I'll be prepping to start running Skull & Shackles over the next few weeks. GMs, if you could go back and change something about how you prepped or what you did during the first session, what would it be?
I've been reading some of the suggestions in here and one of the things I plan on doing is making individual cards for all of the pirate NPCs the party will be coming into contact with aboard the Wormwood. I'll be using the paper miniatures for the campaign so I'll likely include the NPC art on the back of the index card so the players will have a larger version of the person they're dealing with too.
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- Actually printing up all the decks of the Wormwood to some scale, even full 1" scale if possible for the table... makes placement of miniatures more easy, and gives a better feel for "who is where". Possibly draw up the masts, masttops, yards and the crows nest too for this. This will become important once the first storm hits.
- Decide upon a stairwell from the lower decks of the Wormwood to the maindeck (without passing through the officers cabins )... and put it on the map. Same for the main windlass (winch), which should be... well someplace ?
- Draw up two watches for the crew, and have them work in alternate groups... since having the ship stop at night is.... yeah, not really realistic and such. Pretty nonsensical even. Assign the group to one watch, if possible. Cook's assistant is out, of course. Then assign some officers commanding the watch.
- Go through the "Sailor's Talk" threads and amend you lubberly ways.
- Assign some easy to remember quirk or habit to most of the crew, to make them more memorable. Narwhale cleaning his toenails all the time, Aretta pulling on her ear, Scrimshaw whistling tunelessly... helps with remembering everyone.
- Have some idea for an incident showing just how dangerous the officers are in comparison to the crew. Some combat sparring or extra "pressed" crewmeber who considers attacking Longfarthing or whoever is a good idea and gets hewn/hacked into pieces. Might also illustrate how ruthless the officers are... say have the poor sod keelhauled, after having his hands hacked off and the wounds sealed ?
- Get some naval sounds as a background soundtrack : winds, creaking timbers, the flutter of sails, splashing of waves... just as a murmur in the background.
- To scare players : have a short piece of thick rope at hand, and sharply bash it on the table for every "starter" or/and especially any whippings coming up as well.... The short sharp snap should become really.... a thing to hate. Make sure your table is up for it though^^
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Make sure your players understand that they are up for a different sort of experience for the first half+ of the first book. They are unequipped at the mercy of people much more powerful than them and any of the usual sort of PC heroics will probably result not in rewards, but in punishment. It is much more about intrigue, diplomacy and interaction with the crew than combat. It is juicy and wonderful, but it's good for your players to be prepared not to expect a bunch of cr 1/4 baddies to mow through.
Make sure to offer a couple opportunities in the first 20 days for your PC's to "succeed" - to break up the brutality. Whether that is getting revenge on a minor crew member (Fipps, Arretta, Syl or whoever), or getting a reward from the captain for a good job (even better if this is done in front of Plugg and he is sputtering and angry).
I used notecards for PC's to mark their daily actions on. Sped things up and saved me having to remind them what their options were. I just wrote their options for day & night on the cards, had them all mark at once for each day and then resolved one by one.
I've been reading some of the suggestions in here and one of the things I plan on doing is making individual cards for all of the pirate NPCs the party will be coming into contact with aboard the Wormwood. I'll be using the paper miniatures for the campaign so I'll likely include the NPC art on the back of the index card so the players will have a larger version of the person they're dealing with too.
I did exactly this and it has been an excellent tool. I have each NPC card with a picture from the paper minis set on the back and key stats for me on the front...including an attitude scale with starting and current attitude, job, notes, etc. I show the players the cards as we're playing so they know who they're talking to. When a PC is assigned to, say, the bilges and wants to know who they're working with I can put all of the swabs in a pile and pick one at random.
One thing I might do from the beginning is to pre-roll jobs, Kroop's inebriation level, whether the QM's door is locked, etc. I started doing that in my campaign journal beginning on day three or so. I've also had the players make one pre-roll per day and noted those rolls so we don't have to go through the whole job requirement thing. If they make a good roll then we don't have to examine what's happening in full detail, we just narrate it. If they roll poorly then we'll look into what happened and maybe make some more rolls.
Example: One of the PCs was a runner one day and had pre-rolled a 1. We played out what happened and how he got out of a sticky situation involving a trip over a rope, a spilled bucket of mop water, and Mr. Plugg's boots. Fortunately this PC was a smooth talker and merely got a sound dressing down!
