Say you want to run a swashbuckling campaign. Be it a historically-accurate game set in 17th-century Paris, a happy-go-lucky game of pirates out for Spanish gold, or even a Solomon Kane-ish chronicle with franky fantastic and/or horrific elements.

What is it that you want the system to do?

And what systems do you feel have the right tools to pull it off?

Of current games, All For One: Regime Diabolique (using Ubiquity) looks good, but I'm really digging Honor + Intrigue, which uses the system from Barbarians of Lemuria.

There's an only Flashing Blades supplement I might get in pdf, as it supposedly has details on both the Musketeers and Cardinals Guard, which would be very useful for running games set in Paris. Paris Gothique for All for One would be another must have too, as it details Paris at the time

i'm curious about this, as well.  i have flashing blades + high seas (the 17th century Caribbean supplement) but haven't read them all the way through yet.  

offhand, could something like MRQ pirates + combat maneuvers do it well?  i have the former but have only heard of the latter thanks to folks raving about MRQ2.

I want something that has fast and easy dueling--that makes play and choices fun, without bogging down the resolution.
I want to able to have the heroes swing across a room on a curtain and that be the BEST possible choice from time to time.
I want "face" to be involved, dueling as well as bravery/cowardice, facing down and making opponents step away by sheer courage and conviction.

Romance and the possibility of females being able to step into a pure fighting role.  Like a Joan of Arc without the religious connection.

Quote from: Marleycat;555531Romance and the possibility of females being able to step into a pure fighting role.  Like a Joan of Arc without the religious connection.

 I assumed that was given....

Quote from: Silverlion;555532I assumed that was given....

Usually if you go female in a swashbuckling game that's historically accurate your best bet is to go the Templar or maybe Pirate route.  The first has proof the second not so much.  Besides I want to be a musketeer.

And romance is a given. I just want to try the "chaser" role and still be in setting and character without straining SoD.

Swashbuckling adventure style games are something I've always been interested in so I've picked up and run a bunch over time. I've copies of Pirates & Plunder, Flashing Blades, Privateers and Gentlemen and Seventh Seas. The one I've enjoyed running the most though is Lace and Steel:

Combat: Lace and Steel's combat, specifically the hand to hand combat, feels like a fencing match. It's run through a mini-game using cards that come with the game. Players and their opponents play from a hand of tactics dealt to them The combatants stats and skills determine both how many of these cards they are dealt and exactly how much mileage they can get out of it. There's a real feel that players are exchanging strikes and parries, locking blades and trading repartee jabs over locked hilts. It really is a lot of fun.

Interactions: In addition to skills and stats, which help control how players interact socially, there are also emotional traits called Ties, Antipathies and Self Image. Player develop ties and antipathies during play. If you have a tie to you best friend then you will get a slight skill bump when performing skills that involve him. If you have an antipathy to something then you will get a slight skill loss when dealing with the focus of your antipathy. Self Image represents how at ease you are with yourself at that moment. If you self image drops into negatives it can effect your healing rate and your chances to increase skill after an adventure. These emotional stats really come into their own when players start using social skills. A truly vicious exchange of repartee at court can have really meaning consequences for a player. Aggressive social interaction is actually modeled much like the fencing system.

Magic: Lace and Steel has a magic system and is set in a fantasy world. Magicians learn magical skills (Divination, Necromancy, Alchemy) and then within the category learn individual spells that they can use. The over all effect is that most magicians choose a few skills and work to develop those as high as they can.

Nonhumans and Beasts: The playable non-human races are Centaurs, Harpies, Satyrs and Pixies. Optionally a player could talk the GM into allowing an Ogre or Troll character (there are rules for generating them). When I ran it the nonhumans were very much in the background. I wanted to run a very human-centric version of the game. The Beastiary is very, very brief. In an editor's note the writer says he wanted the primary villains of the game to humans instead of a 'monster of the week.' That said it would be quite easy to make up any monsters you wanted. I certainly did.

Sorry, I went on and, but I wanted to give some specific answers as to why I really like this game.

Sounds fun, where do you get it?

Bleah, used to be downloadable from Drivethru, but I don't see it anymore. Guess it's faded into the ether. You might find a copy on ebay.

Quote from: IceBlinkLuck;555556Bleah, used to be downloadable from Drivethru, but I don't see it anymore. Guess it's faded into the ether. You might find a copy on ebay.

Too bad because it sounds 7th Sea like.

Swashbuckling Combat: Which needs a heavy focus upon actively defending yourself and manoeuvring into an advantageous position. It also needs to be pretty pacey, if your spending half an hour looking stuff up when you yank a rug from under someone, it dosen't feel swashbucklery.

High Stakes: In the Three Musketeers, when someone gets shot, they either die or spend months recovering from getting shot. Your not playing a bunch of Conans here, you are very much mortal and to survive through Wits and Skill rather than raw power and healing magics.


Looking at what is out there and I have experience of:

Seventh Sea has a lot of nice stuff, but the maths is poor and character generation is a bad joke.

Lace and Steel has some ok stuff, but I don't really like cards and the background is a bit to focused on weird monster shagging for my tastes.

Savage Worlds, using the Solomon Kane or Pirates of the Spanish Main may well work, although the maths is pretty broken if that sort of thing bothers you.

All For One looks really cool, if you want to play in a demon infested Paris. I haven't really played it though, so there may be some jarring stuff under the hood.


I have never played Flashing Blades, and I don't even own Honor + Intrigue.

Quote from: jadrax;555576Savage Worlds, using the Solomon Kane or Pirates of the Spanish Main may well work, although the maths is pretty broken if that sort of thing bothers you.

Apparently rerolling using [dice-1],instead of just adding the dice, fixes the issue most people complain about with regard to the math - at least, that's what I've heard. It'd probably be my pick, though I know The Butcher has a sort of love/hate/meh thing with SW so to try and pick some other things...I'm wondering if something like MasterBook might be good for swashbuckling, with its Drama Deck and such like, though the rules are a bit involved?
Or D6 System (if it worked for Star Wars, it has to be swashbuckly...).
Or Marvel Super Heroes (although you'd need to adapt it to a completely different genre for this, so I may be insane; I haven't played it except as a supers game but it seems like a simple game where there's alot of fancy combat manuevers and such).

I have been itching to run the SW pirates of the spanish main.

I enjoyed 7th Sea, the few times I played it.

I want very low lethality, a quick and easy improvised stunting system, and mook rules. That's about it, really.