The Black Campbell

I stumbled across a review for Beat to Quarters, the companion volume of this game and liking the sound of it –I’m a sucker for Napoleonic sea stories, but strangely, have never done a game campaign in the setting — jumped over to DriveThruRPG.com to have a quick look.  Unlike a lot of the big players, the PDFs didn’t cost an arm and a leg; for $10 for the core book for each system I figured even if there were only a few things to scavenge out of them for other systems, it would be worth it.  I wound up buying the two books, and all the “free” miscellany for Duty & Honor and Beat to Quarters for a grand total of $20. (Here’s Omnihedron Games‘ page on DriveThruRPG.)

So was it worth it?  Oh, yeah.

Duty & Honor‘s designer Neil Gow gets a few simple things right with the system, the book, and the idea: keep it simple.  First, the look of the book.  As mentioned, I don’t have the print version, so I’ve no idea if it’s hardback or soft, but the prices on Omnihedron’s website seem to suggest the later. (They are — I’m guessing — running the hard copy on a print-on-demand basis, but the prices are still very reasonable: £12…about $18-20 US, plus shipping.) The covers are color, the rest of the book is greyscale and printer friendly (although they have an even more printer friendly version that comes with the DriveThruRPG purchase.)  The font is large, readable, and the layout is simple — a one column with a sidebar column for asides and rules clarifications.  There is a some simple black and white art in the book — mostly uniform examples and a few character portraits, and the page is watermarked with a battle scene that I know I’ve seen before and am blanking on as I write this.  Total length of the book 132 pages.

Not 300+, full color on glossy paper as is the standard now for the RPG industry (and half the reason you pay $50 a book now.)  132: simple declarative English with a minimum of chaff, but plenty of material to allow you to run the game.

The basics:  Duty & Honor uses a deck of cards and die poll sensibilities: for a test, the GM pulls a “Card of Fate” (no jokers). If the players are in a contested actions, a fight, wooing, whatever, the FM then pulls a hand of cards. Likewise, the players pull a hand based on their Measures (Guts, Discipline, Influence, Charm), possibly their Reputation, Skills, or a weapon. Match the suit, you get a success; match the card number of the CoF, you get a critical success; match the card (say it was a 3 of Diamond and that’s one of the cards in the players’ hand), it’s a complete success.  You count the number of success for who won.  Complete trumps criticals, criticals trump normal success.

Character creation is simple and fast:  hit on a concept, take a number of experiences (this can be “ten years as an accountant” or “spent a weekend running for my life in the Black Forest”) you’ve agreed on with the GM, do your military training (this is a Napoleonic war game, after all) and experiences.  Each give you points to put to your measures, skills, reputations, traits, etc.

Combat is generally rendered as a series of action sequences, not round-by-round combat.  A Skirmish can have one to three actions you need to take, and that’s it; a full-blown battle could run up to five tests for the characters.  The players and GM are expected to work together to narrate the events; this seems to be the new “in thing” for RPGs — the communal storytelling vibe is all over the new Cortex rules, and much of the indie games out there. The game suggests that players shouldn’t be the first ones to take a face full of grapeshot or injury…that’s what the mooks in your military outfit are for.  You’re the heroes, after all.

The combat sequences are interesting in that everyone’s actions effect the outcome of the other players. An officer or sergeant gives extra cards to a hand through their discipline measure to other players. The success of the ratings and sergeants gives cards to the commander for the next round of fighting. It’s a well thought out mechanic that mimics the interaction on the battlefield — the commander can motivate and direct the troops effectively, but if the troops don’t fight well, it’s all for nought; if the troops kick butt, even the worse plan might come to fruition.

Combat is interesting in that the characters have no combat skills, per se.  There’s Soldiering or Command, but for the day-to-day shoot/bash someone, it’s just the successes on the cards. That might seem counterintuitive, but in a mass combat, your Guts and Discipline are more use; extraordinary skill in combat can be taking in a Trait.  It sounds funky, but I suspect it would work fine.

Overall, I’d have to give the substance of the system and the background material a 4 out of 5; they could have given more setting material for the players in the corebook, but that would have upped the cost.  The look: 3 out of 5 — it’s clean, neat, and there’s not a lot of razzle-dazzle, but it gets the job done.

I’ll have a review for Beat to Quarters soon.