Squibbing in the Skull and Shackles is a Wrap

I have just gotten home from running the Skull and Shackles game for my in-person group and I have to say I had a blast tonight.  I arrived a little tired and I thought I was going to struggle but when we got our pirate on I flew through a lot of the module.  It was one of those nights that you had to keep an eye on your watch or it would be 4 A.M. before you knew that all the time had gone by!

The Man’s Promise is squibbed and now sails as the Black Promise!

Tonight I think I enjoyed it so much as I began to see a lot of the characters beginning to gel into their longer term personas.  I am really getting a sense of Daranis, Claude, Captain Lem and Skye as a unit.  They are a dysfunctional unit but they will work well as a dynamic.  Also, to start with there was an absolutely fantastic non-scripted part of the game at the start that saw one of the more annoying and liked characters of the first module, Conchobar Shortstone (the Gnome Bard) become Skye’s first victim in her quest to qualify as an assassin in a couple of levels time.


Conchobar liked to think of himself as a ladies man and ever since about midway through the first module he had a fascination with Skye.  She had intimidated him into doing something for her and he liked it.  He loved the strong woman.  Skye played up to him just enough to keep him interested but would pull the rug out from under him at other times.  It was last week that I realised Conchobar had an Elixir of Love amongst his belongings so I got him to use it tonight.  He flubbed his sleight of hand check with a natural 1 and it became painfully obvious that he had slipped something in Skye’s drink.  Regardless Skye drank it and fell to his charm elixir.

Aaaarrrrgh forgot my hat tonight!

There was some great roleplaying in the Commons (Inn at Rickety Squibbs) as Conchobar attempted to get Captain Lem to marry them.  The Captain (and every one else in the Inn) knew what Conchobar had done and refused.  He said he would do it in the morning if they still wanted to be married.  Conchobar retired to his room with Skye and the Captain held an emergency meeting worried that Conchobar was going to circumvent the officers with such potions.  They decided that his packs needed a good rummaging and hit their rooms.

Skye woke to find the charm worn off and she was in Conchobar’s room.  She saw him sleeping and realised what had happened.  One of the pre requisites of the Assassin prestige class is they must have murdered someone in cold blood.  Conchobar availed Skye of the need to fill that pre-requisite anywhere else as he became her first intentional kill with a coup de grace as he slept.

The crew are bringing their personalities together!

The rest of the game went really well.  There was a battle with some giant wasps (which I thought looked like it was going TPK) and then they came across an unexpected visitor and got to the bottom of the secret why they had not been stopped by the signaller (he had been killed by a giant wasp).  They made an ally of a Shackles free captain and finally got their ship out of dry dock.  It was an eventful and great nights game!

I will be looking forward to getting my pirate on again in a week as the players now actually try out some pirating action!  They are ready to build up their disrepute and infamy as they ply the slithering coast for merchants and slaves to sell along in the Aspis stronghold of blood cove.  Until next week matey’s keep rolling them bones!