En Garde!

 Well, what a blast from the past. Russell has resurrected another ancient game, this time GDWs 'En Garde'. I remember playing it at school back in the 1970s, but we dumped all the character development stuff and just fought duels instead. It is interesting to read the rather table heavy rules again, with a bit more maturity I can appreciate the designers intent now.

It is a pen and paper RPG, so not much eye candy, just a lot of middle aged men in ludicrous hats.

For those unfamiliar, it is set in seventeenth century France, the age of The Four Musketeers, Cardinal Richelieu et al. Our heroes roll up characters and than collaborate to achieve wealth, fame and power through various machinations, the most important being 'Social Status' and 'Influence'. As ones social status rises, it costs ever more cash to maintain it.

My chap wasn't bad at all, Eduard du Moulin, second son of a wealthy gentleman with a reasonable monthly allowance and seemingly a dab hand with a blade and an eye for terrain (I rolled a 6 for Military Ability). A career in the Army seemed the obvious choice, although purchasing a commission (and a horse) would exhaust almost all my funds. I'd just have to hope a career in the military would bring fame and fortune.

We had a fair spread with a few middling characters like myself, and two extremes, one being poor John. The son of a poverty stricken peasant hoping to make it big in the metropolis, and Mark or  should I say, Monsieur le Comte, who managed to roll up a wealthy high status nobleman. Marks main problem was that his father had died so he had no allowance, just a huge inheritence, which could vanish very quickly indeed. Anyway, you get the idea, I won't bang on about all the ins and outs.

In theory we were supposed to play this in one month intervals,with one 'action' a week - join a club, go gambling, woo a fair damsel, that sort of thing. Unfortunately it was a fairly large and chatty group, and keeping some semblance of order to the proceedings was well nigh impossible, made worse as some actions were contingent on  other ones having succeeded and there was an awful lot of looking up rules etc.

We did get there in the end though, and managed to get through two complete months. John, Nick and myself were on campaign on the frontier with the Netherlands/Germany and got involved in a big battle. As that took quite a lot of setting up, we left the resolution until next time.

In brief, my chap (Eduard) joined a club appropriate to his rather lowly Social Level (it is all about SL in En Garde) and did some carousing - if you don't earn 'social points' equal to your social level, you drop a level, and that is bad. My guy started at 4, which was OK, whereas Count Mark was 11(!). 

The most important thing for me was to get into Army asap, as it both generated income to supplement my allowance, social points for rank and the opportunity for loot and glory. My character was also very fortunate, having rolled the maximum possible 'Military Ability' score. I plumped for a rather bad Regiment, the 27th as I could a) afford it b) they'd let someone of my dubious class into it. I had enough cash to enter as a Captain, which meant buying a horse, so more cash.

While all the other players sorted out what they were doing, I did some calculations and realised I could make Major with a small loan, a rank which opened up all sorts of interesting possibilities in terms of military appointments and service. Count Mark very kindly lent me some cash, as Majors need to own three horses which cost a fortune to buy and maintain, and also purchase to the rank in the same lousy Regiment.

Thus sorted, I volunteered my battalion (apparently Majors command battalions in the Seventeenth Century French Army)  for service on the frontier. This has the huge advantage that there is no upkeep to pay, so you get to keep all your income - no expensive socialising, although there is a slight risk of death of course. Serving in the battalion I actually commanded considerably reduced my chance of death and rather increased my chance of loot and glory. Anyway, we shall see what the outcome of that is in due course.

I have to say that this game really caught my interest. As a multi-player experience it is awful as there is almost no need to interact with other players to do anything at all, made even worse in the chaotic atmosphere of remote play, but as a solo game it is fantastic. Essentially it is the longest Traveller Character Generation Sequence you are ever going to play.

I cloned my character and ran through several more months of development as a solo game. My cloned character ended up flitting back and forth between Paris for social development and fighting at the the front for gongs and glory, as I worked out how to manipulate the various mechanisms for character advancement. As my rank improved I became less likely to die in battle, and to get more loot and to get more social points - it was, as Marx would point out, capitalist social reproduction in action.

My clone character ended December 1607 with a social level of seven, the rank of Major in a rather good regiment, a member of a rather good club and with oodles of cash. Next stop, Brigadier. I'll see if I can replicate that in our next f2f sessions as I have a playtested the strategy.