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TITLE: Gloire: Swashbuckling Adventure in the Age of Kings (2006) AUTHOR: Pete Murray PUBLISHER: Rattrap Productions PUBLICATION DATE: 2006 WEB SITE/SUPPORT FORUM: · Home Page: http://www.rattrap-productions.com/ · Support Forum: http://www.rattrapproductions.com/speakeasy/ PRICE: $17.00 ($11.00 for the PDF) (in 2008) REVIEWED BY: Rhoderic PERIOD COVERED: The age of swashbuckling, from the early 16th century possibly as far as the early 19th. The "core" period hinted at by the fluff and artwork is the 17th century. THE BOOK: Bound paperback book, 100 pages, colour cover with black-and-white interior, also available as a 3 Mb PDF file. Quite high production values with a few pieces of professional-looking artwork scattered throughout. There's a table of contents and a quick reference sheet. The basic rules are about 20 pages, followed by about 35 pages of character archetypes and abilities, and 30 pages of scenarios. There are blank character sheets for photocopying at the back. SCOPE: Gloire lets you game swashbuckling adventures/encounters at the skirmish level and smaller, with minimal table space and miniatures. Story-based campaign play is encouraged but not necessary. The rules are not designed or suitable for competitive tournament-style gameplay. ARMY SIZE: Varies greatly depending on the scenario. A faction could have as little as one solitary character, or as much as a dozen or more. Non-player characters are also quite common. All in all, a typical scenario has around 5-15 figures on the table. BASE UNIT: Each miniature represents one fairly detailed character with special abilities, equipment and separate wound locations. There are seven (quite self-explanatory) stats: Brains, Brawn, Guts, Blade (close combat prowess), Musket (marksmanship), Dodge and Speed. There's also Defensive Rating and Weapon Strength, which are used for determining wounds. Each character has a data sheet/card to keep track of wounds, ammo, abilities etc. GAME SCALES:
BASING SIZES: Unimportant TURN SEQUENCE: Players take turns moving figures by descending order of the characters' Dodge stats (ie. nimbler characters get to move sooner). GAME MECHANICS: First off, I need to point out that Gloire is designed for very free-flowing (kind of RPG-style) gameplay. The rules are open enough to allow for improvised actions and events to be introduced into the game without difficulty. If an improvised action or event threatens to mess up game balance, there are ways to make up for it, for instance by adding an equal element of risk or by making the benefitting player have to expend Hero Points to make it happen. The game uses only the D10 (two dice should suffice to play). Most die rolls are opposed rolls with two players trying to outscore each other. When only one player is involved in an action, the roll is a "stat test" where the player must beat a predefined score. In most rolls, one or more of a character's stats are added to the score. The stat most relevant to the action being performed is chosen for this. For instance, in an opposed roll with one character shooting at another, the shooter would add his "Musket" stat to the roll, while the character being shot at would add his "Dodge stat (if the shooter scores higher, he's hit the target). Further die roll modifiers are also common. The various actions available are as expected of an adventure-oriented game. Aside from moving, shooting and close combat, characters can jump, climb, go prone etc. They can also wait to activate later that turn, possibly to interrupt an enemy's movement. Each stat is tied to a hit location on the character's body, so wounds taken to that location make the relevant stats go down. The characters' data sheets contain "wound boxes" for the various hit locations, listing their current stats. For each wound suffered, a box is crossed off and you move on to the stats on the next box, making it easy to know a character's current stats at any given point. Higher-grade characters can take quite a lot of wounds, while the lowest-grade ones can potentially die from their first wound. The game uses Hero Points to allow for various especially heroic actions to be performed. Players start with a number of Hero Points which can be spent to modify or re-roll dice, affect measurements (for instance to make a character jump farther than normal) or increase the strength of an attack or defense. Combat is relatively straightforward. An opposed roll is made with the relevant stats (Blade against Blade if close combat, Musket against Dodge if ranged) and possible other modifiers (eg. cover or moving targets). If it hits, a roll is made to determine hit location, and the Weapon Strength is compared with that location's Defensive Rating to see if a wound is scored (if the Defensive Rating is higher, the wound might still