A Swashbuckling! Style Guide
Flashing swords and witty repartee hold a lot of appeal for gamers. It’s not surprising that an entire systems have been dedicated to a swashbuckling genre setting.
Many adventurers try trading in their Greatswords and dwarven battle axes for rapiers and lace for an evening. Why does it so rarely work? Everyone comes to the game, expecting an Errol Flynn movie - except that it runs more like every other game they’ve played. What happened?
To quote GURPS Scarlet Pimpernel, most PCs are “ruthlessly pragmatic.” And they often get that way because they’re punished by their GM if they’re anything less. GMs work hard to make their villains cunning and realistic, not mustache-twirling buffoons who utter lines like, “But before I kill you, Mr. Bond…” No, they just shoot Mr. Bond first and cast “Speak with Dead” later.
A fun swashbuckling game requires some trust. The PCs need to know that they can take some risks, waste a little time to be classy and stylish, and use, not the most efficient and safest plan, but the most daring and elegant plan - and not get wasted by their GM. The GM needs to know that his villains can afford to do the same and not have the PCs take advantage of the situation.
The Swashbuckling Hero
While the Hero is often quite skilled at swordplay, it may not be his best asset. Indeed, more than a few swashbucklers considered it a failure of their plans if swords had to be drawn. The swashbuckler thrives more on trickery than anything else. Captain Blood often masqueraded as a Spanish grandee to infiltrate the Evil Spaniards’ castles and throw things into disarray; the Scarlet Pimpernel was a master of disguise. Even Robin Hood was well-known for dressing as a potter or butcher to fool the Sheriff of Nottingham. To lure one’s enemies into a position of weakness where swordplay is unnecessary - that is the best way to win a fight.
Not that fighting should be forbidden! No, but do as the Three Musketeers and their friend D’Artagnan do. Always act with courtesy towards your opponents. If they are men of quality, they will return the courtesy. If they are not, you still shouldn’t lower yourself to that level. Duels don’t have to be to the death, just until one party yields. You can even become fast friends after a duel, if suitably impressed with your foe’s courtesy and skill.
Treat friends and enemies alike with respect. This is especially true if your enemies are powerful individuals! The Musketeers were, without fail, polite and respectful to Cardinal Richileu when they saw him. He even ordered them to escort him on one occasion, and they did so without the least trickery or treachery. (They also used the opportunity to eavesdrop on him, but, well…) As a result, the Cardinal found the Musketeers to be the most remarkable men and kept trying to induce them to enter his service rather than kill them.
Be generous, even when poor. Cyrano diBergerac bought some tidbits from a poor orange-seller girl when he had scarcely more money than she did. When the Musketeers had money, they spent it like water, never thinking about tomorrow. When Fate delivers a fine Spanish galleon to Captain Blood, he doesn’t hesitate to sink it in a deception which gets a French ambassador on his good side. Don’t horde the advantages Fate (or the GM) gives you, and you’ll find that he gives you more. Your GM worries that you’ll store up toys and then spring them on him all at once. So be like James Bond - if Q gives you an item at the start of the adventure, be sure you use it during the course of the adventure. If you have it, it must be for a reason!
Be a gentleman (or gentlewoman). If you give your word, keep your word. Act according to your station. If you love disguise and trickery, like many swashbucklers, then you can afford to crawl in the mud or accept insults, if that’s what your disguise calls for. (The Scarlet Pimpernel himself was beaten with a belt while disguised as a Jewish cart-renter, after all). But if you’re in uniform, like a musketeer, do nothing to bring dishonor to your unit or your king. (Or at least don’t get caught!)
You’ll probably want a secret identity, if you are a nobleman. The Three Musketeers all used aliases, even though only one of them was truly a nobleman concealing his identity. The Scarlet Pimpernel was, by day, Britain’s most fashionable and dumbest dandy. The Pimpernel alias (and the dumb act he played at home) kept his enemies from discovering him for years.
How often you duel and over what will depend on your locale, your culture, and your temper. 1600s France was so hot for dueling it had to be outlawed, and the Musketeers are often ending up in trouble for dueling with the Cardinal’s Guards. Even among them, though, there is room for variation - brash young D’Artagnan is looking for excuses to challenge people to duels when we first meet him, but mild Aramis can only be provoked to a duel when a lady’s honor is at stake. The Scarlet Pimpernel, in his alter ego as an English nobleman and dandy, declines to duel with a hotheaded young Frenchman. This just amuses all of the English present. If he’d have been in France, he’d have been thought a coward. Swashbuckling can mean incessant dueling, but doesn’t have to.
