anyway.

I'm probably being dense here, but I just want to double-check that I understand bargains correctly.

Let's say that I'm playing "Young Zeb Harris" and you are playing "Pigfuck Dan". Dan has got "Young Zeb Harris swore to back me for ship's captain." on his sheet.

Now, during play, you get to withhold up to 5 dice (Zeb's Soul) from any roll I make, right? Regardless of Dan being involved in the scene, or in the same location, or whatever? And once you do so, that bargain is voided, and I no longer have to back you for captain?

Could you withhold less than 5 dice if you wanted? Could you withhold a single die five times before the bargain was complete? Or must it be the full amount, just once (which is what I suspect).

And, with the "back you for captain" part. Who determines if the bargain is fulfilled? Me, you, the GM? I could see it being a mechanical thing sometimes, but not for others (when "X swore to help me", what counts as enough "help"?)

So let's say that I do back you for captain in a vote, I am them free of the bargain, right? Regardless of you winning or losing? No way for you to withhold any Soul dice on that bargain, and so on.

I dare say I'll find some more, as I continue reading :)

Oh, and what somebody said on RPG.Net about Poison'd sounds very accurate from what I've seen; "Poison'd is to pirates what the HBO series Deadwood was to the western".

Your interpretation's good in every particular. And as you suspect: I get to withhold 5 dice, once.

For fulfilling ambiguous bargains, go with the "reasonable person" standard. If that fails and the two principals in the bargain can't agree, have the rest of the group (including the GM) decide. It won't often come up; bargains are typically concrete enough that you can all see plainly when they're fulfilled.

Also, you may go many game sessions without anyone withholding anyone's soul from a roll. That's fine. Like betrayal in The Mountain Witch, it's the possibility that matters.

Oh, this is important: as GM, be sure to jump in and insist that people write things on their character sheets whenever they strike a bargain, no matter how casual it is, even if they don't intend to invoke the bargain mechanism at all. Keep an ear out and interpret what they say toward striking bargains.

Oh, another followup question that occurs to me. You can withhold 5 dice, once, from any roll, right?

What happens if I'm rolling less than 5 dice—Let's say you want me to lose a "Going into Danger" type of roll, i.e. Devil vs. Ambition—so you decide to withhold dice from me.

My Ambition is only 2, so do I roll 1 die, zero dice (getting no successes—but what happens with ties?), is it an automatic failure, or does it work rather like Sorcerer, where the GM gets bonus dice in their pool? Or some other combination?

Or can you only withhold Soul dice when Soul is (at least part of) the dice pools I'm rolling? If so, what happens in an "Attack someone helpless" contest? Do you reduce the pool I'm rolling (i.e. Brutality), or do you reduce my character's Soul rating instead (i.e. the dice the GM will be rolling?)

Withhold dice from any roll, not just soul rolls. Withhold dice down to zero, so it's pretty much an automatic failure, a tie only if the GM rolls no hits.

But most of the time you'll withhold them from a fight roll, not from a success roll.

Do NPC crews help their captains like PCs do?  Or is that folded into the Xs from a difference in profile?  In the latter case I'm assuming that the Dagger should be a little below average, as far as fighting ships go, but I'm confused then about the rules for spending Xs in big fights to take out single pirates.

NPC crews don't help their captains.

The rules for spending Xs to take out single pirates are for when one side wants some particular member of the other side dead or out of the fight. For NPCs, "out of the fight" won't have any mechanical effect on the GM's dice, but it might have in-fiction consequences.

The GM can spend Xs to take out the PCs, too.

Can a roll be reduced by more than one bargain at a time?

If so, and this would reduce Brinksmanship below zero, is the stat reduced to zero or counted as negative when adding extra dice from Xs?

Eg: a pirate has Brinksmanship 6, Soul 4.  Two other pirates remove dice by calling on bargains.  His Brinksmanship drops, effectively to zero, but he has 3Xs to spend for extra dice.  Does he roll 1 die or 3 dice?  Does the order in which this happens matter?

Also, about the sins:

I know that it is important to have a hard list, but there are two other ones that I'd really like to see there: Fornication (which seems like it would nicely replace the perhaps slightly specific Adultery) and Cannibalism (which would add extra bite to the Hell Cruel Fortune).

You can absolutely arrange it, timingwise, so that the effect is a negative stat. Maybe that should mean that the rule is, yes, it makes a negative stat. Dunno.

Cannibalism, huh. Maybe it can be a sin like backsliding - only available in play.

I decided on purpose that plain screwing isn't a sin. Funny, huh?

I kind of wondered about sins myself—I get the sense there's an arbitrary level of sin that's so pervasive it can't really be termed a sin, or has lost its teeth: gambling, whoring, and drinking come to mind (noting that Adultery might include whoring).  I suppose one wishes to avoid creating a point-buy kind of situation.  ("Drinking, Whoring, Dereliction, Gambling, and Laziness are 'half-sins', and you must have two of them to equal a regular sin.")

And as always, Mr. Baker, your stuff is a rollicking read.

~Madu

Re: bargains.  I was just looking for the sort of case that puzzles players once in a blue moon.

As for the sins, I can quite understand that.  It makes sense for a game in which mutiny appears on the list of sins.  On the other hand, I bet there are some pirates who wouldn't consider "plain screwing" a sin, but would think fornication is.  That is more the result of a lack of vocabulary than anything else.

Another way to look at it is: you know how if you choose no sins, your Devil is still 2? Maybe that's from gambling, drinking, whoring, swearing, doing random violence, covetousness, working on the Sabbath ...

I kinda want Falsehood to be a sin, but only because it might be a fun thing in play.

Oo! What about Insulting a Pony?

