Alright, so I've looked at the GM Section and cruised through the parts of the Wildsea, so now we're going to move on to more GM centered stuff: Hazards
The first big thing to cover is that everything from an enemy captain, their crew, a storm, a trapped chamber, or an aggressive flying shark are all classified as "Hazards", and are either Basic or Complex. Every Hazard has the following:
- Name & Description - What it is and what does it look like. I want to verbatim quote a section here because I think it's fascinating: "... along with guidance in italics on why or when you want to use it in your game". This feels like it puts you in the mindset of like, double checking your work to make sure it works when you need it. A kind of "Hey, how would another person use this thing if they didn't have access to your brain"
- Drives - If it's smart or has agency, it'll have a want and a basic behavior pattern.
- Presence - What the PCs experience when seeing the Hazard, such as sight, smell, feel, et al.
- Resources - Salvage, charts, secrets or other things obtainable from this hazard.
- Aspects - Includes what the party will be dealing with or types of damage it will do.
- Quirks - An optional section to put a spin on things. Not every Hazard will have a Quirk, but it may be helpful to distinguish similar encounter types across your game.
- Hooks & Encounters - With really big Hazards, they might lead to specific encounters or special situations, maybe be part of a quest.
- Special Extras - Catchall category for anything not covered above. May not be needed every time.
That's our basic vocabulary for this section. The next section is about Using Hazards. One thing I like is that it tells you roughly how much to spotlight the Hazard. According to the book, a Hazard should perform one Major action and one Minor action for each "round" of actions the party takes. With the Focus Tracker from the previous entry, you can keep track of who has been spotlighted and how many times so far. This isn't a game with regular Initiative, so you need to manage it like a lot of other story-forward games.
it also advises to not have enemies that deal a lot of damage every round, nor ones that have super high tracks or immunities to the most common damage type among combat types the party has. The goal is to make dynamic encounters, not create a slog. They use the phrase "Challenge, but don't Overwhelm" in a sidebar about this.
The next big section I am interested in though, is Limits and types of Tracks to use for an encounter. Limits are a number you set that's like, an absolute maximum length of progress that the party needs to clear to finish an encounter and clear the Hazard. Limits are like, the combination of various Tracks you use. So a Limit of 4 is a brief encounter, that might be a single 4 step Track, or two 2 step Tracks titled different things. The "Average" Hazard has a Limit between 7-12.
So I'm going to take a stab at interpreting some intention behind this. A game like Blades in the Dark has something like "Oh, getting past the guard beast is an 8 Step clock, good luck." Wildsea wants to break down each Hazard and use the Hazard's Aspects as potential tracks, meaning THEY CAN BE DISABLED. The book describes a Pinwolf, a Limit 12 creature with the following Tracks: Pin Limbs (4), Corkscrew Tongue (2), Staccato Movement (2), Armored Hide (4). When the players do something that affects it, you mark the track that makes the most sense. This is how you can turn your Hazard's Aspects into something active and dynamic.
Beyond the Damage tracks, there is just... the Blades in the Dark Clock Track. It's called the "Strategy Track". It's recommended to mix in a Strategy Track with the Damage Tracks to reach the Limit (So for the Pinwolf, maybe there's a mystery track that's like, 2 steps long. To account for this, I decide to remove the Corkscrew Tongue track, now the players have a mystery Track that they dont' know what fills it, but if they decide to go for a Distraction, you can mark it if they work on that, if they want to go for a trap, you could mark that too). The Strategy Track is a good catch-all for whatever the party might do to bypass it in ways that aren't dealing with its Aspects. You could also forego the entirety of the Damage Tracks and just make multiple Strategy Tracks to account for multiple ideas the party has during planning, like so.
Theo's crew go for a few different approaches to the pinwolf's threat, so Theo makes tracks for each of them as they're discussed. Attacking the Limbs gets 3 boxes, and can be marked by damage. Masking your Scent gets 2 boxes - it's a great idea that might give advantage throughout the rest of the combat. Cut the Tongue gets 2 boxes and their overall goal, Driving it Away, gets 5 boxes.
And every time a Track fills, either Damage or Strategy, the dynamic of the fight should change. The enemy takes a new approach in combat, or they reveal a new attack relating to an unfilled Track, or if it's a natural encounter, the waves get worse, or whatever. Something in the environment reacts to the filled Track.
Also, you can use the Track system to indicate a 'wind up'. Reinforcements, a dragon's breath attack, a bombardment, a giant sweep... so on.
To create a Hazard, you start with a Concept, which should let a name, it's Presence, and maybe even Resources. From that, this should hopefully get the juices flowing, and you then give it some Aspects. They advise using the most interesting parts of your Concept to make the Aspects, since these are the mechanized parts of the Hazard...
And that's it. That's all you really need for a simple, one-off Hazard. Adding the other things makes it more fleshed out sure, and you should do that if you're going to make a more complex Hazard, but for a basic thing like "Shipwreck vortex" might not need a Drive or too many things beyond Description, Presence, Aspects, and Resources.
The next page is dedicated to how to use Forces of Nature as Hazards, which is good. It's good to give people ideas on how to Encounter-ify some non-standard encounter things.
Following that, you start to get some explicit Hazard examples. Flame, for example is one of them. Fire is Incredibly dangerous in WIldsea. The Quirk of flame is so cool: "Malice: Some flames know what it is. Some fires want nothing more than to spread." Sure, Fire can just be a mindless force, but sometimes... sometimes... it's more.
A sidebar in this section a few pages in is titled Wonders & Horrors. These are perfect like, side objectives, random occurances, or Obstacles, since both affect Mires, which are like, negative debilities. Wonders clear them, as seeing something once-in-a-lifetime can restore your spirit, while a Horror can trigger a Mire. The sample ones given are as follows (They have more descriptions but I just want to give the titles)
- Sudden Migration (Wonder)
- The Corpse Sun (Horror)
- Undercanopy Lights (Wonder)
- Roachriver (Horror)
- Whisper of Salt (Wonder)
- Leviathan's Passage (Horror)
- Titanofruit (Wonder)
- A Grave Grove (Horror)
- A True Heirloom (Wonder)
- Hollow Monument (Horror)
The book gives descriptions and sample hazards for Forces of Nature, Beasts, Insects, Plants, Constructs, Marauders, Illnesses, and Leviathans.
As a quick "Next chapter" bonus, since I probably won't post about them, I want to share one of the Realms of the default Wildsea setting: The Foxloft. The Foxloft is located in an area of green and gold leaves and occupied by a mass of foxes and fox-like beings. The page gives several types of Elements of the area, along with some descriptions in bulletpoint format.
So! This is neat. It's nothing groundbreaking for people used to games with Clocks, but I could imagine it being a shock for people used to hit points, and not treating travel, combat, and exploration the same mechanically. I like it so far. This game seems really cool the more I wrap my head around it.