A recent positive review on Shut Up & Sit Down introduces the game and uses Transatlantic as the mechanical demo. Sean Nitter wrote up some excellent Actual Play about Fiascon’s play session:

Hot damn. Within a few scenes Nikola was revealed as a spy bent on giving secrets transported on the Leviathan to a German Uboat that was following us. As the torpedo was fired and the ship was sinking, that’s when we realized Nikola was actually Nikolas! He is a she is he again! And “he” took my Elke hostage!

Sean Nitter Transatlantic AP

As the sinking of the Titanic’s anniversary is quickly approaching, there are a few new online resources that would be excellent for consideration in advance of your next Transatlantic play:

Titanic Real Time is a “real time” twitter feed of fictionalized account of how the Titanic was built, stored and how things may have progressed towards that fateful day. Excellent quotidian fire for your fiction. Here’s an example:

#photographer I snapped this as she left Belfast on her trials. I’m already itching to rejoin her at Southampton! http://twitpic.com/94lvk5

#crew We have just been given the orders – sea trials to commence immediately. Next stop – Southampton.

#engineering A nervous but exciting morning for us. In 30 minutes the ship will leave dock for sea trials – let’s hope for a clear day

#engineer Refrigeration units are of the C02 type utilising the gas in its compressed form. Hopefully the poultry should keep!

#engineer Titanic has two ice-making machines located on G Deck. We want the passengers to have every luxury whilst they drink and dine.

#crew Sea trials tomorrow but most of the interior isn’t even complete yet! Let’s hope the boys in Southampton work fast!

Want more? FirstyWork has released a detailed Titanic Titanic App with a slew of historical information and photographs about the ship and the event.

Snippets of life onboard the Titanic have been making the round this month. This one in particular seems appropriate:

The story of the Philadelphia millionaire Billy Carter, for example. He boarded the Titanic with 60 shirts, 15 pairs of shoes, two sets of tails, 24 polo sticks, a new Renault and two dogs. His reaction, when he realised she was sinking, was to put his head round the door of the family suite and bark at his wife to dress herself and the children, before scarpering to grab himself a place in an early lifeboat. They met again at eight o’clock the following morning, aboard the rescue ship, Carpathia. “All he said,” his wife testified during their divorce, “was that he’d had a jolly good breakfast, and never thought I would make it.”

Play well!

download the Transatlantic Playset

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1. Transatlantic notes There’s been a run on Transatlantic the past few weeks!...

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My buddy, Chris Bennett, dragged a copy of the Transatlantic playset to Fiascon 2012. Here are the results:

Chris Bennett: I played a 17 year old tomboy from Texas named Sadie Hawkins who had a crush on a young German bride but accidently stabbed her with a cavalry saber. Oops.

Mia Blankensop: See how mournful I look? I was a German, orphaned, staunchly Lutheran teen bride. In the thirties.

Sean Nittner: I was a French WWI veteran sailing west with my new (or soon to be) bride. But in this picture it just looks like I have TMJ. Fun times!

…

Brian Minter offers the following AP from a housecon he threw for his friends.

“Brian Minter 4 days ago whisperquote# 11
We played Transatlantic! It was a good one.

St. John Smythe pretended to be friends with the ship’s purser, Reginald Black, but only to learn where his father had hidden the dowager countess’ emerald tiara aboard the ship, while Burt Smythe, St. John’s identical twin separated at birth, snuck aboard and pretended to be his brother, also in order to steal the tiara, which he wanted to use to fund the activities of Pierre Lecarre, a Frenchman traveling to New York to repatriate the Statue of Liberty back to France. On board, Pierre Lecarre was posing as wealthy American peanut farmer Percibald Jackson, but he was (sort of) found out when his brother-in-law, Hank Shanksmith, an uneducated harpooner, was rescued from the Georgia Peach, which sank in the North Atlantic with all hands aboard. Shanksmith spent a night of strong, manly passion with Reginald Black, who denied this forbidden love until the end of the game, when, gut-shot by Burt Smythe, he begged Shanksmith’s forgiveness. There was also a pirate ship of Australians, and a bag full of tiaras, and the cruise ship may not have actually sunk, but it was hard to tell.”

via StoryGames

Thanks for the recent spate of Transatlantic love!

