Well, I've finally gotten some time actually playing Kings of the Endless Sea-- six sessions, to be exact. I've already learned quite a bit about what's working, what's broken, and what my players want. Let's do a rundown.
What's Working
Generally speaking, I'm really enjoying the sandbox ethos. There's simply no need to prepare a plot beforehand: I can always count on my players to come up with plenty to do, when you combine their expectations, assumptions, and misunderstandings into a big stew of "I meant it like that." For example, I pretty much handed the party a small ship at the start of the first session so they could get down to the work of exploration. They immediately decided their primary goal was to get a better ship. In session four, they got that ship (stealing it, perhaps a little too easily, but again, I wanted to get them out into the world) and decided that they needed a better ship (since the one they stole was still undergoing repairs). They took a third ship on the high seas, and I'm just hoping they'll be content with it for a while...
What I really love about this style of play is that I can let my imagination go wild, and by pre-planning almost nothing, I can let the mechanics inspire the plot and not the other way around. My favorite example involves the fabled Bloodstone of Morgai. In session five, the players (somewhat stupidly) assaulted a ship belonging to an enemy pirate gang, going up against a crew of twelve on the enemy ship. In mechanical terms, this meant a party of five level-one characters was taking on a level 8 encounter. By all rights they should have been TPK'ed, but thanks to some bum rolls on my part they stuck around long enough to have whittled the opposition down to two level 3 soldiers. At this point one PC was dead, two were unconscious, one was still on the party's ship (the Filth Fever, which is my favorite ship name of all time, and was suggested by a guy who just walked into our game store, sat down at our table for his first D&D session in twenty years, and is now a regular) and one, Bronn the Bold, was facing down the two remaining enemy pirates aboard their ship. One of them put a crossbow bolt through Bronn's neck, dropping him, but his turn was next, and lo and behold he did what nobody else had done through many turns of unconsciousness: roll a 20 on his death saving throw. So of course I ruled that these two pirates, having seen their crew (including their captain, a level 4 elite) mostly butchered, having now seen the towering slayer immediately stand up from what should have been a killing blow, peed their pants in their hurry to surrender (it was also midnight and a raging storm-- thanks, weather table!).
Fast forward to later that night, as I rolled on the Essentials treasure table for a level 8 encounter. My first roll came up with absolutely no treasure except for a gem worth 500 gp. This immediately fired my imagination-- what sort of gem would twelve men be willing to die to safeguard? What sort of pirate ship would be returning home with only one item in its hold? So I decided that it wasn't just a gem, it was the Bloodstone of Morgai, a fabled blood-red ruby from deep in the heart of the jungle, carved with strange depictions of animal gods and human sacrifice. The Bloodstone is widely said to be cursed, and so of course the two pirates who surrendered were convinced that their ship was just the latest in a long line of keepers of the Bloodstone who were struck down by its curse. Surely the theft of such an item wouldn't go unnoticed, making the PCs targets for a retributive strike by those who want it back...
And then the party sold it.
I love this kind of rhapsodizing, weaving a story from the elements I'm given. I like taking player suggestions, as well, to the extent that I sometimes have to stop myself from changing my own plans when a player suggests something that seems cooler. (For example, one player was convinced that the pirate gang lieutenant who sent them to do a mission in the sewers was a lying scoundrel who'd sent them down there to kill them. Convinced. To the extent that his PC attacked the guy when they finally got out of the sewers. I loved this idea, but I didn't want to change my plans too drastically on the fly.)
Other things that have worked: the trip from Freeport (the pirate city) to Monmouth (the nearest port, on the coast of the nation of Exonia) took the better part of two sessions. I really miss the feeling of travel being an integral part of an adventure, or even being the adventure itself. Getting there is half the fun, and my random encounter tables are making getting there a hell of a lot of fun. It was an eight-day journey in game time (six days of travel, one day stuck in the doldrums thanks to a natural 1 on the weather table, one day spent transferring supplies from Filth Fever to the newly-captured ship because one of my players said "We should probably take a day to move the supplies over") and it really felt like a journey. No handwaving "You sail to Monmouth" at my table, dammit. Oh, and I don't even really know why the players decided they needed to go to Monmouth. I think they felt that after attacking a high-up in one of Freeport's five pirate gangs, they should get out of town for a while.
Next post: what isn't working!
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