Freebooters is an adventure using Clinton's system for TSOY, written by John Harper, which I'm pretty sure will become its own full-fledged game. First he needs to finish the ST, but this is a kickass next thing to see.

So it was Andy K*, Paul Tevis, Matt Snyder and me, with John as the story guide. I think there's another write up of play for this same adventure, so feel free to compare.

John's pretty good at this ready-to-go scenario thing. The pregen characters reminded me of an intro to Savage Worlds that he ran one evening. The character sheets were stellar, and they had a built-in special "power-up" ability for each character to spend an advance on. It made for a great "this is my guy, and this is where I can take my guy."

The scenario itself involves crewmembers aboard a pirate ship in a swashbuckly magic kind of setting. The four characters do something stupid and have to go on a mission to rectify it. As it happened, all four of our characters spent most of their time on cool side adventures.

Here's the coolest moment in the game: Matt Snyder is playing the guy with the key of bloodlust, and he's sent to kill a 'witch,' and Matt gives in to the allure of his key and hacks away, using his secret of mighty blow. The witch is doing a parallel action of casting a charm enchantment. The awesome result: Matt's character falls in love with the witch right as he kills her.

Yeah. So that was way cool.

And then that damn Paul Tevis decides in the final scene that they'll sacrifice one of us to the sorceress in order to get possession of a magical key. Yeah, guess whose character that damn Paul Tevis sacrifices. My guy (the thief, who had basically stolen all the silver in town), was embroiled in this wicked BDTP to get out of a crazy trap, and there's Paul, giving John gift dice to use against me. What a bastard. This is me shaking my fist at him right this very moment. It was so awesome.

On a side note, here's some excellence about the games I played at FM: I was the cowardly sheriff who threw down his badge in shame. I was a church cultist who watched his comrade get incinerated by plasma fire and then was captured and tortured. I was a thief who was left to die at the hands of a sorceress. And I was a half-human half-demon who was bound in terrible service to a mysterious demon-hating human. And it was awesome in every case. Remember games where you didn't have fun if stuff like that happened?

*Andy's character had hazel eyes.

Matt wrote:
And then that damn Paul Tevis decides in the final scene that they'll sacrifice one of us to the sorceress in order to get possession of a magical key. Yeah, guess whose character that damn Paul Tevis sacrifices. My guy (the thief, who had basically stolen all the silver in town), was embroiled in this wicked BDTP to get out of a crazy trap, and there's Paul, giving John gift dice to use against me. What a bastard. This is me shaking my fist at him right this very moment. It was so awesome.

The game was lots of fun for me, and was different from the first time I ran it. The adventure needs some tweaking before it's wrapped up for the public, but I like the direction it's headed.

The end of Matt Snyder's battle with the witch of Rope Hill was a high point of Forge Midwest for me. Both characters chose parallel actions in BDTP, and both hit each other to Broken at the same time, achieving their intents. The Witch's intent was "Make him fall in love with me," while Matt's was "Kill her." Right as his knife pierced her heart, her spell took hold and he loved her. In response, Matt created the Secret of the Frozen Heart for his next advance. So cool.

I also thought that Matt's sneak-thief scenes with the Lamplighters were very entertaining, as was Paul's portrayal of the lovable fop, Canter. Andy chose a grim and gritty style for his wanted Voodoo man, Artio, and he had a kickass little fight scene against three zombies in the ghost brothel.

And, I have to agree with Matt W.: When the other pirates sacrificed him to the sorceress to complete their mission, I was grinning. Now those are some cutthroat bastards!