This game is not pure En Garde! It uses the En Garde! greasy pole climb as a background, similar to D&D's levels, but it incorporates a lot of ongoing roleplay like modern RPGs. Social climbing will be of long term importance to your character development, and may influence his/her motives and abilities, but the day to day adventures will have a more immediate importance. ie, your prospects for gaining a captaincy will perhaps be of less importance to you than rescuing your mistress from the clutches of the Witchfinder General or uncovering a plot laid by Dutch fifth columnists...
It is a semi-freeform game that maintains a narrative style, but with enough of a rules framework to keep everything grounded in realism. You may
want to leap from the staicase, swing across the room on the chandelier and then engage two enemies simultaneously, defeating them both in short order, but whether or not that
actually happens will depend on your character's skill set and Lady Luck rather than just your announcement of intent. Having said that, such an event will be resolved with a couple of dice rolls, not twenty - I don't want the game bogged down with number-crunching.
Please note that this is a sandbox game. This means that the GM will not be pushing and prodding the Players along a predetermined and choreographed plot line. The game has no points to score or keys to collect by going to vital places and no Arch Villain to be defeated in a Grand Finale. It’s a saga, not a three-act play.
That’s not to say that there is no plot at all and no villains to defeat. There is certainly an overarching setting, a background of events against which the action takes place, and you will meet up with all sorts of nefarious characters with their own lives and their own agendas. There will be no shortage of action if you want it, but remember: Prince (or Princess) Charming won’t come knocking on your door - only the Rent Man does that...
The game revolves around the characters, their lives and loves, their gains and losses, and how they grow as people. It will evolve as the characters make friends and enemies along the way. This means that Players have a direct input on the direction of the story and will need to make a substantial contribution to its evolution - I’m looking for participants not puppets.
The role of the GM here is not to kick Players’ butts and railroad them along the One True Path to the Holy Grail. The GM will instead provide a world for Players to explore and interact with. If the Players interact with that world and have their characters do things, fun will ensue. If the Players sit on their unkicked butts, have their characters do nothing, and wait for somebody else to carry the story, the game will falter and die. Nobody wants that.
You can’t step too far, because I’ll rein you in. I’d rather use the reins than the spurs.
However, spare a thought for your GM. Unfortunately I have limited time to spend on planning this game and one thing I simply cannot do is create a different plot-line for each player. There's no way I can have one character in London, another in Worcester, a third in Paris, a ninth in Barbados... So although you are theoretically free to do what you want, I must ask that you work together, or certainly in no more than two or three groups.
It’s your game, make of it what you will. That’s the nature of a sandbox.
If you haven't already done so, check out the
Game Info tab at the top of the screen for a taster.
I hope you enjoy the game.
BTW, please check out the web site of the En Garde! community:
http://www.engarde.co.uk
This message was last edited by the GM at 16:15, Sun 15 Jan 2012.