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Game Over! Poison'd.
summeryclept
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
From The Whisperings of Madmen, Lost At Sea...
POISON'D
In this the Year of Our Lord 1701, did end the bloody career of the pirate Captain Jonathan Abraham Pallor,
called Brimstone Jack.
He did not die on the gallows, nor by the sword, nor shot in two by cannon. He died of poison, administered to him by his cook, an assassin under the King’s orders.
This is what happened next.
called Brimstone Jack.
He did not die on the gallows, nor by the sword, nor shot in two by cannon. He died of poison, administered to him by his cook, an assassin under the King’s orders.
This is what happened next.
* * *
OUR SHIT
The Dagger
- It's lucky
- It's frightening to see
It's best strength is:
- Cannon to cannon
Our company
- Its members are well-armed and eager to fight
- Its members are, by and large, unreprobate murderers
- It has no strong common language, instead relying on pidgin and guessing
The PCs!
Reverend Algrenon Broussard
Reverend Algrenon Broussard, surgeon
Sins: excessive blasphemy against God, sodomy, murder, idolatry
Devil: 5
Soul: 3
Suffered: impressment, torture, beating, lashing, imprisonment, damnation
Brutality: 6
Ambitions: to spit in the eye of God, to spit in the eye of the Devil, to be revenged upon the Pope, to live forever
Ambition: 4
Brinkmanship: 6
I go armed with my amputation knife, a sword, a brace of pistols and my savage demeanor
Profile: 4
Sins: excessive blasphemy against God, sodomy, murder, idolatry
Devil: 5
Soul: 3
Suffered: impressment, torture, beating, lashing, imprisonment, damnation
Brutality: 6
Ambitions: to spit in the eye of God, to spit in the eye of the Devil, to be revenged upon the Pope, to live forever
Ambition: 4
Brinkmanship: 6
I go armed with my amputation knife, a sword, a brace of pistols and my savage demeanor
Profile: 4
Bad Luck Billy
Bad Luck Billy
William Hammonds, cook's mate
Sins: blasphemy, idolatry, robbery, sodomy, sodomy
Devil: 5
Soul: 3
Suffered: beating, branding, impressment (x), lashing, mutilation, torture
Brutality: 6
Ambitions: to be revenged upon the cook, to be pardoned, to be regarded highly by society
Ambition: 3
Brinkmanship: 6
wicked knife
sword
pistol
distinctive hand weapon (butcher knife)
slight, quick, wiry-strong, and vicious
split tongue
Profile: 3
William Hammonds, cook's mate
Sins: blasphemy, idolatry, robbery, sodomy, sodomy
Devil: 5
Soul: 3
Suffered: beating, branding, impressment (x), lashing, mutilation, torture
Brutality: 6
Ambitions: to be revenged upon the cook, to be pardoned, to be regarded highly by society
Ambition: 3
Brinkmanship: 6
wicked knife
sword
pistol
distinctive hand weapon (butcher knife)
slight, quick, wiry-strong, and vicious
split tongue
Profile: 3
Percival Black
Percival Black, quartermaster aboard the Dagger
Sins: Murder, Robbery, Blasphemy
Brutalities: Mutilation, Torture, Branding, Beating
Ambitions: To spit in the eye of the Devil
Weapons: Not a weapon, but your pirate is, while slight, nevertheless quick, wiry-strong, and vicious
Disability: The word "CHEAT" permanently scarred across forehead
Ambition: 2
Devil: 3
Soul: 5
Brutality: 4
Brinkmanship: 5 (Soul)
Profile: 2
Sins: Murder, Robbery, Blasphemy
Brutalities: Mutilation, Torture, Branding, Beating
Ambitions: To spit in the eye of the Devil
Weapons: Not a weapon, but your pirate is, while slight, nevertheless quick, wiry-strong, and vicious
Disability: The word "CHEAT" permanently scarred across forehead
Ambition: 2
Devil: 3
Soul: 5
Brutality: 4
Brinkmanship: 5 (Soul)
Profile: 2
Mr. Benjamin Raccheam
Mr. Benjamin Raccheam, Gunnery Master
Sins: Adultery [x2], Murder
Devil: 3
Soul: 5
Suffered: Branding, Disownment, Impressment
Brutality: 3
Ambitions: To be captain, To own land, To be pardoned, To live forever, To be remembered forever, To be regarded highly by society
Ambition: 6
Brinkmanship: Ambition = 6
Being quick and wirey, I am best armed with a trench knife, a saber, my trusty pistol "Plink", and a brace of more pistols
Profile: 4 (2+ 1 brace of pistols + 1 wirey strong and vicious)
Sins: Adultery [x2], Murder
Devil: 3
Soul: 5
Suffered: Branding, Disownment, Impressment
Brutality: 3
Ambitions: To be captain, To own land, To be pardoned, To live forever, To be remembered forever, To be regarded highly by society
Ambition: 6
Brinkmanship: Ambition = 6
