El Juego de rol del Capitan Alatriste

On occasion, somebody asks in Roleplaying Open (where I frequently post as Aegypto") about non-English roleplaying games. A number of French and German games have been reviewed on RPGNet, but to my knowledge, no Spanish RPG. That's one of the reasons which drove me to write this review, to give RPGNetters a small sample of the kind of games created by Spanish gamers.

Just to be clear, El Juego de Rol del Capitán Alatriste ("Captain Alatriste Roleplaying Game") is a licensed game. It adapts a best-selling (in Spain, anyway) series of swashbuckling novels penned by Spanish writer Arturo Perez-Reverte. With Dumas' Three Musketeers as an obvious reference, the Capitán Alatriste series narrate the adventures of Diego Alatriste, veteran soldier of the Spanish Tercios and swordsman for hire, in the Madrid of the first half of the XVII Century, during the reign of Phillip IV Hapsburg.

The tone of the books is a far cry from the flamboyant "grab the chandelier, jump on the balcony and kiss the lady" commonly associated with cinematic swashbuckling, and it's best described as "grim, gritty and overtly pessimistic".

17th Century Spain is a country blinded by religious zealotry and an obsession with honour, nationalism and blood purity; it's a powerful yet waning empire bleeding from countless wars and widespread corruption. Across Europe, desperate men kill and die for king, country and the "One True Religion" - but the king is a klutz who doesn't deserve your loyalty, the country is an ungrateful one, and God remains silent. As a consequence of the state of constant warfare, Spanish cities are teeming with former soldiers - grizzled veterans who have to survive by hiring their swords for a few miserable coins or take the more risky route of becoming expendable pawns in court schemes, as arrogant noblemen, fanatical inquisitors and greedy government officers conspire and plot against each other.

It's a harsh world for honest, decent men. Sooner or later, your luck will run out and your enemies will see that you end imprisoned or exiled in disgrace - this assuming you don't get stabbed or shot, whether in a dark alley in some Spanish city or a muddy field across war-torn Europe. At the end, when everything is said and done, the best you can hope for is that you can stick to your beliefs, and die the way you lived.

The Book

Barring a few exceptions, Spanish RPGs tend to have a rather pedestrian look in comparison with their French or American counterparts. Not the case here - this is a pretty, full-colour hardcover book with glossy paper and tasteful design. The cover shows Alatriste duelling against his nemesis, Italian hired killer Gualterio Malatesta. Joan Mundet, the same artist who does the cover art and interior illustrations for the regular Alatriste novels, does all the RPG artwork, so it makes for a consistent look (even if some of the illos are used repeatedly through the book). Sample pages and artwork for the book are available at the game website.

The style of writing is fairly witty, with a healthy dose of irony. Comments from characters (historic & fictional) pop through the regular text, usually to make a point or statement. All in all, it makes for an entertaining read. I'm missing some of the sombre (even grim) overtones of the novels, but a lighter mood probably makes for a wider audience, and I'm one of those genre emulation freaks anyway.

Book contents are:

* Introduction to roleplaying games.
* Player's section (basic rules, character generation, combat, experience)
* GM section (GM advice, setting information, adventures)
* Appendixes

Introduction

The book starts with a foreword from the editor and a newspaper article written by Perez-Reverte advocating roleplaying games. These are followed by the classic "What's a roleplaying game" section, a list of Spanish roleplaying clubs and associations (a nice touch, if you ask me), and a good old-fashioned solo adventure. Reading through the introduction, it becomes clear that one of the design goals was making the game friendly towards newbies and people who may have happened across the RPG after reading the novels.

The characters

So, what are the player characters supposed to do in this game? Well, pretty much what is common in most roleplaying games: Make some money, fame and fortune, get involved in crazy schemes - willingly or not - and get into lots of fights. Specifically get into lots of fights. In keeping with the tone of the series, player characters will be usually street-level troublemakers, from lowly peasants to minor lords and courtiers able to move at ease among the masses.

Thus, there aren't a lot of options for gamers interested in being kingmakers rather than pawns (apparently there's a sourcebook in the works which will focus on games of politics and intrigue at the court)

Incidentally, this is a swashbuckling game. Sorry, no pirates.

The rulebook has thirteen character classes available: Artist, Adventurer, Bandit, Priest, Comedian, Courtier, Handmaiden, Inquisitor, Medic, Rogue, Soldier, Braggart (Thug), and Cloaked Woman (think Milady de Winter, or Monica Belluci's character in Pact of the Wolves). Each class has a list of available skills and suggested advantages.

