This post was originally posted in the Angalog Union newsletter
En Garde! By Game Designers Workshop
I’m going to come out and just say- En Garde! is really awesome. It's one of those games I've heard about over the years and always been curious about. I know it's for me, but I often saw some negative writing about it online or declaring that it was a “product of its time” - which honestly can be a dismissive term for games that are quite honestly pretty great and playable. I mean, the OSR is my thing so I'm going to be drawn to these mysterious old games but in my experience; only some grognards whisper about En Garde! In passing before talking about more popular games. This game will sometimes draw the “I was playing this before you were alive!” statement but then can’t recall their own experiences with the game. And In my mind that isn’t to do with the game being not interesting- it's more that people just didn't commit to the game which is a shame because En Garde is really its own kind of game that I really really like.
So what is my personal interest with En Garde? It’s one of those games that I learned about early on when digging into RPGs, and it is easily one of the first notable ones with a release in 1975. I read more that the game was very popular as a Play-by-mail game, which mechanically I can see why due to how it's played which I'll get to in a bit. But what are the main reasons why I found En Garde intriguing?
The Genre: I love the idea of a game that attempts to gamify an iconic literary and media genre. Obviously Fantasy and sci-fi are major ones but there are some less appreciated ones like Cowboys and Swashbuckling that I feel like should be more elevated. So the idea of a Three Musketeer game is really fun to me.
The game is an emulation of satire: You aren't a hero in En Garde! You are essentially being a crummy social-climbing privileged POS in an attempt to emulate the lifestyle of the privileged men in the Ancien Regime of France in the first half of the 1600s. This game overtly is inspired by Alexander Dumas’ works about the Three Musketeers and the related stories. Which were critiques about the social injustices and awfulness of the time period from a post-revolutionary France perspective.
Fencing: I am a fencer of 13+ years now, both modern epee (olympic) and historical (HEMA) including a main interest in the rapier. I coach historical classes weekly for adults and have a deep interest in the history and context of dueling. Which En Garde! It is directly inspired by the milieu that the rapier was developed and used.
The Traveller Connection: This game was a primary inspiration on the creation of Traveller, featuring some of the creators of En Garde to not only be some of the iconic Traveller writers (Frank Chadwick, Loren Wiseman, John Harshman, and Daryl Hany) but also being published by Game Designers' Workshop.
Now RPG Rediscovery is for games that are out-of-print so this game review is a bit of a cheat because it is currently available as a print-on-demand product. However, it's essentially unchanged since its publication over 50 years ago and is readily available. So I want to use this article to discuss the value of an original cool game that really needs to be given a spotlight. I eventually bought the current print-on-demand version where it then sat on my shelf for a number of years. Actually I lost my last copy in my “great flood” but repurchased it because I knew I would actually play it some day. This past year I finally brought it to Shirecon in Northern Connecticut where Ben of Empty Castle Press and I rolled up characters while watching our vendor table. Fellow Analog Union member Jayson came by and hung out where we got talking about playing a game of En Garde since he played it awhile ago and also liked it. So we planned for TotalCon to play a session together in the Solarian room. Now at this point I wasn’t entirely sure HOW the game was played, just how you make a character because the game doesn’t present all of its procedures clearly. So at TotalCon, we made our characters and played a game and spent a lot of time trying to figure out the dueling rules.
So yeah, the main focus of this game was the dueling rules which were developed as a mini war game but then a roleplaying game emerged around it. And when I say roleplaying game, it's more like a solo game. And by THAT I mean, the game is structured so everyone at the table is rolling on tables for events independently until two players overlap and then they can duel. The Dueling rules are not great but also aren’t bad either. I will say they are a ‘product of their time” much like I derided earlier but it's a more complex rock-paper-scissors that is overly built but with some variables as determined by a character's stats or abilities. But we pushed the dueling rules to its limit and Jayson was able to absolutely kill me by repeatedly kicking me (kicking is overpowered!) which was really funny. I can see what the writers were doing but I can also see none of the writers had any experience with fencing, only Errol Flynn films. And that's okay! The dueling rules are certainly a fun and funny way to have a game of risky swashbuckling, but the real meat of this game is the character generation and campaign.
Before I continue I would like to state one thing that makes this game cool- It was designed to be played in one session. As in, not an ongoing campaign but you could do that if you desired. I really like this idea- a game to fill in a game night session when you can’t get the whole group together for a session of D&D in 1975. This means all aspects of this game is gamified with dice rolls, there isn’t a referee or DM. You use tables to develop a story based on your decisions and the dice results of those decisions. This honestly makes En Garde a solo-gaming pioneer but you play alongside other players. So how does it work?
Create a character: You'd determine the class you were born into, your father and mothers separate statuses (you could be born out of wedlock- oh my!) and your allowances from Daddy.
Weekly Actions: From there, the game has each player attempt to do one social climbing action each week such as being seen calling on women, gambling, attending gentlemen clubs, joining the military, or visiting "floozy houses”. Players declare what they are doing each week simultaneously to determine if any players overlap. If you aren't seen with women enough, spending enough money, etc. then your social status decreases. You have to maintain a certain level of spending to maintain your current status, while overspending to increase your status. It's honestly a very interesting balancing act. You have four weeks to do this, otherwise you lose any social points at the beginning of the next month where you have to do it over again.
Risk-reward: You need money essentially. You can get it from allowances as stated earlier, but also if you are seeing a noble woman who you can charm into financing your lifestyle. Finally, joining the military is a way to maintain some income while gaining some status, IF you get into an esteemed regiment. Lastly, you can always get money from a “shylock” but have to pay him back otherwise there's a chance you will be jumped and harmed and robbed! Being in the military means you will be sent on a military campaign for the kingdom, where you may gain status by participating in battle or become wounded or even killed!
Dueling: If two players declare that they are calling on the same noble woman then a duel can happen, where the game then incorporates some action. Dueling consists of players pre-writing out their “routine” of actions based on the dueling weapon. Each action will use some amount of endurance so players must declare when they rest per exchange instead of thrusting, cutting, etc. Both players reveal their declared actions and then consult a table to see who hit or if a miss occurred. When a hit happens, damage is rolled. Players can then decide if the duel continues or not.
Additional Campaign elements; Players can invest money and hope for returns on investment to help them in their social climbing but may also go broke! Players can also be appointed official titles at high enough statues or end up disgraced.
The main point of the game is the narrative that emerges based on the player’s decisions and luck of the dice, which may be modified for specific tables based on stats. The gameplay style of solo-but-in-a-group is pretty clever and is more of a zoomed out way to roleplaying the life of a wannabe gentleman, low-life noble, or con artist type. And the experience of actually doing this at a table and sharing what your character is doing and the risks or desperation of making decisions to climb socially makes for some very funny emergent play with friends for a couple of hours. This gameplay loop directly inspired the character creation mini-game of traveller, famous for dying iconic character creation due to rolling two d6s to pass a check and 1d6 to roll on a selected table to advance your character not unlike this game. The weekly events also impacted traveller where a traveller has to resolve actions on a weekly basis, since jumping in hyperspace takes a week of time, and the arrival and navigation for a star system or starport takes another week of time to complete jobs- leading to a level of time management and weighing the odds of using your time that is a core feature of En Garde!
En Garde! went on to inspire a game called Flashing Blades by Fantasy Games Unlimited which extrapolates the gameplay here into a more traditional RPG in the 1980s that I plan on reviewing at a later date (sneak peak- it’s also very cool!)
There's nothing quite like En Garde! Highly recommended! There is an official website you can check out here
