OSR Anyone playing Aaron A. Reed's Skycrawl (or downcrawl) with an OSR?

[Foodgeek]

I've been having a lot of fun playing Skycrawl (as a player) as an add on to an OSR, and it has been a lot of fun. You explore different floating islands in your skyship and combine different "heavy elements" for magical effects. Right now our party is wizard, rogue, cleric, and fighter and the crew is a giant, a symbiote (engineer), an elf (navigator), a human scholar, and a robot handyman (we salvaged and repaired).Well, the giant and symbiote were also saved before being added to the crew.We did lose one crewmember, a dwarven sailor to a hail of arrows from the underworld gang where we were. The worlds are random, and so far we've visited a desert word with buried shyship hangars to salvage and a huge tower/market world, and are now heading to where new sols (suns) are born. So, the new mechanics are random worlds, Orcery (like alchemy with heavy elements), ship to chip combat, and navigation between floating islands (lands). We have not tried ship to ship combat yet. we came across a battle between 2 ships but left it alone.

Anyone else tried skycrawl or his other game, downcrawl? What did you think?

 

[timbannock]

Working on using it in a campaign or two, but nothing live yet. I loved creating an orcery table with loads of blanks for the players to start messing around with and finding out.

I watched Last Exile and started watching a play through of Skies of Arcadia to help set the mood. Last Exile was really fun, though the ending/twist(s) was mostly lost on me; I find more than a few anime endings nigh impenetrable.

 

[Foodgeek]

Working on using it in a campaign or two, but nothing live yet. I loved creating an orcery table with loads of blanks for the players to start messing around with and finding out.

I watched Last Exile and started watching a play through of Skies of Arcadia to help set the mood. Last Exile was really fun, though the ending/twist(s) was mostly lost on me; I find more than a few anime endings nigh impenetrable.

Oh, yeah, our DM had us a find a notebook (with loot) with some already filled in to update ours. later on, we bought a couple of answers form an orcery shop, and later yet, traded some with an orcerer that approached our ship on a barge. Oh, and we randomly tried Lazul Lode on our own (because we had those heavy elements handy. We've just started messing around with distillation.

 

[Foodgeek]

Almost done with this campaign. Maybe around 4 sessions left. We are nearly all at level 7 (one fighter is still level 6 because he joined late). We now have the upgraded ship needed for the endgame and just need some additional crew (from another port/world) to make the final run. Biggest challenge is having enough players each week to run a session since the other 3 players come up with work or travel conflicts (and the other one hasn't shown in months).

 

[Foodgeek]

Anyone else playing Skycrawl?

 

[The Firebird]

I'm not familiar with it. How does the crew work? It sounds like they're separate from the party?

 

[Foodgeek]

This is run on a B/X OSR (Skycrawl is an add on). We hire crew members at ports (worlds). many have died, especially mercs and guards. We currently have 2 navigators, 2 scholars, an engineer, a trainer (a magical book) on the payroll and a levitating/teleporting plant monster (we hatched) and freeloading "alchemist" (he really is not one) who are not on the payroll (unsure why another party member invited him since he was designed to annoy my wizard (which is not happening since my wizard knows this guy will die shortly (1 HP), LOL). The problem is they are all level zero, so D6 HP (the ones with 1 or 2 HP die in environmental hazards). We control the NPCs but if we ask them to do something not in their job description (ask a merc to help the engineer with repairs which he did or two dangerous (have 2 mercs scout a room ahead of us which one did), they roll morale to see if they do it. We had all the NPCs (the three that were left at the time) freeze up after a harrowing environmental encounter where we lost many crew members). Right now, we need 10-12 mercs or maybe a bunch of actual leveled fighters. we could use an Orcerer (a real alchemist and not a typo) but we won't find one at a fighting arena world (our last stop before perusing the end game).

 

[The Firebird]

This is run on a B/X OSR (Skycrawl is an add on). We hire crew members at ports (worlds). many have died, especially mercs and guards. We currently have 2 navigators, 2 scholars, an engineer, a trainer (a magical book) on the payroll and a levitating/teleporting plant monster (we hatched) and freeloading "alchemist" (he really is not one) who are not on the payroll (unsure why another party member invited him since he was designed to annoy my wizard (which is not happening since my wizard knows this guy will die shortly (1 HP), LOL). The problem is they are all level zero, so D6 HP (the ones with 1 or 2 HP die in environmental hazards). We control the NPCs but if we ask them to do something not in their job description (ask a merc to help the engineer with repairs which he did or two dangerous (have 2 mercs scout a room ahead of us which one did), they roll morale to see if they do it. We had all the NPCs (the three that were left at the time) freeze up after a harrowing environmental encounter where we lost many crew members). Right now, we need 10-12 mercs or maybe a bunch of actual leveled fighters. we could use an Orcerer (a real alchemist and not a typo) but we won't find one at a fighting arena world (our last stop before perusing the end game).

That's cool. Does Skycrawl have rules for these retinue characters (i.e., what a "navigator" does and how much they get paid) or is that all external?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Anyone else playing Skycrawl?

I keep thinking about picking Skycrawl or Downcrawl up, but have never pulled the trigger yet. (I try very hard to not pick up stuff that I cannot make a strong argument that I will be using it.) But the system seems fascinating for both the underworld and flying islands.

 

[Foodgeek]

You can get them cheaply on black Friday i bet. the alchemy systems are nice. one is heavy elements and one mushrooms.