Booty: Skull & Crossbones Classics

The first issue of Bob Brinkman's Skull & Crossbones Classics, a role-playing game in zine form compatible with Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG, has arrived, answering my prayers for a piratey DCC RPG. Further writings on the matter will follow...

How to Create a Swashbuckler in En Garde!

En Garde!, published by Game Designers' Workshop in 1975, "is a semi-historical game/simulation representing many of the situations of an Errol Flynn movie set in the Seventeenth or Eighteenth Centuries." We also learn in the introduction of this quasi-role-playing game that:

The game was originally devised as a fencing system, with background added to provide scenarios for the duels. After a time, it became apparent that the background was more fun than the duels, and En Garde, in its present form, was born.

More precisely, it's obvious from the rules that the game is really a simulation of The Three Musketeers.

This is my first character for En Garde!:

Strength: 12
Expertise: 9
Constitution: 11
Endurance: 132

Class: Nobleman (roll of 6 on Birth Table A)
Sibling Rank: Second Son (roll of 3 on Birth Table B)
Father's Position: Impoverished (roll of 1 on Birth Table C, Subtable: Nobleman)
Title of Father: Baron (roll of 2 on Birth Table D)
Initial Social Level: 7

This is a straighforward process. You roll 3d6 for Strength, Expertise, and Constitution. Endurance is Strength multiplied by Constitution. The rest is determined by rolling 1d6 on a few tables. Everything else is optional.

I'm not really sure how much of a role-playing game En Garde! is. The players have characters. They keep secret written orders of their activities (one activity per week). They duel, drink, gamble, join regiments, fight battles, have dalliances with mistresses, and try to increase their social standing, but it's all an abstraction. According to the section on "Birth," "The most important thing a player must know about his character is his initial social level." Two paragraphs later, the player is advised, "if desired, the character should be given a name." So, that gives you an idea of the amount of role-playing expected. None of the activities, as far as I can tell, are handled in any degree of detail more specific than writing a word or two on a piece of paper and rolling on some tables. I suppose it could be a conversational game, but perhaps not necessarily moreso than most board games or war games. I wonder if it could be successfully fused with a storytelling game, such as The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen.

Since I'm not required to give this character a name, I guess I won't.

This is a game I would play as an experiment, preferably with one or more experienced players. [Edit: Then again, sometimes it's fun when none of the players know what they're doing exactly.]

[For more articles in this series, visit How to Create a Swashbuckler.]

How to Create a Swashbuckler

"How to Create a Swashbuckler" is a series of articles in which I create new characters by the book for different swashbuckling role-playing games. Why? To elucidate the process of character creation, evaluate its verisimilitude, and analyze the actual fun in creating such a character as well as extrapolate the fun to be derived from playing the same? Yes, but also to put some of these games to some kind of use, which I might not ever get a chance to play. And maybe, through this exercise and a rereading of the rules, I might be inspired to run one or more of them instead of watching them collect dust.

Here, then, I will keep a list of the articles as I post them for reference:

• How to Create a Swashbuckler in En Garde!
• How to Create a Swashbuckler in Skull & Crossbones
• How to Create a Swashbuckler in Pirates & Plunder
• How to Create a Swashbuckler in Flashing Blades
• How to Create a Swashbuckler in Zorro: The Roleplaying Game
• How to Create a Swashbuckler in Privateers and Gentlemen

Swashbuckling Thought of the Day 2020-03-31

A swashbuckling game ought to be flavorful. It ought to transport one to another time and place, heighten the drama, quicken the pace. It ought to stir the imagination, inspire herioc action, but also provide for romantic interaction (one of the greatest motivations in swashbuckling fiction). Dare I say that swashbuckling, even as a game, ought to aspire to the poetic and not just the name?

Swashbuckling Thought of the Day 2020-02-29

If a swashbuckling game doesn't reward you for accomplishing dangerous deeds, or it actively discourages (or prevents) you from attempting them, then I don't think that game is a worthwhile emulator of the genre. Ideally, a swashbuckling game ought to facilitate and encourage derring-do, and not force players to endure a slog of monotonous activities and extended incompetence.

If ye cannot handle a sword, do not bear one.

Deed Dice and Luck Points on the Horizon

In my search for the perfect role-playing system for swashbuckling, I gravitate toward those of a more freeform nature (Fudge, Sherpa, Risus, Prince Valiant, etc.), but one of the swashbuckliest systems I've seen in terms of specific rules mechanics is Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG. From the Heroic Deeds of the Warrior class to the way Luck functions for the Thief class, many a swashbuckling subgenre could be adapted with little fuss, and I'm tempted to give it a go myself. I know there is a pirate-themed DCC RPG game in the works by a third party publisher, but there are plenty of other swashbuckling settings to tap...

Perhaps a new project for 2020?