Be clever. All swashbucklers ought to be smart, unless they’re the comic relief. Porthos, the large, vain musketeer, was the least bright of the bunch. His pompous lies and posturing are funny and make nice interludes in the story, but the evil Milady dismisses him in her report as “an ass.” His is a role suited best for a PC who enjoys being the comic sidekick, or for an NPC in that role.
Improvise a lot. There’s nothing wrong with getting your fellow captains together and planning how you are going to steal the Spanish gold. But when things don’t go according to plan, make it up as you go along. If you’re caught in a compromising position, make something up. Keep it simple and believable. If you’re not good at thinking on your feet, ask your GM how he wants to handle it. Some possibilities include: You get 2 full minutes to make up the reply your PC makes in 2 seconds; the GM lets his NPCs be a little more stupid, but you need to think quickly; on a successful die roll, the GM makes up something believable for you.
The Swashbuckling Villian
Heroes are only as good as the villains who oppose them. Swashbuckling villains come in three types: smart but non-lethal, dumb but lethal, and henchman. Cardinal Richileu is a smart, non-lethal villain. If he wanted the Musketeers dead, he could have them dead. But he doesn’t - he wants them to work for him, and that means they need to be alive. Even if they never work for him, he does realize that they are good French patriots, and France needs as many such men as possible. But when they get in the way of his plans and plots, they put themselves at risk. The Cardinal might not be trying to kill them, but he won’t be unduly upset if they should be killed if they were preventing his agents from carrying out his commands.
Captain Blood was often up against dumb but lethal villains. These were Spanish governors who wanted him dead, dead, dead. Thankfully, the Irish pirate-doctor could speak flawless Spanish and often held extended, gracious conferences with these same governors, who never knew that the infamous Captain Blood was right in front of them. Any villain that wants the PCs dead should have something - immense stupidity is only the first and most obvious item - which keeps them from immediately achieving that goal.
Henchmen can be anything. Milady Clarik, the Baroness di Winter, was the Musketeers’ most fearsome foe. Highly intelligent, a skilled actress and seducer, utterly evil, and bent on D’Artagnan’s destruction, the only thing holding her back was her employer, the Cardinal. The capable henchman can be that pragmatic, lethal villain you love, who the PCs know will be trying to rain death upon them - just as soon as the boss lets him. It’s a nice touch to let the PCs gain a false sense of security: “Oh, the Cardinal will never let Milady kill D’Artagnan, he’s trying to get him to accept a commission in his own Guards.” Then let them find out that indeed, for her latest mission, Milady demanded carte blanche to kill the young Musketeer - and the Cardinal granted it.
Not all villains should look like villains, but anyone who does, is. Any NPC you describe as weasel-faced, spindly-fingered, squint-eyed, sallow-faced, or otherwise untrustworthy, ugly, and/or menacing ought to be a villain. The reverse doesn’t hold true for heroes - Milady was an angelic beauty, but a black-hearted villain. Heroes don’t have to be square-jawed, clear-eyed, and well-muscled, but they should never look mean, dirty, or low. Swashbuckling heroes have a sort of inner pride and honor that gives even the commonest-looking hero an air of dignity.
Finally, villains can be black-hearted, but don’t have to. Unlike the many movie remakes, the Cardinal Richileu in the novel “The Three Musketeers” isn’t a total bastard. The king is actually a spoiled little twerp, and the Cardinal makes a far better head of state than he does. At the end of the novel, when D’Artagnan foils him with the Cardinal’s own carte blanche, the man is so impressed by this strategy that, rather than order the Musketeer’s death, he gives him a lieutenant’s commission in the Musketeers, with the name left blank. So why is the Cardinal a villain? He was attracted to the Queen and, when she spurned him, he decided to make her life a living hell. The Musketeers are ever at the service of damsels in distress, especially their queen, so they try to foil the Cardinal’s attempts to get her in trouble with the king. All of the events in the book revolve around assisting either the queen or her handmaiden, or stopping Milady from her murderous revenge.
