Save the Princess; Barsoomian style & En Garde adaptations for Barsoom

Last night we played a great little game of Barsoomian En Garde! The scenario started as a simple raid on an ancient temple of Issus full of Green Martian Tharks with a hostage princess. 

The temple was truly ancient, since I must have made it sometime before 2000 when I still used cardboard and plaster. The thing has languished in my shed for at least 15 years and even smelled suitably mouldy for an old temple! 

This turned out very dull, as the Tharks were simply shot down when they exited the temple and the final Thark inside killed the hostage. Duh.  

So we turned it into a  tense sneak-and-stab scenario. Two sentries were placed outside and moved every turn on a scatter die + 1d6" movement. 

The Red Martian troops laid in ambush and a select few tried to sneak into the temple through a hole in the roof to extract the princess or protect her during the raid. The Red Martians had Initiative as long as they were unnoticed. The Green Tharks inside the temple did nothing as long as the sentries did not raise the alarm. 

The second game used this adapted approach. One of the two Red leaders (a Jeddak) and a trooper evaded the sentries and tried to climb into the temple. The Jeddak succeeded but the trooper fell and alerted the sentries. 

While the Reds stormed the temple, the Thark leader ran upstairs to the hostage and was valiantly met by the Red Jeddak. Who was subsequently cut inhalf in the following duel. Duh....

The third game showed some improved tactics. Red Martians ambushed all around the temple en the two Red leaders snuck and climbed into the temple. 

Succesfull this time, thanks to their higher Initiative. Once inside, they decided to extract the Princess instead of defending her during the attack and they succesfully made it out of the temple and unto the roof again. As it turned out, a fateful decision....

Unfortunately for the Martian Red royalty, the princess failed to make her climb rolls during the descent (twice!) and plummeted to her death. Damn!




Again, the En Garde rules proved perfect for playing Barsoom with only minor adaptaions shown below: 



























En Garde rules adaptations for Barsoom: 

En Garde! Barsoom Rules

These rules are intended to take the player to the wastes of Barsoom as written about by the great
late Edgar Rice Burroughs. In these stories, Mars is a dry and dying planet populated with exotic and
warlike human and alien races, ancient civilizations and bizarre wildlife. In recent decades these
stories have spawned a lively VSF background which unfortunately is not very compatible with the
original JC stories for various reasons. Therefore there will be some suggestions to stick to one of two specific canons.

Victorian Science Fiction Canon:
This is the most versatile of the Martian universes. Here, like in the Space 1889 backgrounds, Mars is
essentially an unexplored territory where European peoples boldly go where no one has gone before.
They fly to Mars in Aetherships and explore the surface of the Red Planet in caravans and liftwood
skyships, encountering the native civilizations much as European explorers did in the 16th to 19th
century in Asia, Africa and Meso- and South America.

Humans in this universe have no special powers on Mars, beside the fact that they might be
technologically more advanced than most of the Martian natives. These natives are mostly humanoid
beings, some bipedal, some winged, living in city states or tribal structures. Their level of civilization
and technology is comparable to Late Medieval/Early Renaissance Earth. Wargaming on VSF Mars is
essentially a fantasy kind of colonial gaming on another planet.

John Carter or Barsoom Canon
True to the ERB stories, here Mars, called Barsoom by its inhabitants, is much like in the VSF canon.
The Martian races are mostly humanoid, divided into red, white, black and yellow humanoids. Next
to these live the giant six-limbed Green martians, originally constructs of the ancient White Martians,
the current Therns. There are however some essential differences compared to the VSF canon.
First, Mars cannot be reached by space, but only by very rare and inaccessible portals which
transport one’s energy form to Barsoom and transform this into a human body. Few humans manage
to make this crossing, the most famous of whom is American Civil War hero John Carter. Earthlings
on Mars are therefore rare. If not unique.

Second, due to Mars’ light gravity Earth-born humans’ muscles gain greatly enhanced strength that
essentially turn an Earthling into a minor superhero, capable of making huge jumps and other feats
of strength. This effectively prohibits playing with lots of Earthlings, since what fun would playing an army of superheroes be?

Thirdly, the human civilizations of Barsoom are technologically more advanced than contemporary
Earth civilizations. They are centuries old, aided by the much longer lifespans of Martians who can
easily reach over 500 Earth years of age. They employ enormous flying ships, energy sources of
unparalleled power and even have found a way to provide the dying planet with an artificial
atmosphere on which all life on Mars is dependend.

