Genital Warts

Lately I have been running a Swashbucklers of the Seven Skies (S7S) game with my group. A few weeks back some of my players found themselves with some extra time and asked me to run a bonus session. I have a few one shot prepared for just such occasions, but they were pretty specific in wanting to play an extra session of S7S. To complicate things, not all of the players could make it, and one of the players that showed wasn't from my regular group.

Obviously I cannot run an adventure from the main campaign, as it would be completely unfair to the players that could not make it out for the bonus session: "Wait, you ran a session without me and you managed to sink our ship!?"

During the regular sessions, the PCs are captain and crew of the privateer vessel The Blacklass. The session prior, the crew had made a stop at cloud-island of Crail for a few supplies and alchemical ingredients. I thought the obvious thing to do was to let the players play the until-now unmentioned members of the crew on their shore leave at Crail.

By this time, the players were familiar enough with the system that tossing together some new characters took less than ten minutes and they were ready to go. I however was not. I hadn't found time to prepare for this last minute session, and had zero plot beyond having the B-Team on shore leave. So I needed something quick that would spur the players to action, something that the players could shake their fist at me for.

So the session is starting and the only thing that comes out of my mouth is: "So you have all contracted genital warts." followed by blinks and stares and nervous laughter. And then the adventure began. The cloud-island of Crail is known as the crossroad of the seven skies. If there was anywhere to find a cure for genital warts, Crail is the place to do it.

Quickly the players had split up to track down the ingredients for the cure. At this point, the game was going in the right direction, but I wanted something more from this session. I wanted things to be worse on the characters. I quickly came up with a mechanic to allow the players to bestow misfortune on the other players.

A PC was trying to flirt information out of a sailor when one of the other players throws in: "Its a well known fact that genital warts have a very distinctive smell. You reek of genital warts." And from here the game descended into brilliant madness.

For the players that made it out that night, this session is still the most talked about out of the entire campaign. All it took was genital warts and a little bit of friendly antagonism.

Throw Everything At the Wall

I contributed this post to the Carnival found here.

Not too long ago I wrapped up a Spirit of the Century (SotC) game. It was a fun game with a fantastic group. Before we started the game, I sent out a list of game pitches and asked my players to vote on them. As Murphy demands the players choose the only game I did not have a plot for. I could not seem to get my creativity going and come up with an original plot. After staring at a sheet of paper with nothing more than the heading "A Totally Awesome SotC Plot" for some time, I finally gave up and decided to run an adventure found in the SotC book.

The story was a simple one, there is a science convention and the PCs are all invited. Then there is a murder or two and the PCs run around and solve it.

So the night of the game arrives, and I find myself sitting in the game room waiting for players to show up, and it hits me: Throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. The players are at a science convention, it should be a mad science convention. Every doomsday device, robot, portal device and hyper-intelligent ape should be represented at the conference.

I had no plot ideas for any of these at the time. But the plot of the entire campaign evolved naturally and effortlessly from the half hour of twiddling my thumbs before the game. It just so happened that by the end of the campaign I had worked in every invention at the conference.