"Fencing rules for swashbuckling game" Topic

Hi,

I'm slowly developing a rulest of my own for some swashbuckling adventures. I want to keep it simple yet include some basic fencing stances, so no charts. Dear TMPers please help me :).

Regards,
Tom

Check out a video game called uncharted waters 2. I've always loved how they handled it with cards

Having done competition fencing in my younger days this is an aspect of the game I never get into. I was pretty good, but that's beside the point. In real fencing it takes only a few seconds to see who is the master and who is the defeated. Fencing does not go on for fifteen minutes, like it does in the movies. Fifteen seconds would be an extremely long match.

There's not much to game here.

Eureka used to have a superb set of swashbuckling/fencing rules. I think they were called "One For All". Well worth checking out…

The Perfect Captain has a set of rules in their "Spanish Fury" series: link

Have each player choose a stance. You have an attacker and defender. Give a + if the stances are mis-matched. ie:
Attacker chooses high attack
Defender chooses low defense
Attacker gets +2 to his die roll

The chart would be pretty simple:
attacks and defenses are: high, middle, low
If both choices match, no modifier
If the choices are one off, +1 (ie. high/middle)
If the choices are two off, +2 (ie. high/low)

That's just off the cuff, so you'll need to test it and work out the details.

Two Hour Wargames has a freebie….

link

One of the best homemade fencing games I ever saw- but can't remember where, probably a con – was based on playing cards from your hand.

Players were supposed to quickly play cards from their hand in succession, the idea being that the swooshing/flipping of the cards at a rapid rate gave the same tactile/emotional/quickness feeling of swooshing rapiers. Very effective when players were getting in the spirit of things. You only had a few seconds to react, otherwise the turn went immediately to your opponent.

Here is a card mechanic I have used. It creates a one-on-one combat effect where both players are building toward victory and feeling each other out at the same time. It also has the benefit of not being able to short circuit end less than halfway through.

Give both players one suit from a deck of cards. Both players choose a card and place it face down, then reveal simultaneously. The higher card, aces low, takes the trick. No point for a tie.

Repeat for seven rounds. Largest number of tricks wins. If there is a tie, play one more trick. If it is still a tie, then the result is a stalemate.

This also works well for man on man martial arts battles.

A variant, more roleplaying than tabletop (and definitely not pickup) is to have "styles". A style is a stack of cards from one suit that you have preordered before the game and placed a rubber band around. This simulates the idea that it is really your previous training and preparation that wins the battle. It also plays a little faster without becoming Slapjack. Players can even arrive with a set of stacked decks. When we do that, we generally label them with an icon for their style … This is my tiger style deck and that is my crane style deck.

If you want to extend the metaphor further into your game, you can have the cards remaining in your hand determine the game effect for the loser. For example, the loser of a duel suffers the following effects, one each for the two highest cards remaining in their hand:

K – No Effect.
Q – Dashing Scar. (should have some mild campaign effect)
J – Ruined Weapon. (should have a game resources effect)
10 – Off Arm Wound. Opponent can peek at one card before selecting his in next duel.
9 – Dominant Arm Wound. Opponent can peek at one card before selecting his in all duels, until some game appropriate time limit.
8 – Abdominal Wound. Opponent removes two random cards from your hand before the next duel.
7 – Shoulder Wound. Opponent removes two random cards from your hand before all duels, until some game appropriate time limit.
6 – Serious Wound. Player can no longer duel, until a game appropriate event.

So that is a chart. But you don't need it during battle, only after, and players have the intuitive understanding that the higher the cards they leave in their hand, the less severe the outcome is. This adds a strategic element of playing defensively.

The chart is an off-the-cuff recall from a "gentlemanly duel" system for a game. Feel free to add death and dismemberment, depending on how duels integrate into your game.

You can also apply one effect to the winner, promoting the card one or two slots up. Or not. Hey, this activity is not without risk, even for the winner.

Of course, everything is not always balanced going into a fight, so "power ups" and "penalties" are in order.

From the chart, a mild penalty is to have a random card removed from your deck. A more severe one is to separate the seven and above before your opponent blind draws one. Following the progression, one full and one "seven up" loss is next, then two "seven ups". Because of the Markov chain, the third option could produce a worse result than the fourth. I actually like the fuzziness and overlap of the penalty spaces as a kind of ceiling effect for penalties.

For bonuses, you can have a player add a "seven up" random card from another suit and lose a random card, or a "seven down". And you can stack two bonuses as well.

Beyond two bonuses or penalties, you lose the deliberate skill feel of the game, so you might as well just have one player roll a die against a hit number.

@Otto: I was also a fencer many years ago (and many pounds ago) and agree about the speed of bouts. Amazing how much energy you can expend in what is just a few seconds of action even without worrying about getting killed.

Now movie sword fights are another matter. The card mechanics above are great for one on one fights, but I don't think scale for brawls such as in the 1970's "Three Musketeers" or Errol Flynn in Robin Hood.

