Pirates vs. Vampires: Alaric Anchorman

I've had a couple of insanely busy days and I have several lengthy posts that require a little more thought before uploading them. In the mean time, I present one of the players characters from my Sunday Pirates vs. Vampire game...

Alaric Anchorman
Description: Think Jean Luc Picard meets Jesse Ventura: bald and bold with a strong passion for military might and discipline. Unlike Piccard, Anchorman is ready to mix-it-up with his crew. He uses persuasion to achieve discipline, not the whip (i.e. not like Capt. Bligh of "Mutiny on the Bounty" fame)

Cliches: Swashbuckling Lieutenant of the Royal Navy (4); Extreme Conditions Survivalist (3); Entertainer Specializing in Song and Accordion (3).

Hook: Strict disciplinarian (may snap or operate at a penalty when discipline fails). He also has a sense of duty to his crew.

Languages: English and Spanish.

Lore: Versed heavily in Royal Navy doctrine. After the Royal Navy comes a strong dedication to God. Having seen superstition nearly turn to mutiny, he is very opposed to the occult.

Tools & Gear: Multiple rapiers, several dozen pistols, a dozen finely crafted rifles, several throwing knives, two waterproof cases for his prized weapons. He also has access to various ship-board equipment.

History: Alaric Anchorman was born in Antigua to a very large family that produced tobacco, ginger, and indigo. He sailed on several trips to England and became obsessed with the sea. His family found it tough to control him, so the Royal Navy was deemed a good place to introduce order & discipline into an unruly child. His uncle, Capt. Allan Anchorman, is a captain of a Royal Navy sloop and oversaw Alaric's upbringing. At 12 he was a midshipman. At 17, he passed his lieutenant's exam. He has been eagerly awaiting the chance to command his own vessel. He is adapt sailor and fighter. He runs a tight
ship, but is respected by his crews.

Weekend Update

Word of advice to GMs who are also parents: do not schedule back-to-back games following hours of wrangling attention-starved two and four-year-olds. This is especially true if you are sleep-deprived and don't have your adventures totally mapped out ahead of time. Young children can easily suck the creative juices right out of you and therefor make it very difficult to come up with interesting encounters on the fly.

I learned this yesterday while attempting to run my latest Gurps 4e Knights of the Astral Sea session followed by out inaugural of Pirates vs. Vampire online Risus game. It's not that Knights was a bad session. I think we had a good time and there were definitely some memorable moments (including a running joke about owlbears). But I had been running this game for about six months with the express purpose of getting to the events of this session. I just don't think I lived up to my own hype.

A brief digressions...

Knights of the Astral Sea is a steampunk/pulp/dimension-hopping game inspired by such varied sources as the recently re-imagined Battlestar Galactica and Joss Whedon's Firefly. On a alternate 1930s-era earth in which the Great Powers have discovered inter-dimensional travel via specially modified airships, an off-world enemy initiates a cataclysmic ritual that brings about the end of the world. The player characters, lead by a swashbuckling cheese tycoon, manage to escape the devastation and find themselves racing through the Multiverse in attempt to regroup with survivors of their Homeworld empire.

Yesterday, my players finally reached the rallying point for Homeworld's survivors. It was a key moment in the campaign and I can't help but think that I fumbled the ball a little bit. There just wasn't enough tension or conflict. Hopefully, it's not too late to make up for it. Next time we play, the players will be venturing into Faerie to find the Once And Future Queen (who should then unite the people, take the fight to their enemies, and build a glorious new society in exile).

Back to Risus...

Last night's Pirates vs. Vampires game was really about testing the waters. Two other players showed  up and we played with full video for the first time. Not much to say about the session as we were mainly trying to relearn how to do play-by-chat. We did have fun, though, and I am definitely looking forward to beginning the game in earnest next week.

Adventure Funnel: Skeletal Corsairs of the Barbary Coast

And now for a little experiment...

