Bral Noir: A Sonata For A Violin And A Murder

I fell of the Blogosphere for some time, but I'm still here! Bloggin' about a game we played a couple of months ago..

Once again, not everyone from the gaming group could make it, so we played a one night story instead.

Inspired by reading a comic book of the early days of The Beatles by Mauri Kunnas, Terry Pratchett's Soul Music, as well as the (then) recent passing of the great artists David Bowie and the Artist formerly known as Prince, this time it was about rock'n roll. With a healthy dose of political intrigue and murder! Set in a world of wizards and warriors in space!

I offered my 5 players a choice of 6 pre-rolled characters. 4 human bards (a music group representing a radical new style, making their breakthrough), a dwarf fighter-thief (the manager), and a human fighter (the roadie).

The story involved the band waking up in an inn on the morning after a gig only to discover one of them (the character nobody picked) murdered and the local police force hot on their trail with unpleasant questions.

Some of them tried to fight the law (the law won). The rest followed the clues on the murder scene, that suggested that their murdered friend had come chanced across some evidence dangerous to the current regime. Eventually, after a rooftop escape, they found sanctuary with the family of the city's former ruler, presumed murdered by the current prince.

It was a fun game! The best part, at least for me, was just sitting back and listening to the players having fun and acting out clichéd rock star mannerisms. They even came up with full lyrics for a song about their predicament!

The full story can be read here. Sadly, it's incomprehensible gibberish to most people. Not only is it in Finnish, but it's in thick and slightly archaic and very anachronistic Helsinki slang.. What can I say? I loved the language of The Catcher in the Rye. Note: The horizontal line on page four marks the transition from intro to actual gameplay.

Anyhow, some paint jobs related. Below are pictured two examples of the guard of the Rock of Bral. Brave men and women who put their lives on the line on a daily basis to keep the citizens safe from pirates, gangsters, adventurers and popular musics.

The minis are from Wargames Foundry. The fancier sergeant is from their Elizabethan Seadogs and Swashbuclers collection, and the constable from their conquistadors collection named El Dorado Adventurers.

And a close-up of the sergeant's shield. Featured are the arms of the Prince's family, the Crown and Crossed Sabers on the right (top) and the ever-vigilant Owl of the Middle City Watch on the left (bottom).

I promise the next post will be sooner in coming than this one!

The 7th Sphere: Book One: The Secret Of The Laughing Cobra: Chapter Two: The Baroness

Full Finnish text of this AD&D 2e Spelljammer session here.

After making a deal with an art collecting wizard to procure the portrait of the pirate captain Gabarra, our heroes set out to the painting's new owner's mansion on a tiny asteroid near the asteroid city of the Rock of Bral.

There they found the baroness Marfont-Drabek living in an odd tower on a small rock with an orchard, accompanied by a family of gnomes.

Most of the session was spent by the players coming up with plans to steal, rob or cheat the painting for themselves using forgeries or illusionary buyers until finally deciding on walking in and starting to haggle. The negotiations were rocky until, following Chandler's Law, a band of cutthroats-for-hire, who had been shadowing the heroes earlier, boarded the tower.

The game concluded in a short swordfight, in which the players' ship's mate, a gliding ape or a hadozee, almost singlehandedly annihilated the attackers and caught a glimpse of their mysterious, black clad  leader, as the rest of the brigands made their getaway.

The baroness was still not willing to sell the portrait, but the PC's valiant defense of her tower made her ask for their assistance in researching the portrait's background and any secrets it might hold.

The minis of this post: Baroness Jeannette Marfont-Drabek (from Foundry), holding a magic wand, accompanied by her faithful servant, the gnome fighter Jorziver Nesmor (from Reaper):

Of Rules And Language, With Space Pirates

Of Rules

Spelljammer is by no means a realistic setting. I have no trouble with open-decked sail ships flying in space, dragging their atmospheric air bubbles along with them. But there are a couple of details that I've never liked.

The first thing is that the speed of a space ship (spelljammer) is determined by the type of the magical helm power source and the level of the spellcaster at the helm (spelljammer). Therefore any fleet would put the more powerful helms and helmsmen on the biggest ships, and therefore the bigger the ship, the faster it is more likely to be.

That's fine, except I want to see space battles between big, heavy capital ships and fast, light ships employing hit-and-run tactics. So I changed the rules so that the speed of a ship, or ship rating (SR) is calculated based on helm, helmsman, ship size, ships maneuverability class (MC, reflecting better ship designs being inherently faster) and also crew skill because I want them also to be more important.