Being quick and wirey, I am best armed with a trench knife, a saber, my trusty pistol "Plink", and a brace of more pistols
Profile: 4 (2+ 1 brace of pistols + 1 wirey strong and vicious)
Jean-Ferdinand de Moèn
Jean-Ferdinand de Moèn, Sailing Master under Brimstone Jack
Sins
Blasphemy, Murder
Brutalities
Attempted murder
Beating
Imprisonment
Torture
Ambition
To spit in the eye of the Devil
To be remembered forever
To be pardoned
Weapon
Knife, Pistol, Sword, Offhand sword
Disability
Mute
Devil – 2
Soul – 6
Brutality – 4
Ambition – 3
Brinkmanship – 6 (Soul)
Profile - 2
Sins
Blasphemy, Murder
Brutalities
Attempted murder
Beating
Imprisonment
Torture
Ambition
To spit in the eye of the Devil
To be remembered forever
To be pardoned
Weapon
Knife, Pistol, Sword, Offhand sword
Disability
Mute
Devil – 2
Soul – 6
Brutality – 4
Ambition – 3
Brinkmanship – 6 (Soul)
Profile - 2
BARGAINS
Percival Black
- Reverend Algrenon Broussard swore to protect me from sodomy
- I swore to Captain Rutherford that I would deliver The Dagger to him
Bad Luck Billy Hammond
- Percival Black owes me 3 Leisure
- I swore to Brimstone Jack that you would sink The Dagger rather than see her taken.
Jean-Ferdinand de Moèn
- Mr. Benjamin Raccheam swore to fight by my side when all others desert me
Reverend Algrenon Broussard
- Percival Black swore to back me for ship's captain
Mr. Benjamin Raccheam
- Jean-Ferdinand swore to back me for captain.
summeryclept on
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Posts
One - choose your position under Brimstone Jack.
Two - which of these sins have you committed?
Pick a sin twice if you do it excessively. It's blasphemy if you're a woman posing and living as a man. Twice so if you've contrived to get some hot girl tail as a woman.
On your character sheet, write down "Devil". It's equal to the number of sins you've chosen. If you chose less than 2, it's bumped to two. If you chose more than 6, it's still 6.
On your character sheet, write down "Soul". It's equal to 8 minus your Devil.
Three - which of these brutalities have you suffered?
Mark an X next to any that Brimstone Jack did to you.
On your character sheet, write down "Brutality." It's equal to the number of these you just picked. Bump it up to 2 or down to 6 if you went over or under, just like Devil.
Four - what are your ambitions?
On your sheet, write down "Ambition", and it equals how many of these you picked. Same with Devil - if it's less than two or more than 6, it's two or six.
If you want your pirate to treat personal danger casually and without fear, choose a higher Devil than Ambition.
If you want your pirate to prefer cunning, stealth, and deceit, choose a higher Ambition than Brutality.
If you want your pirate to be ruthless, conscienceless and violent, choose a higher Brutality than Soul.
If you want you pirate to endure punishment and torture ithout breaking, or to be calm and skilled in chaos, choose a higher Soul than Devil.
Five - Your brinksmanship.
Six - Calculate your Profile.
Also, if your pirate’s suffered mutilation, name a disability your character suffers accordingly: a lost limb, a lost eye, a split tongue, terrible scars.
Your Profile, write this down on your character sheet, equals 2 + the number of weapons you chose - the number of disabilities you chose (at most 1)
You also have Outstanding Bargains with the other players, but those come in once everyone's done.
Here are some facts about pirates, true for this game if not in real history.
A privateer is a ship with commission from the crown to attack or sink or even seize enemy ships, and to receive a share and bounty from. Privateering is lawful. Pirates, on the other hand, are illegal murderers.
Pirate ships are democracies. Captains are elected. They can call for him to step down if the want, though he is under no obligation to descend. Everything is a vote: where to sail, how to provision, what ships to attack. Of course, most of that REALLY gets done through bullying and doubledealing.
Where to travel? Winter in the Caribbean, summer up the coast. Across the Atlantic to Africa, or into the Indian Ocean.
Pirates don't bury treasure. They gamble, drink, and whore it away. Terms are written out for sharing the plunder. Some is set aside for ship maintenance. Salary is given to the carpenter and surgeon, and some to make up for lost limbs and eyes. Then everyone gets an equal share, and the captain gets his own private stash.