Some classes have gender restrictions - women cannot be soldiers, for example. Since Capitan Alatriste tries to be an historically minded game, female characters have some serious disadvantages: 17th Century Spanish women weren't supposed to regularly interact with troublemakers (like, say, your average group of player characters), much less go looking for trouble in seedy taverns or dark alleys. The game posits as a solution that female characters should crossdress to pass as males (a recurrent plot in period dramas, and also modern ones set in the period, see Shakespeare in Love as an example) or have a servant or bodyguard as a secondary character they can switch to when the time to draw the rapier arises.

The system

The system is reminiscent of GURPS (word is that the publishers initially wanted to get a GURPS license from SJG) but goes for greater simplicity. Characters have four primary stats (Dexterity, Spirit, Strength, Wits) and two secondary stats (Reflexes and Vitality, whose values are calculated after the primary ones). Each stat has a default value of 10, with 9 and 14 being the minimum and maximum starting values.

Characters get ten skills whose starting levels rely on their relevant stats, as follows:

* One skill at Stat + 2
* Two skills at Stat + 1
* Three skills at Stat + 0
* Four skills at Stat - 1

Also, all characters get a number of free skills, such as Brawl, Running or Jump, at default levels. Any other skill is considered at Stat/2 for rolling purposes.

Actions are solved rolling 3d6. If the sum of the dice is lower than the relevant skill or stat, the action is successful. 3 is a crit, 18 is a botch. The GM can handle difficulty levels by "fixing" dice - so they get a fixed value, say "1" for an easy roll or "6" for a difficult one - or adding bonus or penalties to the roll.

There are also advantages and disadvantages, which are traded on a point-per-point basis, up to six points on each category. This includes the usual stuff: Allies, Enemies, Hideous, Bad Habits, Bad Luck...Nothing which most gamers aren't familiar with really. Of particular note is the Swordsman advantage that allows characters to acquire Fencing Manoeuvres.

Other character features include social status and Appearance. Social status defaults to Hidalgo (gentry or lesser nobility), but it can be adjusted to play peasants or lords. Appearance reflects how good the character looks to others, and it works as a bonus on social skills based on several factors - physical features, natural charisma, social status, behaviour and fineness of clothing and weapons.

Also, any character with a social status of Hidalgo or higher gets Honra (roughly translated as "good reputation"). Honra is the public version of honour. It's how much dignity and respect you get from your peers and underlings. Honra starts at the maximum value (5 for men, 1 for women) and can only decrease from there. Letting slights against family and servants go unpunished, behaving in an improper manner, being accused of cowardice, or mocked in public - even something as seemingly harmless as allowing that somebody stares at you for too long - will cause a loss of Honra, getting people to talk behind backs and reflecting badly on the character's dealings. More specifically, losing Honra gives penalties to Appearance.

The only way to restore Honra is cleansing the offence, usually by means of a duel against the offender. The seriousness of the offence will determine if the duel ends with a flesh wound, a serious injury, or death for one of the contenders.

Last, but not least, there are tables for jobs and incomes, as well as standards of living, wealth and expenses. Sure, it's great being nobleborn, but you've got to live up to the task which means spending according to your position (and more than a few hidalgos are poorer than dirt, even if they take great pains to appear otherwise). In game terms, this actually means that characters can maintain a lifestyle than they can't afford, but if it their monetary troubles become public knowledge, it will cost them Honra. On the bright side, if you're riding high in the money, you can afford to buy a few perks - like noble titles and higher positions in your chosen career.

Combat

This being a swashbuckling game, some swordplay was to be expected. No surprise then that combat gets most of the crunchy bits, then. Overall, combat is fast, intuitive, and quite deadly - which fits the setting well.

Characters with the higher Reflexes (modified by encumbrance, wounds and special attacks) go first. Basic character actions per turn include Attack & Defence (self explanatory), Full Attack (two attacks, or a single attack with a bonus to either hit or damage roll) or Full Defence (two defences against two separate attacks, or one defence with a bonus against one attack). Full Defence also allows a character to move into Close Combat, a distance where rapiers are useless and daggers are your best friends. I rather liked this, from a tactical point of view and a narrative one, since dirty fighting and rolling & stabbing in the floor are situations commonly featured in the novels.

