The Eighth Sea - Here There Be Monsters

[Seraphim73]

The Eighth Sea is a game of piracy and the supernatural, of wooden ships, iron men, and the dark myths that slipped through the cracks of civilization. It will explore the edges of reason and the tensions between civilization, outlaws, and the unknown.

While individual conflicts continue to brew across Tortuga, the crews will have to set aside their larger differences to find the cause of The Storm and, together, work to return to the world of the real. The focus will be on CvE conflicts, although there is no prohibition on individual CvC action (piracy and the supernatural are dangerous). We are playing a Hollywood version of history, with similarly Hollywood interpretations of real-world religions and myths. There will be darkness, but there will also be swashbuckling and derring-do.

And now how about some details:

• We're a game focused on supernatural horror and piracy around the island of Tortuga in 1660.
• We use FS3.3, the new Ares system by Faraday.
• We've integrated a magic system for Hollywood versions of Voodoo, Shamanism, Paganism, and Abrahamic faith.
• The people of Tortuga and the surrounding area are just starting to encounter creatures of myth and legend.
• We're just ramping up out of testing here in November, and it's a great time to get started.

Check out the wiki at www.the8thsea.wikidot.com or come aboard at 8thsea.noderunner.net:4005

EDIT: Changed the connection address, thanks @Sparks.

[Sparks]

FWIW, having just seen this, I've added an '8thsea' alias to scrozzle, so you don't have to use the real hostname.

So, telnet://8thsea.noderunner.net:4005 should work now.

[Tempest]

This is probably not the place for this, but how different is Ares from the standard FS3 stuff? Like, sheetwise is it still 4 attributes that go 1-4 and custom-input skills that go 1-12?

(Not to go "OMG FS3!!!!!" Just genuinely curious. IDK anything about Ares.)

[Arkandel]

Sometimes I write here about being able to tell when a game is a labor of love, and not just something put together for its own sake.

The Eighth Sea, from what I've seen and discussed so far, is a labor of love.

[Ganymede]

@tempest said in The Eighth Sea - Here There Be Monsters:

This is probably not the place for this, but how different is Ares from the standard FS3 stuff? Like, sheetwise is it still 4 attributes that go 1-4 and custom-input skills that go 1-12?

Ares / FS3.3 is different from FS3 v.2. FS3.3 is, from my understanding, more customizable insofar as what you put in as attributes. If 8th Sea follows BSG:U, and I think it does, then you have 6 attributes that go 1-5, and custom-input skills that go 1-7.

I think.

What I do know is that the system is gorgeous, and Faraday's working on a web portal and a whole bunch of nifty shit.

[mietze]

This looks amazingly fun. I might need to check it out. Thanks for posting it up here.

[Auspice]

@ganymede said in The Eighth Sea - Here There Be Monsters:

Ares / FS3.3 is different from FS3 v.2. FS3.3 is, from my understanding, more customizable insofar as what you put in as attributes. If 8th Sea follows BSG:U, and I think it does, then you have 6 attributes that go 1-5, and custom-input skills that go 1-7.

8th Sea is on roughly the same version as BSG:U, yes. When Faraday updates the core, Kraken is usually not far behind in updating T8S.

However, we have a host more action skills than BSG:U does.

The Ares version of FS3 is sort of... ramped up. It's the FS3 you know and love (or hate), but with a lot more added in. Die rolls show the numbers, not just the result. Combat is almost exactly the same, but with fewer bugs (no more instances of 'The NPC That Never Dies').

The biggest perk of Ares, IMO, is the scene system. A system that generates temp rooms on the fly, that logs the scene, and allows such functionality as highlighted ST poses ('scene/emit'), repairing poses on the fly ('scene/undo' to remove a pose, 'scene/replace' to wholesale replace a pose where it lies in the log, and 'scene/typo' to silently adjust a pose). In the end, you have a cleaned up, web-ready log (and scene/repose shows the last few poses, which is awesome for walking into a scene-in-progress).

As a note... T8S is not using the web portal fully (though CG is active on it!), so logs do currently need to be manually uploaded to wikidot, but the 'scene/log' command makes it super easy to just copy and paste the log over.

[faraday]

@tempest said in The Eighth Sea - Here There Be Monsters:

This is probably not the place for this, but how different is Ares from the standard FS3 stuff? Like, sheetwise is it still 4 attributes that go 1-4 and custom-input skills that go 1-12?

This page addresses What's New in Third Edition.