Y'all are pussies. Those things aren't sins. I'll gut ye ter prove it. Arr.

I posted this on the lumpley forum, but Ill do it here as well:

Lets say two characters are in a fist fight. They roll, one side looses, the player escalates and... draws a weapon. What happens?

If you draw a weapon to help you win the fistfight, you stay in the fistfight. You've just escalated according to the rules.

If you draw a weapon because you're sick of losing the fistfight and it's time to do real violence, you accept the consequences of losing the fistfight, then launch a new fight to match the weapon.

For color : when dice are rolled, what matters is just whether you get 4, 5 or 6, that's a 50/50 chance. So, let's replace dice by pieces of eight.

More seriously, I'm a bit uncomfortable with leisure. To me, it lacks mechanical effect. There's a list of what one can do, right. But then? How does it affect the game? How does it relate to ambition?

The absolute only way to get close to Governor Rutherford and his daughter (for instance) is to spend leisure to do it. There's no earthly reason for the GM to put them on a boat for you (and in fact the GM should not).

Leisure doesn't need any more mechanical oomph than that - the game's fiction and its mechanics are coequal, not one subservient to the other.

Sorry if this is too nitpicky, but I think the numbers for Profile of fortresses might be wrong? It says add at most 3 positive traits to a base value of 12. It then says that 14 or 15 is average and that 16 is an exceptional fortress. But wouldn't 15 be the max?

Just trying to clarify here. ^_^

When a character suffers a disfigurement as described under Deadly Wounds, does it reduce the pirate's Profile like the disabilities chosen at character creation, or are disabilities and disfigurements different things altogether?

Yes, it reduces the pirate's Profile.

Anna, I'm sure you're right. 13 or 14 for a usual fortress and 15 for an exceptional one, same as for a ship of the line.

I don't have the book handy - that IS the same as for a ship of the line, right?

I believe so?

Cool. I don't know whether a fortress SHOULD be the same profile as a ship of the line, but for the sake of the game it might as well be, I figure.

Oh! That reminds me. The cruel fortune the storm is wrong, it's a relic of an old way of calculating Profile. The storm should have a Profile of 9+1d6, probably, maybe.

Hey, Vincent.  Who can call for fights?  Just the GM and when the players fail a roll?  The players, when they feel like it?  Seems to me the players can call fights against one another at a whim.  Is that the case?

Regards,
Daniel

Hey Daniel. Anyone can call for a fight, whenever. Sometimes as GM when one player's pirate attacks another's, I'll call for a round of success rolls before the fight.

Are cruel fortunes ment to be mostly arbitrarily brought into play by the GM as he sees fit?

Ah, that's interesting Vincent.  From my reading of the text it sounded like a fight could only be called by the GM when a player failed a success roll.  That changes the landscape a bit.

Regards,
Daniel

Hi Vince,

Seems like no one's posted here in an age, but I've read through Poison'd twice now and I've still got a number of questions about some of the mechanics.

For one, do GM's get X's? It says in the book that GM's never get X's but you contradicted that in this thread. If GM's do get X's are they globaly attributed to the GM or does each individual NPC have a store of X's?

I have some other questions about how to run a company to company/mob battle when one side is the PCs and the other is the NPCs. It doesn't really seem that the NPCs have a snowballs chance in hell against the PCs given the fact that the captain is getting additional dice from the crew and Xs can more than compinsate for being outmatched by the NPCs profile.

I love the promise of this game, but I need some help hammering out some of the crunch so it makes sense to me.

Thanks,

~FSC

FireSoCold@hotmail.com

Cool!

Ignore everything this thread says about Xs... In fact, the bulk of this thread is about the ashcan, isn't it? So treat this whole thread as unreliable.

About fighting mob to mob:

When the captain hands dice to the other players, remind them that (a) if they hold onto the dice instead of rolling them in for the captain, they get Xs, and (b) if they roll the dice in for the captain, they're fighting, and they have to use or lose all the Xs they've accumulated.

If the PCs are strongly united and have a store of Xs, yes, they can take on a much bigger enemy and expect to win. That's fine! That's the ideal case for the PCs. I think that what you'll find in play is that the PCs never really get their ideal case.

Oh, this is interesting!

About point (b): if the non-captain players decide to fight, and use their Xs to help the captain, if they win, do they retain any at the end of the fight?

mario.bolzoni@gmail.com

They don't! The captain gets Xs for winning the fight, and everybody else is out.

Okay. So, that clears up the issue about GM Xs except for one little thing. Since this thread is mostly regarding the ashcan and not the ?first edition? printing; is the description of the Cruel Fortune: Accursing correct in the book as it is written? Specifically about the bit where the GM gets 2 Xs for every fight and that?s the only time you (as the GM) ever get Xs? Just want to clarify that one last bit on the Xs.

Moving on?

I?m still unclear about mob combat when there is an NPC side. Everything in the book seems clear cut and dry when one PC wishes to have a conflict with another PC, or even a PC versus a single NPC?the rules seem to work great. Fast, deadly, colorful, and narrative. However, when one side comprised of a unified PC crew goes up against any company/mob/ship consisting of NPCs?is gets a little hazy and I think I?m reading the rules wrong. This is how I understand it thus far: I?ll use The Dagger vs. The HMS Resolute as an example.

- Assuming my PCs choose to make The Dagger with no particular positive or negative characteristics. This means she is a two-masted, ship rigged, Bermuda sloop with 16 guns and a company of 80 salty dogs to crew her, which in turn equates to a profile of 8.

- Now let?s throw her against The Resolute per the example in the book: A three-masted warship with 22 guns and some where around 200 men on board. Profile: 11.

