Via Matt Staggs I discovered this blog post about the venerable early role-playing game, En Garde! I’m delighted to see that the game is still available. En Garde! was never much good as an RPG, but it worked really well by post and was very popular in postal Diplomacy magazines for a while. The author of the post seems unaware of this, but he does suggest that the game would work well online. I think he’s right. (And no, I really don’t have the time. Sorry.)
3 thoughts on “Well Buckle My Swash!”
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My first “fanzine” was a carbon-copy affair, entitled “Garde’s Van,” documenting a weekly En Garde campaign we ran at school. I remember the press getting distinctly scatological at times. Well, we *were* all fourth formers…
I have a copy of En Garde somewhere, but I always preferred Flashing Blades. Indeed, I ran a FB campaign for six or seven years and still miss it sometimes. Great system for low to medium level, but once characters top out, it breaks (which is what happened in my campaign). It was fun to ref and play and I do love me some swashbucklin’ action.
I was in the Connecticut Game Club’s play by mail campaign – a long time ago! We’d send in orders and have the results reported in a kind of tabloid format along with our current stats in the monthly newsletter. Beginning characters would start out on campaign until being mentioned in despatches, then be presented at court. You usually tried to avoid duels, since both players tended to suffer. There was definitely more emphasis on acquiring status points then melee. Building and maintaining your reputation at court by whatever means possible was the goal. I still have my copy of “En Garde” and a few copies of the newsletter. I’ll have to try and find these when I get home tonight.