Pyramid Pick
The Swashbuckler's Handbook (for Mage: The Sorcerers Crusade)
Published by White Wolf Game Studio
Written by Phil Masters, Phil Brucato, and Rebecca Moss
128 pages, $18.00
Most games -- not to mention literature and drama -- are about conflict, and the simplest form of conflict to create is violence. More than any other reason, that's why so many roleplaying games place such a high premium on combat. It's not that most game designers are lazy or that most gamers are stupid; it simply takes a rare combination of astute writing, clever players, and lots of examples to make other forms of conflict at all viable in a roleplaying setting. The somewhat misnamed Swashbuckler's Handbook (perhaps "Courtier's Handbook" lacked a certain flare) provides two of these three ingredients in great quantities. You need only find a group of appropriately cunning players to add seduction, guile, and treachery to your Mage: The Sorcerers Crusade chronicle.
Subtitled "High Adventure and Intrigue for Mage: The Sorcerers Crusade," The Swashbuckler's Handbook focuses on the social side of conflict. As the book's introduction makes clear, the purpose of this book is "to show Storytellers and players how to run chronicles in which a poisoned cup is just as fearsome as a fireball -- and often far more effective in the long term." Thus the book is a guidebook to the potent combination of sex, violence, and intrigue that make the Renaissance such a wonderful environment for gaming.
Physically, The Swashbuckler's . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: August 25, 2000
Copyright © 2000 by Steve Jackson Games. All rights reserved. Pyramid subscribers are permitted to read this article online, or download it and print out a single hardcopy for personal use. Copying this text to any other online system or BBS, or making more than one hardcopy, is strictly prohibited. So please don't. And if you encounter copies of this article elsewhere on the web, please report it to webmaster@sjgames.com.