#flashing blades

I looked at Flashing Blades (1984) a while back — it’s one of only a handful of swashbuckling Musketeer RPGs out there (it’s basically this and En Garde! until 7th Sea showed up, I think, and 7th Sea sorta feels like a stretch). Parisian Adventures is, well, it’s right there in the name. In addition to the four scenarios, there are some expansions for Paris that probably should have been in the original box set — a selection of exotic items, a short guide to the city and a 20-entry rumor mill table that is essentially an array of further adventure seeds.

The adventures are short and sweet. One involves the mystery of a missing (kidnapped) fencing master. Unraveling the mystery is no difficult task, but seems satisfying — it ends up in the catacombs beneath a church. The second scenario involves recovering stolen secret documents from a theater. Of course, whichever faction the players belong to (say, the king’s musketeers) have to beat the other faction (the cardinal’s men) to the quarry. Backstage brawls and accidental participation on-stage are a given. I can see this one playing out in glorious Technicolor in my mind’s eye.

Scenario three is about foiling an assassination while participating in a marksmanship contest. That one is probably the weakest of the group. The final scenario is a farcical scavenger hunt for presents for the mistress of one of the player characters; the primary dangers are being pelted with cabbage or becoming intoxicated. Also easily envisioned on the big screen.

Oddly, the art credits for the whole book are given to the Bain Sidhe Studio, which seems to consist of four folks including someone named Matt Wagner. Surely, not that Matt Wagner? This is the earliest example I can recall of farming art duties out to a studio, which is kind of interesting. I like the interiors, but boy, the cover leaves a lot to be desired.

When I first wrote about Flashing Blades, I lamented that the game was so focused on Paris and musketeers, because I thought the fencing rules seemed particularly well suited for pirate-y swashbuckling. Why wasn’t there information on the Spanish Main? Well, there was, it’s just in a different book: High Seas (1985). Who knew!

The bulk of the book is a source book with additional rules for ships and the setting. It’s all decent stuff — the ships rules seem pretty minimal, which is welcome, but I can’t really tell how well they might work, which is maybe not the best sign.

The back half of the book is a three-part campaign that sees players journeying from France to deliver a secret message to Martinique. Along the way, they join up (or are press-ganged) with some pirates and take part in a treasure hunt on a desert island, deal with some bad voodoo on a plantation (eek) and suss out the movements of the Spanish silver train in Portobello. Then they deliver their message and get a pardon for their efforts! (Mostly) good stuff (the voodoo scenario is a bit ham-fisted by modern standards).

On one episode of the podcast, I wondered aloud about why no one had ever made a Three Musketeers RPG, then a couple weeks later, Flashing Blades (1984) showed up in a collection I bought, proving yet again that I don’t know everything. I was initially leery of it — Fantasy Games Unlimited published it and their games tend to A. Be extremely complex to my tastes and B. Set with type so small to save on printing costs that reading them gives me a headache. To my pleasure and surprise, Flashing Blades is neither terribly complex nor cramped in its layout. A miracle!

It feels rather like a Basic Role-Playing game, to me, actually, maybe with a hint of D&D and Fantasy Trip mixed in. Skill based. Professions provide a light class system which provides base skills. Rather than handle combat skills a la carte, you get packages of skills, according to the “martial training” you select (a bit like Traveller, I guess?). Hand to hand fighting is a bit complicated but, that’s kind of what you’re here for — clashing blades, kicks, parrying daggers, maybe a quick swing on the chandelier. The system is a bit clunky by our modern standards, but I think it acquits itself well in expressing the swashbuckling the game calls for.