Game Prep: Staggering Through Summer

Always surprises me how much my work day wipes me out. Like, I know I can't complain (my job is actually pretty cushy, all things considered), but home at the end of the day and I can't focus, which makes writing and gamestuff hard.

Anyway, with that in mind, I'm running Night's Black Agents and Alas for the Awful Sea this weekend, neither of which I have prepared for, so I figure I better do that.

Alas for the Awful Sea: Character Creation & Setup

Saturday, we made characters for Alas for the Awful Sea, and then played Rock Band and drank. You're really only interesting in the former (although if you're interested, I do a pretty killer rendition of "Miami 2017" by Billy Joel).

Alas for the Awful Sea is a PbtA game in which you play the crew of a fishing boat in 19th century British Isles. It's about economic hardship and tradition and perhaps a little folklore, low fantasy but definitely some fantasy.

Anyway, the ship is called The Tempest. It used to be a whaling vessel (it's a two-masted schooner) but it doesn't do whaling anymore. The harpoons are still intact, though. The quarters are converted and still smell of whale, and there's a collection of whalebone scrimshaw decorating the ship. The officers have private quarters (the surgeon's quarters are where blubber used to be rendered, so it effectively has a fireplace). The whole ship is overrun with a doubt of cats, and they keep the ship surprisingly rat-free.

The captain, Theodosius, is a man who loves his drink. He took over the ship from the previous owner, who stipulated as part of the sale that women be allowed to work the ship without hassle.

The crew includes:

• Violet MacKenzie (Scholar/Believer): She is studying weather patterns, and is a fervent Non-Conformist. She's from money (father is a trader in Scotland). 
• Blythe (Boatswain/Creature): The crew doesn't know her last name, or really anything about her. Blythe maintains the scrimshaw. She's...strange.
• Fanella MacCallan (Surgeon/Confidant): Not officially a doctor, of course; she followed medical students around to their classes in Dublin, and listens carefully to everyone's secrets.
• Connor (Strider/Outcast): Knows the sea well, drinks and refers to a former lover when drunk, but never by name.
• Berylis "Berry" Beer (Cook/Kinsman): Fanella's "sister in law", and her late "husband" (actually wife) owned the ship before. She sends money home to put on her spouse's grave, but the ship is her true home now.

That's all we've got so far; next month we'll see what shenanigans these folks get up to.

Character Creation: Alas for the Awful Sea

Here we go!

The Game: Alas for the Awful Sea
The Publisher: Storybrewers Roleplaying
Degree of Familiarity: None yet, though this game is on my list for 2018.
Books Required: Just the one.

 

 

Alas for the Awful Sea is a low-fantasy PbtA game set in the remote British Isles around the turn of the century (19th to 20th, that is). It's meant to explore why people hate and what they're afraid of, conflict between tradition and progress, poverty, starvation, fishing, myth and legend, that kind of thing. I'm looking forward to running it, though I suspect that played well it's going to be very sad. I like sad RPGs, though.

Anyway, like most PbtA games, my first order of business is to choose a playbook and print it. Also like most PbtA games, this is going to be quick because the real meat of chargen happens with a group, and it's just me for this project.

So, for my playbook, I'll choose...hmm. I don't think I want the Captain. I know I don't want the Boatswain because I played something very much like that in a Savage Worlds game some time ago. Likewise, I don't want the Cook; I've played cooks (or at least made them for this project). Scholar's out for the same reason. Merchant, Strider, Old Sea Dog. Hmm.

I kinda like Strider, especially if I spun it more towards navigation and reading the stars. Yeah, I think I'll go with that.

Going in the order laid out in the book, I'll start with a name. I don't much like the name options here, so I'll name my Strider Diarmid Craig. For appearance, I'll circle man for gender, faraway for eyes, honest for face, reedy for body, and versatile oilskin coat for dress.

I think Bonds is the next thing, but that requires a group so I'll skip it. Stats, then. Unlike the other playbooks, the Strider gets to allocate all of the stats (the others have a +2) already in place. I get a +2, two +1s, a 0, and a -1 to place.

Well, I know I want the +2 in Beyond so I can do the otherworldly shit well. That also plays into my special move (Innate Compass), as it happens. I'll put +1s in Brains and Balance, the 0 in Brawn, and the -1 in Beauty. I tend to make things worse when I try to convince or bargain.

Right, what's next? A Descriptor! These, coupled with the playbooks, create a unique axis for each character. I could be a Creature, for instance, and be overtly supernatural, or I could a Lover and my arc is more about my relationship with whomever. Let's take a look.

Well, the Kinsman and the Lover rely too much on other PCs, so I'm not using them. The Believer doesn't really do it for me, to no one's great surprise. The Confidant sounds pretty cool, but let's check the others. Ooh, Outcast or Creature. Hrm. I like them both.

You know, my impulse to leave Creature for "someone else," but there is no one else, so I'm gonna grab it. OK, cool. So my first thing is define my True Form. I need to decide what I am. I could go digging around in Scottish myth for a while, but I'm gonna say I'm a crow. A stormcrow. That sounds good.

I'm from the sky, obviously. When I assume my true form, I'm very small (crow-sized), and I have wings. I think Diarmid looks more or less like a real crow in that form, but his eyes remain blue and keep that faraway quality to them. I can call upon my True Form to do cool things, and I can call other stormcrows in a pinch. Neat.

I think it'd be fun to play this character out and figure out why Diarmid took human form. Being "from the sky" it's easy to say he fell, angel-style, but I also like the notion that he fell in love with the sky so much that only by being on the ground could he gaze upwards. There's some tragic poetry there.

And that's me done.