I know, the answer is 21 days... what I'm asking is, the first part of Wormwood has you at sea for 21 days, how did most people play this out?
It didn't take long before I could tell my players really did not want 21 days of this. Rolling for work duty, picking ship activity, role playing, checking success, taking consequences, picking night activity, role playing, checking success, etc.
I'm looking for some ideas.
We started last night, player introductions:
1. Thanor - Thanor is a shifter (we pulled in the race from Eberron). Thanor is the great great grandson of notorious Captain Grimclaw, a feared and hated pirate that commanded a crew of lycanthropes. Story says his ship was eventually caught by the navy and blown to hell, all survivors killed. Truth is, a fishing boat picked up the only survivor, a young girl, daughter of Grimclaw, lost at sea. She carried the gene of lycanthropy and passed in on to her son, and her son's son. Thanor is the direct and only descendent of this line, and he carries with him the key to a locker holding claims to his origins and his inheritance.
2. Max and Roki - two separate characters but a pair in the adventure. Max is a halfling alchemist and engineer, Roki is a golem-esq dock worker (read worforged from Eberron). Roki was built to work the docs loading and unloading. Max found him interesting and in his spare time studied the golem. Using his skills and fate, Max tinkered with Roki in the late evening hours often altering his design and improving on the golem's construction. Roki spoke for the first time a month ago, "why am I here?" the golem said, "who am I?" Since then the two have been inseparable. Roki, working late on the docs, attempted to stop the pirates from taking Max, an action that resulted in his own capture.
3. Wolfgar - Wolfgar is a gunslinger, waiting in Port Peril. Wolfgar is a professional sailor, and works the boats up and down the coast. His last big assignment was aboard the Merry Weather, a merchant vessel from the orient. It was here he met Gin Mor. She was not only a beautiful women, but an expert in a rare substance called black powder and gunsmithing. The two became close friends, perhaps more. During their time together, Wolfgar learned the art of black powder and gunsmithing. One night, the Merry Weather docked in Port Peril on her way South to Sargava. Wolfgar woke the next morning after a night of celebration to find the ship, her crew and Gin Mor gone. He's spent the last 6 months looking for the ship. No one has heard from, or seen the ship since. It has never docked since.
We've made it 5 days into the journey so far.
On the flip side, my story details have already got the players hating Plugg and Scourge, and speaking of mutiny. Heck, even the consideration of an assassination and frame of an NPC.
basically took us three days. Long sessions though (6+ hours) and a long-term group who does not debate too many tactical choices all day.
And... we had fun^^
For my group we are about to attack the ship and the first 19 days took 2 x 4 hour sessions. My players got bored of rolling out daily duties so to speed it up I gave them the chart for their job and had them all do it at once and just trusted the results they gave me. Also, my party is on the slow track so I am handing out 50xp each time someone succeeds in their daily task, so there is a carrot as well as the stick (whipping)
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I know, the answer is 21 days... what I'm asking is, the first part of Wormwood has you at sea for 21 days, how did most people play this out?
It took our group 4 four hour sessions to get through the first chunk of the AP. Before we got into it I thought it had the potential to be boring, but the players really got into it and created all sorts of entertaining situations. I'm actually really glad the game started this way - with lots of roleplaying, and with the PC's in a tight spot and having to use their wits to get out of it alive. It will also really make them appreciate their freedom once they earn it by the end of book one.
Great assortment of character ideas.... sounds like fun!
My group is only up to Day Four and "Fun with Owlbear", but we've only had two sessions so far. (First session was primarily setting up characters and Day One.)
I have decided to telescope the time frame a bit in our campaign. As written, once the PCs are at sea there usually is a "day off" in between the encounters where the PCs just do their jobs but nothing particularly happens unless the GM inserts a side quest of some sort. In order to move things along a bit faster (and give my PCs less time to consider sticking a knife in Plugg's and/or Scourge's back) I'm going to drop the "off" days and just play through the encounters in order. IIRC this shortens the time at sea
Once we hit the "Day 21" part of the adventiure we'll probably use the regular schedule, as things move along pretty quickly after that.
How long will it take to complete the entire module? Knowing my group, I'd guess another three or four 6- to 8-hour sessions.
9 days in total over 4, 3 hour sessions. I was the same, i could see my group starting to get agitated and wanting to Mutiny, this I knew would have been suicidal on the Wormwood so I needed to move it along a bit quicker to get to the Mans Promise so they can start planning (I think as a group they already have a plan of action). They hate Plugg and Scourge with a vengence and I am relishing the time when they do face off with him.
I ran day 1-4 as normal, day 5 I had the ship stop for a bit of R and R outside a coral reef, this gave me the oppertunity to run the reefclaw encounter (one of the reasons for the ship to stop, well known for delicoious crabs) in the morning and as the ship had stopped this also gave me a chance to run the boarding practice in the afternoon. The eveing was spent in the company of Owlbear who they managed to befriend.
Day 6 was normal with a build up to the storm in the afternoon.eve, Day 7 was the storm, (Rosie fell overboard but was rescued almost imediatltey with clever use of Hyraulic push and animate rope), day 8 I had the bilge encounter with one of the party and the sighting of the ship in the evening. Finshed last night at day 9 with the very start of the pirate attack and a well earned level up for the party.
the party are doing exceiptionally well, they have the majority of the crew on thier side, they also mamanged to Kill off Fipps and Aletta in the bilge encounter on day 8 and with a very clever idea and fantastic dice roll managed to make the bodies look as if they had killed each other. However, said player is in trouble as she managed to fail in her duty to clean the bilges...blood and bodies still need cleaning.