A piece-of-eight is a silver coin, and is what we work with most. It's about the same buying power as an American twenty. Doubloons are large gold coins worth a lot more (a handful of doubloons makes you set up well for a year or more). A single pirate's amount of loot typically would amount to a couple hundred pieces of eight - roughly six to eight thousand dollars American. HOWEVER! Most plunder will be in trade goods, like cloth, tobacco, whale oil, spices, dyes, jewelry, even slaves.
A pirate ship is likely to have a mixed race, more so than a Navy ship. Sometimes black slaves make their way there. The way to tell: if he has a weapon, he isn't a slave.
There's only been two female pirates that we know of. One disguised as a man. Many more could have been well-disguised, who knows. Dozens of women disguised as men entered the regular Navy.
Punishment for talking mutiny is a split tongue or your tongue burned out.
Here in 1701, there's about 25 pirate ships in the Caribbean. There's only 4 or 5 English ships stationed to fight against pirates. Merchant ships usually surrender if they take you seriously, because fuck all that noise. Merchant ships hide their most valuable stuff. Pirates grab a bunch of them and torture the whereabouts out of them.
Living aboard a pirate ship is just as healthy as any navy ship. The food is better. Navy captains eat rat meat and the sailors fend for themselves.
Prisoners don't walk the plank. Your ass just gets tossed. Mostly, though, you just get shot or cut.
Success Rolls
- Roll Soul vs. Devil when acting despite pain or duress, or pressing on during exhaustion, or enduring torture, or doing something in bad conditions. You want the first stat to win in success rolls, and the last one to fail. Roll your own Soul and your own Devil.
- Roll Devil vs. Ambition when you go into danger or do something risky, but not fighting.
- Roll Ambition vs. Brutality when you keep still, act with stealth, deceit, cunning, or care.
- Roll Brutality vs. Soul when you attack a helpless or outmatched victim.
You want 4s, 5s, and 6s. For your second stat, that you're rolling against, discard one success (that's good for you! hooray!) If you have more, your action succeeds. If you lose or if the two stats roll the same amount of successes, you fail, or you succeed but to no advantage. The GM will let you know about failure.
Count the difference if you win. Each point of difference is called Advantage. So if you roll 4 vs. 2, the difference is 2. That's 2 Advantage. For each Advantage, mark one X on your character sheet.
If you fail an action, the GM can bring the fight to you now and you can't roll for any more successes beforehand.
You can even use flashbacks right before a fight to gain Xs, if possible. You can't have a fight in a flashback, however.
FIGHTING
ONE - compare Profiles.
Between players, whichever side has a higher Profile, you get additional Xs equal to the difference. Between a player and the GM, the GM rolls 6 dice, plus or minus the difference between your Profiles.
If someone beats another's Profile by 4 or more, it's fucking suicide, and they win by default.
If you go unarmed, your Profile is 1.
TWO - roll your Brinksmanship.
Each player rolls their Brinksmanship. The GM takes dice for your compared Profiles. Roll them all! 4s, 5s, and 6s. Here, the GM doesn't throw one away like with Success Rolls. If we tie, we reroll our lowest die until we aren't tied.
Whoever has fewer is losing, and must choose: escalate, spend Xs, or lose.
THREE - escalation.
Each fight has three levels. You start in the first and you can't go past the second. When you escalate, you pick up your failed dice and reroll them. Maybe you're winning now, maybe not. The strategy here is: the get another chance to win, but each subsequent level of escalation means worse and worse shit when you lose. So be careful!
If you ADVANCE to a tie, that's a win. If you STAY AT a tie, you lose.
The GM doesn't escalate at will. GM rolls Brinksmanship, aside from his standing dice. If he has at least two successes, he escalates.
FOUR - consequences.
If you lose, you suffer whatever the penalty is for the level of escalation you're currently at. If you win, you only suffer necessary harm of entering the fight. Also, for each Advantage you have on your last winning roll, you get an X!
FIVE - fighting on a side.
Captain's player, or whoever is leading, take all dice for Brinksmanship in secret. Give one die to each player fighting under you. Players, take a second die add it to the one in your hand. Now, the captain rolls Brinksmanship. Players, you can choose to add your two dice to his roll, or decline. If you decline, you disobey orders but you get two Xs on your sheet.
SIX - spending Xs.
Before the fight: (number of Xs is how many you have to spend)
3X - kill an NPC with no fight at all, as long as he's within reach.
During the fight:
The loser gets first option to spend Xs.
1X - roll an additional die.
1X - if fighting ship to ship or company to company, you can inflict harm on a non-captain named member of the opposite crew. They're out of the rest of the fight, but not lastingly harmed.
2X - as above, but that pirate gets a disabling or disfiguring wound
3X - as above, but give them a deadly wound. This doesn't affect the GM's dice.
1X - if you're winning on the first level of escalation, inflict harm on your opponent according to the current level of escalation, even if your opponent goes on to win. (don't do this in pistol to pistol or pursuit and evasion)/
2X - as above, but the second level of escalation.
