I've been playing through Sunless Sea again and I love the atmosphere and writing. I was wondering how you would translate it to a table top game?
Obviously Call of Cthulhu comes to mind, but otherwise what would you guys include to help build the tension and uncomfortable nature of Sunless Sea.
"LOSE YOUR MIND. EAT YOUR CREW. DIE. Take the helm of your steamship and set sail for the unknown! Sunless Sea is a game of discovery, loneliness and frequent death, set in the award-winning Victorian Gothic universe of Fallen London."
sunless sea is great and well written, but its essentially a cthulu-esque, Victorian/steampunk era game.
Mason Jackson
Remind me how Sunless Sea handles sanity? All I remember from the game is that darkness is bad.
Jackson Roberts
You acrue 'Terror' over time, the rate of which is linked to light. So if you have your Headlamp on or are near a buoy or lighthouse then you'll get Terror at a slower rate, but there are times when you might want to turn your Headlamp off because of monsters you want to sneak around or your running out of fuel
Terror is also gained through the story, which is interesting since you can get Terror from... having a chance encounter with some sea beast which is understandable, but also from going into a abnormally dark room with a deep sense of foreboding. If your terror hits 100 you go crazy.
I haven't ever played CoC, how often do you like run into the monsters, since in Sunless Sea you never run into something like a... Shoggoth for example, its always hinted at or eluded too through tricky word play and excellent writing. Most of the uncomfortable things that you read come from some shady character saying something off.
Daniel Cooper
I've been trying to homebrew Sunless Sea in SWN, pretty much lift the ship combat and apply it as is. That way, combat will feel like it matters a lot more. I don't know if the combat system regarding characters would translate that well, probably switch it with something like Unhallowed Metropolis' wound system.
But the horror part, I'm split between the insanity systems CoC and Dark Heresy uses, only more forgiving on the part of removing the insanity. On one hand CoC is unforgiving about it and on the other DH leaves a lot of parts vague.
Also, how would you translate mechanically the various other aspects of the game? The various Zee Gods' curses and attentions should have some kind of effect in-game, same with any unwanted attention from dream sneks. Also, I think that the stats shouldn't stay as they are with Iron, Mirrors, Veils, Pages and Hearts and go down the traditional route.
Samuel Diaz
some zeebeasts are pretty scary. The Flukes, Mount Nomad, lifebergs, Tree of Ages, Neither, Triskelegant, Flukes. It's not quite as bad as, say, Chtulu but still
Andrew Reyes
Not as bad? Methinks you haven't found descended into the Eye and come across the Black Judgement and the House of Chains then.
Brandon Ortiz
Don't forget that Frostfound is a place that you can't enter its final room without being a step away from going completely balls-to-the-wall, out of your mind, jacking off to Jack Chick's Hot Chicks issue #1 insane.
Camden Lee
I think Claymen could be an interesting enemy. Say you have a Clayman on your ship and some enemy agent wipes off his forehead writing and he goes feral. You have this stone behomoth loss on your ship just effortlessly crushing crewmembers.
You don't exactly get many mouthed monsters with thousands of popping gurgling eyeballs.
Alexander Ortiz
stone is actually pretty fucking easy to break if you brought a hammer.
Elijah Morales
True! But on a steamboat? I thought I'd do some write faggotry about this idea where a Clayman manservant gets sabotaged and goes berserk. The main character draws his gun and empties all cylinders but it just scratches the stone, crew members are lunging at him wielding harpoons and hooks but can barely scratch him as he knocks them about, crushs some poor souls skull like a birds egg. Maybe the main character is a veteran and goes into his study to get his Elphant gun. The Clayman is to heavy and tough to damage, so in a last ditch attempt to escape him, the first mate grabs hold of the ships wheel and rams them side on into some rocks which tip the boat to one side. The Clayman goes tumbling off the boat and sinks like a stone in the zee as the main character watches them, Elphant gun ready as they slowly disappear into the murky depths.
Nathaniel Garcia
Wouldn't the chief engineer have a hammer? A small one, at least? Those repairs need a full set of tools, ya know.
Hunter Green
Well the Clayman isn't exactly going to crumble from a small hammer blow, a sledge hammer maybe. But even then, the Clayman is fighting back with impossible strength the whole time.
Adam Anderson
yeah, you really need a BIG HEAVY to smash rock. If someone can lift the anchor, that'd do it. Or if you can trick the guy to getting under the anchor wynch.
Brody Walker
Just rip-off Fallen London system. 4 stats. 4 kinds of dangers if you fail when yousing those stats.
Austin Martinez
im pretty sure a sledgehammer is standard issue on steamboats of those times the massive ass gears and cogs need to get movin' adn they aint, so one on the zee is not out of mind
Carson Wood
Isn't there already a FL homebrew someone made?
Alternatively, a Black Crusade-esque affiliation system with the gods of the zee (and the Dawn Machine, Mr. Eaten, the Fathomking, and the Bazaar for good measure) would be neat.
Alexander Sanders
Taking the straight system sounds pretty lame just to take the system when you have like a whole party. I don't think one man could wield an anchor, but yeah that would do some damage. I need to look into CoC but I am familiar with Dark Heresy, its a simple easy system
James Jones
Terror gain from darkness isn't so bad, though. I remember that in order to maximize my profits from trade runs I would sail exclusively with the headlamp turned off, since it consumes a crazy amount of fuel to keep that thing lit. I would usually get to ports with ~50% terror at the worst, and there are always multiple ways to remove it. (my favorite was to feast at pigmote island)
Then again, I'm sure that my crew loved me for that... But hey, capitalism.
Bentley Phillips
Do they love you more or less than my relatively sane crew that I make repeatedly fight sea monsters twice the size of the boat?
>WHAT WAS, WILL BE; WHAT WILL BE WAS >TIME IS SIGHT >GRAVITY IS DESIRE
wait fuck where am I
James Fisher
You said flukes twice. I like flukes
Henry Jackson
Don't forget to include UN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE S
Julian Davis
Crunch wise, I don't know about making things tense, but really to create that atmosphere, I'd make it so that Terror is almost unavoidable with any encounter at Zee, but has a really high value before you loose your mind, like in Sunless. Something you could do though is add gradual negatives on like every fifth of the way to insanity - say crew develop psychotic ailments like OCD or Peckish for NORTH Food - things that add in a mechanical and story detriment. Then I'd make encounters at Zee valuable enough that the tension would come from having to choose between accruing Terror and passing up something valuable. I think the best way to add tension would be to make the players have to constantly weigh their options.
Jordan Lopez
If you want to understand the style of writing a bit more read Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities. There are a lot of other influences like Borges, P.G Wodehouse, T.S. Elliot and G.K Chesterton but Id say Calvino is probably the most present.
Josiah Sanchez
Maybe add in that the boat is transporting Claymen, or has a good deal on board as Zervants. I can just imagine a Zailor going through the cargo hold with a lantern passing over each stock still Clayman, looking for an Unfinsihed before the Unfinished finds him (or her! (or citizen)).
Dylan Foster
I'm fairly certain that was the collective reaction of every citizen- err, resident, when London was Stol- err, Fell.