- The crew of The Dagger, lead by a PC captain with a brinksmanship of 6 and a profile of 4 along with five other PC crew members loyal to their new captain, decide it?s a good idea to charge The Resolute and preemptively end their worries by sending her to Davy Jones? locker. In terms of in-character decision making this sounds like a foolish idea, but when I look at the resulting battle wagged with the dice?It?s not a half bad plan.

- Pursuit begins and it?s a contest of PC captain vs. NPC captain. Since this is a ship to ship battle, I?m assuming that the profiles of the ships are compared to determine the dice I (the GM) will use for this fight.The Dagger?s 8 vs. The Resolute?s 11 profile makes for a difference of three which is added to my base of 6 fight dice.

- So I?m rolling 9 dice. My PC?s captain takes up his brinksmanship of 6 dice and hands one of these dice to each of the five PCs in his crew. This is ofcourse assuming that since the PC?s are manning the guns, crawling the rigging, loading weapons, and preparing to board, they along with their captain giving the orders constitute a ?side? where the NPC captain and his crew do the same. The non-captain PCs in turn each add another die to their hand and since they all collectively want to be rid of The Resolute they opt not to betray their good captain and roll their dice along with his. When all is said and done there are 11 dice rolled on the PC?s side against 9 dice on mine.

- Based on that, a pirate sloop going up against a better armed English warship has a greater than average chance of sinking her. Mind you if the PCs had decided to design The Dagger differently, they could?ve had a higher profile; offsetting the dice to 13 or even 14 against the GM?s 9. These odds are consistent in every phase of the battle vs. The Resolute because I?m not even factoring in the possibility that the PC?s captain can trump the NPCs even further by expending Xs.

If this is what you intended when you created this system, I?m totally cool with that! I like a cinematic feel to a pirate game and fictionally I can easily conceive how a smaller pirate vessel could overwhelm and sink an English warship provided the pirates where faster and able to make good use of increased maneuverability or capitalize on the weaknesses a larger ship has vs. a smaller one. I just want to make sure I understand how the rules work when my player group (who numbers in at least 6 besides myself) decides to deal with The Resolute or any ?PC side vs. NPC side? conflict for that matter. I felt like I missed something when I realized that a group of PCs could just go bitch slap the hell out of The Resolute with their starting Xs alone even before they repair The Dagger. I suppose I should just scale up The Resolute?s profile when dealing with a player group of this size. Between having Xs to spend and the ability for PC crew to ?aid? their captains with additional dice, PCs seem to have loads of advantages stacked against strictly NPC threats.

So, just to make sure I?ve got this right?.

Is there anything I screwed up in my example?

We?ve established that GM?s don?t have Xs to counteract any used by the PCs. But in PC mob vs. NPC mob fights, does the NPC captain have officers that he can give some of his fight dice to just as a PC captain hands out brinksmanship dice to his fellow PC mates? Is there anything NPCs have to offset PC advantages in fights?

One last question?

In a PC mob vs. NPC mob fight, only the PC captain spends his Xs on the dice, right? And at the end of the fight, only the PC captain gets awarded Xs for an advantageous victory. But if a non-captain PC decides to aid his captain by rolling into a fight, he looses all his Xs at the end of combat because he participated in the fight. How are non-captain Xs used in a mob fight? Why would a non-captain PC ever forfeit the 8 Xs he?s built up just to add ONE additional die to his sides fight if abstaining only meant keeping his 8 Xs and gaining an additional 2? Even if his character really wanted to join that fight, it seems like a piss poor player choice.

Vincent, I want to thank you in advance for weathering this deluge of questions. I know it?s a lot. But, I?ve been roleplaying for longer than I care to admit and I?ve run numerous successful campaigns in dozens RPGs. About six months ago I got interested in the ?Indie? style of RPG format and I?ve ever since been considering bringing something new to my players. I?ve picked up and read Poison?d, Sorcerer, The Mountain Witch, Cold City, and The Burning Wheel. Poison?d will be the first ?Indie RPG? experience my gaming group will have. I know my players and they?re going to need to understand the ambiguity of certain rule systems. This game is a bit different from the conventional stock they?re used to, but everyone?s exited to play. That?s the only reason I?m asking these questions so explicitly, because I know that?s how my players will come at me when the game kicks off. I just want to make sure I got it right. So, I appreciate your patience in fielding my questions.

Thanks,

~FSC

Oh....wait....OH!!!

I think I just figured it out! LOL

Cool, I'm glad. Please share!

Right?.So, why would a PC with so many Xs join a captain in a mob fight? Cause in my above example, The Dagger would be totally boned in that fight if even one of those PCs chose not to throw his dice in. One PC who doesn?t fight equals two fewer dice the captain rolls. That could make a difference in the fight and a HUGE difference if more then one PC abstained from the battle as the captain will then have bitten off more than The Dagger can chew. If a PC chooses to not fight on their side, they get two additional Xs, are safe from the consequences of the fight, and that?s the only way a non-captain will be able to retain their Xs after a mob battle. A PC who is pursuing his own agenda will want to use those Xs in a fight in which the player has a chance to retain Xs in an advantageous victory. And even if the group is united under the Jolly Roger at first, there will eventually be deceit and betrayal in order to further their own ambitions and agendas. Otherwise, if all the PCs aided the captain everytime there is a mob fight, the captain?s player will be the only one to ever have Xs from session to session. I think the other players would eventually tire of this and want to retain some Xs of their own. And this is why, as you said: in a conflict like this, PCs don?t often get their ideal case. I see now. It?s all a matter of pursuing your own selfish goals vs. cooperating with the group in order to overcome almost impossible obstacles.