?X - your opponent can undo the two above by matching them.
End of the fight:
2X - if you lost, reduce the harm by one level of escalation. You can only do this once.
1X - if you lost, inflict harm equal to the first level of escalation. (not pistol to pistol or pursuit and evasion)
2X - as above, but for the second level of escalation.
?X - your opponent can match Xs to undo this.
1X - if you fought in a mob and lost and aren't the captain, you suffer no harm no matter what else happens.
2X - if you won, reduce the harm you inflict on the loser. you can only do this once. if they already reduced it, you can't reduce it again this way.
After the fight:
Lose any of the Xs you haven't spent. You can't save Xs for another fight. Only the winner carries Xs forward, and only those he won from the fight.
FIGHTING, PART 2: ESCALATION
HERE ARE ESCALATION LEVELS FOR SHIPS
Bargains
Bargain like fucking crazy. This is how you get what you want, not fighting.
If the bargain is broken, and you're not the one who broke it, you get to withhold his Soul from any of your rolls. That means any amount of dice up to however much his Soul is worth.
Deadly Wounds and Dying
- Bargain with a surgeon.
- Bargain with a non-surgeon (add a disfigurement)
- Bargain with God (give up an ambition)
- Bargain with the devil (such is a sin, add it to your list)
Death - roll Ambition vs. Soul. If you win, you can be a ghost if you like. Otherwise, or if you want, go to Judgment. At Judgment, if your Devil is 0, you go to Heaven. Otherwise, roll Soul vs. Devil. If you win, you get silent eternal rest. If you fail, you enter hell for eternal torment.
Example of Conflict and Fighting
Davis wants to beat the shit out of Stanley and knock his teeth loose. Remember that part, it'll be important later. Now, this sounds like a fight, but in Poison'd, it's only a fight if both parties say, "Fuck it, let's throw down." Right now, the Quartermaster is attacking a helpless victim (Haskins is sleeping).
He rolls his own Brutality against his own Soul, and he gets 4 successes (Brutality 2, 3, 5, 5, 5, 6) versus 1 success (Soul: 1, 1, 5, 6 - remember, you discard the first success for the vs. against stat). He jumps on top of the surgeon and starts railing on him, grabbing him by the hair and pounding him in the face until his nose is all mushed up and blood is spraying the walls. He adds 4 Xs to his sheet.
Stanley Haskins has two options: fight back, or endure duress. You can always endure duress. Even if Davis had come in there with a gun and shot Stanley in the mouth, Stanley can STILL roll to endure duress. That'd be a deadly wound, and Stanley would need to strike a bargain or die (and since he's the surgeon, it'd need to be with God or the devil himself). Stanley chooses to endure duress, rolling his own Soul against his own Devil, for two successes. He's wailed on and beaten, alright, but he gets two Xs from his roll.
Remember, though, that the Quartermaster wants something specific: to knock Stanley's teeth loose. To get something specific like that, he needs to strike a Bargain. Why he wants his teeth is anyone's guess, but the offer goes: "Open that mouth and free those teeth, or I'll murder you here and now."
That's the bargain! Stanley doesn't have to accept it, but he decides to. Why? Read it again: if he offers up his teeth, he won't be murdered here and now. And who wants to be murdered? Granted, he won't just die automatically, but what the Quartermaster is REALLY saying here is, "If you give me your teeth, I'll stop hitting you, and you won't die." It's official. Stanley opens his mouth and screams, and the oak staff comes down hard, busting teeth everywhere.
Now, Haskins can withhold Davis' Soul (let's say 4 dice) from any one roll until the bargain is fulfilled. It's not fulfilled yet - Davis might decide to keep on hitting him until Stanley's dead. Thankfully, he doesn't. (On such bargains, the GM normally decides when it's been fulfilled. Sometimes it's not always clear).
But the Quartermaster isn't done yet! He gets off young Stanley Haskins and demands FIVE Leisure for his trouble, wherever the surgeon's hiding his stash, or else he'll go and rat on him for talking mutiny about the Captain (pretty much all he can threaten right now - remember from the previous bargain, murder isn't on the table, not unless Quartermaster Davis wants to lose some dice!)
Stanley rolls over and spits on him, lots of blood through his toothless mouth.
When does an actual fight occur? Either when someone fails a Success roll and them GM decides to bring the fight, or when two participants agree to it, or when it would logically happen due to events. Stanley says he wants to fight, and Davis sure as hell isn't backing down. It's time to rumble.
Before the fight, a smart player will seize the opportunity to have a flashback. It has to be relevant to the conflict, though, and you can't just go crazy with them. Stanley narrates a flashback to when he had stolen a knife from Jack McGord's cot next to him and put it under his (Ambition vs. Brutality to act with cunning or care). This gets him only one more X, unfortunately. But! It also places a knife within reach.