Today I'm going to take Dr-Rotwang's Adventure Funnel and use it to develop a scenario for Sunday's Pirates vs. Vampire game. Before I can jump in and start creating, I do need to consider my player characters:

Alaric Anchorman: Swashbuckling former lieutenant of the Royal Navy and aspiring young "privateer".

Hector Valdez: A former blood thrall and current member of the anti-vampire resistance.

John "Mad Jack" Murphy: Ships' doctor and resident vampire-hunting specialist (and my own npc/occasional pc).

(As-Yet-Unnamed): A merchant-trader with an interest in Jewish mysticism.

I'm going to assume that the characters are already serving on a privateer ship that is operating at the behest of anti-vampire personages in the British government. Young Alaric is not currently captain, but I expect that he will be thrust into that role early in the adventure.
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SPOILER ALERT [My Players Should Turn Back]


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Goal: Find and eliminate the undead threat to allied shipping and free settlements in and around the Mediterranean.

Obstacles

1. The Captain is secretly working for the other team
2. No witnesses at sea
3. Villages razed with an undead raiding party left behind
4. Galleys crewed by skeletons and skeletal warrior champions
5. Barbary pirates in league with the Necromancer
6. Notorious pirate port on the island of Al Amarja
7. Skeleton base is in a hidden cove
8. Giant Fell Beast patrols the sky
9. Giant scorpions in the desert
10. Bedouin minions
11. Secret desert lair
12. Skeletal Minotaur
13. Gladiatorial arena
14. Hulking sword-wielding henchman 
15. The Necromancer
16. Bound Ifrit 

Details

• The characters are crew-members aboard the Spear of St. George. Captain Christian Kent carries a coded royal decree from King Charles II (the year is sometime between 1680 and 1685) granting it permission to commit piracy against the interests of known vampire clans. It should be noted that the decree would only be recognized by British officials who are also members of a secret anti-vampire organization and is thus no guarantee of clemency in the case of capture.
• Captain Kent is being blackmailed/extorted into working for an unidentified vampire aristocrat, identified only as "R" in various correspondences locked away in his quarters.
• "R" has ordered Kent to continue on his mission but that he must find the source of the Necromancer's power [the bound Ifrit] and deliver it to "R".  
• The party has at least heard rumors of skeletal raiders. Several allied ships have gone missing and at least on anti-vampire sanctuary has been obliterated.
• Possibility of stumbling on at least one burning wreck left behind after an attack by skeletal corsairs. The ship is the Comet, another anti-vampire privateer ship out of Port Royal.
• Possibility of encountering smoke coming from the village of Salernius. The party is too late to save the town, but they will certainly stumble upon a stranded skeletal raiding party. It will be a grizzly scene and human survivors will be very difficult to find.
• Certain Barbary Pirates (by no means all of them) have struck deals with the Necromancer and will challenge foreign ships.
• The port of Al Amarja (yes, that Al Amarja for those of you familiar with Over the Edge) is considered to be a free city. That doesn't mean it is a friendly city... the words "you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy" certainly apply. Members of the resistance, foreign spies, vampires, smugglers, ninjas, warlocks, and (of course) pirates can be found in abundance.
• The skeletal corsairs launch their attacks from a secret cove on the Tunisian coast. Undead replacements are continuously marched over trackless dunes and through twisting canyons from the Necromancer's secret lair. Stray from the path and face giant scorpions, wandering undead, or worse.
• The Necromancer's lair resembles Jabba's palace from Return of the Jedi.
• The Necromancer is fond of gladiatorial games and will seek to capture foes for use in the pits. His ultimate prize is an enormous skeletal minotaur of his own construction (which resides in a labyrinth below the slave pits). 
• The Necromancer's right-hand man is a scimitar-wielding blood thrall of prodigious size known only as Armando. 
• The Necromancer himself is a vampire of uncertain age with Mediterranean features. He is the scion of one of Europe's foremost vampire clans and hopes to use his skeletal fleet to amass enough resources to reclaim his rightful position. Despite his name, he is only a middling sorcerer who owes his power to an Ifrit bottle that he discovered shortly after being forced into the dessert. 