All Martian races are very warlike and adhere to warrior’s codes of honour that proscribe chivalrous
behavior in combat.

Red Martians
The technologically advanced red-skinned inhabitants of the moderate regions of Barsoom populate
a number of city states, among which Helium and Zodanga are the most powerful (and rivalrous).
Red Martians have mastered flight and energy-powered firearms.
Red firearms are semi-automatics and count as rifles and pistols in En Garde! They need never be
reloaded, as they employ tiny, highly energized radium bullets that explode on impact and do a
disproportionate amount of damage to their size.

Red Martians basically follow human stats as used in En Garde!. Red Martians may never choose armour. May be mounted on a Thoat (+10). May use skyships.

The Red Martian stats can be used for the white, black and yellow humanoid races as well. 

Green Martians
The 10 feet tall green-skinned and four-armed barbarians of the Barsoomian wastes and deserts are
feared all over the planet. Massively strong and tough and ferocious in combat they are literally bred
for war, as the ancient white Martians constructed them as artificial warriors and laborers. They
roam the deserts as nomadic tribes on their big Thoats and inhabit the ruins of old abandoned cities
that litter the surface of the dying planet. They war with everyone, including each other, with
barbaric customs like torturing and eating their defeated opponents. They should be viewed as
fearsome adversaries in combat.

Having an inbred knack for military technology and combat medicine, they employ surprisingly
advanced weapons for their barbaric demeanor.

Green firearms are more primitive than their Red counterparts. Rifles are powerful single-shot breech
loaders that need to be reloaded. Due to their size, they are even able to damage flying ships with a -2 modifier. Pistols are simple revolver designs that do not need to reload and are comparable to a red pistol.

Green Martians use human En Garde stats with the following changes: 

Combat Pool +1
Movement Fast
Initiative +1
Shoot +1
Traits: Powerful, Extremely Tough. 

Green Martians may never choose armour. May be mounted on a Thoat (+10). All Green Martians are Extremely Tough. Green Martians never board or use skyships.

Extremely Tough:
· Green Martians gain a -1 on the roll to discard Stun counters.
· They ignore the effects of Light Wounds. Two Light Wounds still make a Grievous Wound.
· Grievous Wounds only cause an effect normally seen with Light Wounds. Any Wound on top
of a Grievous Wound still causes a Critical Wound.

· Critical Wounds have the normal affect.

Playing the ninja raid

Today I hosted the Ninja Raid game as a participation demo at Ducosim in Amersfoort. It was a bit of an experiment as I usually host multiplayer games and this was a 1-on-1 game. The convention, held three or four times a year, is a combination of mainly board- and card gamers, some wargamers and that elusive category in between, the participation game. It was the first time my Japanese manor featured on a con and also the most compact demo I ever hosted: I carried all the stuff from my car to the table in two boxes!

 Here the terrain is shown. While the entire game is basically confined to the manor, I thought it good to dress up the table with some more fluff.

The brave (but somewhat sleepy) inhabitants of the manor. The dice are thrown into the building to represent  where the inhabitants are and whether they are awake or not.

Background fluff: temple, gate and Buddha. Yes, here be cherry blossom trees....

The sneaking route for the Ninja up to the back door.

The front gate. As you can see the time to paint the dragons flanking the gate somehow eluded me.

Two cute girls played the first game and as usual in reality turned out to be bloodthirsty hack-and-slash players intent on slaughtering their way to victory...

Here Ninja and samurai battle in the garden. Note the Koi fish. I am very proud of the Koi fish....

Audience gives some constructive criticism while the ninja player ponders his plan of attack.

 Note the blinds that cover up the rooms. This way the ninja player has no idea where his target (or the guards) are and the samurai player knows where they are, but not whether they will be awake...

Ninja sneaking over the garden wall, taking aim with the blowpipe with the poisoned darts...

Here a poisoned dart target, pardon a samurai guardsman reclines on the bridge in the garden.

After the bit with the poisoned darts, ninja sneak up to the back door. Unfortunately several AWAKE samurai were waiting inside!

A smoke bomb took care of the first round of combat and prevented the samurai from using their superior numbers.

One ninja even confronted the Daimyo directly in his sleeping chambers! Alas, in the end the target  ran too fast to be caught...

For Ninja caught inside a building filled with awake guards and staff, times have become interesting indeed! 

Here my neighbours played the venerable game Battletech Classic, which is a silly tag, since, well, what other kind of Battletech is there, really?

Some impressions of the convention: lots of card- and boardgames, some wargames and a huge FoW game. Not my thing, but impressively huge.