Also, I?ve realized that most battles at sea are going to consist of several consecutive fights. Pursuits inevitably start cannon battles which may proceed to broadside once one of the ships is disabled and there is a possibility of boarding action immediately after a broadsides fight. The PCs will only have Xs for the first fight of any extended conflict right? Realizing that, Xs don?t seem to be the trump card against NPCs that I thought they were. My PCs will still need to choose their fights wisely no matter how many Xs they?ve built up.

Ah, its all starting to make sense now! I think that the answers to most of my questions could?ve been found in actual game play, but I just wanted to get it straight before I ventured into running a game of Poison?d. I do have a few more questions about spending Xs though.

1) If you are a non-captain PC in a mob vs. mob fight, you can spend 1 X at the end of the fight to mitigate any harm to your character due to your side loosing the fight. Is there anything else a non-captain PC can spend their Xs on before they loose them after the fight?

2) Before a fight, a PC has the option of spending 3 Xs to outright kill an NPC. Does this require a success roll? It says then that this affects the GMs dice. How exactly does this affect the GMs dice for the following fight?

3) During a mob fight, the captain can spend at least 1 X to eliminate one non-captain member of the opposing crew from the rest of the fight. Since this rule specifies that this also eliminates that opposing crews dice from the fight and also mentions that this can?t affect the GMs dice, I?m assuming this expenditure of Xs is only useful in a PC mob vs. PC mob fight. Is that correct?

4) Could you please answer my original question about the Cruel Fortune : Accursing?

Right on! Great.

Usually when you have a prolonged battle like that, you'll have a round of success rolls between each fight. Like: pursuit vs escape, success rolls, firing at range, success rolls, broadsides, success rolls, boarding.

1) You can spend your Xs on anything from the list.

2) No success roll required. It affects the GM's dice if it affects the enemy's profile. This used to be the default, but nowadays it may be pretty rare.

3) I think that's correct.

4) Accursing is correct as written.

Thanks for asking! I love to answer questions about my games' rules.

Cool, I take the chance to make some questions of my own!

1) When making a success roll, GM throws away a dice; in the example, you wrote, "suppose that you roll 1 4 5 5 and I roll 3 3 6. Your roll counts for 3 - the 4, the 5, the 5 - and my roll counts for 1 - the 6. You take 2 advantage, 2 being the difference between your 3 and my 1".
The thrown success still count in order to calculate the advantage, or is a mistake and the player takes 3 advantage?

2) About bargains (page 18): ?Think broadly about bargains. "Row harder you bastards, or I'll beat you bloody" is a bargain, if they row harder: "we rowed harder, so Hugh McMinn swore he wouldn't beat us bloody"?; wouldn't this be fulfilled as soon as Hugh McMinn don't beat them bloody, at once?

3) I've not clear which version of Accursed is right, if the one on this FAQ or the one in the manual...

4) Threats count as bargains; a threat like "I'll kill you" is a bargain "John swore to kill" me; this means I have John's Soul untile he kills me or I use the bargain to reduce his dice?

Thanks.

Good!

1) It's a mistake in the example. The GM should throw away a success.

2) It would be fulfilled as soon as Hugh McMinn didn't beat them bloody, but not necessarily at once. It'd last until Hugh McMinn certainly didn't beat them bloody.

3) The one in the pamphlet ... Well, the one in the current pamphlet. Oh hell I'll just c&p it here. This is the correct one:

Accursing
Bring accursing into play if ever any player?s pirate is cursed by one with the talent or authority to make binding curses.

To be rid of a curse: the one who pronounced the curse can revoke it, or else one with greater talent or greater authority can counteract it.

4) Sure.

This is awesome! Thanks for taking the time to answer these questions Vincent. It's all coming together. I can't wait to start playing. I'll let you know if anything else comes up.

~FSC

I played the game, and I very enjoyed it! I hope to play it again soon (byt I think I wouldn't be able till May, when I'll be master); in the meanwhile, another doubt arose, about fighting on a side:

- the captain can or must give one dice to each (wo)man fighting under him?
- the non-captain players can refuse the die, giving it back to the captain?
- if a pirate betray the captain, not trowing the die, he still counts as having fought, then losing his Xs? or he keeps them adding the two for the betrayal?

Thanks.

Cool! I'm glad you enjoyed it.

The captain chooses who to give a die to. If you figure someone's going to betray you, don't give them a die - but that means they can't fight for you.

If the captain gives you a die, you can't refuse or give it back. Pick up a die to match it, and decide whether to roll them or hold them.

If you hold your dice, your character visibly and obviously does not fight - the captain knows you've disobeyed. You do keep all your Xs, and add 2 more.

Great, thanks!

Hi, I'm here again!
I was thinking about my last experience with Poison'd, where some players (and the GM) said that the game lacks something to manage initiative, an order in which characters act; how do you manage this, usually?

When it's necessary, I manage it by backing up, carefully establishing where each character is, what each character's doing at the instant the action starts, and then deciding by judgment which actions must happen first and which must come later.

For the most part, the characters can act at the same time and the players can roll dice at the same time, and it works fine. Have both players roll, and when you say what happens, follow the logic of both rolls' results.

Awesome, thanks!

Hello Vincent

Should I use 9+1d6 profile for the Storm or go by the first edition book?

Go by the first edition book.

Hi! English isn?t my first lenguage so apologize for my mistakes.

I?m not play Posion yet, but i?ll do soon and i?ve got some doubts about the matter of the mob?s battles.

When you say a player, who isn?t the captain, can spend a x after a mob fight for suffer no harm. What is that? I mean, it go well for beaten and bloodied, disabling or disfiguring and deadly wound? The harm only comes from spend x and no for escalating? And the captain, he allways suffer harm in a mob fight? And, in a mob fight, be cannon to cannon, broadside to broadside or company to company, the crew is killed, few or many. Is that harm? Is that the harm than you can save? If not, when many crew is killed, How that affect the pcs? How do you think solve that thing?

