Last night saw the last session of the Tempest Rising which finishes with the ship race the Free Captain’s Regatta. I was seriously impressed with the game last night. The race was well organised and fit pretty much perfectly into a nights play. The night did see a death, though not from the combat that I thought may cause the issue! The Free Captain’s Regatta is a roller-coaster ride of a pirate ship race that runs through the Eye of Abendengo, a massive, stationary cyclone.
To pick a couple of things that I was excited about was the fact that there was a dragon turtle encounter amongst it. I think, from the time that I first discovered dragon turtles in the blue or black box of the basic Dungeons and Dragons game in the Eighties it has been one of my most favourite creatures. I am not sure I know exactly why, probably because I thought it was so creative. But I have never, ever, used one. And last night I got a chance to. Kind of. The race is a bunch of skill checks with narrative in a lot of ways and this is true of the dragon turtle too! So of course, my first chance to ever use one and the players were knocking their skill checks out of the park. What that meant is my first ever dragon turtle turned into an adrenaline pumping set dressing. Ah well, perhaps I should build an encounter with one in it!
There was some clever play against a greater lightning elemental that involved the players knocking it prone, confusing it and sacrificing Major (the summoner’s eidolon) to get the thing off the ship and far away. It was brilliant work all around.1
The final race to the line saw the Captain assaulted though and viciously killed (he got reincarnated at the end into a Sylph from a human) that came so close to nearly losing them the race to the Captain of the Wormwood, the ship that so long a go they were Shanghaied and stolen away on. Now, at each juncture of a module we open up the possibility to play something different for a while just to refresh ourselves and one of the other players had mentioned to me that maybe he could run Star Wars. I was hoping the rest would go for it but the idea was answered with a bit of silence. Then one of the players (the Summoner player) said what about Shadowrun.
This was a little left of field, he had talked about it in the past butI was not expecting it. When he said it, the Captain’s player actually physically turned with a keen look, having not thought of it and the Necromancer’s player was keen as well. The Bard’s player has only ever played D&D and Pathfinder but when it was explained he was pretty excited. The other player (Wizard) was away last night so I hope he is OK with it.
I am looking forward to it and dreading it all at once! It has been a while since I read Shadowrun so I need to do a bit of a refresh but I am equally excited as I have a semi campaign already planned for Shadowrun that will tell the stories that Shadowrun should, not the stories it does. But that is a story for next week where we will meet the characters that the players come up with. Until then, keep on rolling!