Wildsea

Bloodlines

Bloodlines

• Ardent - Humans, but changed by the verdancy.
• Ektus - Cactus-people, long-lived.
• Gau - Fungus people.
• Tzelicrae - Hive-minded spider colonies.
• Ironbound - Haunted shipwrecks.
• Ketra - Human-descendants, changed by the deep-forest.
• Mothryn - Moth people that reincarnate.
• Itzenko - Rapidly evolving mantis people.

Wildsea Free Edition, page 9, Wildsea Root and Storm, page 74, Wildsea, page 13

Edges

Edges

Edges

• Add 1d6 to your dice pool
• Add narrative flavour to the action roll, changing how a skill or aspect gets used (e.g. rolling Tides to gather specimens means focusing on quality; rolling Veils means gathering them without being detected)

Using Edges

• Flexible - No edge is required for a specific action. You can use Iron, Grace, or Teeth to attack; Tides if you have knowledge of the target; Sharps for a pre-planned tactic; Veils for a backstab; Instinct if you're just throwing yourself in
• Reliable - Edges are broad by design. You'll almost always have one in play - only fails if the action is completely outside your wheelhouse
• Informative - If unsure what to do, look to your edges. An applicable edge gives you the 1d6 to start a roll even without a matching skill

Edge Reference

Wildsea, page 80-81

Health and Dying

Health and Dying

Health

• If you do take a hit, damage is dealt to one of your character's aspects.
  • You choose which aspect.
  • If you mark all the boxes on a track, you can't use it until it's repaired.
• If you take enough damage to exceed a track, you choose one of:
  • Add an injury with a length equal to the exceeded value.
  • Deal burn to that aspect equal to the exceeded value.

Weakness, Resistance, and Immunity

• Weakness: mark 2 extra boxes when taking damage from a source you're weak to.
• Resistance: mark 2 fewer boxes when taking damage from a source you're resistant to.
• Immunity: mark no boxes when taking damage from a source you're immune to.
• Stacking
  • 2 resistances = immunity.
  • Immunity + weakness = resistance.
  • Weakness + resistance cancel out.

Dying

• Character death is narrative, not mechanical.
  • Fundamentally, you choose if/when your character dies, regardless of anything your character sheet says.
• There's enough weirdness in the setting that there's lots of ways death doesn't have to be the end.

Wildsea Free Edition, page 31, Wildsea Free Edition, page 32, Wildsea, page 54, Wildsea, page 55, Wildsea, page 57

Journeys

Journeys

Departure

• Needs a ship - your own, or borrowed
• Pick a destination
• Make preparation
  • E.g. Hiring extra crew, cargo & passengers, planning
• The Firefly creates journey tracks
  • Hidden tracks
  • Progress - Only when the Progress track is filled do you arrive
  • Risk - When you're travelling through particularly risky locations, track it with a risk track
  • Pathfinding - See Cartographizing below
  • Riot - Tracks crew / passenger dissatisfaction, rarely used

Progress

• Player role depends on their station

At the helm

• Cut a path
  • Traveling normally
  • Mark a single box on the progress track
  • Usually have a choice about encountering things spotted on watch
• Forge ahead
  • Going fast
  • Mark two boxes on the progress track
  • Usually have to encounter what's spotted on watch; the ship may take damage if you try to avoid
• Drop anchor
  • Stop
  • Do a montage
  • No watch roll is made - the undercrew keeps watch instead
• Challenging terrain may require an additional ratings roll at the helm

On watch

• Two options: make a watch roll or spend resources for a discovery.
• Watch roll
  • Roll a single D6
  • Firefly rolls a D6 threat roll (hidden from players)
    • If you own a chart of the area, the Firefly rolls 2d6 and takes the higher result
  • Threat roll results:
    • 6 - Danger-free opportunity
    • 4-5 - Hazardous encounter with a payoff
    • 1-3 - Immediate danger with little chance of payoff
  • Consult the Watch Roll Results table
• Discovery
  • Spend a chart and a whisper - both are lost
  • Gives the player input into a discovered location
    • The location has to be something that might be recorded on a map or chart
  • Firefly still makes a hidden threat roll

Encounters

• Avoiding
  • You may need to make a ratings roll to avoid an encounter if it's something that can give chase
  • Harder if you're forging ahead
• Engage
  • Firefly should give some indication of threat
  • Choice, challenge, or scene
    • Choice
      • Outcome of the encounter depends on a choice
      • E.g. do you investigate an emergency flare or not
    • Challenge
      • Some kind of threat to the ship
      • Player at the helm makes a ratings roll, and go from there
      • E.g. A pirate ship opens fire
    • Scene
      • Usually involves leaving the ship
      • E.g. exploring a ruin

Tending the engine

• Proceed normally
• You can hijack focus for engine trouble
• Overload the engine
  • Spend a resource as fuel
  • Increase impact relating to ship speed, or mark an extra box for progress
• Muffle the engine
  • Uses a resource to muffle the engine
  • Increase impact for stealth, or stealthily leave if you haven't been spotted yet

Cartographizing

• Firefly makes a track
• Mark it when you find an important landmark
• Gain a related chart when you complete the track

Watching the Weather

• Similar to being on watch
• But you always roll
• Check the Weather-Watching Results table

Arrival

• When the progress track is filled
• Firefly describes where you've arrived
• Spend some time port-side to heal, relax, and repair the ship

Wildsea Free Edition, page 40-47, Wildsea, page 67, Wildsea, page 70-77

Languages

Languages

Languages

Like skills, languages have ranks from 1-3. Unlike skills, ranks are named:

• You rarely need to roll - languages are used to draw on cultural knowledge and gain information
• Dialects: the one case where the Firefly may call for a roll - encountering a dialect far removed from the language you know; even fluent speakers can be confused

Language Reference

Wildsea, page 86-87

Montages

Montages

Montages

A montage compresses downtime into a brief scene where each crew member gets one task — a moment of focus to pursue their own goals before the next scene begins. Time passes. For example, stopping for the night on a journey, or exploring a new port.

