Noodling/Musketeers RPG

Random bits for a musketeers thing:

Honor

Characters all have an honor score. Perhaps 'respect' or 'repute' is a better name for this, since it doesn't imply "lawful good" behavior, and it basically only matters wrt what's public knowledge. Honor is the implied goal of the game - it may even translate directly into xp (alternately, the game uses a key system and the PCs by default have the Key of Honor, or some combination of keys that add up to this). Rough tenets are like:

• Don't abuse your position wrt social inferiors
• Act properly wrt social superiors
• Be loyal to your group
• Be brave
• Show good taste and manners

Note that in particular lying isn't a problem, and it's possible that two people can oppose each other stridently but both behave honorably. It is conceivable there might be different codes of honor depending on your group.

References

• The Three Musketeers (obviously) - note all the stuff that is apparently permitted by their honor codes
• The Phoenix Guards - some argument for different people having different codes

Combat

Types

There are two basic kinds of combat, formal duels and informal fights. In the case of an informal fight, it's anything goes and no honor is at stake, so it's fine to cut the rope to the chandelier or throw wine in their face or whatever, and it is fine to team up N-against-1 or whatever. On the other hand, in formal duels you're much more limited in what you're allowed to do, but contrariwise you can use some more advanced skills/techniques that aren't practical in informal settings. Furthermore, in formal duels you gain honor based on the stakes (for participating, maybe more for winning - definitely lose some for turning down the duel depending on situation). It's still possible to gain honor for an informal fight, but not just for the fact of fighting - but if you, say, are in a tavern and some of your buddies get into a fight, you gain honor for helping them out. I think it is probably possible to gain some honor if you treat a combat like a formal duel even if they are treating it like a fight. Also note that dueling is often illegal (formal; informal dueling is basically (attempted) murder, of course).

Positioning

When there is a team up, positioning yourself to limit the number of people who can attack you (by getting your back against a wall or tricking them into interfering with each other or whatever) is a big part of the duel since even fairly weak opponents can be dangerous when they outnumber you.

Dueling Techniques

In formal duels, everyone gets a relatively high base defense (depending on their skill level). If you're much more highly skilled than your opponent you can probably just blow through it, but otherwise you need to spend some time figuring out their style (which chips away at their defense). You maybe divide your successes (or skill dice?) between attacking and figuring out their style and hence can do both every round. The dueling techniques revolve around this - so like you can have Obscure Style that makes it harder to understand, or even Adaptive Style that lets your defense "heal" from being understood, or Flash of Insight that gives you some one-shot big knock against their defense, or Secondary Style that lets you switch to a new style, resetting stuff (but techniques apply to different styles separately). Note that named schools and techniques and so on are only part of this implicitly - they're basically color for the various rolls.

In order to get this defense bonus, you're limited in what skills you can use - more or less just your weapon skill, your style observation skill (perhaps that's the general perception skill), and conversation skills.

You can switch from a formal duel "mode" to an informal one if you want at any time (even right before you declare your action). However, to switch from informal back to formal is more complicated and requires spending an action just switching.

Environmental Interactions

In informal duels you don't get the base defense bonus (because instead of focusing on your opponent exclusively you're splitting your attention to the environment to spot opportunities there). Hence dueling techniques aren't generally useful. On the other hand, you're allowed to do other kinds of things. It's not clear how to "score" random stuff like hitting a guy with a leg of lamb or throwing wine in their eyes or dropping a chandelier on them. I think it's something like regardless of the action, you choose between damage or a temporary condition (blinded, stunned, entangled, etc). Success is determined by rolling some appropriate skill (or maybe part of the deal here is you always roll some fixed skill). There's a bonus to the roll if you've never done this particular action before (this adventure, anyway), and a penalty if you have - it's basically impossible to succeed at this kind of thing if you're repeating an environment action more than two or three times. You can also get a bonus spending some actions to set it up, but that's often not that useful.

Roughly speaking, the desired balance is that against no-name opponents, environmental actions are slightly more effective than weapon attacks wrt damage and temporary conditions are usually not as good as damage. Against more serious opponents, environmental damage is less than weapon damage; conditions are useful but the bonus from stacking them usually makes it not worth it.

