Crazy Hybrid Idea?

[castiglione]

I've always wondered...has anyone attempted to merge Classic Traveller and En Garde? Have the players be minor nobles in the Imperium attempting to climb up the "greasy pole" of society, woo'ing women, fighting duels with rivals, and occasionally going off to the frontier to seek fame and fortune in battle?

 

[Supplement Four]

I've always wondered...has anyone attempted to merge Classic Traveller and En Garde?

Isn't there a JTAS article about that same thing?

 

[castiglione]

Well, I'm glad that someone else thought it was a good idea (so I'm not crazy).

 

[FlightCommanderSolitude]

Yes, there's a mini-game in JTAS that deals with (IIRC) some students at Naval Academy. I've never actually played it, but it looks interesting. I've always been attracted to the idea of the same thing on a larger scale. I remember playing En Garde for a bit years (ie decades) ago ... it seems like there are numerous non-RPG games that fit within the Traveller universe, and an En Garde-style game should definitely be one of them!

 

[selunatic2397]

Woah! I was reading that article last night.

Brief sense of deja vu vertigo.

Nice article, though I was going to use it as background for an adventure set on Regina.

 

[Mithras]

Which issue?

 

[selunatic2397]

It was in JTAS #26. I found it in the third of those big softbound volumes of the JTAS [issues 25-33] by Far Future Enterprises.

Hope that this helps you out!

selunatic2397

 

[rancke]

Yes, there's a mini-game in JTAS that deals with (IIRC) some students at Naval Academy. I've never actually played it, but it looks interesting. I've always been attracted to the idea of the same thing on a larger scale. I remember playing En Garde for a bit years (i.e. decades) ago ... it seems like there are numerous non-RPG games that fit within the Traveller universe, and an En Garde-style game should definitely be one of them!

We tried it for a couple of sessions. It was great fun. I was just starting up a campaign where the players were the officers and crew of a small IN ship (a Gazelle) and they played the cadets who would become the officers.


Hans

 

[Hemdian]

I've always wondered...has anyone attempted to merge Classic Traveller and En Garde? Have the players be minor nobles in the Imperium attempting to climb up the "greasy pole" of society, woo'ing women, fighting duels with rivals, and occasionally going off to the frontier to seek fame and fortune in battle?

I've thought about it frequently over the years. I've just never come up with a set of rules mods that I was happy with.

 

[castiglione]

The more I think about how this might play out, the more I think how interesting this would be. However, it would probably need a certain critical mass of players for it to work.

 

[kafka47]

En Garde, afterall was copted by one of the 2300AD adventure/sourcebooks as a virtual world, so why not Traveller. The Little White Book adventure that MJD wrote for BITS - The Khidhar Incident (?) would make a perfect backdrop for En Garde.

Also, I have always viewed the Imperium as an onion that it was not simply the Roman Empire in Space but has been influenced by Russian, Italian, Chinese, Indian history...so why not French. It is entirely concievable that you do a scenario during the First Imperial Civil War entirely influenced by En Garde and the struggle of the French dynastic politics hinted at in En Garde.

 

[Icosahedron]

I just found that En Garde seems to be still in print - 12 months ago, anyway. I thought it had gone decades ago. I might just have a look at this. Can anyone tell me how it works? What are the mechanics, D6, D20, D100? Gimme a trailer.

 

[castiglione]

En Garde was published at around the same time as D & D. I think it ties with Tunnels & Trolls as the second role-playing game published.

Its take on role-playing was VERY different from D & D and its ilk. There was no GM. The game was set in 17th century Paris. Your objective was to climb up the social ladder of Paris.

As I mentioned before, there was no GM. So the game was kind of competitive. You basically planned out what you would do in each week of a given month. The stuff you could do was go to a social club, go to a bawdyhosue, woo a woman, practice your fencing, etc. A lot of the stuff your character did was centered around trying to increase your social level, i.e. going to a club and spending a ton of money on drinks, joining a prestigious regiment, winning duels, hanging around your social betters, etc. Taking a step back, the game is kind of like a caricature of high-school (I'm kind of surprised that noone developed a high-school version of En Garde given the variants that have popped up).

The combat system for duels was pretty involved - you basically planned out your moves and they were cross-referenced to come up with a result. For example, if you lunged at the same time that your opponent parried, your attack missed...but if he did something else, you'd skewer him and inflict damage. Differences in character skill were incorporated into the system by giving the more skilled character extra attacks.

The engine of the game was a series of tables where you resolved your actions via die/dice roll. There was no unified mechanism (not surprising considering how old the game is).

Most attributes (strength, constitution and fencing expertise) were rolled on 3d6 but others (like military ability - the ability to lead troops) was rolled on 1d6. Some actions were resolved by rolling 2d6. Others were resolved by rolling 1d6.

The game was kind of obscure but gained popularity with the advent of the internet when it became possible to have games with 20+ characters running around Paris.

Variants based on Barsoom, Dune, the Royal Navy in 16th century England and Feudal Japan have been developed.

 

[castiglione]

Interactions between characters basically revolved around toadying (hanging around people of higher social level to gain social status points), dueling (which happened when characters ended up wooing the same mistress or when characters in rival regiments ran into each other) and later on, when player characters achieved high posts like being made commander of a regiment, etc., petitioning high ranking player characters for favors.

 

[rancke]

The game was kind of obscure but gained popularity with the advent of the internet when it became possible to have games with 20+ characters running around Paris.

There were games run in APAzines long before that. I was in a game that was run face-to-face every monday. We were well over a dozen participants at each session and more than 20 all told.


Hans

 

[castiglione]

Wow - that's pretty cool. Did you guys need a GM when you got that many players just to keep things organized? How did you guys keep track of what was going on? Blackboard? BTW - I believe I read somewhere that the game was more popular in Europe than in the US.

It just occurred to me that En Garde was sort of like a formalized Braunstein (people running around a village/town/city pursuing their own personal agendas).

 

[rancke]

Wow - that's pretty cool. Did you guys need a GM when you got that many players just to keep things organized? How did you guys keep track of what was going on? Blackboard?

It was a long time ago and I mostly recall some of the highlights. I remember composing an obituary for my character who died while campaigning at the front, "Killed while showing his men that there was nothing to be afraid of" .

We each had a diary where we wrote our orders and we had typed and photocopied lists of mistresses, club membership, regimental affiliation, etc. And we had small differently colored notes representing favors that we kept from session to session. No GM. We were quite disciplined.


Hans

 

[castiglione]

I remember composing an obituary for my character who died while campaigning at the front, "Killed while showing his men that there was nothing to be afraid of" .

Nothing to be afraid of except the musket ball with your name on it!



RIP.

 

[castiglione]

Does anyone know the history of Traveller?

We all know that D & D got its start with Braunstein which led to Dave Arneson refereeing a similar game set in a fantasy medieval town (Blackmoor) which eventually evolved into D & D. And we know T & T got its start when Ken St. Andre red the OD & D rules, couldn't make heads or tails of the mechanics but understood the concepts and wrote up his own rules.

How did Traveller come to be? The reason I'm asking is because I'm wondering whether it all started out as something like En Garde...the character generation system seems to have evolved from the actual game of En Garde.