We finished Part 1 a few months ago. Good and brutal times. Here is a tally of the punishment the party of 4 collectively endured:
Rope Bashes: 15
Whip Lashes: 48
Sweatbox: 3 days
Unscheduled assignment to bilges: 2
Fatigued: 12
Exhausted: 2
Sickened: 2
Rum addiction: 2
Undead paralysis: 4
Filth Fever: 3
Ghoul Fever: 3
Strength Damage: 13 (all from reefclaws)
Dexterity Damage: 9
Constitution Damage: 18 (using a friendlier rum ration)
Near TPK: 1
Death: 1 (bought back with hero points)
Wheareas NPCs suffered the following:
Keelhaul: 1 (scripted, Jakes Magpie)
Rope Bashes: 6 (Kroop, for being wasted more than 50% of the time)
Lashes: 6 (Conchobar, for slacking)
Sweatbox: 1 (Maheem, for talking to Harrigan)
Rum addiction: 1 (Jaundiced Jape, sleight-of-handed PC's rum ration)
Sickened: 1 (Syl Lonegan, due to disabled device hammock/ sleep deprivation)
Con: 1 (Conchobar, from Ghoul Fever)
Prisoners exchanged to Grindylows: 3 (Plugg, Scourge and Tam Tate, in exchange for Sandara and Rosie, thanks to heroically set up bluffs and intimidation)
I wasn't sure how the 3 weeks of abuse would go over. Might have overdone it. No doubting that the mutiny was one of the most cathartic acts of violence. I tracked NPC attitudes per PC, not the whole party. When it became "go" time, it was interesting to see the chain reaction/domino effect of the relationships come into play. Good times! Very much looking forward to the rest of the AP.
Certainly much of the challenge of Part 1 was withstanding all sorts of abuse. I thought it was clever, from a sadistic point of view, of turning to ability scores as another source of hit points, in a sense. If all that damage was hit point damage, there could well be more deaths at lvls 1-2. Attacking the ability scores as well as hit points gave the players another way to suffer without death being an immediate threat (though it was certainly an agonizing, drawn out threat). Add to that the social and situational abuse and those poor PCs really had to endure quite a bit before they were truly allowed to vent. Is it even possible to maintain some sort of civility in such an environment? Most PCs did, one cracked a little, for a little while.
In the 3 wks plus a few days of Part 1, they were at full health for maybe 2 days.
Am I bad that it was fun?