[This entry is from Robert and, due to the direction that the game went, deals with some of the more risque elements of Freeport (e.g., prostitution) and may not be suitable for younger audiences.]
When we last left our heroes they had just been surrounded in a narrow street by a number of thugs, the leader of which asked us to hand over Allara.
Assuming that you’re playing in a game/campaign that uses miniatures and you’re at least a little bit like me, then a miniature that is a good visual representation of your character adds a nice touch to the game. Custom paint jobs are great (assuming the player doesn’t say something like, “My character stands out in a crowd but doesn’t draw attention to himself. Can you paint him all brown?”) but take time. Plus, as the optometrist noted at my last exam, I’m at that age now where the eyes start to go. Pre-painted minis are a great convenience but already have the appearance established (unless you paint them). Paper figures like from One Monk are great for the baddies but something a bit more three-dimensional is preferable (at least to me) for the main stars of the game, the PCs.
[This entry is from Jamie.]
Chapter the first
Allara, Tory, Gills, Zahndethus, and Pta find themselves in a jolly-boat, towing a door-raft encumbered by an unconscious man, somewhere in the trade routes off the Freeport archipelago. Apart from the well-dressed but mutilated corpse of Allara’s former bodyguard, the group has practically no resources to draw upon. Pta prepares the body for burial in the deeps, saving a small portion to be recycled in a more immediately practical manner. Allara is despondent to learn that the attack of the one-armed zombies and their independent-minded limbs seems to have been related to her presence on board. Upon questioning, she reveals merely that she is turning 18 in a week, and that her mother sent Thomas to fetch her home for that milestone. The hapless voyagers made do with Pta’s supply of meat both as protein and as fish bait, and manage to hang onto life in the absence of any better sustenance and source of life-giving water.
[Warning: Potential spoilers for the Savage Worlds Horror adventure, The Mutator]
The next session was going to be the day before Halloween and I wasn’t going to have enough time (or motivation) to finish up a prop I wanted for our next Freeport session. So what’s a GM to do? The answer seems pretty obvious…run a one-shot for Halloween. I grabbed a horror one-shot from Pinnacle, made some modifications to it, and set up the room to be a bit more conducive to a horror/slasher flick type game.
After each session, one player has responsibility for writing up a synopsis of what happened during that session. The responsibility rotates from session to session with everyone taking a turn. Here is the first of the Freeport Campaign (aka Sea of Spheres) journal entry (from Rachel). I generally add my comments here in [italics surrounded by brackets].
After an extended stay in the port town of Windywater, the Maiden’s Tear is finally ready to set sail. With a hold only partially laden with trade cargo, Captain Tiberius “Tibs” Flint, first mate Smutty and crew, including the rather exotic Pta, have also taken on passengers. Three passengers have booked passage to Freeport. There is a young, local man, Zahndethus, whom some of the crew have heard is rumored to be cursed. Allara Shelfer, a young woman, is the second of the passengers and is returning home to her merchant family in Freeport. Her chaperone and guardian, Thomas Dorr, is the last of the passengers and is never far from Allara’s side. The ship will make a few stops in other ports, to take on additional cargo (and possibly other passengers), and then strike out for the open sea and Freeport beyond.
[Thomas was being played a visiting player and was not the most affable character.]
If anyone in Tallahassee is interested in a regular, face to face, tabletop Savage Worlds campaign, I’ve got one spot at my table. If you’d like to find out more info, you can contact me at melchioronetwo at comcast dot net (replacing the italicized at and dot with the appropriate symbols of course and replacing the italicized one with 1 and the italicized two with 2…damn spammers!). You can also register with the site and post a reply here (though if your email and/or name don’t look legit, it won’t get approved…same if you have a gmail account…again, damn spammers!).
The Savage Worlds Freeport campaign started last night. I’ll post the campaign log once the volunteer player, Rachel, writes it this week. In the meantime, I wanted to share some photos of the session’s setup and centerpiece…The Maiden from WorldWorks Games. Some of the other models in the pictures are from the WWG’s Skull Cove set. In the end, I had to kind of rush things and skipped some of the finer elements (like edging) but it was still great fun to have an actual ship to use.
Jamie had no idea that I’d be using the WWG model in the game when he chose the Maiden’s Tear for the name of the ship that Pta was serving on…just a bit of coincidence.
Without much further verbage, here’s the pictures. Oh, you can click on each picture for a larger version.
After an extended stay in the port town of Windywater, the Maiden’s Tear is finally ready to set sail. With a hold only partially laden with trade cargo, Captain Tiberius “Tibs” Flint and crew, including the rather exotic Pta, have also taken on passengers. Three passengers have booked passage to Freeport. There is a young, local man, Zahndethus, whom some of the crew have heard is rumored to be cursed. Allara Shelfer, a young woman, is the second of the passengers and is returning home to her merchant family in Freeport. Her chaperone and guardian, Thomas Dorr, is the last of the passengers and is never far from Allara’s side. The ship will make a few stops in other ports, to take on additional cargo (and possibly other passengers), and then strike out for the open sea and Freeport beyond.
Our actual Savage Worlds Freeport campaign is finally starting this Friday…barring any unforeseen problems that lead to a cancellation!
The plan to begin the Freeport campaign hit a small snag this weekend. One of the players had to miss the game due to an emergency. I didn’t want to start without the player or his character so, instead, we went ahead and just played using the Freeport characters as a another test run. I had a short adventure, laid out a basic premise for the players (and characters), and away we went. Almost immediately, we departed from the adventure as written. We probably spent the first hour or so of play on an improv “encounter” and the roleplaying that went with it.
After a bit of a delay, the Savage Worlds Freeport campaign, aka the Sea of Spheres campaign, will be kicking off this upcoming weekend. In this campaign, Freeport is something of the center of a multiverse. The Sea of Spheres are the waters that lie beyond and between the oceans of various realities or spheres of the multiverse. These worlds are collectively known as the Continent to the residents of Freeport. The realms of the Continent are not a multiverse in a physical sense (a la Star Trek and other science fiction) but rather in more of a literary sense (a la Chris Bateman’s perspective on Michael Moorcock’s multiverse or Million Spheres and Seas of Fate).