be averted on another die roll but this doesn't happen very often). Weapons differ in range (even close combat weapons; a spear has a longer reach than a sword), strength and to-hit modifier. Ranged weapons (including some close combat weapons that can be thrown) have range bands with different strengths and to-hit modifiers. Ranged weapons also require ammo tracking and reloading. Unlike many other games, close combat in Gloire is not simultaneous, so characters only attack on their own turn and defend on their enemies' turns. There are various close combat outcomes such as the Pushback, the Turnabout and the Fighting Withdrawal. These make combats feel more cinematic and have interesting tactical applications. The morale rules are a very simple affair where a character has to test for Panic whenever he's wounded, but it's easy to add Panic tests for other events at the players' discretion. Also, there are additional rules for things like suppressing fire, duelling, disarming etc. Aside from weapons and armour, characters can also have abilities. There's quite a long list of various abilities with interesting effects and descriptions. There are also virtues and flaws, with which you can give characters various limitations in exchange for more abilities or Hero Points. Last but not least, note that the rules revolve wholly around scenario-based storytelling gameplay. Straight fights are not recommended as some characters become unbalanced in this milieu. Players are encouraged to invent their own scenarios with unique objectives and events. Encounter markers (markers scattered throughout the board, which the players must investigate and which reveal various encounters such as traps, treasure or clues) are a very common game mechanic in Gloire. There's also a lot of room for inventing your own game mechanics when creating scenarios. ARMY LISTS/SCENARIOS: There are no army lists to speak of, but there are about 30 character archetypes representing stock characters from swashbuckling stories (the Highwayman, the Fop, the Guardist etc.). These come in three grades, with Grade 3 being the leading heroes and villains, Grade 2 the supporting cast, and Grade 1 the lackeys. To design a faction you simply choose some suitable archetypes; each character then has a certain allowance of weapons, armour and abilities. There are no points values, so the only way to ensure factions are (roughly) equal is to allow them equally many characters of each grade. Some scenarios might call for unequal factions, coupled with unsymmetric mission objectives and starting conditions. The book contains four well-detailed introductory scenarios:
Ultimately, players will have to start making their own scenarios suited to their collections of miniatures and terrain. The four included scenarios seem to have been designed as exemplary ones to teach players how it's done. Some extra scenarios can be had from the Rattrap Productions website, and the supplement rulebook "Under the Black Flag" also contains new scenarios (as will probably all forthcoming Gloire supplements). REVIEWER'S COMMENTS: This is a very enjoyable ruleset for people who want to game adventures rather than battles (but still want it to be a miniature game, not an RPG). The rules are well-written and allow for a lot of innovation, I feel inspired when reading them. They're suitable to solo play as well as big multiplayer bashes. The text is easy to read and illustrated examples are used to help explain some of the rules, such as combat outcomes. PLAYER'S COMMENTS: The first couple of games brought up a few dodgy situations that the rulebook didn't resolve, mostly to do with close combat. But it's not that hard to come up with a solution of your own, or guess at the rules designers' intentions. Speaking from my own experience, the people at Rattrap Productions are also good at resolving these matters for you if you ask them. I was also ever-so-slightly annoyed with the fact that so few Grade 1 archetypes are allowed armour when there are so many miniatures of armoured soldiers/guards available, but it's really no trouble coming up with a house rule allowing them more armour if you need it. This is the sort of game where players will naturally start to roleplay their characters, complete with mock swordfights and spontaneous outbursts of corny one-liners. Granted, it does take some preparation to design your own scenarios and I suppose some people will not like this, but personally I enjoy the chance to get creative. It's a plus that the game requires so few miniatures and so little table space. Still, I think the more dedicated Gloire players will want to collect quite a lot of varied miniatures and Scenery/terrain, so they can set up more diverse scenarios. To read comments by others or leave one yourself, please click here. |
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