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“Percy and Jackson were old friends from Eton, and dedicated drunks. Daisy was a girl that Percy had rescued from a den of iniquity in Calcutta and who was accompanying him to America. Violet was (secretly) Daisy’s sister. Daisy hadn’t really been in danger in Calcutta, but had insinuated herself into Percy’s life as an excuse to get close to a British lord who had done something ill-defined to her father. She and Violet planned to kill the lord by crushing him under a piano.”

A Mr. Kevin Mowery submitted the first Actual Play report from the Transatlantic playset that i created for Jason Morningstar’s Fiasco game. I’m so glad that people gravitate towards the piano.

I know that Transatlantic was run at Fiascon last year but Kevin’s AP is the first breakdown i’ve seen of the playset outside of my own. There were two goals i had with the playset: a) to create a period drama that had upstairs/downstairs intrigue; b) I wanted a playset that felt open and “couples” friendly. It’s good to read Mr. Mowery’s write-up holds to my specs. More details of the play at: Transatlantic Actual Play

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I just re-read my review of your game and thought it sounded much more negative than I intended. I think your game has an exciting premise and lot of real promise, so I was mostly focusing on what I thought worked less well in an effort to help you make it even better. Sorry if that came off in a less-than-supportive fashion. I think your game kicks ass.

*I may have read too much into his compliment.

Jonathan Walton came back and re-upped his love for MoL, MoW. It’s good to have the additional screen time because there are so many interesting games in Game Chef ’10 that it’s going to be hard to get any play.

Anyway, everybody loves additional love. Thanks.

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Man-of-Letters, Man-of-Wars: A Game of Tactical Correspondence with a Chance of Drowning by E. Tage Larsen / Double King
“Man-of-Letters, Man of War” is one part saucy libertine epistolary and one part age-of-sail slugfest. It is loosely set amongst the 18th and 19th century’s naval warfare and the epistolary novels that were popular in this time. This is a gm-less game is about letter writing and naval battles. Each player will have a turn with naval mayhem and scurrilous penmanship. Bon voyage!

* Concept: This game emulates 18th and 19th century epistolary naval novels. Hotness.
* Execution: Perhaps the designer knew that I’ve been reading the Master & Commander books recently and is trying to stack the deck on here. Still, I really wish the designer used larger type, as it was somewhat painful to read on the screen as a PDF, at least without awkwardly zooming in on the pages. I’m a bit unsure why every player makes their sailor be on a different boat during character creation. The designers this year really want to design solo or 2-player games, don’t they? Still, I suppose it supports the correspondence theme, though characters are corresponding more with their loved ones at home than with the other characters aboard ships, which seems like a missed opportunity. I can imagine a lot of drama with various sailors and officers informing their fellows on other ships of their victories or defeats. The way the dice “explode” is clever, because it allows you to gamble that the explosion will continue, but with the potential to lose everything. This is actually the only way to fail, which matches nicely with pulpy novels in which self-aggrandizing junior naval officers mess things up by overplaying their limited resources and luck. Additionally, the ship and character creation guidelines are delightful and really add to the feel of the game.
* Completeness: In the naval combat section, the Speed rules are a bit unclear, since you seem to roll+Speed (of your ship) in an attempt to close with any object on the playing field, but it doesn’t really explain what happens if you don’t actually want to close, but keep your distance, or how to maneuver your ship marker on the map if you miss, since presumably you still move somewhere. The rest of the rules look pretty exciting, though it’s surprising that there are no explicit guidelines for continuing your narrative, presumably under a new flag and on a new ship, once you are rescued from being shipwrecked. In the correspondence section, there probably need to be examples of Assertions, since they are so crucial to the rules and are won with naval victories. Part of me also wonders how random impressed hands know how to write, but that’s a separate issue entirely. This game is clearly in need of some playtesting to see if traits are adjusted in practice in a way that suits the endgame.
* Cookery: On the acknowledgements page, the designer wrongly lists the theme of this year’s contest as Voyage rather than Journey. But I suppose we’ll forgive that.
* Conclusion: This Finalist really needs to see the table, which will undoubtedly help it work out any remaining issues. Like the last game, it is also in need of some playsheets to make this easier, given the relative density of the mechanics and guidelines.

Thanks for the kind words, Jonathan. Though i think picking nits over Journey/Voyage might lead to bloodshed. Time will bare this out.

Good notes. And i’m very thankful to have had additional eyes and some critical feedback on the project. Certainly some framing questions i need to review. A note on your notes, at present the Ship is considered half of the player’s character which is why i isolated everyone on their own vessel. That drove the narration into bloodshed vs isolation. I’ll take a look at some of the places you raised eyebrows.