Characters who bought the Swordsman Advantage can also use any Fencing Manoeuvres they have previously learnt, such as special attacks, feints, ripostes, entangling, etc., which usually will give a bonus to rolls or additional parries or attacks.

The game takes into account the advantages and disadvantages of different weapons: Some daggers are best for parrying (such as the classic main gauche), others have protrusions to break the tip of the enemy weapon. Heavier weapons are harder to parry but also slower to attack. Firearms are as unreliable and slow to recharge as they should be - getting one or more sixes in an attack roll will cause the gun to misfire, break or explode. Again, displaying certain "villainous" weapons in public will reflect badly on the character's status and Appearance.

Melee damage is usually one die plus a bonus depending on the specific weapon. In the case of firearms, two dice are rolled, keeping the higher value for shots at short distances and the lower value for long distances. The damage die also determines hit location, which is important since smart characters will wear some armour (padded clothing, leather vests).

After armour is subtracted, the character loses as many Vitality points as the damage received, and receives some nasty penalties. Reaching zero Vitality means that he falls unconscious. When the character reaches negative value equal to his Vitality, he's dead. It's worth mentioning that getting a critical roll in an attack is an instant kill - unless the defender gets a critical roll in his defence as well.

Gamemaster Section

Here we get basic tips for running games and developing scenarios - very basic tips, actually, as they only take a couple of pages. Now, in my experience, minimal GM advice seems to be fairly typical of Spanish RPG design, but I keep thinking that some commentary on plots and themes would have been a good thing - particularly considering that the game intends to be newbie-friendly. Seasoned players may easily come up with dozens of plots, but novice players could have a hard time creating plots fitting to historical games.

(Come to think about it, "What I do with this game" is a frequent comment in gamer forums, so maybe it's not just a newbie thing).

To alleviate this, there's a bibliography for fiction resources (comics, books, and movies) and four short adventures. These are relatively straightforward, but well written nonetheless, and can be very useful for novice and veteran players alike.

The first adventure, Un asunto de honour ("A Matter of Honour"), is about a courtship gone wrong and serves as a basic introduction to the setting, explaining subtleties of courtship and duel etiquette. El legado de los Montealban ("Legacy of the Montealban") is a contract which turns to not be what it seems, and is intended for unsavoury, streetwise characters. La Maldegollada deals with a street investigation into a series of seemingly supernatural murders with political ramifications. Finally, in Secreto de confesion ("Secret of Confession"), a priest sends the characters to a roadside inn to prevent a murder, with the added hindrance of not knowing either the murderer or the victim's identities.

After the GM advice and the adventures, there is a most excellent chapter about Spain at the time of the Hapsburg Monarchy. From the structure of the Spanish Royal Court, Spanish nobility and the Catholic Church (including, as everybody was expecting, the Spanish Inquisition), to crime and the justice system, to Spanish social strata and customs - food, fashion, courtship and leisure activities - this chapter provides all the basic information you may need to get a proper feeling for the setting. It isn't that long - about forty pages - but the amount of detail is noteworthy.

There's also a general description of the city of Madrid - the natural setting for the majority of Alatristre novels - and a brief overview of the rest of the known world (the other European powers, the Ottoman Empire and the Americas). As mentioned, it's more than enough for starting a game, but after reading it you'll be craving for more. That's where the bibliography comes in, listing about twenty non-fiction books, sorted by General History, Military History, and Daily Life.

Appendix

The appendices take up a large part of the book - roughly eighty pages - and their contents are:

* A large character gallery that contains forty characters, historical as well as fictional ones from the Alatriste books. All the characters get full stats, background (or biography) and their possible connections with player characters.

* Equipment lists and prices for common possessions and services, as well as initial possessions according to wealth.

* A glossary on game terms, and another for 17th Century Spanish street slang.

* Thirteen pregenerated characters, one for every character class.

Final thoughts

El Juego de Rol del Capitán Alatriste is a great game which successfully recreates the historical setting the original novels are based in.

The system is easy, fast, and playable, while allowing for some amount of detail and options. The setting as featured in the rulebook may seem a bit narrow though, as it mostly focuses on Madrid. Those interested in military campaigns in Europe or visiting other countries will have to make their own research or wait for relevant sourcebooks. Otherwise, the game is well worth it for anyone interested in historical gaming of the swashbuckling variety. Thumbs up.