GM is called a Firefly, to make it more thematic. The game can also be run GMless using the "Dragonfly" rules, and the "Mayfly" rules are an alternate ruleset that allows the GM to roll. Instead of the GM rolling in opposition though, they roll to see if any Twists happen, either positive, mixed, or negative.
Session Zero
Lots of good stuff here, from safety tools (including a list of common lines/veils) and how to run a session zero. The book outlines 3 important things for Session Zero, as well as some "if you have times things" They are...
- Setting Goals - Describe the goals of your character, what sort of thing you want to experience and so on.
- Discussing Tone = There's more on this later so I'll leave it here for now.
- Core Rules - Make sure everyone understands the basics. This can minimize stops later on.
If you have time...
- Make a ship - Since the ship is something the entire party will be part of, using it as a communal tool can help get everyone on the same page and in the right mindset for the game.
- Discuss Themes - A more broad version of the Goal one, figuring out specific topics you want to cover.
- Set an initial goal - What direction do you want to go first?
- Fill in the crew's history - Find ways to connect them, either to the world or each other.
- Lay some Groundwork - This is talking about what's true in your version of Wildsea in broad strokes. This one leads us nicely to...
Unsetting and Framing Questions
Unsetting questions are used in Wildsea as both Session Zero questions that the players help provide some flavor to the world ("What are the Spires and why do the wildsailors avoid sailing between them" is one listed). The trick to these is that there is no right answer. This isn't "answer by committee". This is "each person can have their own idea on what something is". Even if you don't use it, it gets the creative juices flowing. You can specify certain players to answer questions, but it's also advised to just let people jump in and answer.
It is also advised to use these as a pre-regular-session warmup. A way to shift people from the pregame chatter to getting invested. It's a creative exercise to ease everyone in.
Framing Questions on the other hand, are true. Things like "What do you think about X" "What is the story you tell about your ship" "What is a feat that you are associated with out on the waves/gossip".
These taken on their own aren't a big deal, but I really like how Wildsea has laid out so many things clearly. They are giving both concrete examples of these questions, and how to make up your own as needed.
Planning
Not too much out of the ordinary here. Don't focus on beat-by-beat things, but focus on the following...
- Focus on Moments - Something like the introduction of an important NPC, or a predefined wreck, ruin, port or island with not everything figured out, A particular hazard or threat you want to use, or my favorite, the "chickens coming home to roost", or as the book calls it: Vivid consequence or knock-on effect from one of the crew's previous actions.
- Focus on Characters - Prep to zero in on character motivation, drives, and hooks. Put them in situations where their abilities are useful or opportunities for characters to shine.
- Focus on the world - The players aren't everything. Think of places they haven't been and just make some shit up. Oh, Carnack island had their annual honey festival. Splitbridge Port had a pirate problem recently, but has been recovering. The book calls this "making the world of Wildsea a character instead of a backdrop"
Maintaining Tone and Pacing
This is the section that made me pause and start this post. I love when books put a thing in to help you visualize tone for the table and how to think about your game. It tells you about tonal shifts and goes "hey it's alright if things slip or you decide the original tone wasn't working", and gives a few tones and how you can tweak a few rules. it's samples are
- Positive but Dangerous. Cut rolls every so often due to threats, keep tracks open when in doubt, give information freely when you can, make ports friendly but with problems.
- Light, Fun and Maybe Even a Little Bit Silly - Take player input, focus on sound and color to make the world vibrant, make NPCs distinctive as possible.
- Dour and Deadly. Cut often and remember Impact, forcing players to use their tools and tricks. Treat the undercrew as expendable, so people you hire may not stick around. Offer death as an option to player.
Now, a ton of other games have rules like this, like Gritty Realism in 5e or whatever. I just like the way they're laid out here with a bit more detail than I've given. I think Shadowrun did this too (naturally), but it's still something I appreciate every time.
As for pacing, it's a lot of standard fare, but also gives examples and advice for running the game as a one shot, a limited campaign/some-shot, and a full on campaign, including more tweaks to use and what types of play works well.
There's also a section here about the general shape for a "classic" Wildsea session. While not essential, the "classic" experience has the following scene types.
- Scene of Exploration
- A transition from place to place or time to show off changing mood or tone (Going from singing Tree Shanties to a dark cave where the smallest sound echoes)
- A journey (or moment of physical travel) - spotlight distance covered
- A time for crew to interact with each other
- A time for the world to shine - something unusual, interesting, and/or explorable
- A discovery of something new or unexpected
Toolbox
This section talks about how to use the conversation as a tool, and to not be too harsh on metagaming (unless it derails the game), since that meta-conversation could be useful to you, pointing out things that might need clarification in the future, things to hint at, and potential things to incorporate in the future.
Wildsea does a lot of little things that feel like common sense, and puts them into paper. It feels like a more complete GM section than others I've read because this feels like it's got a good focus.
Focus is next, and that's just how you spotlight players. They recommend keeping each character's name in a "tracker" so you can track who has acted and reacted, so you know who needs a little spotlight in a scene. Knowing that Bob has taken an Action, a Reaction, and another Action, because he was the most assertive player, lets you know that you may need to shift the camera off him over to Chelsea, who has only taken a reaction so far.
