GMBC ep49 - When Vivacia Wakes: How GMBC Turned Robin Hobb’s Ship of Magic into Tabletop Gold
Ship of Magic
Robin Hobb
Speaker A
00:00:00.240 - 00:00:00.560
Foreign.
Speaker B
00:00:04.480 - 00:01:22.420
Welcome to Game Masters Book Club, where great fiction becomes your next great tabletop experience.
In this episode, we follow the fortunes of the Vestrid merchant family and their newly awakened live ship Vivacia in Robin Hobbs, Ship of Magic, first book in the Live Ship series.
Captaining the ships of Wonder of imagination across the treacherous seas filled with sea dragons and up the strange and magical Rainwild river are Rich Davies, Tom Watkin and Martin Wilson.
We discuss 7th Sea and the Good Society RPGs, Binghamton Fashions and Reluctant Heroes.
Sailing ship media spanning from master and commander to one piece.
Let's get into the conversation.
Hey, there's Craig.
And here we are on the Game Masters Book Club.
Welcome everybody to another episode time around we're going to be talking about Robin Hobbs, Ship of Magic, a fantastic nautical adventure from from an amazing author.
But before we get into talking about the story, we want to meet our Game Masters.
And our Game Masters are also going to be talking about their fantastic piratical adventures that they've had so far in their TTRPG experiences.
So I'm going to start right off.
I'm going to have Tom lead us off.
Tom, introduce yourself to the nice folks and tell them about pirates.
Speaker A
00:01:23.540 - 00:02:27.940
Hi everyone, I'm Tom.
Tom Watkin.
I write for DND at Work where I look at the link between leadership and playing games like Dungeons and Dragons and other role playing games.
When it comes to a piratical adventure, one of the best ones I can think of, I was running a campaign called Broken Isles and it was, I think it was a couple of years we were playing it and the very final session was one of the most crazy, difficult to GM sessions I've ever run.
I really overstretched myself.
So I'll give you an idea of what was, what was going on.
So we had board with ships fighting each other.
We then had other boards with boarding actions going on.
We had a tower with a mage in it that was being attacked by flying carpets.
We had serpent like ships running around and it worked really well.
It was really epic.
But from, from a GM's point of view, it was a real stretch but managed to keep it juggling and it was a really good fun.
But wow, I was exhausted afterwards.
Speaker B
00:02:28.020 - 00:02:52.500
That is one of the great things about any sort of large conveyance.
But ships are really great at this that you have this huge number of people and there's all these different directions and things can be coming from everywhere.
You get the environment playing in, you've got people getting kicked off the boat and all that you know, all that just makes for a fantastic combat experience.
Martin, you want to introduce yourself and tell everybody about your favorite piratical experience?
Speaker C
00:02:53.260 - 00:03:43.950
Yeah, sure.
My name is Martin Wilson.
I'm from just GM from Perth, Australia.
Play with Tom and Rich a lot.
And my favorite piratical.
Well it wasn't piratical but it was still shipbound combat.
It's been a.
A campaign with run by Rich actually called Cloudburst.
We managed to get our hands on a skyship and got into a fight where we got ambushed by a ship that was sort of cloaked in the clouds.
And my orc barbarian got a bit excited and tried to jump from ship to ship after flying into a rage, rolled a natural one and fell to his death.
Which was a great sort of epic moment where I felt very confident at the time.
Yeah, I just thought that was so good.
Speaker D
00:03:44.910 - 00:03:52.190
That was one of the classic things.
I think you had already lost a character to that for a similar sort of thing like falling off a flying ship.
Speaker C
00:03:52.650 - 00:03:58.810
Yeah, yeah.
My first character at level one got shot in the head for a critical and fell off a ship.
Speaker B
00:03:59.050 - 00:03:59.850
Oh geez.
Speaker C
00:03:59.930 - 00:04:02.650
Yeah, so I was the second character in the.
Speaker D
00:04:02.650 - 00:04:18.250
In that campaign to when you wanted to do that.
I thought like okay, well I think it'll be all right just as long as you.
You don't roll a one.
And that's exactly.
That's exactly what you rolled.
And there was no choice.
I was kind of.
It makes no sense to survive it.
Speaker C
00:04:18.620 - 00:04:41.020
Absolutely not.
Yeah, yeah it was.
And I think you did give me a.
You're like, I make a dexterity check, see if you can grab onto the to something.
And I fluff that as well.
So.
But I think that's absolutely fine.
I think sometimes it's great to have characters die.
Not only do the other players sort of think, oh geez, okay, this is getting serious and it brings a bit of levity to the table but it also makes great stories and memories.
Speaker B
00:04:41.260 - 00:04:48.460
As long as you player buy in from the as a dm a player a well placed player death can really like make.
