"The Dolorous Stroke – named after the fateful blow that sets in motion much of the Grail Quest – is a narrative wargame that deals with medieval romances, and the knights they depict. Players take control of a knight errant and his retinue, and play through the various adventures that they experience on their quest.
The game is designed for teams of 1-5 characters on each side. It deliberately moves away from competetive play, and instead is focussed on an ongoing campaign where the cast of characters encounter new challenges each game.Character creation is completely open-ended and freeform, with each character tailored to match their miniature and concept. Likewise, scenarios are intended to have objectives that can change as the characters meet, fight, negotiate and explore. Rather than list-building and point-scoring, the game is instead meant to encourage creativity and picaresque storytelling.
As well as using dice rolls to resolve actions, each character uses a deck of playing cards to track injuries suffered, blood loss, degredation of virtue and expendature of willpower. Whilst using a simple framework, the mechanics have room to be customised so that a wide variety of characters can all play in different and interesting ways.
Gameplay tends towards fairly low lethality; killing enemy characters is difficult, but combat is useful as it allows you to injure (and so weaken) enemies, and lets you control the tempo of the game. This control of the tempo of the game so you can react to your opponent's moves or preempt their strategy is key to success; by the time blows are exchanged there's probably been a great deal of maneuvering and negotiation…."
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Amicalement
Armand