Here be (generated) monsters: And an example of crew actions in GOLD TEETH
Welcome to the TEETH newsletter! This is an almost, occasionally, somewhat weekly missive from the world of tabletop roleplaying games, written and compiled by thrashing leviathan Jim Rossignol and briny glob Marsh Davies.
Hello, you.
Links!
Exemplary Seafaring in Gold Teeth
Hello, you.
Marsh here! It's been just over week since we released the Gold Teeth beta to backers and, while it's too soon for anyone to have really kicked its nautical tyres, the feedback has been reassuring. There is not a sufficiently sweaty sweating emoji to indicate my sense of relief. Thanks to everyone who read it and reported in—and if you have thoughts of your own, good or ill, we'd love to hear them on the TEETH Discord.
Also thanks for the many well-wishes directed at Jim. Fuelled by your positivity—and drugs—he gains in power every day and may soon be unstoppable. Jim is one of my favourite people on Earth and a hero of mine since his early PC Gamer days. Needless to say, I'm very glad to have him with us still.
I'm also excited that, with the beta game in backers' hands, we will now be able to release more Gold Teeth material to you as we wend our way towards a final manuscript. For example: this map of Great New Plymouth might be useful.
And perhaps this table for generating a sea monster. It even comes with serving suggestions.
Finally, further down this newsletter, I've included an example of play that covers the Voyage Roll and how everyone at the table negotiates the consequences for bad dice rolls, among other things. But let's take a quick break from Gold Teeth to serve up some links!
Links!
I'm thrilled by Triangle Agency's announced expansion: Triangle U. It's "a setting guide and book of missions dedicated to a specific location: Cartersfield University and the surrounding town of Cartersfield, Illinois"—a place dear to my heart, as it is the setting of the Triangle Agency campaign in which I am myself a player, thanks to the fact that the GM is the expansion's designer, Dr Noel Warford. He has already subjected our team of agents to many of the nightmares soon to be published in Triangle U and so I can tell you first hand that they are not to be missed.
Is it too self-congratulatory to point to Kieron Gillen's write-up of our game, False Kingdom? On a blog that he co-authors with Jim? Yes, it is. But I'm going to do it anyway, because I'm pretty proud of False Kingdom, it won an award, it's free, and yet it remains one of our least downloaded games.
Marginally less self-indulgently, here's Kieron's interview with Josh Fox, one of the designers of Ex Tenebris, an investigatory sci-fi game which offers a decolonial riposte to Warhammer 40K: Dark Heresy's far-flung imperial future. I'm a fan of Warham's lore but roleplaying within it does throw up a problem that Josh succinctly outlines here: "I just didn’t want my friends to have to play fascist enforcers."
Ex Tenebris is currently crowdfunding. Get in on it.
We do like the look of Threadcutters in which “you and some friends will tell the story of a group of elite occult assassins.” You can’t say fairer than that.
A highly accomplished hack of our own NIGHT OF THE HOGMEN with incredible art and design? Yes, that’s THEY MADE A TOMB. It’s a haunted house game in a modern setting based on the quick and dirty FiTD minimisation of our game. Go check it out.
Three Sails Studios, they of Mappa Mundi fame, are doing something moody, political, and historical. Gallows Corner: A Peasants’ Revolt RPG sounds right up our alley.
Exemplary Seafaring in Gold Teeth
One of the things that is a bit different about Gold Teeth is its rules for sea. While on land, players take on the role of individual Sea Dogs—old tars and desperados on a mission to save themselves from a terrible pirate curse—but when they take to the ocean, they stow away that individuality and unify as a crew. Players divide the ship's functions between them, speaking for all the people who man those sections, while in an intense collaboration to keep the ship afloat. Players share a Luck pool that can be used to boost Actions, and suffer the same debuffs across the entire ship. One player's roll can and should have repercussions that affect other parts of the ship, and much of the game is about passing these consequences between players, giving a dynamic sense of how closely bound the fate of the crew is while also keeping everyone engaged. Below is a narrative of how that might look at the table.
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Man the bunk-rails and tally the gibbons! The players are about to set sail for French waters to investigate some troubling weather phenomena around the island of Iguannique. They build their dice pool for the Voyage Roll: starting with one dice, they gain another for the decent state of their ship and crew, and decide to add one extra from their Luck pool. However, two dice are then removed: one because they are entering enemy territory and the other because they can expect erratic weather. With only one dice, they make the roll. It's a 4—a partial success. The players will suffer an Affliction from the conditions at sea and be subjected to an encounter, finding themselves placed in an immediately Risky Position.