The SR is calculated as follows: 1-10 points for helmsman and helm or furnace, etc., as per the official SR-tables + 1-6 points for MC + 1-10 points for tonnage + 1-4 points for crew status for a total of 4-30 points then divided by 3, rounding down, for the SR.

Helmsman Caster Level Minor Helm Major Helm 1 +1 +1 2 +1 +1 3 +1 +1 4 +1 +2 5 +1 +2 6 +2 +3 7 +2 +3 8 +2 +4 9 +3 +4 10 +3 +5 11 +3 +5 12 +4 +6 13 +4 +6 14 +4 +7 15 +5 +7 16 +5 +8 17 +5 +8 18 +6 +9 19 +6 +9 20 +6 +10

Tonnage SR Points 91 – 100 +1 81 – 90 +2 71 – 80 +3 61 – 70 +4 51 – 60 +5 41 – 50 +6 31 – 40 +7 21 – 30 +8 11 – 20 +9 1 - 10 +10

Crew Status SR Points Green +1 Average +2 Trained +3 Crack +4

MC SR Points G +0 F +1 E +2 D +3 C +4 B +5 A +6

Secondly, I think the ships were just too fast in tactical speeds. 1 SR is now equal to ~3 knots (12 movement rate) with 1 hex  being ~100 yards instead of 500 yards. Ships are now noticeably slower, moving at 5.5 – 55 km/h as opposed to the speeds of 30 – 300 km/h of the official SRs. 

Now with speeds still above that of sail ships but closer to them, and smaller distances in combat, it’s not quite as absurd to hit a boat moving at 55 km/h with a ballista bolt from the distance of 800 m than a boat moving at 300 km/h from a distance of 2 km with no negative modifiers to the shot. Also, very importantly, even the slowest ships can no longer easily outrun any attacking monsters, so dragons and such are once more a threat.

My third issue was with the non-magical engines mentioned in the Spelljammer rule book. The problem was that they were very sketchy. How do they work? Do they need fuel? How much? What would the fuel cost? Why isn’t every groundling nation using fleets of these steam-punky things?

My solutions was that now ships designed and built for space travel can use their sails to move in zero gravity environments at tactical speeds, using the solar winds or vacuum energy or some such thing. Still pretty vague, but it eliminates the "engines" and adds the sights and sounds of small boats setting off along the gravity plane from an asteroid city before the break of dawn to return with their catch of space fish.

Yes, with monsters like this, there are bound to be smaller fish swimming around in the void.

Note that beating gravity requires a magical power source, so helms and furnaces are still a must for planetary landings, as well as for interplanetary travel.

Unpowered ships are of course slower, naturally getting no points for the helm and helmsman with an additional MC -1 affecting the total SR raw points recalculated without the helm points, an additional -1 to the recalculated SR, and an additional +1 penalty to initiative.

Example: A 18 ton, MC D Wasp with a minor helm, a level 6 wizard as helmsman and a trained crew gets +2 points for helmsman and helm, +9 points for tonnage, +3 points for crew status and +3 points for MC for total of 17 points for a SR of 5. Their initiative is -1. If they lost their helmsman, they could still sail with +9 points for tonnage, +3 points for crew status and +2 points for their MC-1 of E for a total of 14 points for a SR of 4-1 = 3. Their initiative would be +0.

For now I'm happy with the system, but I realize there some issues. It is a bit complicated as it requires calculations in advance to keep the game flowing. Also, I still haven't thought of ships bigger than 100 tons nor of the inevitable situation where the helmsman wants to go in a different direction than the crew..

Of Language

In case there are some Finnish speakers reading my game reports I'd like explain some of my word choices. I aim at running the game as much as possible in Finnish and avoid using obviously English words. The main reason is, that we hear and read English all the time (and I'm writing in English now, obvs.) so, while being a foreign language it is no longer foreign enough to my ears and using English words breaks the flow of language without evoking the sense of the exotic.

So it's 'haltia' instead of 'elf', but in some cases I would be cool with the related German word 'Alb', because it's less familiar to me.

The big problem was the word 'spelljammer', used to refer both to the spaceships as well as the spellcasters guiding and powering them. The word is obviously derived from 'windjammer' but in the dictionaries the Finnish translation for 'windjammer' is literally 'large sailship', not very useful.

