Swashbuckling and Chandler's Law
The last couple of swashbuckling games I've been in have been slow(er) to start than they could be, and I think I've figured out why. We're used to starting with exposition, set-up, making opening moves like there's this huge chess game going on and all the pieces of the full plot arc have to be in place for plot to happen. Which is absolutely fantastic if you're doing Tolkien, Martin, Jordan, or Dumas ( pere )[1]. This has been the general slant of mainstream tabletop games for quite some time--overarching plots, all of which are carefully constructed ahead of time and known entirely to one person (or sometimes persons, if you happen to be using a dual-DM system...one for the story and the other for the mechanics). We're trained to think this way, react thusly, and sometimes the results just don't seem to fit. What should be a lively, fast-moving, cinematic game of flashing blades and brilliant quips feels in practice more like a whodunnit that proceeds wi