches
• Cult of the Gloomy Digon
• The Gold of Yimcthu
• The Mandible of Fanâlav
• The Citadel of the Giant
• Magenta Snake
• The Omega Gulf
• Atop the Moonlit Wasteland
• Hoard of Qulgarqizav
• Dragon-Killers of Dozul
• Out of the Cassiopeia-Gulf
• In the Citadel of Aaryim
• Steading of the Crocodile
• The Stranger of the Darkling Cave
• God of Copper
• The Call of Cthuxilqul
• The Imp of Brass
• The Dungeon of Yoza'ygg

This is just crying out to be paired with the PULP-O-MIZER.

Y'know, there're actually a few of those - The Gold of Ymicthu, Hoard of Qulgarqizav, God of Copper - that would make great rumors in my Flashing Blades campaign . . .

DVR Alert

TCM ushers in March with Jose Ferrer's Oscar-winning performance in Cyrano de Bergerac Friday night - this is one of those movies fans, and gamers, of the genre shouldn't miss.

Local listings, yadda, yadda.