Hi all,
I'm thinking of doing a home conversion of the Pendragon rules, 5th edition as those are in print, to Dumas-esque swashbucking.
Odd as it may sound, I think the rules and genre would be an excellent fit. Rolling your Love: Mistress or Loyalty: King for inspiration, time passing would work too, the sequel to the Three Musketeers is called 20 Years After for a reason.
Skills would be slightly, though not necessarily hugely, different and some new skills would be needed. Some new weapon stats would be needed, rapier, pike, halberd, musket of course are all relevant.
Tone works well, the literary Three Musketeers is much grittier than people tend to think. Injured heroes take months to heal, people die often nastily. It is very dark in tone in places, a darkness that is lightened by the humour and honour of the protagonists. They are heroes not as most rpgs treat their like because they cannot fail, they are heroes because they can fail but act as honour demands regardless even at the very real risk of death.
I would need religious bonuses for Catholics and Protestants, and to give some thought to whether the standard traits need tweaking.
Otherwise, I actually don't think it would be that big a port. Skill defaults for the various nations would be one of the harder bits, the French Catholics, the Hugenots, the Dutch, the English, ideally all should have some differentiation just as the nations in Pendragon 4th did.
Thoughts? I will likely be offline or online only patchily over the next couple of days and shall post more ideas here if there is any interest after that, but the basic concept is set out above. Dumas-style swashbuckling (not cinematic swashbuckling which is really a very different genre) using Pendragon. All thoughts and suggestions welcome.