[Argad] A Border reivers game

[Patrice]

One of our friends wanted to run a game about the 16th C. Border reivers, it happened two weeks ago. Ruleset: Argad with some additions.

There were seven players, and seven tables. Each table represented a part of a domain of a family: three north of the border in Scotland (families Scott, Elliott, Moffat, three south of the border in England (families Musgrave, Fenwick, Carleton) and one between (family Armstrong). Movement from a table to another took two game turns on a same side of the border; a ?random? time (1-6 game turns) across the border.





Isolated figures of animals were randomly scattered on the tables. Coming near any of them discovered larger flocks grazing freely; it was then possible to gather them and drive them home.



The players' aim was to protect those on their own table (supposed to be theirs) and to, um, steal others (preferably on the opposite side of the border but that was not compulsory). There were also some other missions, for example one player of each nation had secret orders from his king to capture Armstrong for hanging.

There is no full AAR, I'll just say that there was much border crossing and cattle stealing the whole afternoon... Myself (Elliott) went to raid Fenwick land while they were occupied to attack Scott, but I had to surrender to the Musgrave and Carleton who arrived there at the same time! Meanwhile most of my cattle was stolen by the Musgrave, who had no time to drive it away because Scott attacked them on their way back and stole it from them and kept it and became the richest man on the border, while Carleton land was unsuccessfully raided by Armstrong and Moffat...







I was happy enough to be freed by my captors at the end of the game after helping them to capture Armstrong... The GM said that what will happen to him will probably be decided in a next game.



Some more pictures and commentary in French:
https://www.anargader.net/t3962-argad-border-troubles-trioblaidean-criche

[Red Orc]

Elliott, double L and double T?

"The double L and single T
Descend from Minto and Wolflee,
The double T and single L
Mark the old race in Stobs that dwell,
The single L and single T
The Eliots of St. Germains be,
But double T and double L
Who they are, nobody can tell."

Looks like an absolutely awesome game - chaotic and confusing as everything on the Border should be!

And it's a great excuse to tell a probably apocryphal anecdote, about a preacher, concerned about the lack of churches in Liddesdale.

"Are there no Christians here?" he asked.

"Nay, we're all Ellots and Armstrongs hereabouts..."

[Patrice]

Elliott, double L and double T?

Well... The GM of this game, and myself, are French speakers and Breton speakers but unfortunately not Scots native speakers, and we know that, so I must acknowledge that the number of Ls and Ts everywhere were probably a bit random. 

"The double L and single T
Descend from Minto and Wolflee,
The double T and single L
Mark the old race in Stobs that dwell,
The single L and single T
The Eliots of St. Germains be,
But double T and double L
Who they are, nobody can tell."

   That's beautiful.

[Red Orc]

In which case, I cheerfully withdraw any and all objection - c'est formidable, mes braves!

(Absolutely no chance I can do that in Brezhoneg, sorry)

[mweaver]

Sounds like a lot of fun!

-Michael

[Patrice]

Elliott, double L and double T?

Um, I should have looked better at my character sheet, the GM actually wrote Elliot, not Elliott! 

Sounds like a lot of fun!

Especially as we didn't know what to expect.  We quite often do games with mutiple tables but in this case there was also a large uncertainty as there were no obvious alliances.