Davis goes into the fight with 7 Xs. Haskins goes into it with only 3 (his player, at the table, should be mocked and criticized for not being piratey enough, as any regular pirate would have done enough to get way more Xs at this point, and damn the bad rolls!).
They compare Profiles. Davis has a Profile of 3, and Haskins, being unarmed, has a Profile of 1 (although it's usually 4). Davis wins that much, getting two more Xs!
They're fighting Fist to Fist. They roll Brinksmanship. Davis is winning with 3 successes, and Haskins is losing with 1 success. As the loser, Haskins needs to decide: Spend Xs, or Accept the Loss, or Escalate.
First, he spends 2 Xs to roll two more dice. They both come up failures. He's still losing, so he has to decide: Spend Xs, Accept the Loss, or Escalate.
He escalates.
Now notice no attention was paid to initiative or who went first. That doesn't matter. All we're concerned with is the end result. Either way, whoever threw the first blow, Davis is still winning. Davis calls him several obscenities and jabs the end of his staff into his ribs, taunting him.
Haskins, having escalated, picks up his failures and re-rolls them. He's now tying with Davis! When you ADVANCE to a tie, that's winning, as opposed to STAYING at a tie. So now Haskins has the upper hand. Davis is the loser. He chooses: Spend Xs, Accept the Loss, or Escalate? He spends Xs, 5 of them to be exact, for five extra dice. Now he's winning. Haskins is again the loser, and decides to Lose (he knows he can't beat the Quartermaster in a war of attrition, and isn't up for the damage the third level of escalation can cause).
The loser, Haskins, must accept the second level of Escalation for Fist to Fist's consequences: being stunned, knocked down, or pinned. He screams, slinking out of bed and charging Davis, but Davis throws his weight into it and sends Haskins flying. He rams into the cot and tumbles over it, banging his head on the wooden frame of the next cot over.
Haskins, having lost, loses of all his Xs (only one, so no big loss). The winner, Davis, loses all of his Xs, but he gets a brand new set equal to however much he won by (let's just say 5 Xs from that last roll.)
Notice that if you fight someone, you don't get what you want out of it: you just hurt people. If you want something specific (like his teeth loose, as above) you make a bargain. Otherwise, you're just brawling, and you get what the rules say you get, not what you decide.
Let's go back to the fight, though, before Haskins decided to lose. Remember he's got that knife under his cot? Let's say he gets pissed and wants to whip it out and gut the Quartermaster. Pulling out a weapon IS a form of escalation in Fist to Fist, but only if he was going to bludgeon him with it. No, he's using a knife to stab and cut, and Knife to Knife is an actual arena. That means we first have to exit Fist to Fist, and then go to Knife to Knife. In order to do that, we need a clear winner and loser in this first conflict: Haskins has to Accept the Loss first in order to switch to knives.
He does, and we start a new conflict. Davis doesn't have a knife on him, so he's pretty much fucked. He'll deal damage equal to the fist to fist escalation chart since he's fighting with his fists. Stanley, however, guts and cuts like a pro, using the Knife to Knife escalation chart.
To play Poison'd, you make Success Rolls. The only thing Success Rolls do is get you Xs. You want Xs because they help you win Fights. You want to win Fights because there's always going to be a Fight, and you don't want to lose it.
A Success Roll is a success roll, and Fighting is Fighting. To make this easier, understand there is a difference between "fighting" with a lower-case f, and "Fighting" with an upper-case F. You can fight all you want, go hog wild, but if you want to Fight, you follow the rules for Fighting. The difference is that when you fight, lower-case f, you're not invoking the Fighting rules - you're probably invoking the Success Roll rules. That type of fighting isn't two opponents squaring off and trading blows. That type of fighting is you beating and punching on someone who can't defend themselves, or you cutting someone's throat as they struggle to get away. Or you feebly hit back while you get your jaw smashed open. It's not a fair fight, essentially. That type of fighting is just color, just fiction. It's just something to attach to your Success Rolls. "How are you getting those Xs?"
Hmm, you say, I'm beating up on him, smashing his leg apart.
The other Fighting, capital F. Whenever anyone wants, they can say they want to "Bring the fight." That gets them out of having to make a success roll. So if you are murdering a pirate, they can bring the Fight to you, and suddenly they're not being murdered anymore, they're Fighting back. (They can also choose to Endure Duress and get Xs, and they should! But THEN they should bring the Fight, because otherwise, you can just keep trying to murder them.) It's literally you saying, "I don't like that! We're Fighting instead!"
