H G Wells was a wargamer. Everybody knows that. And when you read something like this (from "With the Main Guard") you could almost believe Rudyard Kipling designed his characters as if they were going into a GURPS campaign:
In the Soldiers Three stories, Mulvaney, the Irishman, is the most interesting. He understands people instinctively and knows how to gin them up and calm them down. He is also subject to bouts of "the black dog", has a drinking problem, and reacts to violence by throwing up, all obvious GURPS disadvantages/quirks. Ortheris, the sharp-as-a-pin Cockney, is small and prickly but a crack shot. Learoyd, the Yorkshireman, is slow but strong. The character sheets write themselves.
The British Raj would make a great setting for a roleplaying campaign. Though I can't see SJG getting around to publishing a sourcebook any time soon, and even Osprey's books of the period seem to be out of stock, here are some weapon stats to get the ball rolling.
We can estimate Ortheris's shooting skill, incidentally. He says he can hit Mulvaney five times out of seven at 800 yards with a slightly substandard rifle. Assume an Accuracy of 4 (1 less than a brand new Lee-Enfield .303). Ortheris can aim for three rounds to get an extra +3 bonus, so he's rolling at +7 in all -- less the range modifier, which is -16. And let's give a +1 to hit Mulvaney because he's a big fellow. So the overall modifiers add up to -8. Ortheris is hitting 71% of the time, so his Guns (Rifle) skill must be 20.
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I'll have to check these out, thanks!
ReplyDeleteVery pleasing. Kipling may be unfashionable right now, but goodness he had an ear! Great still too - Danny's grin is one of so many reasons to watch The Man Who Would Be King.
ReplyDeleteI think fashion should only apply to the length of skirts and the width of collars. It can keep its nose out of literature :-)
DeleteAnd you've reminded me: must rewatch TMWWBK very soon!
"Hope & Glory" is a Savage Worlds setting taking place in an alternative (steampunk) version of the Raj.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/251467/HopeGlory-Players-Handbook
I know it because Umberto had asked me to pre-review it; alas my assessment was negative on certain points (not the game system) and it seems this game gained no fame.
I'd be interested in a historical Raj game, even if it included some low fantasy elements, but for me steampunk has been overused and should now be put to bed for good.
DeleteAddendum: Tim Savin, the GURPS expert in our gaming group, points out that there is also a +1 bonus for bracing a rifle, which would put Private Ortheris's skill at 19 -- still impressive!
ReplyDeleteAnother addendum: Mr Savin mentioned that the GURPS rules describe a skill of 20 as "legendary". I delved again into history, recalling Capt Francis Younghusband's trip to Hunza in 1889. To demonstrate to the ruler, Safdar Ali, the folly of going to war against a modern power, Younghusband told his six Gurkha riflemen to shoot at a man-sized rock 700 yards away across the valley. All six hit it, which implies a Guns (Rifle) skill of 22.
ReplyDeleteBonus fact: Safdar Ali spotted a man on the cliff path opposite and asked Younghusband to get the Gurkhas to fire at him. He refused, saying that they would almost certainly kill the man. "What does it matter if they do?" said Ali. "After all, he belongs to me."
Younghusband later wrote: "From this I knew that he was a cur at heart, and unworthy of ruling so fine a race as the people of Hunza."
(He should not have been surprised by this discovery, though, as three years earlier Safdar Ali had murdered his own father Mir Ghazan Khan to become the ruler.)
Urgh, reading the passage with all the different accents is reeeally difficult for someone for who English is not their first language...
ReplyDeleteYou do have to do a bit of work reading Kipling sometimes, and the modern trend is against trying to represent dialect phonetically in prose, but it's worth persevering. He's one of the greatest writers in the English language.
DeleteJohn Masters has a few novels about India in this time. He was a Gurka officer who served in the Burma campaign in 1944.
ReplyDeleteThanks, I'll take a look -- though I have a lot of Kipling books I need to get through first. I'm interested in the Mutiny, so Nightrunners of Bengal seems like a good starting point.
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