Copyright 2003-2011 T. Kurt Bond

Tue, 25 Nov 2008

Actual Play: Dead Men Tell No Tales, Part 2

I ran another session using the the Pirates of the Spanish Main one-sheet “Dead Men Tell No Tales” with the kids.

E.A. couldn't attend, but L.B. could, so she played Phillipe Gujon and Alice Pettigrew, and out of deference to her dislike of playing “boys”, it was revealed that “Phillipe” was actually “Phelicity”!

So, the roster was:

  • T.A. playing Isaiah Kestrel, Captain of the Lady Faire
  • M.A. playing Scarred Jack
  • L.B. playing (as her main character) Phelicity Gujon and (as her secondary character) Alice Pettigrew

We picked up a couple of days from the island on the map. Not liking the look of the decayed dock, they anchored offshore and left the crew to guard the sloop. On shore they found everybody 50 years dead. They easily found the mine, ignored the skeletons wrapped in pirate flags, and were shocked to find the lady hanging above the treasure in the depths of the mines. And of course, they were then attacked by the six skeletons wrapped in pirate flags.

T.A. was plagued by poor initiative card draws and low rolls, and earned the unhappy nickname “Captain Slowpants”, and eventually ended up “Captain Slow-anything”, much to his dismay. Eventually, however, they managed to kill the skeletons, and that's where the game ended. (We only had a short time to play.)

Reflections

We played in my living room around a low, 2 foot diameter table, keeping dice, tokens, and cards on the table and character sheets off. We didn't bother to user miniatures. I used gaming stones to represent wound and shaken statuses, and check track of the skeletons just by removing the d6 that I rolled for their fighting attacks, so there was no book keeping. I thought that all worked well.

(My bones and joints, on the other hand, did not work well when getting up off the floor after a couple of hours of play.)


Sat, 15 Nov 2008

Actual Play: Dead Men Tell No Tales, Part 1

Some of the kids and I played through about half of the Pirates of the Spanish Main Savage Worlds one-sheet “Dead Men Tell No Tales” this afternoon and evening, before and after supper. This is one of the free downloads Pinnacle Entertainment Group did for the game.

The roster was:

  • T.A. playing Isaiah Kestrel
  • E.A. playing Alice Pettigrew and Phillipe Gujon
  • M.A. played Scarred Jack

They found the dying pirate with the chest manacled to his foot, and after he died opened the chest and found the treasure map, and decided to head for the island. Along the way they found and boarded the decaying pirate ship, from which they deduced had come the dying pirate. They had a hard time with the zombie pirate captain wildcard, who had the luck of the initiative most of the time, ending up with the Joker three times, and the high card of the draw most of the rest of the time. The zombie wildcard incapacitated Alice with one blow that ended up doing five wounds at a whack, and things were looking dire. However, the zombie pirate captain's luck with the iniative cards finally left him However, E.A., rolling for the crew extras who showed up after hearing Alice scream as she went down, aced an attack roll, then aced all three of the damage dice, and then aced at least one of the rerolls, putting the wildcard down decisively. After that M.A. had Scarred Jack try an untrained Healing roll and aced it big time, so most of Alice's wounds got healed and M.A. wants Jack to learn Healing for real now, which is neat. After they returned to their ship the other ship collapsed and sank. They decided to continue to follow the treasure map, even though a storm came up. Alice was unconscious for four days. After couple of days it was obvious that they and their ship were suffering from the curse, and that's were we had to leave the game.

Lots of fun.

Reflections

I should have looked up all the details of the edges and hindrances and wrote them on the kids character sheets, and on my copies, before the kids came over for the game. I had to do it while they were there, and of course they wanted to get on to the gaming. However, I knew we'd be looking them up in the middle of game if I didn't.

We also need to play more often so I can keep the details in mind better. Maybe next weekend.


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