The Sea Hawk (1940) Reviewed

Original Review

It is the dawn of the golden age of piracy, when Spain was claiming dominion over the oceans and plundering the wealth of the New World — and England was plundering Spanish treasure ships. The Sea Hawk served a dual purpose in 1940 as both a rollicking, swashbuckling adventure starring the most popular swashbuckler of his time, Errol Flynn (as privateer Geoffrey Thorpe), and as a thoughtful allegory of the most pressing concern of the time, England's resistance to Germany's ambitions of global domination. As a testament to how seriously it was taken, thespian Flora Robson was enlisted to play the part of Queen Elizabeth and reportedly inspired Flynn to unprecedented heights of professional behavior out of his admiration for her (Robson).

The Sea Hawk was a considerable improvement over its nautical forebearer, Captain Blood. The sea battles were more convincing (and made at far greater expense), the plot was more cohesive, the performances had more solidity, and the fight choreography was much more carefully planned. The climactic duel between Errol Flynn's Captain Thorpe and Henry Daniell's Lord Wolfingham (although a stunt double stood in for Daniell) remains a fine example of swordplay in the genre.

It has been claimed that The Sea Hawk was the logical next step in the path that began with Captain Blood and was followed by The Adventures of Robin Hood and The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex in terms of what the public wanted and what the studio had readily available in sets and costumes, but it is more than that. There is far greater unity in the quality of the script, acting, and directing than in its predecessors. Whether it is the result of a convergence of talent tempered by experience, or the greater devotion that was dedicated to the project by virtue of its message, The Sea Hawk is one of the best adventure films of its kind.

Writing: Good
Directing: Great
Acting: Great
Cinematography: Great
Stunts: Good
Swordplay: Great
Panache: Great

Overall Rating: Great
Swashbuckling Rank: Great


[Originally posted in Cuparius.com on 14 April 2010.]

Extended Review

The music of The Sea Hawk was composed by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, and it plays as important a part in the film as the cinematography in conveying the scope and spirit of the story. It is bold without being overbearing, heartfelt without being sentimental, and ultimately patriotic without being nationalistic. It is fittingly iconic of the genre, and as I listen to it, I think hear its influence in some of the best adventure films that followed it decades later.

Written by: Howard Koch and Seton I. Miller
Based on: The Sea Hawk by Rafael Sabatini
Directed by: Michael Curtiz
Performed by: Errol Flynn, Brenda Marshall, Claude Rains, Flora Robson, Alan Hale, Donald Crisp, Henry Daniell, et al.

All for Me Binary Dice

Inspired by the simple odds-and-evens dice pool system of All for Me Grog (usable with any kind of die or coin), I decided to make the system even quicker by purchasing some six-sided binary dice. Faster than tossing coins or separating dice into evens and odds, all you do with binary dice is count those that show 1 instead of 0. There is no quicker dice pool system in the Seven Seas. Arr!

[All for Me Grog is a piratey role-playing game by Ryan Shelton available in PDF and print.]

Calico Jack Rackham's Flag

The flag of "Calico Jack" Rackham. [Edit: Allegedly.]

Captain Blood (1935) Reviewed

Original Review

The first of the great swashbuckling films of the sound era, Captain Blood (1935) provided the first major roles for its two stars, Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland. It contains all the right ingredients in mostly the right proportions: gallantry, piracy, duels, sea battles, politics, and romance. Nothing about the film is perfect: the accents are of mixed authenticity, the quality of the acting is variable, and the fight choreography wavers between natural and wooden, but the film's totality outshines its components. Greater swashbuckling films would follow, but Captain Blood carved a wider path for them.

Writing: Good
Directing: Good
Acting: Fair/Good
Cinematography: Good
Stunts: Good
Swordplay: Good
Panache: Good

Overall Rating: Good
Swashbuckling Rank: Good


[Originally posted in Cuparius.com on 27 March 2010.]

Extended Review

Captain Blood, directed by Michael Curtiz and adapted from the novel by Rafael Sabatini, is the story of one Dr. Peter Blood (played by Errol Flynn), an Irish physician in England who is charged with treason for administering medical aid to a rebel. Reviews, in my view, are not the place for spoilers, but suffice it to say that one thing leads to another and the good doctor becomes the eponymous Captain Blood, scourge of the Caribbean.

This is a movie that I appreciate more with each viewing. It's a solid pirate movie that served as the opening salvo of Flynn's career as the quintessential swashbuckler of the talkies. Most Hollywood adaptations of novels are as faithful as their depictions of history, and adaptations of historical novels are doubly damned, but the Hollywood swashbuckling film, judged as a unique genre in its own right, has had an enormous and continuing impact on filmmaking and popular culture. Captain Blood can rightly claim a share of the credit.

Written by: Casey Robinson
Based on: Captain Blood: His Odyssey by Rafael Sabatini
Directed by: Michael Curtiz
Performed by: Errol Flynn, Olivia de Haviland, Basil Rathbone, et al.