Dear Jozis

Yes I understand what you mean. For a game it's OK, after all we all would like to imagine ourselves as the dashing hero fighting the bad guy. Would that I still had a body like Stuart Grainger. (Not that I ever did). For me my fall from the matt was sudden. At the age of 19 I walked in front of a car and suffered two broken legs, a broken arm, several ribs and other parts of my body. They were able to put me back together without plates or pins, but I do have a slight limp which is very hard to see. So I was lucky that way. However two years on crutches and canes took away all my dexterity and agility (though it gave me great upper body development.

Anyway the experience as a fencer was not wasted and allowed me to evaluate many things and ideas in war games. Besides the brevity of matches the one thing that comes home is the danger. As you know when you get on the matt you are about as well armored relatively, as a medieval knight. Tough helmet and face mask, thick padded jacket and groin protection, legs as well. The foil (or saber or epee) has it's little plastic nub over the flattened point, but even that has cotton balls and adhesive tape swaddled around it. It's not overkill, even in a friendly match extremely rarely both can come off and if that tip finds the weak spot under your arm in your jacket it can go through a lung and you can bleed out on the matt before the EMS gets there.

As you know, in Fencing, the thrust is all that counts. Cuts count only in saber and in real life they can give flashy-splashy wounds bot are not always fatal.

I always remember the words of my fencing coach. "Get close" he would say. If you notice the movie fights you see that's one thing they never do. Oh yeah, there's the moments where swords are hilt to hilt and good guy and bad guy are grinning idiotically at each other but that rarely happens.

Look at all these fencers (and former fencers) out here!

Game design wise, how would you handle combats where one side has a fencing weapon, while the other side wields something rather different, like halberd, partizan, bayonet, clubbing musket, axe or wooden stool?

Many years ago a friend created a set of rules for Gladiatorial Combat. The game mechanic allowed several attacks or defensive actions. For example thrust, slash, parry, step back, high cut. It was a variety of Rock Paper Scissors really. The twist was that each action limited the follow up actions available to each player. This allowed the other player to guess at what was likely to happen next. This could be extended to force an inexperienced swordsman to plot a couple of terms ahead. The game allowed for other weapons beside the gladius each weapon had its own set of moves and there was a matrix showing the results of each players pair of actions. Combats were often decided in half a dozen exchanges. Might something like that work for you?

Game design wise, how would you handle combats where one side has a fencing weapon, while the other side wields something rather different, like halberd, partizan, bayonet, clubbing musket, axe or wooden stool?

From the system I described above, I would just apply penalties to the oddly armed side. If I wanted to strengthen the penalties for the stool, I might let the fencing player know what cards were removed – not only are you more constrained (have fewer options, less flexibility), but I understand your limitations from the start.

Former fencer here as well (saber). Yes, bouts are quick, and the decision making can be split second and instinctive, but one thing that stands out to me is that the decisions are based on observation and reaction to what your opponent is doing and where his blade is, and what he has or hasn't left exposed, or what you think will lure him into an error you can instantly exploit. To me, those are the essential elements to an effective sword duel game. Therefore, I don't think either dice or rapid card play in and of themselves quite pull this off; they are both too random and don't capture the sense of action/reaction which is the heart of swordplay.

Brain flash… I just recalled a one on one duel game I happen to have: it's "Qui Jonn's Last Duel," a Star Wars card game about the final fight between Qui Jonn and Darth Maul in the otherwise dreadful Episode 1. The game has two decks with cards ranging in value from 1 to 6, and special cards that cover special actions or tactics, including Block (cancels an opponent's card that is in play), Use the Force (draw a card blindly and immediately play it) and so forth. The game is played in rounds, with each player selecting three cards (from a hand of seven) that are spaced left to right in front of them. Staring with the left-most cards, each card us turned over and compared to the opponent's card. The higher number has the advantage, but the other player may then choose to play cards from his hand (creating a stack) to boost his score and take the advantage (totalling all the cards in the stack) or create a tie. If there is a tie, both players must play one card from their hands, simultaneously. Once an advantage has been established in the matched stacks, the player with the lower stack may opt to concede that stack, at which point play proceeds to the card to the right. If a player wins two of the three stack match ups, he wins the round, and advances a space on a victory path (if all three stacks in a round are won, he advances two spaces on his victory path). After each round, played cards are discarded, and seven additional cards are drawn for the players' hands (after the first round, a player could have more than seven cards in a hand, which is one of the strategic decision of the game; do you play your hand out, or try to preserve cards for a later advantage?) The first player to advance five spaces on the victory path wins the duel.
It's not perfect, and is perhaps still a little random, but it has both the "feeling the opponent" out aspect and the "reaction" aspect inherent in swordplay.

Interestingly, I think a sword duel game really wouldn't be a miniatures game, as the actual position of the miniatures would largely be irrelevant, unless one went so far as to create bonuses and penalties for movement choices, obstacles, etc. But in that case, I suspect you'd need to just make the whole "thrust and parry" an abstraction, as D&D, rather tha an actual tactical element, with the tactical element rather being maneuver on terrain.

Thank you very much for your responses :). The three musketeers game with card-based duels seems to be the most reasonable path to take. The problem is they still do have chart, which in my case is a dealbreaker. Same thing with Battle Troll close combat rules.

Star Wars duels was a great game – thanks for reminding me this one, I think I'll do something along these lines.

As soon as I'll come up with something acceptable I'll post it here.