There's still some catches, here - Fighting doesn't negate Success Rolls that just happened. If you're dying, you're dying, and you need to take care of that first (strike a bargain or die). But then say you do strike a bargain. Well, guess what? They're still going to just keep coming at you, so, quick, bring the Fight to escape.
You can also bring the Fight to avoid having to agree to a bargain. "Back me for Captain, or I'll blow your brains out!" Well, that's a bargain. What do you do? If you don't back him for Captain, he blows your brains out, and you don't want that. So you bring the Fight, and that's how you settle it instead. If he's winning after the fight, he can still make the bargain, though, so make sure he's good and dead.
Second, as the GM, I'll make NPCs bring the Fight to you under two conditions. One, when you fail a success roll, I can immediately bring the Fight (as opposed to letting everyone get in just a few more Xs - nope, we're done with that, Fight now!). Two, I'll attack you with my NPCs, and they don't get Xs, not at all. However, what I'm really doing is giving you a chance to endure duress to get Xs, because I'm about to bring the Fight.
The Process
- Make Success Rolls to get Xs, because someone, somewhere, will start a Fight, you can't avoid that.
- When someone makes a bargain you don't want to agree to, but you can't afford the consequences of backing out on it, bring the Fight and hope you win.
- When someone is trying to knock you down and kill you, bring the Fight to avoid several deadly wounds.
- If you don't like what someone's trying to do with their success rolls, bring the Fight to them.
Whenever I want, I can make these. This is my way of fucking with you guys. Picture me laughing as I play them at my whim, while you gets get all pissed off. Sometimes you guys do things that make these come into existence. What they are, are events that affect the game and you guys.
Rarely, a few Cruel Fortunes can come to your benefit. Mostly, though? You hate them. I'll always add new Cruel Fortunes to this post, so check here for them.
HERE ARE TWO CRUEL FORTUNES YOU GUYS, THE PLAYERS, CAN REQUEST!
- The captain can request Divine Judgment to strike a bargain with God, and remove any single Cruel Fortune from play.
- Anyone can request Malcontentment, but the captain usually won't. When you're pissed off about something on board and want the majority of the crew to riot in some way, request this (captain's being unfair? MALCONTENTMENT). How they riot is up to me, and what they do is based of whether or not other Cruel Fortunes are in play. I'll let you know.
Definitions of some current and past fortunes
- Want: You all want / need these things. When they first enter play, you have 7 days of real-time, NOT IN-GAME TIME, a real week! to satisfy them. Otherwise, they'll bring another Cruel Fortune into play.
- Wear & breakage: your ship is beat up and you need to fix it.
OUR CURRENT CRUEL FORTUNES
Urgency (The Resolute -22 guns, Profile 11. #s: )
Want (staples and fresh water. 7 days until: Malcontentment)
Wear & breakage (-1 to the Dagger's Profile)
fuck yes, extra loot to you for being first
Whoever doesn't vote me captain is being thrown to the kraken. Yarr and stuff!
Immediately consigned to the brig for failure to read the OP. All in favor say aye.
A real pirate never follows the rules. 8-)
EDIT: also let me submit that "A****!" and yarr are two totally different things guys, seriously.
Extra loot to you for not following the rules
note: anyone caught not following the rules will be murdered. please turn in your extra loot and report to
murdering
I'll take the loot, but choose not to follow the murdering rule.
...dammit.
Now selling tickets to FlowerEater's double murder, 5 doubloons a pop
!Sign up to have a really low Soul stat.
White FC: 0819 3350 1787
Start
- what to do with the assassin?
- which of us is captain?
Gaming Proper
- free roleplay.
- players try to get Xs through rping violence, endurance, and cunning against each other, enemies, and crew mates.
- players pick fights or are drawn into fights against their will.
- everyone sets sail and gets loot together
Loot
- the quartermaster divvies the loot (with captain supervision)
- players spend loot, called Leisure for this part, to buy scenes of social fun: buying drugs, booze, whores, throwing parties, grooming, sneaking into high ranking social parties, etc.
In Between
- characters scheme with each other
- characters scheme with the British
The End
- when two players die, that's it! Game over.
- hide from the Resolute
Can I be a parrot?
i have an even better position
you can be the mast
huh, how about that?
the mast?
I'll just post stuff like 'The ship's mast sways.' and 'The ship's mast towers over you unnervingly' all day long.
Sounds good to me!
White FC: 0819 3350 1787
It's pretty much your standard tabletop RPG, just with an emphasis on doublecrossery.
Dare I say
Triple crossery? It's like Twister except with swords instead of limbs!
White FC: 0819 3350 1787
Quadruple Bypass, even.
C-c-c-c-c-confirm!
That said, I will be watching with interest
You barely waste enough time here! You should be here every hour of every day.