Thanks. I hope you can understand me.

odisete@yahoo.es

Another question, mutilation is the same way as disfigurament or disability?

And another and i think the last. When you won a fight, you can reduce the harm inflict upon the loser. That's the last use of x at the end of the figth. My question is: every fight, only a duel or only a mob fight?
Thanks

Oh, I came here to ask Lord Pengallan's first question. :)

I think I know the answers to these ones, but it doesn't hurt to ask anyway, I guess.

1) When a pirate pc doesn't make good on his bargain with the devil, Abandoned to fate comes into play. Does it apply only to the offending pc, or to the whole crew?

2) When I create an NPC I roll for his brinksmanship. But while a pirate pc rolls his own brinksmanship in fights, I roll 6 dice, modified by profile. Does that mean the NPC's brinksmanship is only good to check if he escalates?

3) If a player, let's say he's armed with a sharpshooter's long musket, spends 3 Xs to kill the captain of the Resolute outright, as soon as it comes into range, do I roll a second in command outright? How would that affect the Resolute's profile, and the Resolute's crew's profile?

4) Do pirates have to keep their bargains to dead people? E.G., let's say a pirate swore to Captain Rutherford that he would deliver the Dagger to him, and then the pirate sharpshooter from the question above killed him before the fight. Is the bargain still valid, somehow?
(My pirate resolved it this way: he took Rutherford's hat, hang it where Brimstone Jack used to hang his own hat in the Dagger's captain's quarters, threw Brimstone Jack's hat to the sea, and threatened of death or worse every pirate if they tried to touch the new hat. I thought it was cool.)

mario.bolzoni@gmail.com

Hey Vincent! Where are you? I hope you aren't kidnapped.

I played your game and i think is a little bit difficult to used to playing it but maybe was because we aren't natural english speakers. But, anyway, is a great, funny and interactive rpg. I like it. But i have new questions.

Only for be sure, the flashbacks can?t come in the middle of a fight, right?

In the plamphet, you start saying than the GM throw away one die before rolls in the succes rolls. After, you say the GM throw away one die and, after the roll, one succes and finally, you say the GM throw away a succes. I did the last, but can you to clarify this?

And the last, i first thought the highest puntuation for stats is allways 8, but last reread the pamphlet (nice by the way) i'm not sure. Once the game start, have a maximum for stats?

Thanks

Holly cow! I forgot one.
In the example Bringing a fight i don't understand well the endure duress. Why, if you command fight broadside, must you throw a endure duress?
Thanks

I thought I answered some of these! I guess not.

comment 49: When PCs fight as part of a mob, you're allowed to hurt them commensurate to the mob's loss. Being a member of a losing mob can count as taking a deadly wound, for instance. The players can spend Xs to avoid it.

comment 50: More or less, yes.

comment 51: Any fight.

comment 52:
1) GM's choice.

2) Yes.

3) Yes. It might affect the ship's and company's profile, but probably won't.

4) The question is, can Captain Rutherford, RIP, still choose to withhold the pirate's soul from a roll? It depends. Ultimately it's up to you as GM, case by case.

comment 53:
1) GM's call.

2) GM throws away one success, after the roll.

3) Once the game starts, there's no imposed maximum for stats. Since there are only 8 sins, the maximum for Devil is 8. There are 13 things to suffer, so the maximum for Brutality is 13. There is no maximum for Ambition.

comment 54: To close from long range to broadsides without fighting, you must endure the other ship's cannonade as you close. The ship's captain must roll to endure it, as it's the ship that suffers for it.

> Since there are only 8 sins, the maximum for Devil is 8.

Though, if you start by wacking your Devil up to 6 with 3 sins committed double, you could push it all the way to 11. Aren't there also a couple of other sins that you can't take to begin with as well—Cannibalism, Backsliding—in the Cruel Fortunes?

Ah yes, right you are.

Hi Vincent,
I don't know if this is the right place to post, but I have a few alternate 'start' scene's for poison'd. Which sorta displaces the whole 'poisoned' theme. They do however revolve around other minor historic pirates of note and work quite well to kickstart the fiction, just as the whole Brimstone Jack story does.

Anyways, should I post here? or email them to you?
On that note, how do we email you or lumpley games? I received my pamphlet of poison'd in the mail, but not the PDF to my email address?
Thanks for your help, and a most Brilliant Game!
Cheers,
noofy

Thanks Vincent for you answers. You solve a lot of my doubts, but i still have two:

A captain allways suffer harm fighting in a mob because he can't spend X. It's that correct?

I still don't understand how works the endure duress in figth with ships. When the pc decides go to broadside directly he must throw endure duress. If he win the game go to directly to Broadside to broadside. But if he lost, what's happens? The game go to Cannon to cannon?

Thanks

Hi Vincent! Some additional questione I thought about while re-reading the rules:

? A ship "defendings" a prize costs 2 and has on it 3 to 6 prize's worth; if pirates hunt for 2 prize's worth, it's possible to use a ship without prize on it, or with only 2? Otherwise, hunting for 2 they'll found at least 3...
? Being the 2 prize's worth a special hunt (i.e., fresh food and water), the pirates get to roll the dice for the prize?
? At the end of a fight, characters can spend X's to inflict harm on the opponent(s); can they inflict harm beyond the escalation level reached in the conflict?
? Let's say a soldier and a pirate want both to shot to the same character; does this count as fighting on a side, though they are enemies?
? In "A fortress", under Cruel Fortunes, you name "Boarding range" as possible range in the fight for approaching the fortress, but in escalation tables you list only Cannon to Cannon and Broadside to Broadside; does this count as an assault weapon to weapon (be it Fist to Fist, Knife to Knife, or whatever), like is (I think) for a ship?
? Let's say I'm fighting Knife to Knife, my opponent lose and doesn't escalate and I want anyway to wound him deadly, so I say "I don't give a fuck he surrender, I stab the bastard!"; what happens? I think he'd not be allowed launching another conflict, because he already lost the Knife to Knife fight (and to avoid he continously abandoning at the first level in order to avoid serious consequences); so, could he only endure duress? Or instead he's allowed to launch another conflict (and so on if again he lose at the first level)?
Same question for other foght's types.
? Is cannibalism a sin?

