Duty & Honour
By Dave McAlister • Oct 11th, 2008 • Category: Reviews
Europe is aflame! The Emperor Napoleon rules Europe and his armies press through the Iberian Peninsular to gain total control! Only the British Army, under the Duke of Wellington, and their allies can save the day. Inspired by the adventures of Richard Sharpe and Matthew Hervey, Duty & Honour is a roleplaying game where you take the role of soldiers and officers in Wellington’s army. The game features a unique Mission system, which embeds the feeling of a military game whilst ensuring that everyone - commanding officer to private soldier - gets the same time in the spotlight. The abstract Skirmish system brings company sized combats to the table with your characters at the centre, powering the battle with your decisions. Prime your musket! Loosen your sabre! Fix your bayonet! The future of Europe depends on you!
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Dave McAlister is a dedicated geek, combining his enjoyment of roleplaying games with website design and runs UK Role Players. Dave has been roleplaying for almost 25 years now, having played and/or run most mainstream systems. His current favourite though is Savage Worlds. Dave also likes talking about himself in the third person!
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Review by Mick Red
Farewell and adieu to you spanish ladies
Farewell and adieu to you ladies of spain
For we have recieved orders to sail home to england
But we hope very soon we shall see you again
Redcoat shanty, Peninsular wars 1813
Duty and Honour, a game of adventure and romance in Wellingtons army by Neil Gow http://www.omnihedron.co.uk
Whilst serving at sea in the Royal Navy i became accustomed to the ‘Sharpe’ series of books and Videos (in the old days) and i loved it!! Then two Conceptions ago i played ‘Sharpe’s Revenge’ an excellent scenario run by Nathon Barron using Chaosium’s BRP system. Now we have a game set specificly in this historic period so i duly ordered a copy of the £12 book. From paypaling the author the money the book was in my hands 24 hours later - Excellent!!!!
To the book itself, its available from Lulu or the author direct, its a perfect bound 128 page book, with a glossed cover depicting a traditional british redcoat and an officer type set against a sepia picture depicting some spanish castle, very nice. The book is a strange size as far as RPG books go and i think that this was probably in keeping with the ‘ospery’ range of historical military books. The internal pages have a bleed picture throughout of a skirmish painting of the period, done in greysclae with clean well laid out texts and illustrations of varing quality (not poor though, the artist Peter Frain has done a very good job IMO)
The character creation could be deemed quite in-depth for an ‘indie’ game system, but it provides the players with a sound basing for gameplay.
Characters are created by spending experiences on either before or after enlistment skills (or split between both). The experiences are generated by drawing playing cards (this game uses no dice) and referancing the relivant table and transfering the result to your character’s skills, traits and reputations, you also gain points for your choice of social class and job within the infantry, and any campaigns fought in thus far. The party need to work together here so that there is really only one officer, one NCO and a few privates (all players contribute to game regardless of rank so no beef there). IMO this method creates a character than the player can mould to his only play style and and instant player/character bond is formed.
Tests and conflict resolution - This is nice and simple first the player and GM will build a pool of cards (for example lets say private Murphy of the 62nd regiment of foot has found himself guarding the daughter of the portugeese ambassador and wishes to speak with her, the player will use his skills, traits and reputations to build his pool, so lets say young Murphy has the following he can use He has 2 cards in charm (this is called a measure and is one of 4 main catagories Guts. Disicipline, Influance and Charm) he also has a score of 3 cards in courtesy and has one card in reputation ‘The Lady Roshine’ (the ambassadoes daughter), this gives private Murphy a pool of 6 cards for this test. The GM will create a pool for Lady Roshine maybe she doesnt want the smelly guard to talk to her. Once both sides have created thier pools and the stakes of the conflict have been set the GM will turn the top card of his deck over for all to see, this is the card all tests will be resolved against and is called the card of fate pool cards are then tested against the CoF. If any of your cards is the same suit as the CoF thats a ’success’, if any cards are the same number as the CoF thats a ‘critical success’, if a card is the same card as the CoF thats a ‘perfect success’ remaining cards are all deemed failures except the joker which can be any card you wish it to be. Once all cards are tested start with ‘perfect successes’ then move to ‘critical successes’ then to ’successes’ so if private Murphy has a ‘critical success and the GM has only got a ’sucess’ private Murphy’s player narrates the outcome within the stakes set out at the start, simple yet effective it works really well and its fast.
There are a slightly different set of rules for skirmishes (battles of up to 50 men) with player successes each adding a card to the commanders final test, which makes even the most lowley private an important part of any military mission.
Missions (the scenario) - The single military mission will be the same for all players and will be made up of a number of challanges set by the players (normally 4-6) on top of that each player will have a personal mission to complete aswell. this allows the players to frame the kind of game they want for example the military mission may be something as simple as Re-enforce the seiged village of Guimares, however the players may decide this is a 5 challange mission and state that challange number one is Visit the monks at Sentano abby to procure a map of the local area, however they must complete the mission within the set challanges else fail the mission.
Futher rules apply for extended skirmishes and also bring cavelry and artillery into the fold, all cool things to throw at your players, the final section is all about designing missions and running the game, once again very useful.
External support for the game is very good with alot of stuff to help the GM on the website, and the author is amazing at answering any questions (which he has many for me lol)
This is a great little game from a company that really seems to care and for that alone he deserves to suceed
Overall Score 9/10 Reccommended