In other news - I've been working on my character concept somewhat, and think I have him down to pat. I'll write up a proper kind of narration for his introduction, but here's his basics so far:
- French-born Roman Catholic missionary
- Impressed by Brimstone Jack, tortured/mutilated until he was broken of his faith in God
- Surgeon on the ship
EDIT: Alright, finished with him.
When I was fresh out of the seminary, newly ordained as a priest of the Roman-Catholic Church, I was told by the Church to go and preach the word, maintain the faith in the colony of St. Martin. Fresh-faced and yearning to spread the love of God, I accepted my mission and set sail to the Caribbean colonies.
What a fucking mistake that was.
In the year 1699, Brimstone Jack and his men raided the colony of St. Martin.
He burned, looted and pillaged the people, murdered and raped and stole all he could.
Worst of all, he took me alive.
The ship needed a surgeon, they said, ever since the old one died of gangrene. They said Brimstone Jack must have thought, as a man of the cloth, I knew something of the healing arts, that I would be an excellent replacement.
Me? I think the fucker thought it was funny, taking a priest and trying to turn him into a sinner like him. Stuck me in the holding cells with the rats and the stink. Tortured me, beat me to an inch of my life, strung me to the mast and lashed me until I screamed out in fury against whatever god or devil had delivered me into this world. Brimstone Jack damned me to hell, for what I have done and said against the God I used to adore and follow.
Worship God, worship the devil, it's all the same in the fucking end. Worship Brimstone Jack, if you're that much of a fuckin' idiot. Doesn't matter whose throats I've slit during their "surgery", who I've ingloriously fucked while they're splayed out on my operating table. Hell comes for everyone, eventually.
Not me, though.
Hell isn't going to get me before I piss in the eyes of God and Satan for putting me on this earth, before I cut out the Pope's throat for leading the world in this dance of fuckin' worship of the fucking worst bastard who ever got the title of divinity.
Hell isn't going to get me at all.
Sins: excessive blasphemy against God, sodomy, murder, idolatry
Devil: 5
Soul: 3
Suffered: impressment, torture, beating, lashing, imprisonment, damnation
Brutality: 6
Ambitions: to spit in the eye of God, to spit in the eye of the Devil, to be revenged upon the Pope, to live forever
Ambition: 4
Brinkmanship: 6
I go armed with my amputation knife, a sword, a brace of pistols and my savage demeanor
Profile: 4
Okay, everyone, sign-ups are closed! We have plenty enough for an awesome game of Poison'd. Everyone follow the character creation rules in the series of OPs. You'll find it relatively painless, unlike your sorry life aboard the Dagger.
I'll also be adding the rules later today, so look forward to that. LOOK FORWARD TO IT
but I think he was on a merchant ship, was found to be cheating the other sailors out of their salaries at cards, got beaten and branded and marooned at sea
he spent some time floating on driftwood, wandering a desert island, etc., before Brimstone Jack picked him up and subjected him to treatment most barbaric before impressing him into the crew
full bio coming this afternoon!
So far I'm thinking maybe a Carpenter who was a compulsive murderer, killing people and burying them in the foundations of buildings he erected and stuff like that until he was eventually found out and drove off. He signed on with Brimstone Jack out of necessity.
I refuse.
White FC: 0819 3350 1787
Tell me about the Dagger. It's a two-masted Bermuda sloop with 16 guns and a company of 80.
Which of the following are most true? Choose two, as a group. Just make a post saying which options you like. We'll average it out, find out what we all like in common, and compromise.
The Dagger.
Which is the Dagger's best strength?
Your ship's company. Also choose two from this list, about them:
Also, choose one of these:
The Dagger's Profile is 10, and your company's Profile is 6.
i am now awarding Pirate Points instead of loot, as they are cheaper and easier to give
however fiaryn gets no pirate points
I will be distributing Boondollars, which are radness given physical form and you aren't getting any :<
Edit: My votes are
-Fast
-Frightening to See
-Pursuit and Escape
-Well armed and eager to fight
-Trained to fight side by side
-No strong common language
Because the last one is funny.
White FC: 0819 3350 1787
Oh the situations this causes! Imagine - you need to strike a deal with the surgeon or else you die, because your guts are flooding out of your belly. The surgeon speaks Portuguese, and you? Not a lick. Time is ticking.
You end up slighting the Carpenter's Mate due to a bad translation between the two of you (the translator did it on purpose) and he sneaks in your room and busts your fucking face in with a pin in the middle of the night.
All along, you've been getting fucked over on the amount of loot the crew gets and you don't even know it.
So, yeah, it's awesome.
I like these:
- It's lucky
- It's nimble
- Cannon to cannon
- Its members are, by and large, unreprobate murderers
- It's well-armed and eager to fight
I'm also seconding
- It doesn't have a strong common language, instead relying on pidgin and guessing
Also simonwolf your character is awesome and horrifying at the same time.