As for the etymology of 'windjammer', the explanations I found were that it refers to multitude of sails on a windjammer 'jamming' the wind (like jamming a radar, not like jamming strawberries). So I came up with the word 'loitsukaappari', (lit. something like 'spellseizer') for how the ships seize magic to power their movement. It has added benefit of evoking piratey imagery because the Finnish word for 'privateer' is 'kaappari'.

I did find one alternate translation, 'tuulennaukuja', literally 'windmeower' (you know, how a cat sounds), explained to be a reference to the sound of the wind in the large area of sails on a windjammer. When talking these terms over with my players, the word 'loitsunnaukuja' also gained some support, so I've been using both terms interchangeably.

For the people spelljammers, I just went with the word 'ruorimies', lit. 'helmsman'.

Another problematic word was 'demi-human'. AD&D uses 'demi-human' to refer to the core human-like-not-human races, i.e. elves, dwarves, gnomes and halflings. Strictly it would translate to 'puoli-ihminen', lit. 'half-human'. But then you also have half-elves, who are by definition also half-humans. And I thought it would be useful to have a blanket term for both humans and demi-humans as opposed to other groups, such as goblinoids, podocephalic humanoids, hippopotamus bipedalis or sphaira polyophtalmos. Eventually I settled for a dialectic word for human ('ihminen'), 'ihmoinen' (I don't know, 'humon' in english?).

One word that was particularly fun was the space fish 'scavver' -> 'scavenger' -> 'haaskaeläin' -> 'haaskakala' -> 'haaskala'.

Of Space Pirates

For those of you who don't like too much text on blogs and would just like to see pictures, finally, here are some space pirates:

I took a break from painting pirates to paint some space pirates. Who are just like regular pirates. Except in space. Go figure.

The Mate

Captain João's mate Walker was driven to a life piracy, when, at the tender age of seven he watched helplessly, as his pirate parents fell off the cliffs into the sea, pursued by an angry mob in the middle of a raging thunderstorm. With parents like that and the harsh life of an orphan, he felt compelled to take up the career of a criminal. He knows that many of things he does are wrong. But his tears dried up a long time ago, so he had a single tear tattooed on his right cheek as a testimony to his cruel fate. Because of this he goes by the name of Jack "Cry-Matey" Walker.

Inspired by three items:

1. Character A:

"Jack Sparrow" from Pirates of the Caribbean, Gore Verbinski 2003, property of Walt Disney Pictures

2. Character B:

"Cry-Baby", from Cry-Baby, John Waters 1990, property of  Universal Pictures

3. The universal truth, that love songs can be turned into sea shanties by replacing every instance of "baby" with "matey", as explained here by talking dinosaurs.

A Sharpshooter

One more sharpshooter, able seaman Göker "G-man" Gül.

The Boarding Crew, Part Five

Three more pirates to fill the ranks of the boarding crew.

Daniel "Dapper Dan" Soggy Bottom, Elaine Morfil, an angry lady since her dashing pirate fiance turned out to be a drunkard and eventually alligator feed and Quamino.

The Apothecaries

The ships's doctor's assistants take care of the medical supplies. The pharmacological options are rather limited,  but what they have (rum), Mercedes and Bartolomeu make sure it is constantly monitored and sampled to ensure it's quality.

The Master-At-Arms

Robert "Prince of Whales" Morfil had a career as a successful whaler until his crew sighted a pale whale of enormous proportions. The attempt to kill the beast ended badly, costing several crew members their lives and captain Morfil his right leg. Mutilated by the giant of the seas, Rob Morfil said "Sod this!" and retired to raise alligators with his brother and sister-in-law for the reptiles' hides and tasty tail meat.

The business was good, until one day, when Robert's brother, after sipping rum since breakfast as he was often prone do, fell into the alligator pen and was quickly devoured. After that, the farm didn't feel quite as homey, and when the pirate captain Red João's cook came by to stock up on alligator meat, Robert and his sister-in-law Elaine decided to sign up on João's crew.

Rob now holds the position of master-at-arms, charged with keeping the peace aboard the ship. He does this very effectively, throwing his considerable weight around as needed, as well as keeping his two pet alligators, Sebek and Nefernefer close by, which is usually quite enough for troublemakers to see the benefits of finding a peaceful solution to quarrels.

A giant of a pirate from Reaper by Gene van Horne. Very fun to paint because there was a lot of skin to put tattoos on. The reptiles are from Foundry's African animals range, so they are actually crocodiles, but don't tell them.

Tangentially inspired by: Moby-Dick

Another Mule

Mule number two, "Louie".

That's the pack animals done for the package train.

A Mule

Another beast of burden for the package train. She shall be called Bessy.