Ship Type: Sky Junk (+2)

Foibles: Stubborn as a Mule, High-Maintenance

Forte: She’s Got it Where it Counts (+2)

Technique: Dragon’s Breath [weapon]

Forte: Quick and Maneuverable (+2)

Forte: Reinforced Hull (+2)

Forte: Secret Compartments (+2)

Player: Daniel M. Perez

Foible: Devil-May-Care

Motivation: Revenge Against the Three-Eyed Man (+2)

Nationality: Colronan Royalist [raised in Porto Fino] (+2)

Past: Aristocratic (+0)

Swashbuckling Forte: Musketeer (+4)

Forte: Wingman (+2)

Forte: Alchemist [Gentleman Scientist] (+2)

Technique: Dragon’s Breath [maneuver]

Forte: Acrobatic (+2)

Forte: Well-traveled (+2)

Player: Chuck Hedden

Foibles: Guilty Conscience, Marked for Death

Motivation: Regain My Honor (+2)

Nationality: Colronan Royalist [half-Zultanate on mother's side] (+2)

Past: Son of  Baron Nero Ivarson

Swashbuckling Forte: Fencing (+6)

Techniques: Cutlass [weapon]; Scarlotti [fencing school]; Duelling [idiom]; “Let me show you my good side!” [maneuver]

Forte: Silk Tongue (+2)

I’ve been messing around today with getting Maptool ready to host our Skype game tonight, and part of that is making a cool background to act as our tabletop (complete with a bowl and a box for Style tokens) and making character tokens for the player characters. Wanna see ‘em? Well, here they are …

Hey guys, long time no post, eh?

Okay, I really really want to play this week, so I hope that all players (except Daniel) will be ready and rarin’ to go this Wednesday night, July 8th.

I’m trying to get MapTools working for us. Players, please check that you’re up to date with the latest version.

In the mean time I figured I’d toss out a little inspiration-boost to you guys and let you chime in with your thoughts on a few oracle-generated situation ideas that I grabbed from the Brainstormer site we talked about on the show a few weeks ago. Below are seven ideas that were generated. Some of these are already giving me a spark or two – but I want to throw this into the open and let you guys point out anything you see in this list that trips your imagination and sounds like it might be a fun thing to get our characters tangled up in. The brainstormer works (in general) by randomly lining up three terms (typically a mix of nouns and adjectives) that are meant to go together in some creative way to make for an interesting situation. Throw these up against a wall and see if anything really appealing sticks. The idea is to take these very broad ideas and mix them with our current premise as crew of the merchant/smuggler/pirate ship Firedrake and what we already have established for our characters.

So, without further ado …

1. genius – jungle – doctor
2. enigma – Kroyu – idol
3. odd couple – colonial – casino
4. prey to misfortune – dying – general
5. invention – abandoned – warship
6. sojourn – renaissance – mansion
7. kinsman – urban – salesman

So for example I could pick #3 and say, “Ooh, it might be cool if we got mixed up with a Barathi scion who is an old lover of Hidalgo’s (odd couple) at a shady gambling hall (casino) on the Zultanate colony of Batavissora (colonial).” Or I could hit #4 and say “What if we happened upon a derelict skyship that has been ambushed (prey to misfortune) and on board we meet up with a severely wounded Royalist officer (dying general) who was a cousin of Ronan’s father and warns us of a plot to murder members of Ronan’s family?”

Pick as many as you like, and also feel free to counter-propose ideas that riff off of the things I’ve already thought up or anything else another person might write in the comments. Depending on where things go, I’ll pick one as a starting point for the first session, save some others away for possible use later, or meld different ones into something crazy.

Fire away.

I grabbed this from a CNET article on the latest Skype for Windows:

“Skype 4.1 beta brought back features like accessibility, birthday reminders, and the capability to send a contact record to another contact. This minor point update also contains a major new feature that was first introduced in Skype 4.1 beta, screen sharing.

“Screen sharing initiates a video call, using the technology to broadcast a recording of your screen–either a portion or the full screen–to one other viewer. Screen sharing has some limitations: you can’t simultaneously see a video of your buddy and their desktop, and since only one viewer at a time can peep your screen, you can’t use it as a free replacement for collaborative Web conferencing. It doesn’t help that the picture quality is still choppy and fuzzy, in both partial-screen and full-screen view modes.

“Make no mistake, though: it’s a great feature that we’re happy to see added, but we’ll be even happier to watch it improve.”

I’m excited to try this out as a game tool.  I wonder if all of us could see one screen or if this is for one-to-one videos only…

What do you guys think?

Mick, are you wanting to use MapTools for the S7S game?

CHARACTER SHEET

My Name? They call me… Pontius Stone.

I must confess, I’m known to have a Foible or two … Drunkenness, Loyalty to fellow Talons.

My strongest desire, my greatest hope, my Motivation is… to topple the Commandant of Crail and see someone honorable in his place (Good +2).

I’m proud to say my Nationality is… Crailese (Good +2).

.. and my Past, which has helped make me what I am today is… Captain of the Talons (Good+2).

You might say my Swashbuckling Forte is… Shipminder (Good +2).

with the Techniques of … Location: aboard Firedrake, Maneuver: repairs with found objects, Maneuver: Not on My Ship!

Other Fortes? … Skysailor (Good +2), Gift: Merhorse (Average +0).

and Techniques?… chained to Talons – Weapon: rapier,  Maneuver: Detective.

… Miscellany TBD.

CHARACTER HISTORY

Pontius Stone is a veteran officer, the one-time commander of a special unit of Crailese Falcons known as the Talons, dedicated to uncovering and thwarting plots against Crail by agents of other nations.

