Mechanic: Action Prioritization

In Episode 10 of my Beneath the Missing Sea session reports, I mentioned a mechanic that I improvised during the game to abstractly handle a complicated situation that had come up. After one of my players, mtb, playing Manqoba, mentioned that he'd used it successfully in his Dracula Dossier game the following week, I thought it'd be worthwhile to pull it out and present it in case it might be useful to anyone else.

Chongqing Zhongshuge Bookstore / X+Living

Beneath the Missing Sea Episode 11

 

Gank the Mage

Episode 11, exploring the tower, killing its owner, and dragging his corpse everywhere.

Played December 8, 2023

Beneath the Missing Sea Episode 10

The Sea Speaker's Tower

Episode 10, finally spotting the dead Leviathan and sneaking into a wizard's tower.

Played November 14, 2023

Beneath the Missing Sea Episode 9

Our Virtuous Lady

Episode 9, exploring the farthest reaches of the basin and finding a notable ship.

Played November 10, 2023

Beneath the Missing Sea Episode 8

 

Leviathans

Episode 8, a return to exploring the seabed, meeting the Levianthics, and some new information about Garvym.

Played October 20, 2023

Beneath the Missing Sea Episode 7

The Second Retreat from Brost

Episode 7, featuring a lot of fish innards and a very large explosion.

Played October 6, 2023

Beneath the Missing Sea Episode 6

Back in Brost

Episode 6, the Crab Wranglers returned to Brost to pursue a lead about a diving suit and discovered the holdouts besieged.

Played September 29, 2023

Beneath the Missing Sea Episode 5

Do we need a hallucinating albatross?

 Episode 5, wherein the party created a more permanent home for the merfolk prophet.

Played September 22, 2023

Beneath the Missing Sea Episode 4

  

People with Barrels

Episode 4, featuring travel with a new companion and including further exploration of the seabed, people with various barrels, and a prophecy.

Played September 15, 2023

Beneath the Missing Sea Episode 3

 

Crabcakes

Episode 3, where the party finally got around to exploring the missing sea, made a new friend, and then sold him for stew.

Played September 1, 2023

Beneath the Missing Sea Episode 2

Barricades and Boiled Dog

Episode 2, in which the party returns to Brost to deal with the most pressing issue facing its former residents: that they might ever run out of beer. Their first real fight ensues.

Played August 25, 2023

Beneath the Missing Sea Episode 1

Beer Run

Episode I, in which our brave heroes made it to the tragedy-stricken Andrussian Sea and immediately set about delivering kegs of beer for cash and running over feral dogs with their rickshaw.

Played August 18, 2023

Beneath the Missing Sea Campaign

I've recently started running a weekly campaign of Beneath the Missing Sea. This post will contain my initial thoughts as well as the eventual table of contents.

Beneath the Missing Sea is a small hexcrawl written by Sam Sleney and Zachary Cox for Best Left Buried by Soulmuppet Publishing. The nautical theming hooked me the instant I read it and so have been sitting on it since looking for an opportunity to run it. My adventure description to the group, drawing mostly from the text itself, went like this:

Some weeks ago a great and terrible storm wracked the Andrussian Inland Sea and its surrounding provinces for several days. Travellers and merchants alike called it ‘the storm of the century.’ Thunder heaved through the sky, rain lashed at the rooftops and darkness reigned supreme. In Brost, a prosperous coastal town on the Andrussian shore, all ships due to set sail remained in harbour and those at sea were solemnly considered lost after the first day. Even the most jaded sailors knew that no ship could survive a storm of such magnitude. Brost’s townsfolk battened down the hatches and waited out the storm beside their struggling fires. 

Nobody left the dark roads leading out of the town, and nobody came in. Several days later, when the storm passed and the people of Brost emerged from their homes, they found themselves atop a great cliff overlooking a vast and barren tundra where the Andrussian’s waves once rolled. The sea was gone. 

The missing sea has revealed treasures untold, attracting opportunists, adventurers, and other unsavoury sorts from leagues around.