All for one! And every man for himself!
And thank you Blackadder series 1 episode 6 "The Black Seal".
Been watching the new "Musketeers" series on the TV of late. It's... fun. Frankly you might just as well call it "Musketeers of the Caribbean" and be done with it, but it's still fun, one of the few things we will actually make time to catch when it's broadcast rather than pick it up on the Catch-up service we have here. I gather it's been given the go-ahead for a second series, without Peter "mad eyes" Capaldi as Richelieu (apparently he's rather busy inside a blue police box or something) but nevertheless good news. The Wife and I enjoy it, it probably has Dumas aficionados screaming and it's complete tosh, but it's entertaining swashbuckling tosh. Toshbuckling if you like.
Toshbuckling. Hmmm. Good word, must remember that.
Anyway, it inspired me to go rooting around under the bed and haul out one of the overlooked gems in my RPG collection, namely "Lace & Steel", published in 1989(ish) by The Australian Games Group. The author was one Paul Kidd, of whom I have writted before and the art was all by the inestimable Donna Barr, creator of the "Desert Peach" (Rommel's gay younger brother), "Hader and the Colonel" (harpy soldier and a magical rabbit) and "Stinz" (German half-horses, NOT centaurs, they don't like being called that). It's the latter that Kidd heavily mined for material for Lace & Steel, his very own game of swashbuckling fantasy, and yes, that does mean you can play a half-horse musketeer. Or indeed a satyr, harpy or pixie, together with humans they form the five playable races. The setting, while firmly Cavalier years in tone, is not on Earth, it's a fantasy realm called Mittelmarch, where these five races are joined by various others on the fringes of society, goblins, ogres and trolls, while the fay stalk the woods. There is also magic, and battlefield sorcerers are walking talking artillery pieces capable of swaying the course of a battle.
Now there are other Swashbucking games, GURPS Swashbucklers comes to mind, as well as those with a fantasy tone like 7th Sea and Swashbucklers of the Seven Skies, but IMHO Lace and Steel rises above them all due to the quality of the writing, the glorious art and some lovely little innovations that make it unique. For example, as part of the Character generation you use a tarot deck. Drawing one of the Major Arcana gives you character slight bonuses or penalties to certain stats and also give that character the option of using magic. However the real treat is the card based duelling system. Here you have numerical cards marked "high", "mid" and "low", for where you swing your sword, to block a high strike you need a high card of the same or higher number otherwise the blow gets through. there are also special cards that allow you to pull stunts like disarming, feinting and dodging. Once you're used to it combat can be a surprisingly fast process. Magical battles also use cards, with sorcerers using light and shadow to attack and block. The rest of the system is quite light, skill challenges are handled by a simple difficulty rating minus the relevant stat giving you a number to roll under on 2d6, with skill levels reducing your final roll. Some care is taken with how your character interacts with others, with the possibility of you forming ties and antipathies to spice up an otherwise boring day. The world is nicely detailed too, with most European powers of the time having a analogue.
Alas the game never took off. There was a single adventure module, Castle Keitel, which I have and which is equally gorgeous but the fact that the game needed separate cards for the combat systems and was produced in a somewhat unwieldy big white box, with a wrap-around sleeve, holding four separate books probably counted against it with regard to production costs. A company called Pharos Press reprinted the main rulebooks as a single volume in 1998, but minus the cards, and you can still pick this up as a PDF in places but again it never went further. Paul Kidd did write a novel set in the world, "Mus of Kerbridge" involving a be-sourcelled mouse that gets caught up in a deadly political game, the original TSR edition of 1995 was a bit butchered apparently, but a revised edition is available from Lulu.
I still think it's a great shame the game never went further, there was so much more that could have been done, a whole world to expand into. The next module was to be about highwaymen, but Kidd has moved on with other projects and has said he's unlikely to return to this one, even if he had the time and money and when I mentioned it to Donna Barr when I got in touch with her some years ago she didn't even remember doing it. Still, I have my copy (and managed to snaffle a pdf version). Enough to let me hear the ring of steel on steel and smell the gunpowder, enough, indeed, to buckle my swash. Have at you, you curs!