The GM quickly generates some weather conditions to throw at the players using a table: "The sun is gone, consumed—perhaps forever it feels—by a blustering blackness, twisting all around, thrashing the ship with thick rain, spray and spindrift. The waves, short and spiteful, beat against the hull like a wild mob. Describe to me how this causes the crew of the Dangling Dilberry to suffer—what kind of Affliction do you think they might befall them?"
"The Dilberries are stoic lot and well-weathered sailors," says Femi, "So they batten down the hatches, wrap themselves in oil cloths and brace themselves against the storm as best they can."
"But something goes wrong—what?" prompts the GM.
"Hm. How about, despite their efforts, the ropes are made slick with rain, and a sudden gust causes a man to lose his footing and fall to the deck."
"Excellent. The poor fellow crunches into the planks of the quarterdeck—not dead, but assuredly broken. And you know who it is? It's Bonny Billy Muck!
"Who?"
"That's right. The most beloved and skillful of all the skylarks. And he'll probably never jig again. What's the mood below decks as Billy's shattered, twisted body is hauled to the surgeon?"
"There's probably some muttering that this is a dark omen," suggests Wilbur. "After all, it must be an evil wind indeed if someone as nimble as Billy could be knocked from the rigging."
"Too right," agrees the GM. "The crew exchange nervous glances: this is a grim portent indeed. I'm going to say that, as poor Billy is scraped up and ferried below, the crew is so distracted and perturbed that it amounts to a Crew Affliction. There's no debuff yet—but get three of these and the crew complement goes down."
Femi dutifully writes "distracted" into the first box of the Crew Afflictions list on the Ship Sheet.
The GM continues: "There's not even time to swab Billy's goo off the quarterdeck before a shadow looms large from the whirling rain, altogether too close for comfort. It's a frigate—a larger ship than the Dangling Dilberry—and it's on a collision course with you. Whatever you do now is Risky."
"Is it going to hit us straight away? Or can we quickly do something about that Affliction?" asks Luna.
"It's bearing down fast, but you do have time to get out of its way—assuming the dice allow it—and so, yes, you could potentially deal with the Affliction too. What kind of Action do you think you could take to dispel the gloomy mood and get sailors to refocus? Remember, you're not playing your Sea Dog characters here—you are testing the diffuse talents of the entire crew."
"Sounds like we could use a call for Unity, maybe?" suggests Luna. "The first mate bellows across the deck, 'Here now lads, pull yourselves together and mind your work.'"
"'It's what Billy would have wanted!'" chips in Femi.
"That's great. If you don't do well on this roll, I'm going to say the distraction remains and delays the crew's reaction to the approaching vessel, such that it puts you in a Desperate Position, and it will simply plough into you if you don't then make another successful roll."
"OK. Is that on me, as the Helm?" asks Femi.
"I think so. The roll is about rallying the crew with assertive leadership."
Femi rolls and gets a 5.
"Success with consequence," says the GM. "Let's split the difference: the first mate does get the crew to refocus, so you can remove that Affliction, but they take a moment to pull it together and lose time in reacting to the other ship's approach. It's now Desperate. But you can do it. I believe in you."
"What can we tell about the incoming ship?" asks Femi.
"Well, you don't have time to process much, but it's quite fancy. And you can pick out French colours as it emerges from the sheeting rain."
"Evasive manoeuvres then? That's probably on me, Upper Decks," says Luna.
"What kind of situation are you hoping to end up in? The frigate is going to T-bone you if you stick to your current course, so you could turn towards it, and try and pass it in the opposite direction on the near side, or turn so you are running parallel with it? Or something else—you tell me."
"Could we let the wind out of the sails and try and stall the ship out so the frigate passes in front of us?"
"Sure. I have no idea if that would actually work, but let's say it could."
"Cool," says Luna. "I want us to be in a position to be able be fire a broadside into its arse without them immediately being able to broadside us in return."
"That'd do it. If you fuck this up, you will suffer varying degrees of damage to the prow of the ship depending on whether the frigate grazes it or smashes into it."