The parties main concern seems to be that at level 1 they had to be very, very careful, they had countless close calls where they were down to minus HP which made them become very caucious. There was a major sense of relife when they leveled last night. I think I made the right call here I think. The 9 days have been very entertaining though with some very memmerable role-play moments.
It took my lot two 3.5 hour sessions to generate characters and roleplay the first 21 (in game) days aboard the Wormwood. I'm a bit worried that I'll have to bypass the Man's Promise entirely, as I suspect they are about to kick off big time, after one of their number got jumped by two would-be assassins in the ship's bilge. I'll probably have them thrown overboard and wash up some time later on Bonewrack Island. After exploring for a bit, they can bump into a force of their old crewmates, after the prize ship runs aground.
Just finished Part One (21 days) about halfway through our third session last night. Of course, it being a pirate themed game, I tend to use the rule of cool more often than the actual rules.
We finished last night with Night one aboard The Man's Promise and the PC's IMMEDIATELY looking for Plugg and his remaining loyal cronies. Plugg escaped by "sacrificing" his loyal crew mates to capture and eventually mortally wounding Scourge as a distraction while He escaped in a boat.
I believe my next game will begin with a vignette of Plugg as he rows towards and eerie looking Island...
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2 sessions in, with last one going longer than normal, so 12 hours of play equals day 11. Handed out a tracking sheet for main crew that they interact with. Than go around the table RPing each character. This one is alot different than most in that, some PC's havnt interacted much with each other yet. They have done a good job of RPing that they dont know much about each other. Had our first death right before we quit. So will pick up there. Days passed alittle faster since most are sleeping the night away from lashes or grog. day 8 earned alot of lashes. If one player hadnt been playing a sea bard I dont know if they would have made into day 9 without all being asleep on the job.
Two relatively short (3 hrs or so) sessions and we're on...night of day 2. Ach, I'm bad at this.
2 7 hour sessions and they're onto part 4.
My PCs loved the interaction and never got bored, but we're ROLEplayers all no one is a hack and slash only type of guy.
Well, we're two months in now - PbP though. So far, we're up to day 6 (representing about 500 posts, if you care).
OK, we just finished the 21 days at sea Thursday, next we start the Man's Promise battle. So my group took roughly 4 play sessions, each about 3 hrs each.
I had to really work at quelling the Wormwood mutiny talks, and did so with a lot of divide and occupy.
I dropped a lot of the rolling and story-arched the days, we also pulled in some character background to liven it up. Thanor was pushed into fighting Owlbear. It was a clean and generally even fight, till Ownbear got his weapon and then Thanor let go and shifted.
This lead to a good section on the crew wanting to throw Thanor over, and Harrigan (while not friendly) taking an interest in him. Harrigan knew the stories of a ship of Lycans long ago, he has plans for the shifter. Not 100% sure where this will go, but it added some fun.
Surprising as it may sound, my group is heavy into character-play, which is similar to roleplay, but not quite. They all have personalities, some have voices, habits, behaviors and what not, and express them heavily when we play. Lots of camaraderie, but they are not good at 21 days at sea, that's for sure.
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After two sessions, they're setting sail aboard the Promise. Due to the PCs all huddling in together, they didn't win many shipmates over to their side, until I basically just brought Shortstone and Cuss'ell over to them. I ruled that Brawny Jo earned Cogward's grudging respect after a graceful win at the arm-wrestling, after his inability to tell him about when he walloped a big bilge rat to bits with a hand axe's triple-crit. They also didn't bother to get their equipment back, since after the poncy Chelish wizard's spellbook and the mysterious strangers "family heirloom", they didn't really bother except to chat with Grok.
Due to that, and one of them asking to take 10 earlier on, I agreed to fast-forward over days where nothing happened and nobody wanted to chat with anyone. The most hilarious part was during the storm, where young Jack Scrimshaw fell overboard. Brawny Jo grabbed a rope and leapt over to save him, then failed his swim checks and needed to be hauled back too, as sailors with no points in climb fell from the rigging to help out.
Having to fight reefclaws with only brass knuckles and spells led to cries of, "Who wrote this adventure?" but I pointed out that there were plenty of weapons they could have bartered for with stuff the cook's mate found or money won from gambling and such.
In taking the Promise, the stranger finally got to use her heirloom, winning the Besmaran Sin-eater's respect by shooting a fleeing man in the back. Then, not wanting anyone to know he was a wizard, the wizard caught two of his team-mates in a Colour Spray, knocking them both out and only one of the enemy sailors. Rather than have the remaining ones turn and kill him, I decided they had better things to do. Then they fell asleep, and Captain Harrigan climbed up to see him surrounded by bodies (two of which were coming around and swearing).
Now I figure they're angry enough to try and mutiny during a squall, killing Plugg & Scourge only to wake up the next morning wrecked in the middle of nowhere. At least having all the time in the world to find missing crewmates will make the island a little less deadly (and give them more time to explore). I can't wait!