We're only partway through the stay on Wormwood so I don't have much additional advice to offer. Mainly you've got to try to find a way to make that section not a boring, "Okay. Day three. Let's roll for..." thing...both for yourself and for your players. I've really played up the interactions between the PCs and crew/officers and been ready to improvise when a player wants to have their PC do something that's not on the ship action list. Can't much prepare for that...
M
In my group having index cards with the pictures of the crew on them was very helpful. It really helped everyone track who was who.
As was suggested above be sure to put in a extra set of stairs getting from the main deck to the hold on the Wormwood map. It's not very practical to go through the officers quarters every time.
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I wrote out a ships roster with names, descriptions, and dispositions all marked on there for the players to easily reference. I also used index cards for some of the more note-worthy NPCs. Another tip is to make sure you have the locations of the day-job rolls and punishments marked in your AP (or just copied out). I also had a tally chart for days currently spent on the ship, with notes on changes in weather marked.
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Have fun, first and foremost.
That said, Skulls and Shackles uses a plethora of not-so-often rules. Be sure to read up on the following rules:
-Ship to ship combat
-Underwater combat
-Siege engines
-Firearms (they don't show up until book six, but your players may be drawn to them earlier).
-Vehicle driving
-Weather effects
-Starvation/hunger effects
A few good RP elements to read up on:
-Isles of the Shackles
-Pirates of the Inner Sea
-Nautical slang
-Any pirates material you can come across, historic or fantasy. This IS a fantasy game, after all
If you like using minis in naval combat, there is a game Pirates (Pirates of the Spanish Main, etc.) out there with some good card-stock assemble-able modules sized decently for your standard 1" grid. They should work well for ship combats and encounters with the truly massive denizens of the deep.
I just went ahead and made all the ships. lol Ships
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Holy crap your guys had to fight a gargantuan cat with water walk, man you're mean.
Those ship look great.
lol yeah, thats the dreaded 'colossal sea kraken cat of curiosity'
Drop the Rum Ration.
I've been letting the cleric of Besmara purify it...if she can do so sneakily and if Besmara decides it's okay that day (she's fickle, 75% chance). Her stealth/sleight of hand is weak so the bard, now with the help of Concho and Rosie) have been distracting the crew with song and dance...usually making fun of their enemies. It has turned into one of their favorite parts of the day. The times it doesn't work are fun too.
BTW, Aretta Bansion had grown in their minds as the leader of their opposition group and my players have gone to great lengths to undermine her and build their own power base. They had essentially won over all of her associates by last game and, on day nine, picked a fight with her, knocked her out, and stuffed her out of a hole caused by flotsam hit during the storm the night before. Alas, her body was never found, despite the "timely" man overboard warning shouted by the PCs.
This sort of thing never happens in our normal games (all good, all the time). I like it!
M
I just went ahead and made all the ships. lol
Thank you so much for that idea for the ships. I was planning on making them but that's definitely a different take on the build process.
Did anyone recreate the players character sheets and give them back without any equipment and such?
Next week we're going to be getting together for a character build session using Hero Lab and my laptop. SOOOOOO, I'm going to be able to easily make another copy of their character sheets without any on it.
My thought was to take all of their equipment and make half-sized index cards with everything listed individually. That way when the character actually recovers something I'll be able to hand it to them ... probably including some artwork from Ultimate Equipment too. Guess I'll have to be on the lookout for a tiny treasure chest on my next run to Goodwill!
I left my players' characters their duffels and just put their weapons and obvious magical items in lockup. Sandara returned the cleric's holy symbol and a couple of daggers on the first morning. One of the PCs had a hidden dagger that wasn't found and another has brass knuckles.
Just couldn't see taking away everything. So far they haven't bothered trying to get anything back from the stores...though they've been jiggling the handles, so to speak, of the various locked spaces and one swiped Rosie's fiddle for her after Grok and Kroops were done messing around with it in the kitchen and were well into their rum.
M
One week countdown till Skull & Shackles starts for me. I'm pretty excited about it, I'll post up some of the prep work that I've done later this week. And next week you'll all get to see a picture of the ship I'm building.
I've scanned the ship tiles I'd bought and am making them 25% bigger so it's easier for the players to interact with the map.
Any other suggestions anyone?