MoL, MoW continues to evolve! Arrrrgh.

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Thankfully MoL,MoW comes off well and the few criticisms are on point.

He says,

51. Man-of-Letters, Man-of-War by E. Tage Larsen

The Good: This concept was made for me to love. Letter writing and high sea adventure? Layout set up so that it looks like a Victorian novel? I squealed with delight when I read the first bit.
The Bad: The game does feel like it is split in two. I’d like the sea battles to have even more influence and the correspondence to affect the dice more directly.
The Other: The fact that you get to sing a sea shanty about your character is awesome. I know more than enough people who would spend hours just doing that.

Would I Play It? The mug is full o’ grog me hearties. Let’s go feel the salty sea air on our faces!

keep on squealing with delight!!

All of that courtesy of his blog: Jon’s blog

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At present, you roll for Hour, Wind Direction, Enemy and Scenario.

Mechanics wrestling: I’ve decided to refer to “flat dice” as such in the text but where i’m building tables and have dice references i’m going to use a shorthand of an italic lower case f. It works and it has flourish. tada!

Need a slight rewrite but it should be ready for a playtest at this point. so… who’s for that?

Here’s some sample pics of the peripherals. still underway…

Continuing to work on Alpha 1.2. So far, Changes have been to add a functional clock mechanism;Creating an encounter deck of sorts to mop up a lot of the Naval Skirmish generation (down to 3 or 4 rolls now); Split off Enemy information from encounter onto an Enemy Card; roughs of all graphics pressed into place. And, folded weather into Hazards.

Samples of some of the peripherals. Always under constant flux…

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There are some design issues on the table that i’m wrestling with. I also had to do a lot of reformatting as the final draft crashed and i lost some info. c’est la vie.

current changes:
-Assets have become Intimates. I’m ok with this. It’s still not quite there but it’s an improvement.
-A critical typo was fixed in the glossary.
-Mutiny Clock has become a Morale Clock (which triggers Mutiny).

some issues that are on the table:
-I’m going to look into thinning the Naval setup with a pregen table to roll on with a few modifiers. I think if i can get the rolling down to … 3? rolls for setup it’s all good.
-it’s a dice game so i’m not sure if doubles should mean something.
-not sure how to fit surprise into initiative. right now i’m thinking that maybe you need to succeed by over x on the opening roll?
-i know i need examples of the letter writing. don’t know that i’ll get to that in this next round.
-i’ve a couple of requests to look into more interesting mutiny and possibility of boarding.
-question of ongoing naval encounters and nemesis?

Q. I’m wrestling with how to refer and display with a key difference in the mechanic. At times you’re rolling exploding d6s and others it’s just a flat roll of a die or dice and that’s the total. I’ve tried to explain it as the exploding die roll is the norm and that the truncated one is a “flat” die roll. It works “ok”. I’m wondering if it’s possible to denote it with either an underscore _ or an italicized f before the marker. So:

_d6 or fd6

This question vexes me.

Q. Jason Morningstar brought up that the 2nd conflict doesn’t feed back into the 1st scene. It’s not a deal-breaker but i’d like to figure out if there’s a way to give the game that elegant whole-game experience.

Q. Shanties. Love’em or hate’em they’re here to stay. Right now you’re just singing your character sheet. I think that may need to be turned up a level. There was some interest in making everyone sing a shanty between rounds or update their character sheet. That might be too much. I’m wondering if the singing should be a static action, an action with a reward or a penalty. Do you penalize somebody and make them sing or is it a reward? An immediate fix on this is to maybe have everybody sing the same shanty between rounds. Maybe they’re singing “Drunken Sailor” and each round the person with the least Doubloons has to add another verse onto the end of it? The other side of that is that you could make the Doubloon reward at the end of the round contingent on the shanty. No singy; no payee.

Finally, not sure how solid i am on “doubloons”. “pieces of eight” also work well here. but it’s graphically more messy.

Anyway. Wrestling with all this. If you have any feedback, i’d love to hear from you

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Man-of-Letters, Man-of-War

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My game: “Man-of-Letters, Man-of-War: a game of Tactical Correspondence with a Chance of Drowning”

i’m so happy.

if you’re interested, you can download the GC2010 version at:
Man-of-Letters, Man-of-War…

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