Casting Shadows

This is the 17th day of #RPGaDay2026, we are in the second half of the event, and I will be sharing one of my favorite games of all time this week. It’s intense. Today our prompt is Intensity (or Integrity if you prefer – see the alternate prompts). Our weekly filter will be ‘Instinct’ all week, and the daily influence for this response comes from Monday’s child being ‘fair of face.’ The game I have chosen to share responses from this week is well-known as one of my absolute favorites. It pushed itself into the queue lining up on my shelves because according to it, I have been neglecting my duties as a musketeer. That’s right. This week, the prompts will be inspiring posts based on Triple Ace Games’ blend of heroic adventure with horror in Paul ‘Wiggy’ Wade-Williams’ thrilling, All for One: Regime Diabolique.

One of the many creative talents of the author of this game is his capacity to create grounded and interesting characters. Ubiquity as a system employs a template of providing a set of ready-to-play archetypal characters and a quick flip through All for One’s can – as you might expect – communicate immediately what the game is about, what sort of characters get drawn into the game’s promised adventures, how the system presents the competence of a starting character and what it means in this setting to be competent. You can use them as examples for understanding the system, play them right away, or use them as templates to adapt for other characters. It’s interesting to me how many people do just that. The more you play the game, the more these characters begin to shine as a foundation to build upon and as a solid starting point for play. As a result, as we go through the week, I will be checking in on those archetypes to see what they have to say. One of my most memorable AfO characters was inspired by one. Perhaps we will spot which one as this week progresses.

Set in a historically similar but supernaturally different setting, after the events chronicled in The Three Musketeers by the incomparable Alexandre Dumas, but within the lives of his fictionalized characters, All for One puts its focus on players taking on roles within the King’s musketeers. They are expected to be young, flamboyant, interesting, skilled, and above all – better than the Cardinal’s musketeers who, it must be said, are nothing but a cheap imitation in terrible uniforms, and with shoddy training. Ask any musketeer.

The France, and by extension the world, of this game is one in which all the creatures and magic of supernatural tales and folk lore are real, and the struggle between Heaven and Hell is as well – but woefully misunderstood by layperson and clergy alike. It is a place of great beauty, passion, danger, and heroism. There is also a lot of death, of course, but let’s not dwell on that when there is great beauty, passion, danger, and heroism to think about!

As a horror game, this one is arranged to make the heroes of stern stuff which is not eroded into insanity by the presence of the cosmically inimical and ineffable, or the ongoing insanity and cruel punishment of warfare. Instead, they are a bulwark sworn to serve and protect – despite any foibles or indiscretions they might instead fall prey to. The famous motto from Dumas, “All for One, and One for All” is the esprit de corps and oath which binds them to stand to the very last.

As a heroic adventure game, there is much attention paid to sword and gun play, both on foot and on horseback – and these elements tie most directly into the archetypal nature of the character and who they are as a musketeer. Who the character is, and how they, as that person, serve the king, matters to how well they can do it. That said, this game packs a serious magical punch in what it gives to villains and characters alike – if they are willing to risk it.

Ok. Intensity. Instinct. Fair of Face.

The archetype we will draw on today is the Messenger. Often sent from places of peril, through paths of perfidy, and beset by predatory poltroons, the messenger is no stranger to situations too intense for the average musketeer (and way more than any guard of the Cardinal could handle!). This messenger relies on his physical agility, a good horse, his wit, and his capacity for violence in making an escape. That tells you a lot about the life he leads, has led, and hopes to survive leading in the future. He is quick to react, able to handle threats both human and environmental, and tends to outpace pursuit with speed and unorthodox selection of route. Rarely given time to think or plan once pursued, he must trust in himself to pick a proper path away from the potential punishment by his pursuers and toward the rightful recipient of his message.

What if, however, he had been blessed less with Dexterity and more with Charisma? How would his life have been different? What would he really be asked to trade and what skills would he have to rely on to serve the same role in the Musketeers. What I find interesting and compelling, is that for many players it would mean trading away his integrity and self-reliance for tools of deception and disingenuity.

Have we as a global society become so bereft of positive examples of charm that the common modern grifters and conmen that choke public spaces with their self-serving, grasping, villainy are all we have left?

Games like this tell me that the dream for better examples still survives.

The third full week of seven days in #RPGaDAY2026 is now underway and our entry into this dark and dangerous France (and environs) has begun. Where will this week take us? Our next stop is the prompt ‘Directness,’ so who knows? It might get us into trouble!

See you then!