Thanks!

I got the pdf a few months ago - but it doesn't have the errata incorporated - and the print is so small as to be unreadable.

How about a corrected pdf that is readable?

jkantor267@gmail.com

Hey Vincent, someone threw you overboard?

(Only a little bump to remember the questions, hoping it'll not annoying you.)

Thanks for reminding me, Mauro.

1. A defending ship doesn't carry an additional prize. Instead, its size depends upon the size of the prize already established.

If the pirates are cruising for a prize of 2 - that is, they're looking for a beach to careen upon - and you choose to defend it with a ship, the ship should be a sloop.

2. Yes, roll 2 dice.

3. Yes.

4. Yes.

5. No, it's a fight company to company. The attacking company vs the defending company. Boarding a ship is a fight company to company as well.

6. Your opponent can't surrender and keep fighting. If he surrenders, he endures duress. If he keeps fighting, he escalates. He can't surrender and immediately launch a new fight; if he wants to keep fighting, he must escalate instead.

7. It's not in the book. When I play, cannibalism is a sin, but no pirate can commit it during character creation. Only during play proper.

Vincent, you know how answers breed new questions, right? :)

Let's say I want to kill someone (either a NPC when I don't have 3 Xs, or another PC). I challenge him to a Sword to Sword Fight. I win the first round, and he surrenders. I can't escalate since I'm winning, but I'm not satisfied with first blood, I wanted him dead. What should I do now?

I could say I run him through, Attacking the Helpless, but he surrendered precisely to avoid this, so it somehow doesn't seem fair.

That's exactly what you can do. If he really surrendered, he'll endure duress and suffer the deadly wound. If he fights back, he didn't really surrender after all, he's still fighting and thus has escalated instead. His choice.

Now, he might manage to seize the initiative [not a technical term] while surrendering, in which case maybe he'll get a success roll before you can run him through, or maybe even prevent you from following through at all. It depends on the precise details of the situation.

But under normal circumstances, no, if you say "you surrender? Great! I run you through," his choice is to suck it up, or else to retract his surrender, fight back, and escalate instead.

Hi Vincent!

I Gmed "Poison'd", yesterday; it was a strange game (all the time on "The Dagger" and "The Resolute"), but it was cool.
Though, while playing a couple of doubts come to us:

1) If a PG obtains another weapon (let's say a second pistol), his Profile increases by one?
2) If a character wants to knock out another one, and the second escalates to third level, in addition to a broken bone can the attacker choose to make him stunned, though this is a second level conseguence? Or has him to spend Xs in order to decrease the harm?
3) A player wanted to kill a soldier without him giving alert to others; how to manage this? I did this way: a Stealth, trachery and care test, followed by an Attacking the helpless one, followed by a fight (it always come to a fight); if Stealth is successful and the pirate win the fight, he manage to kill the soldier without alert given; otherwise, he doesn't (Attacking the helpless has no meaning in this regard, simply the pirate attacks a unaware soldier, so Attacking the helpless rule kick in).

Thanks!

1. Sure, but to a maximum of 4.

2. Broken bone plus stunned: sure, when it makes sense.

Stunned instead of a broken bone: spend Xs.

3. That's one way it can go. It depends on the circumstances. Sometimes a single success roll can resolve it.

It should go to a fight only if the victim is still able to fight back after the attack from behind. A successful roll to attack someone unsuspecting can kill the person.

If the attack from behind is enough to kill outright the character is GM's call, based on the fiction, right? Can such a thing kill at once a PG?

About the stunning, I was wondering... if I stun successfully a character and then want to chop hoff his hand, I do it without bargain nor fight?

1. You can't kill a PC outright with no fight. You can give a PC a deadly wound with no fight, though, sure.

2. Yes, sometimes. No guarantees, but it's possible it'll go that way.

Great, thanks!

Next week I'll GM again, this time with five pirates, so I'm re-reading the rules!
I was wondering: you said that, if a soldier and a pirate want both to shot to the same character, this does count as fighting on a side, though they are enemies; what if they can't agree on who is leading (same question if two pirates can't agree on that)?
Thans.

adriana_dardanelli@tin.it

Say "I don't care. One of you has to be the leader for the fight. Make a bargain right now. Bargain. NOW."

Hi Vincent!

I had this discussion with some friends of mine, and we were wondering what do you think about it: in the Escalating part of the rule, you says that advancing to a tie is a win; advancing to a tie by spending Xs it's also a win, or it's a tie?

Then, Soul: when a character's Soul reaches zero, bargaining with that character simply loses the mechanical leverage, does it?

Advancing to a tie by spending Xs is a win.

When a character's soul reaches 0, bargaining with the character loses its leverage, yes.

Hi Vincent,

reading threads about Poison'd on The Forge, I had this doubt:

Me: If a PG obtains another weapon (let's say a second pistol), his Profile increases by one?
Vincent: Sure, but to a maximum of 4.

There is also a maximum for ship and crew's profiles?

