OSSR: Swashbuckling Adventures Campaign Setting Ruleboox

[Thaluikhain]

Some of the choices they made seem strange; for example, a bayonet is listed as a slashing weapon. I looked online and I couldn’t find ANY examples of bayonets used as anything other than a piercing weapon.

Erm...in the US military, circa WW2, while the emphasis was on the point, they did also train in slashing with it. One contemporary training film on the subject compared it to boxing. When you're holding a rifle and bayonet, your left jab turns into a slash and your right hook turns into a butt stroke.

By the numbers, you started with a thrust, and if that missed you do a butt stroke, followed by the smash (in that once you've swung your rifle butt at someone, you should end up with the butt close to their face whether you hit or miss), and going back to your first position involves bringing your rifle back down and you should slash at their neck with the bayonet in the process.

So, they did train to slash. But anything that isn't a thrust is cause you couldn't do a thrust, and is followed by a thrust as soon as you can.

[deaddmwalking]

Some of the choices they made seem strange; for example, a bayonet is listed as a slashing weapon. I looked online and I couldn’t find ANY examples of bayonets used as anything other than a piercing weapon.

Erm...in the US military, circa WW2, while the emphasis was on the point, they did also train in slashing with it.

Yeah, but that's the result of better metallurgy and forging techniques.

There are a number of reasons that bayonets CAPABLE of slashing didn't become popular until the 19th century.

Unlike the plug bayonet, the socket and split-socket bayonets had three edges, giving them the name “triangular bayonets”. Given forging processes at the time, a triangular blade was easier to create, and offered increased stability from a two sided or knife blade bayonet without much additional weight. During the War of 1812, bayonets for the British Brown Bess, French Charleville, and United States Springfield muskets were between 12 and 15 inches in length, and continued to have the triangular shape.

Socket bayonets were used through the middle of the 20th century; however the triangular shape became obsolete after the late 1800’s. Though many claim that the triangular bayonet was outlawed in the Geneva Convention in 1949, this is actually not the case. The Geneva Convention set many of the rules of war, and in response to bayonets it prohibits “bayonets with a serrated edge” (International Committee of the Red Cross). Triangle bayonets are not explicitly mentioned in the Convention. Since the wound inflicted by triangular bayonets is difficult to repair, and causes more initial bleeding than that of a two sided bayonet, one could classify triangular bayonets under a clause which prohibits weapons causing undue suffering after the conflict has ended. Indeed, the wounds caused by a triangular bayonet were recorded to last for years after a battle, or to never heal at all. However this would be a stretch. Prior to the mid-1900’s, this also meant that the wound was especially prone to becoming infected, the main cause of deaths in the War of 1812.

A Brief History of the Bayonet

In any case, it isn't listed as a Slashing OR Piercing Weapon (S/P) - it's just Slashing. And even in the modern context with bayonets that can be used as a slashing weapon, that's still not the PRIMARY method of attack.

Here's an example from a WWII American Training with the Bayonet mounted to an M-1 Rifle:
This is a really good article about the use of bayonets at this point in history. During the 30 Years War they were still using a Plug Bayonet (a knife that fit into the muzzle of the musket so you could not fire).

In 1703 the Socket Bayonet was adopted; it allowed the weapon to be loaded and fired while a bayonet was attached.

[Thaluikhain]

Yeah, but that's the result of better metallurgy and forging techniques.

Really? If they could make a sword with an edge like that, why not a bayonet? That is not to say it'd be a good idea to do that, just that it seems it would have been an option.

And even in the modern context with bayonets that can be used as a slashing weapon, that's still not the PRIMARY method of attack.

Certainly, I didn't mean to say that it makes sense to having bayonets as slashing weapons, just that it wasn't totally unknown for certain kinds of bayonetsto be used that way. As an aside, I believe the US military still trains bayonet fighting in much the same way, however the bayonet is much shorter, I think it's understood that you're likely to hit the opponent with your barrel as much as the small blade attached to it.

[OgreBattle]

I would guess their thought process is "a longsword is slashing, a bayonet is like a small longsword..."

Folks I've talked to online say a bayonet is kinda like a worse balanced short spear.

[deaddmwalking]

Appendix

The appendix includes tips for playing a swashbuckler boiling down to it revolves around attitude more than any specific set of skills or abilities. Several ‘archetypes’ are listed including masked avengers, pirates, and more. Each brief description describes what a character should be able to do, but they are not mutually exclusive. Following their advice on archetypes, it includes a dozen or so NPC classes to represent typical opposition. Each covers 5 levels, but the differences between them are minute. The difference between a +1/2 and +1/3 BAB and a d8 and d8 aren’t easy to notice.

Finally, it includes a map of each nation with each notable city marked. In the case of Montaigne, that is 19 cities, so 16 more than they mentioned in the ‘notable settlements chapter’.

The Swashbuckling Adventures Line ended up supporting 11 books with good binding and generally good production values. In a lot of ways, 3.x was a good enough system that for low-level play you could manage a fair approximation of a Swashbuckling system – skills and feats could allow some types of archetypal characters that just weren’t really possible in 2nd edition. But ultimately it boils down to a few paragraphs of rather obvious and generic advice and a lot of words on mechanics that don’t really support the genre.

Since this was a Campaign Setting book, I really expected more on the actual setting. The book doesn’t provide a compelling reason why someone would choose to play in Théah as opposed to the real-world. Within this book, the ideas that are covered are not fleshed out.

Which, to be fair, isn’t ENTIRELY contrary to the aesthetics of the source material So what went wrong?

The biggest thing is trying to outline an entire world in ~250 pages. Frommer’s Guide to Paris is over 300 pages and they’re focused entirely on places you might want to visit without directly covering 4,000+ years of human occupation. They simply weren’t able to provide enough information about anything they discussed to help a GM prepare an adventure around it. If you had just read the Count of Monte Cristo (and you should – it’s one of my favorite novels) you’d be able to create an island prison adventure just fine – you wouldn’t have to decide if you were setting it in France or Italy or what have you… Essentially, this is an example of top-down world building – they drew a map, decided what cultures they wanted to include, assigned everything to a place and talked about it for as much time and space they allowed.

To build campaign setting that enables Swashbuckling, it would have been better to start with a single place that encourages as much of the source material as you can imagine. A port city with a significant privateer/pirate presence, some political machinations, nobles with cadres of private guards, a dash of religious dissent and an autocratic ruler trying to assert his power over the people would have been a better use of space. It would have given the authors a chance to talk about mercenary refugees from Eisen in a way that showed how they could be used in a swashbuckling adventure. There were no tips for how a GM could build an encounter with terrain effects that allows for stunts. Can a PC pick up and throw a bench into 3 guards as they charge into the room? If they can, how is it resolved? Is it just a damage? Or does it count as a trip attack?

We know Musketeers LOOK cool, but how do we actually make them ACT cool Without at least a place to let the players hang their hats and participate in society, we don’t really have enough to run a game.

Perhaps most damning, the examples of classic swashbucklers referenced in this book are primarily heroic individuals. How to make a swashbuckling adventure with 4+ adventurers with different strengths and weaknesses isn’t even discussed.

Ultimately, what this ought to have been was a lot more like Freeport: The City of Adventure also published in 2002. Published a few months earlier, it’s an example of a setting book that gives people a place, a reason, and ways to adventure – at least, that’s how I remember it. I’ll do a review of it in the near future to see if memory serves.

Not to be confused with the 2006 version updated for 3.5 that had the Wayne Reynolds cover