Recalled from Action: Mission Impossible

Instead of finishing my session reports for the Beneath the Missing Sea campaign, here's the hottest new trend from Sahh on the OSR Discord, ReCalled from Action: take a scene from a comic or movie and write it up as if you were handling this fictional series of events in-game. This aims to demonstrate to others how to handle situations as a ref and also to show off various games we like.

I've chosen to do a short but memorable fight from Mission Impossible: Fallout, instead of the example provided from Berserk, and I'll be handling the scene with something a lot like Ms. Screwhead's Pyrhhic Weaselry (a game I've shown before). The specifics of Pyrhhic Weaselry (hereafter "PW") are beyond the scope of this post, including themes (something like experience), motifs (cherished items that involve background and give a bonus as a skill), and even Paths (its very cool version of classes). For the sake of this demonstration, I'll be relying on the concession and injury system as written and avoiding the actual rolls and numbers (generally 2d6+bonus vs 10) beyond noting that Lark is a much better martial artist than the other two so I'm giving him two actions per round rather than the usual one. I could eschew this by giving him the Path of the Warrior and developing combat styles for him, each of which would allow him to declare two actions as one intention, but it already took two hours just to get these images formatted on Blogger, so screw that. 

I've gone ahead and bolded their intentions for each round but it should usually be clear.

Not a lot of shots with all three actors clearly visibly fighting, but this one was pretty cool.

Example of Play: Tomb of the Serpent King using Pyrrhic Weaselry

Quite a mouthful.

I've been playing through Skerple's module Tomb of the Serpent Kings on Sunday nights via live text chat, meaning that we have a set game time and duration but don't use cameras or mics. It's a fun way to play and very different from the traditional methods. Weird Writer has written recently about it here.

 During the third session, the two PCs Skinny Samir and Saturnus, descended some trapped steps before coming across a living statue which they managed to defeat with their wits and daring. Though it goes on for a while, I thought the segment was really fun and illustrative of the game we were playing and how simple games with simple rules for adjudication can create complex situations and outcomes. And Jacey did a great job handling our hijinks.

We're using a game called Pyrrhic Weaselry which is by the blogger Ms. Screwhead of Was It Likely? It's incredibly interesting and probably very unlike anything you've played. I highly recommend looking into it, even if we have made a small house rule about focus gain. But the specifics aren't important to understand this example, just know that when someone states a hostile intent, the GM determines the level of danger, and then the target can either roll to avoid the stated intent or present a compromise dependent on the fictional positioning. Actions in general don't require rolling but avoiding danger can involve rolling if the most obvious result (decided by the GM) is undesireable.

I've lightly edited the text from the original but this is 99% the same. People are bolded and stated actions are italicized. It looks like a very long post but it's mostly short sentences so it reads quickly.

Stone Golem by joeshawcross

Beneath the Missing Sea Episode 16

    

Dragons in Dungeons

Episode 16, getting what they needed from inside the Leviathan and escaping.

Played March 22, 2024

Beneath the Missing Sea Episode 15

Leviathan's End

Episode 15, meeting the Baptist and infiltrating extraction operation.

Played March 8, 2024

Beneath the Missing Sea Episode 14

   

Into the Depths

Episode 14, laying explosives, climbing stairs, and falling into traps.

Played March 1, 2024

Beneath the Missing Sea Episode 13

  

The Temple Andrussia

Episode 13, descent into the depths of the temple.

Played February 9, 2024

Beneath the Missing Sea Episode 12

  

Suspiciously Knowledgable About A Murder

Episode 12, debriefing with Dalbran after the tower and journeying back to Our Virtuous Lady.

Played January 5, 2024

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.