---
Bad Luck Billy Hammond
I nearly pissed myself as he started towards me with the poker.
The tip of it was orange, that's how hot it was. The thing wasn't a regular fire poker - it was a long, metal rod. No prongs, no sharp edges. I think it was more intimidating with the blunt edge. That way you knew it wasn't for cutting, but you were gonna get yours either way.
There was a circle of 'em all leering at me - me, tied to a chair. Like sharks around a wounded man before a feeding frenzy, exactly like that.
There were words, laughter, but all of it was blurred in my mind as I focused on one thing. The tip of that goddamn poker, a wisp of steam coming up off of it as he brandished it at me, grinning.
I can remember one thing that was said, though.
Randy - a younger lad, really just a boy - that fuckin' Randy came forward with a knife, the edge of which was only slightly sharper than the poker's. Randy, the same one I had bent over a barrel the week before. He was about to fuck me over - he wasn't grinning like the rest of them, and he looked pale as he spoke.
"Forget burnin' 'im - if 'e wants t'talk like a snake, why don't we make 'im look like one?"
A raucous uproar of laughter. One of them grabbed my head from behind and wrenched my mouth open.
I was the only one of us who was caught. I don't know how they knew what we were plannin', but I do know Brimstone Jack got his anyway - not by us, but he got his, just the same.
William Hammonds, cook's mate
Sins: blasphemy, idolatry, robbery, sodomy, sodomy
Devil: 5
Soul: 3
Suffered: beating, branding, impressment (x), lashing, mutilation, torture
Brutality: 6
Ambitions: to be revenged upon the cook, to be pardoned, to be regarded highly by society
Ambition: 3
Brinkmanship: 6
wicked knife
sword
pistol
distinctive hand weapon (butcher knife)
slight, quick, wiry-strong, and vicious
split tongue
Profile: 3
--
"A cheat! A cheat, by god!"
Of all the words that Percival Black could have heard while hunched over the barrelhead, throwing dice with the other sailors aboard the Winslow, these were surely the most unpleasant.
"A cheat? Who? I'll tan the blackguard's hide myself," he said smoothly, noting with some alarm that he had allowed himself to sit on the stool by the bulkhead, leaving him no path of escape through a crowd of soon-to-be-enraged crewmen.
The bo'sun, who had originally cried out, picked up Black's "lucky dice," which he had just tossed on the barrelhead.
"Look here!" Sure enough, one die had fives on every face, while the other had only sixes. Although counting was not the crew's strong suit--a fact that had allowed Black to supplement his swabbie's salary no small amount over the last few months--he knew that sooner or later the other players would come to understand the significance of the bo'sun's discovery.
"Aha," said Black. "Yes, that. Allow me to explain."
With one smooth motion, he pulled the dagger from his boot, plunged it into the neck of the bo'sun, and leapt from his stool and headed astern with no small measure of celerity.
They caught up with him, of course, and worked him over with pins, fists and boots until he was crosseyed. When he awoke, he was clinging to a piece of flotsam with no Winslow, no sight of land, and no dice. What's more, when he glanced down at the ocean and saw his reflection, he saw that his former coworkers had thoughtfully carved the word "CHEAT" into his forehead before tossing him overboard. Lovely.
Marooned at sea: not so bad once he washed up on the tiny island, but not an environment in which a man of his talents could be expected to shine. Luckily, the first ship to appear was not the accursed Resolute, nor another caravel full of illiterates, but the Dagger. After he had climbed aboard, Brimstone Jack looked him in the eye, his gaze flicking up to Black's disfigured forehead only for a moment. The mad captain's grin grew wider as he said,
"Oh, yes. You'll fit in fine here."
I certainly will.
Sins: Murder, Robbery, Blasphemy
Brutalities: Mutilation, Torture, Branding, Beating
Ambitions: To spit in the eye of the Devil
Weapons: Not a weapon, but your pirate is, while slight, nevertheless quick, wiry-strong, and vicious
Disability: The word "CHEAT" permanently scarred across forehead
Ambition: 2
Devil: 3
Soul: 5
Brutality: 4
Brinkmanship: 5 (Soul)
Profile: 2
White FC: 0819 3350 1787
The game is mostly about being pissed at one another, so we're already off to a good start!
Also I imagine pirates being pretty illiterate, so I got the image of Percival having the word 'CHEET' carved into his forehead.
You need one more from the company list. You get two from that first section, the one with good things, and then one with the bad.
ALSO WHERE ARE YOU DAC VIN
ahaha this rules
and he became quartermaster because a) he can read and count, unlike basically everyone else; and b) Brimstone Jack thought it would be hilarious to put the guy branded 'CHEAT' (or 'CHEET') in charge of books and accounts