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Re: Seafaring Experience Started by DM Derek at 12-17-2008 10:41 AM. Topic has 8 replies. Habololy Commun... » Gamers » Playing a Habol... » Re: Seafaring Experience

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12-17-2008, 10:41 AM DM Derek Joined on 06-03-2005 Always with my Dice Posts 4,334 Seafaring Experience Now that the grand experience is over, I want to know what you thought. Try to focus on the mechanics of the sailing campaign, rather than the storyline. Questions such as: Is doing the weather and sailing checks useful and interesting or just annoying. Is it better to have the crew very fleshed out, or just more or less unnamed. Is visiting lots of different locations interesting or overwhelming. Does the passage of a large amount of game time help, hurt, or irrelevant to the campaign. The hand that rolls the dice rules the world.    Report

12-18-2008, 6:51 AM Valdis Joined on 07-18-2005 Uber-Geek Posts 978 Re: Seafaring Experience Overall i feel the mechanics of the Seafaring campaign were fine. The Weather and Sailing checks I would say were useful. It helped foster the feeling that we had a say in how well/bad the ship was doing at any given time. And since we had characters aboard who were affected by the weather, it added another element that had to be considered (what would have been the outcome if we were attacked during a cold snap that we were unprepared for? Laz and the other vaas ould have been in much worse shape.) For the Crew, I think you hit a pretty good balance. We knew more about our immediate superiors and people we interacted with on a regular basis than we did about the rest of the crew. Visiting multiple locations was great in my opinion. It was not overwhelming in the least. The passage of time was almost irrelevant to the mechanics of the game. It was only relevant in establishing how long ago a slave or group of slaves was sold to/taken to a particular place in the story. Some things that you may want to consider for next time: Ship Morale: Long stretches aboard ship between ports would likely have seen more fights aboard ship between crew and possibly mutiny. Especially after a devestating loss or catastrophy (after the hurricane incident it should have taken an epic level Daane to keep most of the crew onboard without a mutiny) Withdraw always hurts more on Tuesday...    Report

12-18-2008, 1:24 PM Master Po Joined on 10-04-2007 Posts 566 Re: Seafaring Experience I thought the checks were fine, anytime you can keep people involved I think it is good. I thought you did a great job with the crew and the captives we were after. That seems like a ton of prep work on your part but that level of detail is what keeps people coming back. As for the time line and the places we visited I thought that worked well also. There was something for most everyone to do at one place or another. This was the perfect campaign for Claude the sailor. Claude the adventurer may be a different story.    Report

12-18-2008, 2:44 PM Windblade Joined on 06-14-2005 Habololian Afterlife with Treetop Posts 1,298 Re: Seafaring Experience I enjoyed the weather and sailing checks. It was one way to really tell we were out on the open seas. I agree with Valdis the crew was pretty good as it was. You fleshed out the ones that needed to be fleshed out. I think it was fine to visit all the location but sometimes we spent too much time at locations there were "unimportant" to the overall plot. However, this is a tough call as a DM because if you don't treat every place the same then we would know that something is going to happen at the port that you detail. I have mixed feelings on this and don't really have a solution for this right now. It might just be a necessary evil of this type of campaign to keep the realism there. I think the passage of time is more of a DMing issue. It doesn't really effective the players to much. I agree with Valdis that more on the crew's morale would be important for next time.    Report

12-19-2008, 9:05 PM whitesword Joined on 06-15-2005 Posts 1,124 Re: Seafaring Experience Other than the things we have already discussed in person, the one thing I think could be added would be a nominal amount of xp for the time spent just doing our job as sailors, similar to the xp charachters get in the lay off between seasons. Running the ship is dangerous, hard, work that crewmen get better at as they go about their daily activities.    Report

12-19-2008, 9:37 PM DM Derek Joined on 06-03-2005 Always with my Dice Posts 4,334 Re: Seafaring Experience That is an excellent point and solves the issue of your profession (sailor) skill points not really being used for anything. Nathan, Sas, Laz, Valdis, Claude, and Yuri each get 30 times there ranks in Profession (sailor) in xp. Gnax gets 20 times his ranks in Profession (sailor) Xavier and Gabriel get 15 times their ranks Profession (sailor) and 15 times their ranks in Profession (seige engineer) in xp. The hand that rolls the dice rules the world.    Report

12-20-2008, 10:43 AM Master Po Joined on 10-04-2007 Posts 566 Re: Seafaring Experience Is that just ranks or the total check?    Report

12-20-2008, 1:26 PM DM Derek Joined on 06-03-2005 Always with my Dice Posts 4,334 Re: Seafaring Experience Just ranks. The hand that rolls the dice rules the world.    Report

12-20-2008, 10:13 PM Hero Joined on 06-21-2005 Posts 747 Re: Seafaring Experience Agreed on all counts. I think the variety of locations was great...makes me realize how little of Habololy we've actually explored. One thing I do think was a little off was that daily progress depended on a single die roll, which I guess is prudent from a game mechanics perspective, but tended to make day to day travel seem very jerky...like a one-legged person driving a car with a manual transmission. Great progress one day, next day none, etc.    Report

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