Tracks are this game's version of Clocks, defaults to 3. Gives situations when to use 3 (most actions), 2 or less (a reminder track, even if it can be filled on a single roll, but acts like a reminder of what stakes are or steps they wanted to take and so on), and 4 or more (challenging). It also talks about when to be open, hidden with the name or progress obscured, or completely secret with the tracks. Again, it's Clocks. But I don't remember a FITD game recommending a 1 or 2 segment clock that can be filled easily. They also recommend breaking big tracks into smaller sections (A length 5 track is a 2 + 3 segment tracks, with something big happening after 2, but the total thing not being resolved)
Talking about Cut again from the previous post I made, I like that Cutting dice is also something that's available to players. They can opt to neuter their highest roll in order to increase the Impact of their roll.
Jesus Christ this is long so far.
OK, back at it.
I like how they describe setting a scene and what to keep in mind when running it. How to focus on Interactivity, Dynamics, and Atmosphere, giving examples of each. With Atmosphere, they give two sample sentences one is something I probably would have done, and the second is a much better one.
- You make your way across the jetties to meet with the skiff's captain.
- You make your way across the jetties, old wooden planks creaking beneath your feet. You can see the captain ahead, relaxing at the prow of her skiff with a shotgun slung lazily across one shoulder.
The goal was to add sound and emotion to a simple description to open up more possibilities to the players. Could cross over with Dynamics if you bring in the sound of the creaking tree bough waves and the sharp calls of birds in the distance.
The game also uses Montage so this section covers how to use them. Montages are great for handling things like Downtime or passing a lot of time. Good for exploring a new area to just snapshot things. I believe each player gets a single task during a montage.
Journey Rules
OK! FINALLY! Something I feel like I can hook into more. Steps are as follows.
- Last minute prep
- Set your progress Track, and maybe a Risk track if there's something pursuing you. A Riot Track is used if your crew is uneasy or disgruntled, if you have a troublesome passenger, or dangerous cargo. If you want them to pick out where they're going after leaving port, a 2 step "Pathfinding" Track works too.
- An average journey should be a track between 4 and 8, usually 6. This means you can break the travel portion up into phases, putting a setpiece in the middle of it after they have potentially found some more trouble or salvage along the way.
- Time - It's not advised to set a thing like "oh when x time passes mark a Track", but it's still advised for GMs to denote the passage of time.
I kinda like these rules? Yeah. I think I like these rules. While on the player side, from what I remember, there are two Mandatory jobs that need to be done while travelling (Helming the ship and the lookout), there are others that can modify the travel time. These things working in conjunction with the travel specifics, especially the Track...
Fuck ok. I think you could work this into a hexcrawl pretty damn easily. If you wanted to make the distance of 1 Hex = 1 Track, you would absolutely need roles for the players to take that could either mitigate some complications or speed it up. I guess Dungeon World did something similar, though much less mechanical, with their travel rules, but with how many chances for random treasure, things to explore and so on in Wildsea, this works really well here and might work GREAT for other games where you focus on discovery, a la Numenera.
If you juice the engines in Wildsea, with a player manning the engines, you can cover more distance and thus, mark off more spots on the Track, but also, it becomes harder to spot anything coming up. It's a very interesting system, and I like it a lot.
Following that, there are examples of positive and negative things that can happen while travelling, such as finding plot hooks, resources, cargo, making new relationships or even getting milestones for advancement, as well as trigger Mires, add unforseen troubles, injuries, vendettas, and damage.
Good section, moving on to the last one I'm covering, since everything after this is about various setting things.
NPCs
First things first, book differentiates between incidental NPCs and Integral NPCs. There's stuff here I like, so once again, bullet list hooooooooooo!
- Incidental does not mean "Unimportant" They can be interacted with once, but they should still be distinct in some way. A character that exists but isn't super cemented in the world itself. Though it could become Integral, a la the often adopted Goblin Mascot NPC in some D&D groups.
- "Integral" does not mean "Omnipresent". Just because they're influential to the narrative doesn't mean they're always there.
- Integral does not mean Verbose - Sometimes these fuckers need to keep their mouths shut and not interject every though in every scene they're in. If you're escorting a child somewhere, maybe don't have the kid pipe up with every thought in their head as the party talks.
- Integral doesn't mean Important - I like one line in this blurb: "While an NPC may be a catalyst for the plot, the crew should never be put into the position of just 'following' the whims of a single integral NPC". This then goes on to talk a bit about player agency (natch), but you get the point. The players can receive direction, but they should have some space to either twist it, chop it, or disregard it and suffer any potential consequences. Or at least feel like they are a part of what's going on more than being the NPC's pawns.
- Integral NPCs are the connective line between the players and the world. A reference point and a source of information.
OK JESUS GODDAMN CHRIST
DONE
FUCK
Ok. There's some good stuff here. Sure, Tracks are "Horizontal Clocks", but I like that they're not afraid to go "Hey, a 1 step clock is Good, actually", something I haven't seen in FITD games, where the shortest clock I remember seeing is 4 steps. I like how the game lays out cleanly a few different variants for things, so you can find your own style along the way and figure things out. I like that it's combined a lot of modern GM advice in one section.
Another day I'll get to player stuff. For now, have a good one.