To play the game, there's got to be a game to play.
A lot of games use Larry Brom's excellent The
Sword and The Flame,
with some house rule modifications made for the case of Canada. I call
these The Sword and The Snow. For China, I am
fortunate enough to have
gotten a free copy of Larry's own mods for the Boxer Rebellion.
They're now available on
for sale on his site and really is close enough to pass in the dark
with a shove anyway.
Also included with TSATF is a second full game, The Sword in Africa, which deals with those smaller, adventurer-driven actions in the Heart of Darkness. These are wonderful rules, and they get used (again with house mods) for Darkest Canada. I mean, really, if you don't look too closely, you'll find that there are a lot of similaritites between deepest darkest Africa of the 19th century and the wooded interior of the mountainous Pacific Northwest of North America (BC in my case). And now that there are Pacific NW Indians available from the London War Room, I can even have real forces for the area!
These quick to learn and quick to play rules from Buck Surdu and Chris
Palmer certainly
give room for the imagination! Smaller in scale than the Sword and the
Flame, GASLIGHT
allows for several different levels of character on the table and has
well thought out
rules for the addition of strange inventions, machines, vehicles and
unique weapons.
Also highly recommended!
Check out the GASLIGHT homepage.
Based on Hugh Pitt and Nick Lund's near future skirmish ruleset, KillZone, these are mods I've made to draw the rules back in time, back to a time before lasers and shoulder fired mortars. In the couple of games I've had with them, they seem to play out fairly well. I like the order-based action system, and the supression by fire rules which feel "right" to me. It still needs some tweeking to be really good, I think, but they're passable as it stands. If you play with the mods, please let me know, tell me how it went and what suggestions you have or changes you'd make. And thanks again to Hugh, Nick and Tim for posting such a great ruleset free on the web!
How does is all work?
Tell me about your rules! ehpeaell@yahoo.com
Rules