I was forgetting one! Can players add a new Ambitions (increasing their stat) only when they fulfill one of them, or can they say in any moment something like, "OK, I want to fuck Ambassador's daughter I saw on the ship"? From the text it seems (at least, to me) that I'd go for the first, but given the strong fiction-first nature of the game the second sounds quite good.

There's no set maximum for a ship's or a company's profile, but there are rules for creating a ship or a company that will determine its profile.

Players can say things like that whenever they want, and pursue them as fully as they like. After play starts, though, the only way to increase your ambition stat is to fulfill your existing ambitions.

Vincent: your game rocks. I played it yesterday with four players, two of them used only to traditional games (WFRP and d20 system, mainly); they really liked the game and the way the mechanics work. One of them wrote to me asking more comments on our game.
It was violent, it was gruesome, it was sinful. It was Poison'd.

So this is pretty old, but I thought worth a shot anyways:  hooks.  A pirate gets his hand cut off and replaced by a hook.  He gets in a fight without his sword, gun, knife, grenades, etc.  Is he still Profile 1?  I personally lean toward having him fight per the knife fight table, unless he is (somewhat literally) disarmed of his hook.  Would that then count as one of his two weapon choices, if he started game with the hook?  Would it count as mutilation, since he presumably does other things badly without all of his fingers?

Awesome! Great question. It's funny that (a) I didn't think of it in design, and (b) it hasn't come up since.

A hook should count as a weapon, yes. So: profile 2, unless he's disarmed of it, and yes, it counts as one of his two weapon choices. And yeah, it would be mutilation.

After a first session of Poison'd with some friends of mine who didn't know each other, this comment from one of them: "We pirate-bonded. That shit is for life." I think there's some truth in that.

Quick clarification:

"Players: when your pirates take the prize, roll that many dice, 2 to 6. Add them together - don't count 4s, 5s, & 6s, sum them. This is the plunder you seize."

When the players add together prize dice, do 4s, 5s and 6s count as +0, or are they rerolled?

In a normal roll, you count 4s, 5s & 6s as hits, and discard 1s, 2s & 3s. Don't do that for prizes! For prizes, just roll the dice and sum them.

For instance: you roll 5 dice for a (large) prize. They come up:
2 2 4 5 6

You sum them:
2+2+4+5+6 = 19

You seize 19 plunder.

Wonderful! I thought maybe we had been doing it wrong all this time.

Next week I will finally get to GM Poison'd for some friends for the first time. After reading and rereading the text, several threads and this FAQ, I still have some questions:

1) PC vs NPC, PC vs PC, ship vs ship/fortress, gang vs mob, thats all clear. But can there be a fight PCs vs mob? Say some PCs are on land and get surrounded by the constabulary and they want to fight. Should this fail outright or should I create a "your-on-your-own crew" with very low profile for the PCs?

2) And company vs fortress, how would that work? Maybe Broadside vs Broadside with the company not dealing any damage but requiring at least one success to advance to company vs company? Or, again, is that just not a possible fight?

3) Broadside vs broadside is ship vs ship, as the text suggests, same as cannon vs cannon, yes? And I also assume a (vanilla) path for a fight at sea would be pursuit -> cannon vs cannon -> broadside vs broadside -> crew vs crew, with possibilities to abort or skip steps? But the example where Hugh McMinn wants to avoid cannon to cannon with the Resolute suggests that cannon to cannon and broadside to broadside work differently mechanically. Or is that just because the players would loose their Xs in the first fight before advancing to broadside range? Or does broadside imply that you can board the other ship at will?

4) In the same example from the text, if the player had succeeded the enduring duress test, would the Dagger have received damage for closing in under fire?

Maybe you could clarify the back-and-forth between the different types of fight at sea, how that works? Say the Dagger spots another vessel and both captains want to engage. Is it "player rolls ambition to enter the fight at his preferred distance"? Or would you always start with a pursue to clarify the range? And then once fighting has started, when and how can a captain change from one range to another? Or is it "losing one fight and starting another" as suggested for PC vs N/PC?

A suggestion: Roll ambition vs brutality if you are using deceit or stealth. Roll enduring duress if you are closing in under fire (and your ship takes wear & breakage even if you succeed). Do a pursuit if its a contest of seamanship & maneuvering and you want the other players to help you. If you are already in a fight but want to change range, you have to abort it first (taking the consequences) and then roll again to establish the new range according to the method you use.

Your suggestion is exactly right.

Hm.. would you mind commenting on the first two questions as well?

1) Don't create the PCs into a mini-crew, no. Use the leader's personal profile vs the mob's. The rest of the PCs contribute only via the rules for fighting on a side, they don't contribute any profile.

There's a rule about taking on a force with a much larger profile than yours. I forget what it is precisely. Something like "if they beat your profile by 4 or more, it's not a fight, it's suicide."

2) Same thing. A fortress vs a mob is a massacre.

If the captain wants to avoid that fight, instead engaging with the fortress' garrison directly, I imagine he'll have to use stealth or treachery, and/or go into danger, and/or endure the duress of a charge, to do it.

3) Without looking it up, Hugh McMinn probably wants to avoid cannon-to-cannon and get in close to exchange broadsides just because his Dagger is better at broadsides.

A prolonged ship-to-ship fight - the "vanilla" course you lay out above is a prolonged fight - means more chances to lose your Xs without gaining any back and more chances to get your ship sunk. I recommend going in for the kill as quickly as you can.

4) No damage. Enduring duress successfully, in that case, should mean that the ship can take it.

I should add - I love rule questions! Followups welcome.

Ambition vs. Brutality is used for, among others, treachery. It's the most ambiguous of the actions, I think, and we didn't find a use for it when we played.