Assistance and Rewards

• Hector may have resistance contacts in the pirate port
• The Necromancer has captured and is in the process of turning Lady Magdalene Aston. She is eager to escape and will assist the player characters if possible.
• The Ifrit, bound to a brass bottle, is a dangerous reward as it is a malevolent entity who will pervert its instructions unless the person issuing the orders knows what he is doing. It could be used to help bring down the Necromancer.  

I could keep going and going but I am specifically trying to minimize my advance preparation so as to leave room for organic development. I'm also quite sure that we won't get very far into this particular adventure on Sunday so there will be plenty of time to revisit and re-funnel at a later date.

Monster-Themed Campaigns

Entering the planning phase of my upcoming Pirates vs. Vampires game, I am just starting to consider themes. Even though I will be world-building as I go and possibly using the Mythic Game Master Emulator to drive the game into unexpected directions, I would like to incorporate one or more recurring motifs. Themes are a great way to focus adventure design and they can really give a campaign a unique character.

[Spoiler Alert - My Players Should Turn Back]
In Pirates vs. Vampires I'd like to use a monster-based theme. Specifically, I'd like to feature the various "traditional" undead types from the D&D Monster Manual (edition is irrelevant). This is a game about vampires and vampires should be involved (directly or indirectly) in every story. But as we proceed from adventure to adventure, I'd like to successively move through the various D&D undead types as a way of marking the progress of the campaign. And by making a particular type of undead the focus of an adventure, I can incorporates all sorts of related thematic elements.

I've done this before with my sadly aborted Dragonspire campaign. Inspired by the Dragonlance modules of old, I wanted to create a campaign that walked through the various chromatic dragons in order of their deadliness. Of course, I only actually completed the white dragon adventures in both my online and face-to-face games. But those adventures were fantastic. Set during the height of winter, the characters ventured into snowy peaks and faced down many of frost-related challenges. Each adventure concluded with an exciting set-piece battle with an appropriately scaled white dragon "boss". And though the campaign was discontinued due to scheduling issues, the black dragon-themed adventure was going just as well.

To start things off, I think I'll start with the lowly skeleton. What comes to mind when one thinks of skeletons (especially as they relate to pirates)? Off the top of my head, I imagine a Ray Harryhausen Sinbad-esque adventure along the Barbary Coast.  Images of skeleton-crewed galleys and scimitar-wielding skeleton warriors practically leap into my head. No doubt there is a vampire necromancer who is using these skeletal minions to control the Mediterranean. Already, the simple choice of a skeleton motif has moved the setting out of the Caribbean and into a Arabesque North Africa.

Pirates vs. Vampires: Mad Jack

To get my Pirates vs. Vampires game started, I thought I'd post my own personal character that I hope to run alongside the regular PCs (and as a full player character when the GM duties are shared). 


John "Mad Jack" Murphy

Handsome Irishman with unruly brown hair and a three-day beard. His brown eyes alternate between communicating the joy of new love to the mad fury of one who has watched his lover's heart ripped out by vampires.

Cliches: Swashbuckling Vampire Slayer (4), Disgraced Jesuit Alchemist (3), Navy Surgeon (3).

Questing Dice (Kill All Vampires): [] [] [] [] []

Hook: Tragic Love (driven by love; doomed to have his heart continually broken)

Languages: English, Irish Gaelic, French, Latin, and Greek at the very least. As a classically educated Jesuit alchemist (and world traveller), he can make a TN roll to know a variety of other languages.

Lore: Versed in a variety of Catholic rituals (including blessings and exorcisms). Also knows a number of common (and not-so-common) alchemical formulations. Examples include but are not limited to the "Elixir Vitae", unusually strong solvents (but no the Universal Solvent), Soma, and chemical light. Mad Jack can improvise or research new formulations, though this usually counts as not having proper tools.

Tools: A blessed crusader sword of the finest Damascus watered steel; 2 silver throwing knives; a blessed hawthorn stake, a hammer-backed hatchet; vials of holy water; communion wafers; two flint-lock pistols (with silver and lead balls); silver crucifix; rosary; small silver mirror; garlic; pocket bible; other (unspecified) vampire hunting tools; ship-based alchemy lab; occult library; surgeon's bag.

