En Garde! is a role-playing game

Role-playing game

A role-playing game is a game in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within a narrative, either through literal acting, or through a process of structured decision-making or character development...

 set in 17th century Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

. Players take the roles of gentlemen

Gentleman

The term gentleman , in its original and strict signification, denoted a well-educated man of good family and distinction, analogous to the Latin generosus...

 duellists. The game was designed by Frank Chadwick

Frank Chadwick

Frank Chadwick is a multiple-award–winning game designer and New York Times Best Selling author.-Beginnings:Frank Chadwick, along with Rich Banner and Marc Miller, were members of the Illinois State University in Bloomington-Normal Games Club. They used their club funding to design war games...

 and first published by Game Designers' Workshop

Game Designers' Workshop

Game Designers' Workshop was a wargame and role-playing game publisher from 1973 to 1996. Many of their games are now carried by other publishers.-History:Game Designers' Workshop was originally established June 22, 1973...

 (GDW) in 1975.

History

In the 1980s the game had become widely played by mail but GDW did not reprint it when stocks were exhausted. Theo Clarke and Paul Evans

Paul Evans

Paul Evans may refer to:*Paul Evans , British Olympic runner*Paul Evans , American college basketball coach*Paul Evans , Canadian ice hockey player in the National Hockey League who played for the Philadelphia Flyers*Paul Evans Paul Evans may refer to:*Paul Evans (athlete) (born 1961), British...

 ran a game for over 20 players at the UK Gamesfair in 1983. Evans then wrote a BASIC

BASIC

BASIC is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages whose design philosophy emphasizes ease of use - the name is an acronym from Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code....

 computer program to administer the game and they ran increasingly large games at successive games fairs. Evans started a postal game using the same computer programs in 1986 in a new magazine called Small Furry Creatures Press, which he co-published with Clarke. Evans continues to run this game as Les Petites Bêtes Soyeuses.

Clarke and Evans found that there was significant demand for the rule book arising from their games and other postal games. Under the name SFC Press

SFC Press

SFC Press was a UK games company that published En Garde!, ran postal games, published the magazine Games Games Games, and ran games events....

they published a new edition of the game in 1988 under license from Chadwick. The success of the game also led to an annual convention, Furrycon, which ran for over ten years. When SFC Press was liquidated in 2003 the rights to the game were acquired by Evans personally. Evans' company Margam Evans produced a new edition of the game.