Stone has always had an uncanny knack for perceiving the patterns and inner workings of things – whether they be the mechanisms of a skyship or the plots and schemes of criminals and spies. This is a gift that comes from his mother’s Raehalan heritage (although Stone himself was born and raised in Agua Azul and considers The City to be his true home).

His knack gives Stone a keen investigative ability, which he once used to good effect in leading the Talons to uncover various bits of intrigue.

Unfortunately for Stone and the Talons, the most dangerous intrigue they would uncover would not be a plot against Crail from a foreign power, but one instigated by a powerful but corrupt group of Falcons.

A certain amount of graft and corruption is a fact of life in the Falcons, and Stone was as pragmatic as anyone in terms of accepting that fact, up to a point. But the plot the Talons were sniffing out in this case was a much more far-ranging and high-reaching one than the typical examples of graft and palm-greasing that was common in the city. Given the choice to look the other way or to pursue the roots of the plot wherever they led, the Talons chose to do the right thing – the honorable thing – and dug in.

But the plot reached even higher than they first thought, and powerful forces arranged to frame the Talons for the very treasons the Talons were trying to thwart. The unit was dishonored, disbanded, and several of its members, including Stone, were outlawed.

Stone did the only thing he could do to save his life – he fled the city before he could be apprehended.

This was a serious blow, not only to Stone’s sense of justice but also his honor. His heart burned with the need to figure out a way to bring the surviving members of his scattered unit together and right the wrong that had been done to them. But how could a small band of disgraced soldiers – no matter how capable, no matter how determined – ever hope to overcome a corruption that had wormed its way into every corner of their nation and reached to the very pinnacle of Crailese authority?

Mired in disillusionment and self-doubt, separated from his comrades, and pestered by his conscience, Pontius turned to the only thing that could dull his senses and numb his burning heart. Rum.

Losing himself among the rabble of Port Gulliver, the once-proud captain of the Crailese Talons became just another shiftless drunkard roaming taverns and sleeping in ditches.

The months passed, and Stone nearly drank himself into oblivion. Until one fateful afternoon a former companion in the Talons, Milos, discovered Pontius lying in a muddy gutter, recognized his old captain, and decided to try to save the man from himself. Milos spent the next two days nursing Pontius back into a modicum of health, then took him to to buccaneer captain Antaeus Tartabull in the hopes of securing Pontius a job aboard Tartabull’s ship, Argentine, as a carpenter.

Pontius served Argentine well (and as fate would have it would shortly be joined by his friend Milos as a crewmate) using his uncanny knack for identifying and repairing problems with the ship’s workings. He seemed to relate to the ship on an almost personal level. He kept her in good repair and made several improvements to boot. Pontius began to feel as though he had a purpose and direction again.

Still, though, his nights were filled with disturbing voices calling to him from the recesses of his mind, demanding justice for Crail and redemption for Pontius and the Talons. Milos was also a constant reminder of the need to set things right. And though he was no longer a muck-covered drunkard lying in a ditch, the rum was still the only thing to dull his pain and quell the voices.

Now, Pontius Stone serves as shipminder and sailing master aboard Firedrake, with which he has formed an even deeper bond than he did with Argentine. The demon drink still hounds him, which he still finds preferable to being hounded by his honor and the voices of the people of Crail crying out for justice. But he serves his friend Milos and his beloved ship loyally and well, and he recognizes in Milos’ eyes that at some not-too-distant time, the Talons will rise up and grapple with the forces that betrayed and disgraced them. And as much as it scares him, Pontius knows in his heart that when that time comes, he will be there, standing with his peers, doing what needs to be done no matter the outcome.

Tags: mick bradley, pontius stone

My Name? They call me… Milos.

I must confess, I’m known to have a Foible or two… Dark Past.

My strongest desire, my greatest hope, my Motivation is… Revenge on Commandant Tren Vye (Good).

I’m proud to say my Nationality is… Crail (Good).

.. and my Past, which has helped make me what I am today is… my Crail Falcon (Expert) heritage.

You might say my Swashbuckling Forte is… Pirate Captain (Expert).

with the Techniques of Idiom: Fierce, Weapon: Cutlass and Weapon: Truncheon.

Fortes? Why, yes – I’ve one!  Organization: Falcon Talons (Good)

and Techniques? vs. Enemies of the State (chained to Crail Falcon).

(edited because Fencing is included in Crail Falcon; removed Fencing and added Org: Talons)

I’ve been formulating a few NPCs, and one of the things I’ve run across in the process is the Gift of the Merhorse [S7S p. 87]. The gift as written grants “a supernatural sense of perception.” That is a near-perfect description of an ability I want for certain characters in our campaign – but as I read the text essentially Merhorses, as written, are able to see the past, present, or future in pretty much the classic psychic sort of way (i.e. precognitive and postcognitive visions, etc.) While I have no problem with that in and of itself, it doesn’t really fit with the underlying thing I’m going for in our campaign.

Therefore I propose a minor hack to the details of how the gift works and what it allows a character to do. The hack is this: a person with the Gift of the Merhorse has an uncanny – possibly supernatural but definitely heightened – ability to perceive patterns, connections, and likely outcomes. This can be seen as a pshychic ability (say like Allison Dubois on the tv show Medium, but it can also just be an amazing sense of patterns, relationships, and probabilities, like Patrick Jane on The Mentalist.

The point I’m focusing on is this – whatever the ‘flavor’ a given character might paint this ability with – whether it manifests as full-blown fortune-telling or a simple knack for figuring stuff out – the baseline ‘gift’ is an uncanny sense of the underlying patterns and probabilities that most people don’t notice.

Anyone have any questions or comments?

Tags: gifts, merhorse