This is an En Garde! game set in the reign of Louis XIII. It seeks to capture the spirit of the time, blending historical accuracy with reasonable game-play, and to widen the scope of the traditional En Garde! game to include a much expanded role play dimension.

Basic En Garde is effectively a Rules Playing Game and was originally designed for half a dozen players playing face-to-face around a table. In order to make it into more of a Role Playing Game, this variant has a much more detailed background (including a Map, Gazetter and pictorial plan of Paris in the 1630s) and incorporates expanded rules detailing houses (and servants), estates, the Royal Court, the Church, expanded families, Female Player Characters, and gay characters.

Conventions

The following conventions are used in these house rules:

(7+, class 3) Indicates that an non-player character’s decision may be modified by influence. The numbers indicate firstly the minimum score needed on a D6 for the NPC to carry out the action and secondly the level of influence (favour) required for a + or - 1 modifier. If the first number is omitted, the chance is 7+. If the second is omitted, levels of influence appropriate for the character’s rank must be used (e.g. class 6 for generals).

1D6  means that one six-sided dice is thrown.  2D6 means that two six-sided dice are thrown, and so on.

All actions in the game fall into one of three time-scales:

Pre-Monthly Actions

These take no time and occur at the start of the month. They generally apply to actions that will occur throughout the whole month, or affect a character’s actions that month.

Weekly Actions

These actions take a whole week to perform. Only one weekly action may be given for each week, although weekly actions may be ordered conditionally on the results of previous week’s actions. Orders such as “Toady to Aramis. If he does not let me, toady to Porthos.” are not valid conditional orders and the conditional part will be ignored. Note that an order like as “Toady to Aramis. If he did not let me toady last week, toady to Porthos.” is a valid conditional order.

No-Time Actions

No-time actions differ from pre-monthly actions in that they must be undertaken in conjunction with a weekly action. Toadying, carousing, gambling and wenching are examples of no-time actions.

For a summary of all available orders, and the time-scale and order in which they are adjudicated, please see the relevant section.