[bored]

Looks awesome.

Glad to see another Ares game! (pirates was definitely something I thought it would be good for, too)

[ixokai]

Is this game run by just @Seraphim73 and @GirlCalledBlu ?
Plus a coder?

[Auspice]

@ixokai said in The Eighth Sea - Here There Be Monsters:

Is this game run by just @Seraphim73 and @GirlCalledBlu ?
Plus a coder?

Kraken (who does manage serverside/code) is at the helm ("Head Staff"), with Blu and Seraphim and myself.
It's a team of 4. They are not co-running in this instance. We discuss and decide things as a team.

[Collective]

Do you want nigh-ultrasonic squeeing?

Because this is how you get nigh-ultrasonic squeeing.

[faraday]

@bored said in The Eighth Sea - Here There Be Monsters:

Glad to see another Ares game!

Full disclosure: Ares is still under development and has not yet been released. It's pretty stable - BSGU has been running without major issues for a long time -
but it's still a work in progress. Kraken and the 8th Sea staff have been working with me on sort of a "private beta" basis to help shake out configuration/customization and admin issues. (I'm not directly involved in the game though.)

[TheOnceler]

We've integrated a magic system for Hollywood versions of Voodoo, Shamanism, Paganism, and Abrahamic faith.

So is there a kaballah system for Baal Shem pirates sailing under the black Star of David and crossbones flag, clanking tankards of grog with a “l’chaim!” and cursing their foes with a “next year ... IN HELL!”?

[ixokai]

@auspice

@auspice said in The Eighth Sea - Here There Be Monsters:

@ixokai said in The Eighth Sea - Here There Be Monsters:

Is this game run by just @Seraphim73 and @GirlCalledBlu ?
Plus a coder?

Kraken (who does manage serverside/code) is at the helm ("Head Staff"), with Blu and Seraphim and myself.
It's a team of 4. They are not co-running in this instance. We discuss and decide things as a team.

Okay, thanks.

Question two.

This is a historic setting, how tied to historic social norms is the game? I see on the wiki women pirates/crew aren't such a big deal. Good to know.

What of we gays?

[Ganymede]

@ixokai said in The Eighth Sea - Here There Be Monsters:

What of we gays?

Concurring on the question and curious.

[Arkandel]

@ganymede Not to address the gays part, but the one thing I've noticed in a very limited number of scenes I've done so far. So I'm playing a guy who's both religious and superstitious - which as you can expect, when there are monsters to eat people's faces, he sees as a confirmation of the things he's always believed.

And it's funny because sometimes others looked at him strange for it... like it was weird to be such beliefs - as a sailor. Come on, those are the most superstious people on earth, especially during the time period.

Just a minor peeve, and nothing that's up to staff, but it bears bringing up. We all tend to be a very liberal, enlightened bunch when it comes to our characters, too.

[Auspice]

I view it as broad strokes. It's a Hollywood-ized version of pirates and we know Hollywood takes liberties for the sake of story.

The brothel (the Snakebite) for example has male and female 'companions.' There are women on ships, as you've noted.

But there may still be those (NPC or PC, if someone's feeling a touch antagonistic or it's an inter-ship conflict and they wanna be ornery) that look askance at a woman. Or mock her for being weaker (until she breaks his nose).

As for gay PCs... I can't play a completely straight woman to save my life, so my personal view on it is: go for it. BG strife in relation to being gay probably exists. There may be antagonistic NPCs who are problematic. But I'm certainly not (nor will other Staff I imagine) going to stop someone from playing an LGBT char and I'll smack down anyone who gives OOC grief over it.

[Auspice]

@arkandel said in The Eighth Sea - Here There Be Monsters:

And it's funny because sometimes others looked at him strange for it... like it was weird to be such beliefs - as a sailor

This is why we've tried to build the Daily Life of a Pirate page out. To help encourage people towards hitting tropes, behaviors, etc....

I can say that Staff is playing their PCs in a way to encourage these things. Superstition is awesome. I'd love to see more of it from PCs.

[Collective]

Something I came across when preparing a On Stranger Tides based home campaign a few years back:

https://sexselvesandsociety.wordpress.com/2014/03/24/all-about-the-booty-sodomy-in-the-golden-age-of-piracy-1718-1723/

I'm thinking queer pirates would fit right in, with the proviso that some people (mostly Calvinists) have a stick up their butt over it. And with a player understanding that 'gay' is a 20th century social construct and nobody would identify that way, verbally.