Other Gear: Personal affects (though the grooming kit rarely sees use). Keeps mementos of past loves.

Backstory (not a full Tale): Irish Catholic second son who entered the seminary to become a Jesuit scholar. As a Jesuit, he learned alchemy, became a missionary, and was seduced by a vampire. After his fall from grace he enlisted in the Royal Navy as a surgeon and achieved enough success to begin courting a virtuous maiden of good family from Bath. When his love was slaughtered by his former vampire paramour he dedicated his life to fighting the undead scourge. When he drew the notice of the Undead Secret Masters he was forced back out to sea as a pirate, or vampire-hunting privateer as he likes to think of it.

Pirates vs. Vampires

I week from tonight I hope to commence my first play-by-chat game in over two years. I don't yet have a fancy name for the campaign, but the working title right now is "Pirates vs. Vampires". I have not, as of yet, done a lot of preparation. In fact, the game will be something of an experiment in build-as-you-go world-building. In addition to cranking out content for this blog, I am already running two face-to-face games (a Gurps 4e Steampunk/Pulp/Dimension-Hopping mash up and Slaying Solomon). I simply won't have the luxury of detailing the world to any great degree of detail.

What I do have, however, is a simple and compelling premise. The campaign takes place in a fantastic (horrific) version of our own Golden Age of Piracy (early 1700s). The hook is that vampires rule the world from the shadows. Our heroes are privy to this terrible secret and have taken to seas for their own survival and to strike back against the commercial interests of the undead aristocracy.

For inspirations, I'm obviously going to rely heavily on the recent Pirates of the Caribbean movies for look-and-feel. I also like the aesthetic of Brotherhood of the Wolf, though it is slightly anachronous. Literary sources for swashbuckling goodness primarily include On Stranger Tides, by Tim Powers and The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson.

For the vampire elements I'm going to be mostly traditional. The whole reason the characters will take to the seas is that most vampires will possess stereotypical gothic vulnerabilities. Moving water and the high seas (not to mention the sunlight of the tropics) will be problematic for them. While (named) vampires will be complicated characters with a whole host of motives, they will not (by and large) be sympathetic. No Twilight-style sparkle vampires here! Vampires have to be scary to be effective antagonists. I'll save the rest of the vampire details for a spoiler-filled post later.

Back to my lack of time to prepare...

I have various tools to help me in this. For creating fully plotted adventures, I hope to use Dr-Rotwang's Adventure Funnel (first mentioned on this blog here). Once I figure out my spoiler policy, I hope to actually post my funnels as I come up with the. Additionally, the pace of play-by-chat games make me think that I'll be able to use the Mythic Game Master Emulator to assist in running free-form sessions. It's not so much that I'd have difficulty improvising from scratch, rather I might enjoy running a character next to the players and being surprised by what happens. The Mythic GME also has some wonderful tools to help move a game in unexpected directions. When improvising on my own, I often fail to consider the really interesting cases that might otherwise arise from the Mythic approach.

I forgot to mention the most obvious tool for a GM with minimal time to prepare: Risus! Can't beat Risus for whipping up a game in a hurry.

Christmas Crazy

Christmas is almost upon the Risus Monkey household and I'm waaay behind schedule on doing my part to ensure the crass commercialization of the holiday. And the holidays are inherently hectic. When it's all over, I'm going to want a vacation from my vacation.

Anyway, there hasn't been a lot of non-Mythic posts lately, but I hope to rectify that soon. I've signed on to run a Pirates vs. Vampires chat game in the coming year, so I'll definitely be blogging my preparations. I'm specifically going to need to work out how to handle ships combat. I'll be heading over to Risustalk to hash that all out and will post the results here.

And I hope that folks are enjoying The Moon Goddess is a Harsh Mistress. The action is picking up as we head towards the final scenes of this episode. There's a lot of Risus in these posts, as combat plays an important part.