Been watching the new "Musketeers" series on the TV of late. It's... fun. Frankly you might just as well call it "Musketeers of the Caribbean" and be done with it, but it's still fun, one of the few things we will actually make time to catch when it's broadcast rather than pick it up on the Catch-up service we have here. I gather it's been given the go-ahead for a second series, without Peter "mad eyes" Capaldi as Richelieu (apparently he's rather busy inside a blue police box or something) but nevertheless good news. The Wife and I enjoy it, it probably has Dumas aficionados screaming and it's complete tosh, but it's entertaining swashbuckling tosh. Toshbuckling if you like.
Toshbuckling. Hmmm. Good word, must remember that.
Anyway, it inspired me to go rooting around under the bed and haul out one of the overlooked gems in my RPG collection, namely "Lace & Steel", published in 1989(ish) by The Australian Games Group. The author was one Paul Kidd, of whom I have writted before and the art was all by the inestimable Donna Barr, creator of the "Desert Peach" (Rommel's gay younger brother), "Hader and the Colonel" (harpy soldier and a magical rabbit) and "Stinz" (German half-horses, NOT centaurs, they don't like being called that). It's the latter that Kidd heavily mined for material for Lace & Steel, his very own game of swashbuckling fantasy, and yes, that does mean you can play a half-horse musketeer. Or indeed a satyr, harpy or pixie, together with humans they form the five playable races. The setting, while firmly Cavalier years in tone, is not on Earth, it's a fantasy realm called Mittelmarch, where these five races are joined by various others on the fringes of society, goblins, ogres and trolls, while the fay stalk the woods. There is also magic, and battlefield sorcerers are walking talking artillery pieces capable of swaying the course of a battle.
Now there are other Swashbucking games, GURPS Swashbucklers comes to mind, as well as those with a fantasy tone like 7th Sea and Swashbucklers of the Seven Skies, but IMHO Lace and Steel rises above them all due to the quality of the writing, the glorious art and some lovely little innovations that make it unique. For example, as part of the Character generation you use a tarot deck. Drawing one of the Major Arcana gives you character slight bonuses or penalties to certain stats and also give that character the option of using magic. However the real treat is the card based duelling system. Here you have numerical cards marked "high", "mid" and "low", for where you swing your sword, to block a high strike you need a high card of the same or higher number otherwise the blow gets through. there are also special cards that allow you to pull stunts like disarming, feinting and dodging. Once you're used to it combat can be a surprisingly fast process. Magical battles also use cards, with sorcerers using light and shadow to attack and block. The rest of the system is quite light, skill challenges are handled by a simple difficulty rating minus the relevant stat giving you a number to roll under on 2d6, with skill levels reducing your final roll. Some care is taken with how your character interacts with others, with the possibility of you forming ties and antipathies to spice up an otherwise boring day. The world is nicely detailed too, with most European powers of the time having a analogue.
Alas the game never took off. There was a single adventure module, Castle Keitel, which I have and which is equally gorgeous but the fact that the game needed separate cards for the combat systems and was produced in a somewhat unwieldy big white box, with a wrap-around sleeve, holding four separate books probably counted against it with regard to production costs. A company called Pharos Press reprinted the main rulebooks as a single volume in 1998, but minus the cards, and you can still pick this up as a PDF in places but again it never went further. Paul Kidd did write a novel set in the world, "Mus of Kerbridge" involving a be-sourcelled mouse that gets caught up in a deadly political game, the original TSR edition of 1995 was a bit butchered apparently, but a revised edition is available from Lulu.
I still think it's a great shame the game never went further, there was so much more that could have been done, a whole world to expand into. The next module was to be about highwaymen, but Kidd has moved on with other projects and has said he's unlikely to return to this one, even if he had the time and money and when I mentioned it to Donna Barr when I got in touch with her some years ago she didn't even remember doing it. Still, I have my copy (and managed to snaffle a pdf version). Enough to let me hear the ring of steel on steel and smell the gunpowder, enough, indeed, to buckle my swash. Have at you, you curs!