The Swashbuckling Story
Spectacular coincidence and split-second timing are part of the fun. This is not the sort of game where the GM ought to script out every NPC action, every downtown store, every detail, in advance. If the PCs catch the last ship leaving port, they ought to see their frustrated enemy left on shore. If they need a quick disguise, there’s got to be a little NPC fruit-vendor or cart-renter nearby, who will be willing to lend the PC some clothes and gear for sufficient gold coin. On the other hand, the tavern where the two Evil Henchmen have agreed to meet will coincidentally be where the PC’s love interest is waiting for him - and the three will of course have to meet.
Be generous with resources, as long as your PCs are using them in the spirit in which they are given. Will your pirate PCs need an extra, expendable ship in a game or two? Give them the opportunity to steal one. Will the game be over if the PCs don’t learn a crucial piece of the villain’s plan? A convenient stovepipe might allow them to eavesdrop on the conversation. (Just be sure that the villain never happens to make plans there again - such a windfall should be a one-time thing.) A hurried henchman might drop a slip of paper with the name of a town on it - not very telling, until the PCs find that the other henchman has disappeared - gone to the town named on the slip of paper!
Give the PCs a cause. Swashbucklers without a noble cause are well-dressed ruffians. They could steal from the rich to give to the poor; keep the Evil Empire from terrorizing the waters of the New World; rescue innocents from death in another Evil Empire; defend the honor of their king and queen; be gallant guerilla warriors defending or taking back their homeland; independent do-gooders looking for wrongs to right.
Swashbuckler adventurers often have an episodic feel to them. Each adventure, the villain poses some new threat. The heroes try to foil the new threat. Repeat as needed. Recurring villains and loose ends from previous threats, rather than an ever-widening pool of intrigue and plots tie campaigns together. "The Three Musketeers," a 500+ page book that would make a campaign of fond memories, has only two main adventures: "The Queen’s Diamonds" and "Milady’s Revenge." "The Scarlet Pimpernel" can similarly be broken down: "The Pimpernel Unmasked" and "The Trap is Set." For those GMs who really love the inverted pyramid of plot planning, though, the genre is easily modified. The PCs could discover that Richileu is really just a front man for the Illuminati; that Robspierre intends to summon the Great Old Ones with all of the death energy released during the Revolution; that the Spanish grandees really have discovered El Dorado or the Fountain of Youth.
For whatever reason, many swashbuckling heroes never go after the villain himself! There’s even sometimes a sense of generosity - Robin Hood once had the Sheriff of Nottingham at his mercy in the forest, but let him go for his wife’s sake. The good woman had fed Robin a nice dinner earlier in the day. That’s class!
"Defeat" more often means "outsmart" rather than "kill." The Pimpernel’s nemesis wanted to discredit him, not make a martyr out of him. The same ought to go for the PCs. The Musketeers would never dream of killing the Cardinal, even though they oppose him at every turn. If your PCs are having some blood lust, set up some minor villains or henchmen they can kill in good conscience, without taking down their major source of future challenges.
The pace should be fast. If the PCs get too bogged down in planning every tiny detail of their next maneuver, let them catch sight of, say, their hated nemesis strolling down the street. If you had a dollar for every time the Three Musketeers had a planning session broken short when D’Artagnan dashed after his "man from Meung," you could buy yourself a nice lunch. Innocents in distress, insults which must be redressed, or sudden targets ripe for pirating are other immediate distractions you can use to start the plot moving again. If they’re not thinking on their feet, you need to get them running again.
The tone should be four-color and fun. This is not a genre the players and GM should take too seriously - even if the PCs are in deadly earnest. And if, even after all the cleverest plans they can bring to bear, the PCs fail - give them a chance to make it up.
"Yes, your galleon is sinking even as the evil pirate captain sails off with your betrothed. But look! Over there! A fishing boat, scarcely seaworthy! You think you could swim the distance if you left your sword and gun behind..."
"The king yells at the queen in front of the assembled crowd, berating her for not wearing her diamond studs. She sobs that it isn’t her fault, she’d sent them to the jeweler for a cleaning and they’d not come back. ‘Oh really?’ the king sneers. ‘And with whom did you send them to the jeweler, who was so careless as to lose them?’ The queen looks your way imploringly..."
"You watch, horrified, as the woman you didn’t save is led to the executioner’s block. With some supernatural clarity of vision, she picks you out in the crowd and mouths the words, ‘My daughter.’ Where might this daughter be, and can you find her before she suffers her mother’s fate?"
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