Flashing Blades, a solo RPG campaign, part 2 - A few thoughts and the characters.

A dilemma to resolve.

 Having recently finished my Beyond the Wall solo game "blood in the snow", I really wanted to play something different, a Sci-Fi maybe or a horror game.  Trouble is I cannot decided between Classic Traveller or Stars without Numbers for a Sci-Fi setting, and I cannot find a horror RPG I think I will enjoy , so I am doing neither. 

Which left me with a dilemma as to which RPG to play next,  that was until I came across a forgotten folder on my hard drive, at some point around the time I picked up Beyond the Wall, I also picked up Flashing Blades, the old FGU Swashbuckling rules written by Mark Pettigrew back in 1984, I had completely forgotten I had them.  Well, reading them I realised that was it, I was really up for a bit of swashbuckling musketeer 17th century solo RPGing.

Flashing Blades, my solo campaign.

This campaign will be ,as Mark Pettigrew put it,  'the France that could of been rather than the France that was'.
You will find that gentleladies can fence and brawl as well as any gentleman, indeed, they may be better, we may have female soldiers, and what if we add a little bit of horror in the mix as well, cults trying to summing up demons, witches and sorcerers performing their dark arts in rural villages and Parisian slums, in this France, indeed world, (High Seas adventure anyone), anything could and should happen.      

Already my imagination is running ahead of me, in my first post on this game I set the scene for the starting point, the village of Château Hèras, I plan to expand on those scanty details in my next post, now I want to turn my attention to my characters, what brings them together and what their motives for adventuring through France, (and further afield), are.  I best get on then.

Thoughts on the characters, personalities and motives.

I usually have 4 PC's in my games. this game is going to be no exception.  They don't all yet know each other and will only meet as the first adventure progresses, this is something I sometimes like to do rather than start them all off together.

Although I have a good idea about my characters personalities and motives, I have used random tables from 'SoloistRPG by Chris Atthestudy' to help round them out, (you can download it here and also check out Soloist, his online game assistant.

My four characters are -

Artus, age 24, Soldier (Ex -Lieutenant, Queens Fusiliers).  Artos had been a Soldiers since age 15, 9 years on and he has come in to a little money, making him fairly well off but not enough for him to just put his feet up for good, he still needs to earn a little cash.

I roll twice on SoloistRPG's personality table and get 'Reckless and Cheerful', that seems to sum him up well, always overly optimistic which causes him to act rashly heedless to the consequences of his actions.  Rolling on background I get 'Shrouded in Mystery', what I don;t know is how he has come into the money he has, that is certainly something I can explore later in the campaign.

Guilaume, age 30, Soldier (Retired Subaltern Queens Fusiliers).  Guilaume had been a soldier for too long, finally retiring he has a little money but he is not yet ready to settle down.
I roll twice on the personality table and get 'Grim and Calm', certainly a life of constant fighting would make you grim and you would need to be calm in the face of the enemy to survive.  Rolling on background I get 'Stranger in a Strange Land', I know that he is French so France will not be strange to him but having spent most of his life in the army, civilian life will feel strange to him.

Artus and Guilaume are the only two characters who start off knowing each other, Guilaume served under Artus in the Queens Fusiliers and knows him well with a bit of a soft spot for the young ex lieutenant he feels a brotherly responsibility toward him, Artos for his part knows that Guilaume has got him out of a tricky situation on more than one occasion and is happy to have subaltern around at least for now.

Both Artus and Guilaume were born to adventure, and is the simple motive for their life of adventuring.

Elaine, age 22, Rouge.  Elaine grew up in the slums of Paris, finding herself working for one of the many criminal gangs.  Always with an eye to climbing out of the poverty trap she was in she squirreled away a little money here and there, then one day opportunity arose and she found herself in possession of a large amount of money belonging to her criminal employers.  Elaine and the money left Paris for good. She has now changed her identity, for all appearances she is a wealthy aristocratic lady not a Parish street urchin.
I roll once on Personality table and get 'Ascetic' (anything else I could roll on the table is likely to make nonsense of that roll, so I stop there), I roll once on the Positive Attribute table and get Charismatic, I decided not to roll on background because the one that really fits is 'Always on the Run'.

So we know that she is self-disciplined, keeping a clear head, charasmatic and going back to Paris may not be a good choice for her.

Rosalie, age 25, Gentlewoman.  Rosalie has somehow found herself in a desperate situation, down to her last few livre.  Rolling on personality I got 'Implacable and Hot-Tempered', on background I rolled 'Impoverished Nobility' and from the FB rules she got the secret 'Sworn Vengance'.

So Rosalie comes from a wealthy, middleclass background but someone has caused something to happen which has resulted in her current impoverished situation a wrong she intends to right, at the moment I don't know what that wrong is but it sounds like the basis for a cracking adventure later in the campaign.

And that's the four, Elaine and Rosalie are yet to meet Artos and Guilaume, they will do so during the course of our first adventure.  I have rolled up the stats for all these characters, my next step is to get some NPC created, see how they all fit together and get the first adventure set around Château Hèras underway.

In part three, the adventure will begin.