Would cutting a rope count, if someone who trusted you was climbing it?

Do you have any other examples?

The one I see all the time is pretending not to be a pirate in some way, like pretending to be a drunken vagrant or pretending to be a lawful ship in distress.

Hey Vincent,
I'm running a Play by post over on the fear the boot forums. And my players are doing something that I didn't expect neither of them are pushing to be captain at this moment. We've just started so I'm not too worried. I was just curious how often this has happened to you and how did you handle it?

This is my first time playing this game and I am really loving it.

Good question. The time I had the least fun playing Poison'd was a time when none of the PCs had the ambition to become captain, but I think it was because I forgot the rules.

Without a captain, there's no one to lead the ship or its company in fights, and the rules consequences of that are terrible. When the Resolute arrives, it'll be every pirate for himself, which means that the PCs will be going up individually against an enemy of Profile 11, which means that the Resolute will be able to capture them without rolling.

It's perfectly fine if they're captured, that won't break the game in any way, so I guess I'd just make sure they know this feature of the rules and then let them make whatever decision they feel like making.

Hi Vincent,

another couple of questions for you:

1)You say in the spending Xs section of the rules that killing an NPC outright "affects the GM?s dice if the NPC is part of a mob you?re about to fight." Then in this thread you say that means the profile might change.

The only time I see this happening is if the leader of a mob is killed in which case the PC's mob automatically wins the fight anyway because as you stated in my previous question without a leader the mob becomes individuals.

Is there other reasons that the profile of a mob would change?

2) Is a PC mob always 6 profile?

3)In Dogs you handle escalating from fists to guns, but in Poison'd you didn't seem too. What methods have you used when both sides are in a fist fight and one side pulls a knife/sword/gun or calls in a couple of his buddies to mob the other guy? Do you force the players to spend Xs equal to the number of levels changed(i.e. Fist to Mob = 4 and Knife to Sword = 1) but they stay on the same escalation level?

I thought initially when I read the rules this would be handled by suffering the consequences of the fight and immediately starting another, for example take a deadly gun shot to pull a pistol shoot your opponent, but you said in this thread that shouldn't happen because if they surrender they can't keep fighting.

4) In a three way fight, does it work as normal just with two losers?

Uh oh, some tough ones. Let's see.

1. When the leader of a mob gets killed, that doesn't mean the mob doesn't have a leader. If there's a second in command or something to step into the leader's place, the mob can hold together.

I believe that "affects the GM's dice" clause is a relic of an earlier version, though. I'm not sure. Anyway if you play, and the PCs spend Xs to kill an NPC, and it doesn't seem to affect the GM's dice at all, that's fine.

2. No. The Dagger's company always starts at 6 profile, but it can change in play.

3. If you're in a fight fists to fists and you want to make it a gunfight instead, you admit that you've lost the fistfight, suffering the consequences as they are, and immediately launch a new gunfight.

4. The rules don't admit the possibility of three way fights.

So does that mean that any mob that has at least one of The Dagger's crew in it uses the The Dagger's profile?

Any tips for when to change the The Dagger's profile in play?

Sorry I meant to say: So does that mean that any mob that has at least one of The Dagger's crew in it uses the The Dagger's Company profile?

No, not at all. Always just follow the rules for creating a mob (on pages 9-10).

Change The Dagger's company's profile when its options change. Like, if it begins with "its members are well-armed and eager to fight," and for some reason during play they are no longer well armed or eager to fight, change its profile then.

Okay so I got a situation that I don't really know how to handle. One of my players is in a fight with an NPC. Another player has decided to jump and break up the fight. The fight is already on the second level of escalation.

Starting a new fight doesn't make sense to me as it's not fair that another player could just force a character to suffer the consequences of losing just by jumping in.

Should I just have him pick a side? that mechanic doesn't seem right as he's really kinda fighting both side.

Excellent! The rules don't provide for that. Here's what I'd try adding to them:

1. The person who's trying to interrupt the fight is most likely going into danger.

2. It costs 2 Xs to drag one named PC or NPC out of a fight that's already underway.

3. It's up to the GM's judgment of the fight and its sides whether this'll end the fight, and if so, who suffers consequences, if anybody. For instance, if it's a 1-on-1 duel, then it probably will end the fight, and whether anyone suffers consequences should depend on what's already happened. If it's a fight cannon to cannon, it probably won't, unless the person in question is the gunnery master maybe. In that case, yes, interrupting the fight probably means losing it.

3. If you get dragged out of a fight, you do lose all your Xs, same as if you'd lost the fight.

Untested! But that's my first guess.

Hi Vincent!

While choosing Ambitions, can a PC choose they want to fuck more than a PC?

Another thing! It's possible to add another ambition (increasing the stat) whenever the player wants, or just when they fullfil an ambition?

Hi Mauro!

1. Just the ambitions from the list. I think there are two: another player's pirate, or the son or daughter of a man beyond their station.

A PC can want to fuck anybody, but it doesn't count as an ambition except in those two cases.

2. No, they can't! Just when they fulfill an ambition.

Ok, thanks, next time I won't allow a PC to choose an Ambition two times.

Oh, and while I've this on my mind: when I take an ambition in the middle of the game, it has to be from the list? One of the players wanted to be Vice Captain and I saw no problem, but I'm not sure this is allowed by the rules.

Oh! Oh, you can take the same ambition more than once, with different targets. More than ONE PC, yes, you can!

Mid-game, it still has to be from the list, yes.

I have allowed people to take an ambition "To fuck [here is the name of a wife of a man above their station]" I am a horrible cheater?

The worst kind!

Did it work out okay?

It was fine! An old love triangle, resolved by violence and abduction.