Tasks

• Describe what you're doing and how — this usually clarifies any requirements
  • Only roll if the task is difficult, dangerous, or dramatic — one roll is enough
  • Some tasks need a specific requirement (place or resource) before they can be attempted
  • Gain advantage by working with a crewmate, but you can't help in two places at once
• Exploration - Split up to cover more ground. E.g. Talk to NPCs for local knowledge, or scout routes for further exploration.
  • Many explorations need no roll — Vault/Wavewalk for movement, Sway for social, language skills for cultural detail
  • If exploration leads into a scene, pause and resume when everyone's together
• Acquisition - Gain resources during downtime (trading, scavenging, fishing, hunting, gathering, theft, rumours). Uses the resource roll table (p.48).
• Recovery - Healing, repairing, relaxing. Uses the recovery roll table (p.62).
• Creation - Combine resources to create a temporary aspect (name + track + ability). Mark the track each use — when fully marked, the aspect is gone permanently. Usually applies to one crewmember. Uses the creation roll table (p.63).
  • Agree the benefit with the Firefly before rolling — outcomes are freeform.

Projects

Multi-stage tasks spanning several montages. Agree scope with the Firefly — they set a project track, noted on your character sheet. Spend a task slot to work on a project instead of a normal task.

Mark the track via:

• Time — study/practice/hard graft (not all tracks allow this)
• Rolls — roll as a normal action
• Resources — spend resources to advance
• Aid — others contribute skills or expertise

Longer Montages

Usually one task per montage. Take 2–3 tasks when:

• The crew is waiting idle for a particular event
• Extended downtime (e.g. leafless-month hunker-down in a campaign)
• Best run at end of a session — gives the Firefly time to plan follow-up scenes.

Wildsea, page 58-65

Rolling Dice

Rolling Dice

Dice Pools

Edge (1d6) + Skill / Language (0-3d6) + Advantage (0-2d6)

• You can only use one edge and one skill or language for a roll
• Advantage is situational bonuses (discuss with the firefly)
• If you have nothing to draw from, roll 1d6 and count triumph results as conflicts instead

Outcome

Pick the highest dice in the pool, that's the result.

Twists

• If you roll doubles, the roll also introduces a twist
  • If you roll multiple doubles, it's still just a single twist
• A twist is an unexpected addition to the outcome — it doesn't replace the result, it adds to it
  • Usually related to the action or situation that caused the roll
  • Often beneficial, but doesn't have to be
• The roller doesn't decide the twist — anyone else at the table can suggest one, with the firefly having final say
• Twists must not:
  • Invalidate or override the roll result (a disaster with a twist is still a disaster)
  • Force a player to accept something about their own character they hadn't planned

Cut

• When rolling, the firefly might impose a cut of some number (realistically, 1-3)
  • Difficulty - A task is harder than it might otherwise be
  • Precision - E.g. in combat, aiming for a particular part of a creature
  • Impact - Try to bump the impact up a class
• After rolling, remove the highest value rolls from the pool, before determining the result
• E.g., after rolling 1, 4, 5, 6, and cutting 2, the highest result is 4, so the result is a Conflict
• Rule of thumb: about a third of rolls should have a cut of some sort

Impact

• Low, normal, high, and massive - determined by how you approach a given action

Wildsea, page 40-42

Skills

Skills

Skills

• Each skill has a rank from 1-3; it adds that many d6s to your dice pool when used in a roll
• Skills are flexible by design
• Not having a skill doesn't block you from trying - skills make you better, not permitted
• Two crewmembers can work together on the same task. Both are affected by any negatives from a conflict or disaster.

Skill Reference

Wildsea, page 82-85

Stations

Stations

Different roles on the ship. This doesn't cover everything - you can assume people are still busy even if they're not on-station.

• Required
  • At the Helm
    • Controlling the ship itself
  • On Watch
    • Make a watch roll to see what's happening around the ship
• Optional
  • Tending the Engine
    • Overcharge the engine by spending a resource as fuel
  • Cartographizing
    • Sketching out new charts of where you've been
  • Watching the Weather
    • Be forewarned of changes in the weather

Wildsea Free Edition, page 41, Wildsea, page 71

Types of Track

Types of Track

• Open - The existence, progress, and length are visible to everyone
• Hidden - The existence of the track is known, but not progress or length.
  • The firefly may want to give in-game hints when you're close to marking the final box
• Secret - The players don't know about it; they only learn of it when they unwittingly mark the final box and the firefly reveals its secret

Wildsea, page 38, Wildsea, page 39

Unsetting Questions

Unsetting Questions

• Session zero / warmup exercise
• Simple, open-ended questions about the world
  • Anyone can answer - more people answering the same question is better
  • The answers aren't necessarily true, but are the sorts of things wild-sailors would tell each other

Wildsea Free Edition, page 117, Wildsea, page 189