In a little over a year I've picked up four booklets: Gloire, Under the Black Flag, GURPS Swashbucklers, and Savage Worlds Pirates of the Spanish Main. I was more or less waiting for somebody else to put on a game at a convention to show me what some swashbuckling gaming could really be like before I took the trouble to figure it out for myself. I thought that somebody would put on a Gloire game first, and so last year I bought Gloire and tried to read it, but instead my first taste of this type of gaming came in May with a Savage Worlds tavern brawl. I had bought the GURPS Swashbuckler supplement shortly before that, and then after the May game I promptly bought both Under the Black Flag and the Pirates of the Spanish Main. Here's some impressions:
Gloire is a rulebook in black ink on 100 pages of white paper from title page to the final page of ads (for Rattrap products of course) inside nice glossy color covers. It's not dense material. The font isn't small, and there's comfortable margins and white space here and there. There's a few nice drawings, black and white photos of Black Hat Miniatures, and drawings of scenario layouts to relieve the tedium of text. The booklet is clearly focused on presenting rules for gameplay. There seems to be an assumption that players are already familiar with the genre, both movies and books. The only breaks in this were snippets of dramatic writing, four small grey sidebar sections on topics of interest, and a two page historical and fictional chonology. I have the impression that it was written by people who come from a background in traditional wargames rather than in roleplaying, because its really all about rules and sample scenarios. There just isn't the mass of roleplay campaign stuff that's in some of the other products. The rules look simple, but my brain is so fried after work that I wasn't able to really understand them the first time around. Price is $17 US, not bad.
I picked up Under the Black Flag at a convention in May. It's more of the same, 88 pages of black ink on white paper from the title page to the final ads page, again inside glossy color covers, a handful of photos, three action drawings, more drawings of scenario setups, snippets of dramatic writing, five gray sidebars, and a one page chronology. There is some material on roleplay campaigning, which obviously makes sense for a supplement. The Gloire rules are required. Price is $18 US, again not bad.
Before the convention this May I was shuffling through a bargain bin in a hobby store and came accross the GURPS Swashbuckler supplement. I didn't know anything about GURPS except that it stands for "Generic Universal Role Playing System," which seems like an ambitious thing. The booklet looked good, so I picked it up for the low price of $12.50 US. It was a steal! The rules for actually playing GURPS isn't in that book, and I don't have any clue as to how it plays, except for vague hints that it bears some kinship to Dungeons & Dragons. What's valuable about this booklet is the fantastic history and roleplaying detail. It has 128 pages of black ink on white paper from title page to final index, adds on the inside of glossy color covers, smaller print, fun artwork, lots of sidebars, and a great map of Paris in the early 17th Century. I've spent hours reading and rereading this book. I'm much more impressed by the description of fencing styles in this book than in the Rattrap or Savage Worlds products. There is really serious interest in history in this book, though there are tips for campaigning and fighting in more cinematic or fantastical styles also. Regardless of which system I ultimately play, this GURPS supplement will stay by my side. It's good value at twice what I paid for it.
Savage Worlds Pirates of the Spanish Main is a different animal altogether in terms of production value. It's a hardbound book that includes the basic Savage Worlds rules, lots of stuff about piracy, a tie in to the collectible constructible little ships from WizKids, and massive amounts of role play campaign stuff set in a fictional somewhere in pirate time. The pages are an attractive brown artistic pattern rather than white. There is a lot of color, including artwork and colorful section headings. It's got 256 pages from the title page to the final page of ads for Savage Worlds products, and there are a couple of extra pages of art inside the covers, including beautiful maps of the Carribean. In fact, the maps of the Carribean and the descriptions of Carribean islands in the gamemaster section are some of the most valuable bits of this massive book. I came from a historical wargaming background, so I'm less impressed by the fictional world that has been constructed as the setting for role play campaigning. However, I can't help but be impressed by the amount of work that went into this, and by the beauty of the printed product. As an all in one product, rules, scenarios, role playing system, this is a really worthwhile book, and the $39.99 US that I paid for it was quite reasonable. Even if I don't play Savage Worlds, I'll use the book for extra background and for the great Carribean geography.
Savage Worlds is the one of these game systems that I actually got to try so far, last month. It was easy and fun. I'm not sure that I like all the different sided dice, as I'm not sure I like switching from d4 to d6 to d8 to d10 to d12. But that should be fine for people who come at this genre from a role playing background. And computing the odds is difficult due not only to the different dice, but to the "exploding die" system of adding extra die rolls onto the roll when the highest number is roled on the die. That's actually a necessary mechanism to defeat some high defense values in parrying and toughness ratings. The experience helped me grasp how much easier it will be to compute the odds in Gloire just using a d10. Savage Worlds is clearly designed to reduce the bookkeeping from what it is in some other role playing systems. In fact, it seems to have a little less bookkeeping than Gloire, though it's pretty comparable. Stats in Gloire/Under the Black Flag should translate fairly easilly into Savage Worlds Pirates of the Spanish Main and vice versa, as similar character capabilities are at play.
All in all, there's some really nice publications out there now in this genre. I'm quite pleased with the above products. I think it should be easy to borrow ideas or stats from any one of these products to use in one of the other systems. I hope the rest of you check them out.
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December 26, 2011, 05:00:11 PM