Now that the first month of Full Metal Friday releases are out in the wild, I wanted to take a moment and talk about our experiences with the material here at Privateer Press. We’ve been running playtest sessions in the office to try out the careers, equipment, and rules, and it’s been loads of fun.

For the first month, we ran a group through the encounter against Captain Brinebight’s Hellkite raiders. I let the players create their own heroes since I wanted to see how the encounter would pan out without the controlling factor of pregenerated characters. The party broke down like as follows:

• Studio Painter Meg Maples played Scaoil Doitean, a Skilled Thurian Alchemist and part-time thief with a penchant for incendiaries.
• Retail Coordinator Bill French brought Rene Clochard, his Intellectual gobber Investigator/Explorer from Merywyn. Though combat wasn’t Rene’s focus, he still carried a rapier and holdout pistol in case things got hairy (which of course they did).
• Video Producer Tony Konichek surprised me by bringing a painted miniature of Gareth de Luca, his Gun Mage/Soldier. Tony put a lot of work into the painting, and it really helped us all invest in his character.
• Shipping Assistant Matt Warren brought Thugrun, a Mighty ogrun Man-at-Arms/Military Officer, giving the party some hard-hitting melee power.

The setup went like this: the characters were aboard an unarmed merchant vessel named the Broken Oar headed south along the Broken Coast. They were paying for their passage by helping trim the sails, swab the decks, and agreeing to secure the ship’s defense in case of pirate attack. The Oar was in the Gulf of Middlebank when it was caught in a sudden storm. All hands rushed to the deck to help pull in the sails before the powerful winds damaged the ship’s mast.

I figured the players had enough scene setting, so I threw the first massive wave at them. Rene spotted the wave far enough out to warn the crew, so they grabbed hold of whatever they could to brace themselves. Bill suspected something sinister was up, so he scanned the crest of the wave with his spyglass. One Detection roll later and Rene saw the masts of the Hellkite silhouetted by a crack of lightning. The blackship was riding just behind the wave, letting it carry the ship right into the hull of the Broken Oar.

After that, the encounter unfolded almost exactly as planned. Crewmen were harpooned, lacerated, and head-butted into submission; Thugrun rallied the survivors to join the battle; Scaoil threw grenades at everything in sight; and a combined effort between Rene and Gareth destroyed Brinebight’s black ogrun escort. The encounter ended with Brinebight retreating to her ship and ordering a full broadside into the Oar, leaving the player’s ship crippled as she made good her escape.

When the encounter was done, we discussed things that needed tweaking, and then I sprung a surprise on the players. We were going to run the encounter again, but this time they would step into the boots of the evil Satyxis crew, taking our new race and career out for a test drive. They took to playing the Satyxis with gusto and ripped through the Broken Oar’s defenders with ease.

By flipping the player’s perspective we managed to get a whole different encounter out of the same material, and I encourage anyone using Full Metal Fridays in their games to do the same. That material we’re producing is fairly story-neutral to facilitate its use in a longer running campaign. However, if you’re having trouble seeing how it fits in your own game, feel free to pull an encounter apart, bolt it back together into a whole new shape, and throw it at your unsuspecting players. I’d love to hear your take on Full Metal Fridays and how you use them in your games.

–M