Ship of Fools Session 4 – The World at Large

Believe it or not, but hiding a young woman on a vessel full of sailors all barely capable of completing their own ship duties is easier than it sounds. Leon continues to protect Isae, as more and more sailors continue to fail recognizing her as anything less than the captain’s cabin boy they forgot was on board to start with. At least one of the crew is too concerned with the contraband he smuggled out of the Degrading Lands to care.

Erstwhile, two new sailors find a place and purpose aboard the ship. Quessy and Garou, two refugees recovered from the Degrading Lands, assume their duties with grand vigor. Quessy, an enternainer. Garou, moving man sized barrels over each shoulder. The Degrading Lands were indeed kind to the Duquetimme.

There’s a new ship on the horizon. This one, however, waves a neutral, foreign flag: a trade vessel of the distant desert land of Xexoria seeks a meeting at sea . . .

Zach is the Slender Man

PLAYERS

  • James – Edouard Fasson. Doctor, cook, etc.
  • Alex – Louis Jalbert. Part-time merchant and full-time scumbag.
  • Zach – Marshall Yaeger, late twenties. Scout and marksman.
  • Matt – Leon Donnelly. Midshipman, navigator, shipwright, and jack of all trades.
  • Charlie – Christian Kavan. Cook and gentleman adventurer. Has the approximate size, shape, and mustache of a walrus.
  • Kevin – Carey Ignacious, the dreamy first mate.

5 Comments

  1. Real quickly the Zack is the Slender Man side bit isn’t leading for me. I get a 404 error.

  2. might just be from just hearing the Little Fears and Fear Itself podcasts, but apart from the in-between flavor stuff of characters just bouncing off eachother, Nate-run sessions keep feeling like they’d make better books than campaigns. a lot of “guess what? this happens.” makes me feel a bit down that the PC’s mostly flavor the fillery scenes and don’t have much control at times, even disregarding the captain factor

    might be that my games tend to be slightly more freeform sandboxish and I love to roll with the players’ ideas, might be that it’s his brain-baby and has very particular ideas he wants to put in
    might be that the last few sessions i heard from him wound up as “suicide or declare that you forgive yourself from way back,” “die or run away from the plot,” and “everyone does brief Alice in Wonderland impressions and marvel at the scenery.”

  3. That’s a sensible conclusion. I’m actually a writer before anything else; I have one novel in the revision stages (and possibly soon on the edge of publication), a novella in the wing, and a roleplaying game in the works. Ship of Fools was a pre-written campaign (which is included in the guide, should it be interesting enough for someone to want for their group). That being said, though, my way of GMing relies mostly on improvisation. For instance, 90% of the plot in Ship of Fools, like almost all games I run, is player driven. Take the side plot with Isae; she’s a written in character, yes, but nothing is written about her boarding the ship. Bringing the people from the Degrading Lands, too, created player driven plot. I prefer to drop players in a place full of NPCs and the like and say, “here you go, make your own fun.” The fact that they flow like stories that otherwise seem predestined is less of a suggestion of predestination and more a feather in my cap. That just means I managed to make everyone’s contributions to the game relevant and strung together in a cohesive way, which is something I actively try to do when I run games. I’m glad to know it’s gone well enough so far. : )

  4. Sweet merciful god Charlie/Christian is annoying. It took him literally 30 seconds of TRYING and say “did you see those other guys on the other island who were off their faces?” 12:00 > 12:30. I heard some pretty huge smirking in the background.. I guess there was chat mocking going on?

    But the series has finished so I guess I’ll grin and bear it and keep listening.

    Moments later “oh ffs.. Christian is talking again”

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