Pirates of the Tepid Seas

My Pirates of the Tepid Seas got off to a boisterous start last night. Â  We’re using the True 20 system which is a streamlined version of D20 and is one that can cover pretty much any genre from classic Dungeons and Dragons to Modern Apocalyptic and everything in between.

In my case I’m using it for a Pirates campaign with a bit of supernatural flair, see previous posts for details.

We started off with the usual suspects in attendence, Laura, Temple, Brandon, me, Greg, Scott going clockwise around the table.  My gaming table has been just a great success overall.  I recommend one to everyone.

Laura, Brandon, Temple started with Expert based characters while Greg and Scott both started with Warrior for their first level.  Laura is playing a female pirate from England, Temple a French pirate, Scott a African pirate, Greg a Native American and Brandon is from Australia or England I forget.   We started on board the Wavestrider, the ship upon which our mighty folk are smple crewman.  Their ship pulled into a secret pirate port on an uncharted isle where the officers went ashore and returned with a small cask holding some unknown item.  Afterwards the crew were restricted to the top decks and not allowed below decks.

Three days later during a particularily dark night the ship is swarmed with what appeared to be undead, the corpses of drowned sailors in fact and some kind of lobstrosity.  In the first two rounds our Frenchman died.  He failed to make a notice skill to wake up and one of the undead fell upon him and ripped his throat out.  Jacque tried to use his Conviction to reduce the damage but to no avail.  His dying state moved to dead after he failed to stabilize his condition. Â  Except for Plot Devices that’s the fastest that a character has ever died for me.

WhileTemple worked on a new character the party and the rest of the crew fought the undead with the end result that the undead were slain, Sarah (Laura’s character) was disabled.  A giant crustacean based creature crawled onto the ship, doing major damage to the hull doing so and then ripped it’s way through the stern deck to get into the captain’s cabin.  The first mate came flying out the doorway cut in two with the gunner’s mate running for his life.  The captain stopped in the doorway trying to hold back the lobstrosity but was neatly snipped into two bloody parts by the things claws.  It burst the wood around the doorway to get out onto deck where it faced Standing Bear, Tomboktu and William.  One look at the thing and they quickly decided to Combine their attacks and all three managed to hit it in the same area where they did a total of 27 damage.  The creature failed its Toughness save badly and collapsed to the deck dying.

The ship lurched and began to wallow in the waves and our party, now reinforced by Little Reggie from the crow’s nest where he’d been cowering and Tom the gunner’s mate, abandoned ship.   Little Reggie is Temple’s new character, a warrior of little intelligence and wisdom (the equivalent of an 7 int under D20′s 3-18 range).

Adrift at sea in two longboats, Reggie didnt’ notice everyone had left at first and by the time he’d figured it out they were already pretty far off.  He jumped into the second longboat and proceeded after them.   Neglecting to take pretty much anything that would enable him to survive.  (-2 wisdom)

With William Willams trying to Navigate and Standing Bear trying to pilot they set off on a course they plotted using charts they’d recovered from the shambles of the captain’s cabin.

After a few days they were picked up by a merchant ship where the first thing that happened is Reggie got the others thrown into the brig by mentioning they were pirates.  He snuck down later and released them though. Riiawwwgghttt?

Through his cunning stupidity they lured two of the night watch downstairs where they managed to wake up the entire crew.  Tom (NPC) was forced to create an inferno in the lower hold to block the crew from getting to them and they raced upstairs again where they finished off the other crew including the officers.

With the wood and pitch boat swiftly exploding into flames they were forced to abandonship with nothing more than some weapons although the Tom did retrieve the cask from where the merchent’s had stored it.

They eventually made shore, alive thanks to the Survival skills of Sarah and William, and reached Baytown.  While adrift they made a pact to go after Tom shared the information, it was intimidated out of him actually, that the cask was rumored to hold Kreech’s Eye which could lead them to the fabled treasure of the old Pirate Lord.  They separated from Tom, mainly to allow me to get it out of the party than for any ulterior reason so they could try the Fury in Freeport module.

Selling some of their weapons they earned a few gold which was enough to keep them in grog for awhile.

They were approached by a seedy young man who talked them into stealing a box from the Auction House.  They have two days to get it before it goes on sail.  Given that none of them have any gold they don’t have the ability to just buy the thing.

They sent Sarah and Tomboktu to go case the joint where they found that perhaps it wasn’t only guarded by one sole guard.

They returned and got the others and proceeded back to the place after evening was well advanced.  With four of them climbing the walls they used Tomboktu to attempt to lure the guard closer.  But our guard being of reasonable skill and very good rolls on his notice skill heard one of the wall climbers and was on alert.  He kicked on the door into the warehouse and was talking to someone through a sliding panel in it when Standing Bear tried to snipe him from the wall but missed and the guard yelled something about summoning the mage’s guild.  The door was opened from the inside and the guard darted through the opening and slammed the door shut again as the party went “Well that didn’t work.”  A brilliant purple flash flickered through the edges of the doorway and discretion was decided upon and the party retreated back to the tavern to rethink their ‘plan’.

Everyone leveled to 2 with everyone taking another level of their chosen roles I believe.  There was also some rearranging of character builds as people are still learning the system.

So far I think everyone’s doing okay with the system. The lethality is perhaps a bit of a surprise and Conviction has played heavily to trying to keep players alive.   Standing Bear has perhaps been the best at using the new options to their fullest by suggesting the Combine option and using Conviction to Surge and gain extra attacks and re-roll attacks for instance.  But he did pump up his Charisma so that he has 6 Conviction points where the others have 1 or 2 so he has a lot more leeway in this regard.

I’m still iffy on the regaining of Conviction points given some of the vice/virtues that were chosen.  How does an Impulsive Gregarious regain conviction for instance?  Give impromptu speeches in the town square?  I need to Forumize that a bit and see how other people are handling it

And that was the first night of the Tepid Sea…