I spent a very enjoyable day, hosted 4 or 5 games and chatted with a lot of people, known and unknown and even got a bag of Thirty Years War Cuirassiers for my birthday. Thank you Sander! They will grace some Witchfinder General Table in the future.

The making of The Raid: how a scenario is born.. Part 3: The Building

On with the show. Now the scenario and rules have taken shape, further building can continue! 

Roofs will be detachable. Doors and gates must be able to open and close. The buildings must allow for a lot of cover, given the lethality of missiles in the Ronin rules. And where would a ninja sneak if there is nothing to hide behind? 

As usual I made some sketches for the design. No blueprints, just an impression to guide me during the building process.

The building should look distinctly Japanese. This calls for a maximum of clichés and the watching of some samurai movies while making a list: shoji doors, tatami floor coverings, cherry blossom trees in a Zen garden, a little arched bridge, curved roof ornaments and Buddha statues in some of the rooms. A Chinese food-and-novelty shop proved a treasure trove!

The building was undertaken in my proven fashion. Sturdy foamboard outer walls with small windows detailed with balsa and basewood timber would hold the roof made of cardboard. 

I decided on rooftiles instead of thatch: the owner of the manor is supposed to be rich and powerful enough to warrant assassination after all! There are lots of expensive and laborious ways to make rooftiles but being a stingy and lazy peasant I chose corrugated cardboard, cut in strips and glued in layers overlapping each other. Once painted this is remarkably effective. The top of the outer wall would be likewise tiled.

Interior walls will have to be double-walled to enable the sliding shoji doors to move into the walls. All interior doors and doors opening into the courtyard and garden have to follow this pattern. As shoji doors are relatively easy to break through, opening them would signify a broken or opened door, needed to either look or walk into a room. The doors are made from plasticard, as they would have to be moved around a lot and need to be resistant to friction and sliding. 

I make extensive use of printed paper to decorate the rooms and walls. Wall panneling, floor planks and stuff like paintings and screens are all googled, printed and glued. Be aware that the usual printer paper is too thin to take glue well (see the regrettable result on the floor in the picture below) so take thick paper to print on when you have to glue large surfaces like floors.

Rooms get foamboard lids resting on the interior walls to prevent the attacker (and up to a point the defender) from finding out what is in them too soon.

Wooden gates and exterior doors, reinforced to enhance the fortified nature of the manor, are made of glued basewood (praise the Heavens for coffee stirrers!) and move on dollhouse hinges.The same technique is applied to the double front gate and the rear garden door.

The garden presented me with a challenge in that it would need a pond. So different ground levels were built using thick cardboard and construction paste. The garden would then lay higher than the courtyard, but as these two spaces are separated by one wing of the manor this is not disturbing. Grass would be flocked around the pond, cherry trees fit into the garden (and can be replaced with bare winter trees) and fine gravel is glued onto the paths in (hopefully very Zen-like) patterns. The roof gets some simple ornaments. The building is then painted. I try to use as much cheap acryls as possible. 

The lanterns are beads from a huge box with all kind of beads I bought years ago.

All that remains is the interior detailing. I always add a lot of prints for interior and exterior decoration. All are found on the Internet. Used are several different wood patterns, Japanese art and such. Japanese rooms were sparsely furnished in any case and as this is essentially a wargaming table enough room should be available for moving figures around. So tatami floor coverings and some ornaments (Buddhas, a wire Bonsai on a plasticard table or a vase made of a large bead) made up the furniture.  Added to these was a scratchbuilt rack of bows and arrows and some wooden boxes, some of which could contain an arquebus, powder and shot.

I also made modern furniture so I can use the manor for modern games as well. Below is the Oyabun's office. Mind the aquarium! All items are largely made from plasticard (old gift cards and credit cards) and plastic sprue or tubing. 

The local Chinese store also produced a lot of useful stuff. The screens are again prints. 

A rack of bows from the bit box and some balsa wood. 

The garden. Mind the loose cherry trees. They can be replaced by bare winter trees for winter games. 

And the courtyard. Park your horse or BMW here (depending on the game played). 

 I need to add a sword rack because it looks so darn Japanese and for any players that like a less bloody scenario in which the ninja steal something instead of kill someone. Whether they do so with or without violence, I am not able to predict. But I have my suspicions….

Let the Raid begin!

PS

Thanks to Peter's generous donation I was able to add this Ancestral Sword Rack and Offspringly Firearms Locker!