Duty & Honour
11 Oct 2008 • Category: Reviews • Tags: Duty & Honour, Omnihedron Games, Peninsular War, Sharpe, Wellington
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 Modus Operandi and UK Role Players. Dave has been roleplaying for over 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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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
I picked up this game at Dragonmeet and spoke pretty extensively with the author there, and I’m quite taken with it. The system hangs together very well, with each aspect of a character both giving means to success in the story and providing an immediate path to a storyline, and each part of a storyline putting an aspect of the character at risk.
My only real wish is for more “meat and potatoes” details that I could insert into the game to bring the setting and the “stakes setting” to life for players who aren’t familiar with the source material already; I would love to see that kind of material in the “Almanac” downloads that Omnihedron puts out.
I hope to coerce my players into trying it out soon. If they balk, there’s the lash!
Duty and Honour (hereafter referred to as D&H) is a game set in the Peninsular war of 1810. By default player characters are infantry men in the British Army, under the command of Lord Wellington. The style and substance of the game is based heavily on the action literature that has built up in recent years surrounding this period – the Sharpe novels are obviously the main influence here.
D&H is a diceless game that uses a very elegant standard playing card based system for task resolution and character generation. It is quite “traditional” in some respects, as in combat and skill challenges are very much Player vs GM, and quite “indie” in the fact that there is quite an emphasis on Player and GM collaboration in setting up the scenarios and the world the characters inhabit.
D&H begins with a standard introduction section, detailing what the game is about and a very brief overview of the historical situation circa 1810. What is nice is that some of the history is given “in character” with two fictitious officer’s points of view, one British and one French.
The book then launches straight into character generation. Characters in D&H are generated within seven different parameters, Measures (Guts, Discipline, Influence and Charm), Reputations (the characters standing with individuals or organisations, such as The Lady Barrington-Smythe, Officers Mess, Nasty Naig the Pimp), Skills (speaks for itself really! Stuff like Engineering, Gambling and my personal fave – skulduggery), Experiences (character defining moments that have happened both before and after entering the army), Regiment (the regiment that all the PC’s start in), Traits (advantages that give you bonuses in game) and Wealth (your character’s wealth!).
Character gen is a mixture of points based and random, players draw a number of cards based on their amount of Experiences, this level is set by the GM and 7 or more is listed as giving a charcter who is “iconic”, 4-6 is suggest is being a good level for reasonably experienced characters. There are then several tables for the cards, both for before and after joining the army, depending on what you’ve drawn results in what areas you get to spend points on, some PC’s are going to be more naturally adept than others but will likely have less Reputations to fall back on in times of need, or perhaps be less wealthy etc. As the cards are drawn it’s quite easy to get caught caught up in the backstory of your character and various ideas for Reputations and story ideas freely spring to mind. Designing the Regiment that the Player’s will be part of is lots of fun, the Player’s come up with a selection of npc’s smattered amongst the ranks – they can then decide on whether to define the npc’s good side or their bad side, whichever one they choose, the GM gets the opposite. These npc’s can also be used as the PC’s Reputations if they so desire.
Potential bones for contention in the game arise from the split in character’s ranks – it is advised that there is only 1 officer, a couple of NCO’s and mostly the group should be made up of foot soldiers. However with the way that the games scenario structure is set up there is no need for players to worry, each character is ensured a chance to shine due to each player collaberatively coming up with a Personal Mission – a defined goal that he will want to acheive whilst also having to help out with the company’s Military Mission. Personal Missions can range from anything from stealing bottles of rum from the quartermaster to seducing the wife of the Company’s Major. Missions are split down into individual challenges – certain objectives that have to be completed in order to succeed in the mission. Fail too many challenges and there is no way that the mission can be completed. Completing missions results in a benefit to the character, usually an advancement in a Skill, Measure or a Reputation, although failing results in damage, either to a character’s health or Reputations.
So how do players go about completing their Challenges? First of all the players intent has to be stated – what do they want to acheive by taking part in the challenge, the GM will then discuss what happens if the character fails. If the player decides the consequences are worth the risks then it’s game on!
The GM and player then decide on the relevent card pools – for a player this is his skill level plus any Reputations he can use to add to his pool (if he wants to risk the reputation being damaged that is, he might just decide to go with his skill level alone) and bonuses for any relevant Traits or equipment. The GM decides on his pool if the test is contested. Next the GM draws the Card of Fate from his deck – this is the card that the player will be drawing against from the player’s deck. The player is then looking for matches with his pool of cards against the card of fate. Same suit = Success Same number = Critical Success Same card= Perfect Success Joker = choose it to be any card. If you get no matches of suit or number then you’ve failed. If the GM has a pool then he compares his level of success to the Player’s – highest degree of success wins. Note that as the GM has pulled the Card of Fate from his own deck there is no way that he can gain a perfect success (the GM’s deck does not contain Jokers either).
The GM and Player now look again at the intent that was agreed on and decide on the consequences.
Combat challenges work the same although there are no combat skills to speak of – a characters pool is decided by the type of weapon he’s weilding – a musket gives 5-1 cards depending on range, a sabre gives 4 and brawling gives 2. If you want to play a character who is more adept at fighting than the average soldier then you need to take traits such as Crackshot or Duelist.
There are rules for more involved combats that include the use of the imfantry tactics of the time – such as bonuses for forming squares against cavalry. There are 3 phases to these combats and the orders for each phase are chosen at the beginning of the combat – without knowing what you’re opponent has chosen obviously! Changing tactics mid flow results in penalties. The officer plays an important part in these combats as he can give bonus cards to the other PC’s equal to his Discipline measure each turn. It is also up to the Officer to make the final test at the end of the combat to see who is declared the victor – this test is modified by how well the PC’s have done in the previous rounds.
As can be expected in a game based around life in the Army rules for promotion are included and there is also some good advice on how to successfully run a campaign in the world of D&H. There is also a good selection of sample npc’s. The appendix includes additional rules for cavalry campaigns and a list of Regiments that fought in the Peninsular war, very handy is a large list of suitable names for npc’s of the various different countries that were involved.
Duty and Honour is a very atmospheric game – it’s obvious that the author has great love for the subject matter. The rules are set up very well in my opinion to deliver the experience that you’re after in a heroic Napoleonic game – that he has continued to support the game with free mini supplements since it’s release only bodes well. There is also a sequal of sorts – “Beat to Quarters”, which will focus on naval campaigns in the same era. Illustration throughout the book is sparse but what there is is of very good quality and atmospheric. There is also a nice painting on the background of all the pages as a watermark, depicting some Frenchies getting a good spanking by the good old boys in Red.
There are some niggles however, I noticed several spelling mistakes throughout the text and some of the examples of play contained errors, one of the most glaring errors is the fact that it doesn’t explicitly state that the GM doesn’t get Jokers in his deck (I had to clarify this by emailing the author). However an errata is currently in production and most, if not all, of these points should be identified and didn’t really detract from my enjoyment of the book.
Style 3 – Some errors in the text but it’s well laid out with decent production values. If the mistakes were corrected I would give it a 4
Substance 5 – If you’re looking for a game that delivers all of the tropes of the genre with style then this is the game for you. I’m especially enamoured with the resolution system. I don’t usually like diceless systems but this one has me hooked!