"Could I take the Consequences?" asks Wilbur, who is covering two Stations: Long Guns and Lower Decks.
"Maybe! What would that look like?"
"What's that bit at the front of the gun deck where the animals are kept?"
"The manger."
"Right, well, I'll trade you: on a total failure, instead of the ship taking absolutely catastrophic damage to the front of the ship, the prow gets only a little bit smushed, but the juddering impact breaks the manger open—goats get loose and start pelting round the gun deck."
"Deal. If that happens, then you still get a Minor Ship Affliction from the collision and Long Guns will need to roll to corral the goats before they can fire effectively—but, because you've taken the Consequences for another Station's roll, you will also get a point of Luck back."
"Sweet."
"OK, Upper Decks, make your roll and tell me how you are taking the wind out of the sails."
"Oh, uh, I don't actually know anything about ships."
"Doesn't matter, nobody does. Ships are fake. Just make up some plausible-sounding sea-bollocks and I'll give you a point of Ship XP—on top of the Ship XP you are already earning for making a Desperate Action."
"Very generous of you! Well, the sailors quickly wallop the dug-bits, strap the lemon, and begin squeezing wind out of the main-whisk like they are milking a cow."
"Let's see if the old heifer likes it. Roll them dice. What Action makes sense here?"
"I think it's Seamanship. We're relying on the sailors hard-won experience to yank those wind udders efficiently. I'm going to add a Luck dice, too, so that's three dice altogether."
Nonetheless, Femi rolls a high of 3, much to the players' exasperation—excepting Wilbur, who looks delighted that he gets to wrestle some goats.
"So," says the GM, "the sails flutter as the wind spills out of them, but the ship's momentum is simply too great for it not to carry you a little way into the path of the frigate, which crunches into the bow, sending a shockwave through the fabric of the ship: sailors stumble, cargo jumps and tumbles, and—most importantly—one wall of the manger splinters apart, and a number of ill-tempered goats barrel down the length of the gun deck. Can you note a shattered bowsprit as a Minor Ship Affliction, Femi? Wilbur—you're up. Here's a Luck dice back. Now, what does this scene look like, and what do the people of the gun deck do to resolve it?"
"It looks like a right cluster-fuck. The goats rampage down the deck, butting men who are trying to ready their cannon, getting under foot, sending shot skittering and spilling buckets of water. As for what to do... I think this is a Craft Action."
"OK. That'll require some quick thinking. How's it work?"
"There are ropes attached to the cannon, right?"
"Yes, to run them in and out of the gun ports."
"Some sailors are already holding them, presumably, and so, almost instinctively, they pull them taught, creating a sort of rope barrier and hemming the goats in until they calm down enough to be subdued and returned to the manger."
"OK, yeah, I agree that feels like Craft: you are sort of building an enclosure, albeit temporary. I think this is Risky: on a 4 or 5 you will succeed but it'll cost you even more time, but, on a failure, the clusterfuckery will result in a bunch of trivial injuries that together amount to a Crew Affliction: sailors who've been bitten or tripped or had their foot run over by a cannon. That kind of thing."
"Not a problem. I'm gonna ace it."
Wilbur rolls a 6. "Eat that, goats."
"Congratulations," says the GM. "The goats are halted and seized with surprising efficiency and led back to the manger where they continue to bleat their displeasure behind a hastily rebuilt barricade. You're clear to light up the retreating ship, but you might not want to because, as the frigate passes, it's clear to the Upper Decks that it is not fully under control. It's a deck taller than your sloop, but it's easy for the crewmembers in elevated positions to immediately see that there is a bitter hand-to-hand battle occurring on board. As the frigate swooped towards you, emerging from the shroud of rain, you could see dozens of dead and wounded on the deck. No one is steering the ship: everyone is fully engaged in the battle. So they might not have even realised you were there. What do you want to do?"
"It would be suicide to tackle a frigate normally, right?" says Luna.
"Not suicide—it's only one size class bigger than your ship—but if you were trading shot for shot it would outlive you. So it would by wise not to take it on in a fair fight."
"This wouldn't be a fair fight, though—sounds like they're a little distracted."
"Absolutely."
"Then let's get them!"
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And off the Dingleberries go. No doubt we shall see more of this redoubtable crew in subsequent examples of play.
More soon! x