Intentional Handicaps

You can earn a little extra honor by giving yourself an intentional handicap in a duel (fighting left-handed when you're not left-handed, say).

References

• Princess Bride's Chatty Duel is clearly a formal duel but has a certain amount of non-swordplay allowed; not clear if this is a breach of the rules or just a description of them
• The Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser story The Jewels in the Forest starts off with a fight where positioning is a big deal to deal with a numbers disadvantage
• The Phoenix Guards has a bunch of scenes of different kinds of fights
• The Three Musketeers does too, although in fact the first fight seems to be a formal duel but nevertheless is a 5-on-4 scene that includes somebody tagging in mid-fight

Money

Money is a big deal but the exact kind of big deal it is depends on your social class etc. If you're mercenary-class, then you tend to gain money from patrons or mistresses, or rewards from social superiors, or occasionally prizes in war or being actually hired as a mercenary. You spend it on stuff like a fancy horse or maybe a sword, or nice lodgings or clothing or whatever, or drinks for your buddies, or blow it gambling (this probably exchanges money for honor). When you're dead broke you sell off your fancy outfits, move to shadier lodging and drink worse-quality drinks, and maybe grovel to or flatter people you'd rather not grovel to (this exchanges honor for money). If you're noble-class, then you always have enough personal funds for stuff, but you have an estate whose fortunes wax and wane. You can be tied up in farming and dependent on agricultural returns, or invest primarily in other stuff and have to deal with that. There are some minor losses of honor if your estate gets too in debt, and minor gains if you keep it up well, but mostly it doesn't affect honor. You might get involved in stuff that affects honor depending on what your estate's invested in, though.

References

• Three Muskeeters has a bunch of good stuff about money
• Count of Monte Cristo is also a good reference here

War

Sometimes you have to go to war. This is a chance to make money and distinguish yourself, get awarded a noble title, and accumulate career-ending injuries. It can be kind of annoying for social stuff you're trying to get done since everyone will be out of town.

References

• Three Musketeers has some war stuff, I believe

Injuries and Healing

It has to be possible to fight duels where people are hurt enough to have to quit, but it also has to be the case that duelists aren't being killed all the time, or you need a constant influx of new duelists. The Three Musketeers seems to have the basic principle that any wound that doesn't kill you immediately can be treated, and within a couple days you'll be good as new with the proper care. This might be more the case with dueling swords than with, like, muskets.

References

• Three Musketeers has d'Artagnan explicitly get a recipe from his mother for a healing potion with this property, but other characters seem to have similar recovery without it. Also, it seems pretty routine to stab a guy and then leave him on the porch of a nunnery for the nuns to patch him up.

Patronage, Politics, Conspiracies

Part of the standard setting premise seems to be an empire with a set of traits, as follows:

• The emperor is prone to whims - the absence of a strong hand at the top means policies can shift around a fair amount on short notice
• The empire is "comfortably corrupt" - it's not exactly mismanaged but there are a bunch of power brokers who can make stuff happen
• The empire is factionalized in one or more ways; this might be about being pro/con somebody, or it might be about some issue, but in any case there are people on either side of the issue (though people on the same side might be there for different reasons)

The result is the heroes end up hooking up with some patron and fighting with their patron's enemies (and their patron and patron's enemies might be opposed just because their patrons are opposed), and coming across a conspiracy that they can take an active hand in thwarting.

This probably implies some kind of faction scoring (that is, different factions have honor scores of their own, and you can do various things by your action to adjust them - so you might want to become someone's patron in exchange for them working to give the faction you run more honor).

Setting

I think the main things to figure out here are why so much dueling and stuff is happening in a small area, and what the characters do when they're not dueling, if they have enough leisure time to be duelists. Presumably making them city guards is one solution - they have freedom to poke around but can also be given various missions. Another take might be a bunch of feuding groups, maybe city-states - but they'd probably feud in a war way and not in an individual duelist way.

References

• Black Company
• Conan