Full Light, Full Steam: Our Ship's a Saucy Beauty
My morning game was Full Light, Full Steam game, "Our Ship's a Saucy Beauty".
GM: Jonathan Walton
PCs:
- The Lowest Tar, Magnus Lewes -- Jon Edwards
- Cowardly Captain, Captain Charles Longshanks -- Dan
- Gallant Captain's Daughter (Lyric Soprano), Joanna Longshanks -- me
We not only named our PCs, we also each came up with a third schtick / trait / what have you.
Joanna: Fairest Flower That E'er Blossomed, I'll Teach You All Ere Long, added Klutz
Captain: Popular Commander, Abject Coward, added Genial Drunk
Lewes: Alas I Love A Lass, The Lowliest Tar, added Lithe as a Cat
The Aether ship was the HMS Courageous: Distinguished History, Slowest in the Fleet, Haunted
I'd thought Full Light, Full Steam was intended to be Gilbert and Sullivanesque. Having played it, I'm not sure if it is, but we did our best to make the scenario run that way.
At one point, Joanna, the captain's daughter, dressed as a sailor. Her father asked who "he" was.
Joanna: Smith, sir.
Captain: I didn't realize we had... 8 Smiths.
Magnus quickly realized "Smith" was a fraud, no doubt a French spy! He warned the captain.
Captain: I did think we had too many Smiths.
When accused of being a French spy, Joanna fainted, and was locked in the brig, still in male garb. Later, Magnus put on her dress to escape a mob. We figured that they were married while wearing each other's clothing.
It was a pleasant 4 hours, though I'm not sure I like the system. Oh, the mechanics of conflict resolution seem okay, but there's also a mechanic for determining the length of a scene. There is a card for each PC, and whenever a player mentions another player's PC's traits in character, that player initials the card. I think this includes the GM. E.g., Joanna scolds a sloppy admiral, saying, "Why our Lowliest Tar can do better!" So, I get the card for Lewes and I initial it. The scene cannot end until everyone has initialed all the cards. This feels very fiddly to me.
