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 with all the alacrity of ponderous peasants with pikestaves in a peat bog.

Nuts to that! In media res! Get 'em moving! Get 'em engaged! EN GARDE, YE SCALLYWAGS!

Chandler's Law, apocryphal as it may be, is appropriate advice here. Start it off in the middle of the action and figure out the whys and wherefores later, after the PCs have gotten to show off their flashy awesomeness for a bit and need to catch their breath. Thereafter, whenever things slow down too much, send minions through the door with rapiers out. Keep it moving! Keep it hopping! Cut to the action!

Thus and so, the next swashbuckling game I run will start with a bang. Probably something pirate-y because pirates are equal opportunity baddies and nothing focuses a diverse bunch of PCs like finding their ship under attack and a sudden number of crucial openings in the vessel's crisis response hierarchy.

Obviously this can be carried too far: the key words here are 'slow down too much'. Even the most dedicated paladin of rapier and plumed hat needs to take five occasionally, and the occasional pause to let the table contemplate their next move, catch their collective breath, and indulge in a little depth-building conversation is a good thing. But if someone starts trying to map out every conversation with every shopkeeper in New Market over a week's rest, it's time to send in the baddies!

(In defense of our current GM, who is running said game mostly as a favor to me, I don't think they are terribly familiar with the tropes of the swashbuckling genre. They are more a fan of noir detective and true crime, and thus we seem to have started on a constabulary procedural rather than the more rollicking free-for-all that could be hoped. But they have also remembered that they have a subject matter expert close at hand, and things are likely to improve. Alas, it's a play by forum game, and those are slow no matter what you do...)

[1] There are some lovely exceptions to this. Ron Edwards's Sorcerer, John Wick's Houses of the Blooded, Mortal Coil by Galileo Games, and of course Swashbucklers of the Seven Skies all throw this out the window. Ditto for Apocalypse World, all the indie games that took inspiration from it, and everything my friend Ed publishes.