Could really make a whole campaign.
Speaker C
00:04:49.250 - 00:04:50.690
Yeah, that's right.
Absolutely.
Speaker B
00:04:51.490 - 00:05:00.050
Rich, you want to introduce yourself and since you've already had a chance to chat and let everybody know who you are and about your pirates.
Yeah.
Speaker D
00:05:00.050 - 00:06:26.520
Hi everybody.
Thanks Eric.
Yeah, I Rich, I do some home games over in Perth.
Been playing for a little while and also DMing so the.
The pirate story that came to mind sort of when I was thinking about this quickly it was about just recently I've Been running some pirate Borg running through the sort of the, the beginning of adventure that they have in the, the sort of the book there.
And it was the.
The pirates had come to the sea cave, so to speak, and that had the treasure in it.
And there was, in, in this, one of the, the cave rooms, there was this little encounter where they encountered some spirits.
It didn't give you much information about that and it was a, it was a little bit vanilla in my point of view.
I didn't really know what was going to happen at the table, but I did have an eye to an adventure that was going to sort of shortly follow once that the characters and the players had found the treasure.
But.
And it sort of revolved around the spirits that were from the village that they were possibly going to have the adventure with.
And it ended up being.
It was a.
Some spirits who were.
Had died a little while ago.
And I didn't want it to be a combat encounter necessarily with the spirits.
And so I sort of, I knew that this, this module had some eel wrestling in it.
And so this is something that the, the.
Speaker B
00:06:26.680 - 00:06:29.000
I'm sorry, did you say eel wrestling?
Speaker D
00:06:30.120 - 00:07:29.020
Yeah, eel E, double E, L. Okay, continue.
You know, so they were requesting the spirits of what had happened in the cave and you know, all sorts of things.
And so I just wanted to know, you know, what would, what would kind of make sense and it doesn't always make sense anyway, so sort of then they said, okay, well, as long as you can sort of best the eels in a, sort of like a wrestle.
I had the players, you know, once they, the eels had been summoned from the ocean, they had to each conduct one on one wrestling.
And so that was pretty good.
So it was, it was a combat type of thing, but it was, they had to describe how, how they were sort of wrestling eel and like putting in a headlock or as they were sort of wrestled under the water and things like that.
And so the players at the table, they got really sort of inventive with that and they had a lot of fun.
So rather than just sort of striking with a, with a sword, they were using their elbows and knees and all sorts of things.
So that was, it was a really sort of colorful little moment that just sort of came out of the balloon.
Speaker B
00:07:29.020 - 00:08:12.640
I don't know if I can top eel wrestling, but my name is Eric and I'm the host and I've been playing games since the Pleistocene and I've actually been accused by many of my players of being a little obsessed with pirates.
All three of my current game.
My current games that I am running.
Of those three games, all of them have had pirates within recent memory.
They've all been on.
They've all had ship trips on them.
A lot of just.
I've done a bunch of different things.
I think probably the most interesting thing that we had recently was that we had a.
An Aboleth warlock, or rather a warlock who was pledged to an Aboleth.
One of those like manta ray psionic creatures from the.
Speaker D
00:08:12.640 - 00:08:12.960
From.
Speaker B
00:08:12.960 - 00:11:39.720
From D and D. And he.
He did a whole.
But he like pretended.
He like made a giant illusion and it looked like a kraken was attacking the boat and the characters were freaking out and eventually they penetrated his.
They penetrated the illusion and they were able to take.
But there was.
There was definitely real.
That's the first time I've ever seen my characters be like, oh no, you did not just, you know, like.
Because I.
They had, you know, giant tentacles wrapping the ship and they're like.
So giant tentacles don't match.
I think.
I still think eel wrestling is better.
Yeah.
There's a ton of really interesting things that you can do on a nautical adventure.
It has that to a certain extent, it has the horror.
The horror trope of like everybody's all in the same space and they really can't leave.
Right.
You're stuck on the boat, so you've got some of that.
You know where the players are.
They can't.
It's tough for them to escape.
All that makes for a really great setting.
And there's.
That's.
There's no exception here with the Ship of Magic by Robin Hobb, which is what we're going to be talking about today.
The Ship of Magic is the first of the three books in the Liveship Trader series.
Follows the fortunes of the Vestrit family, a traitor family in a sort of low magic fantasy world that owns.
They own a liveship which is called Vivacia.
Great name for a ship by the way, that is.
That's made of wizard wood which allows the ship to gain sentience.
And in our book, at least in the first book, we are there when Vivacia is quickened and gains her true sentience.
The story itself follows members of the family as well as a bunch of other folks within the shifting political realities, including encroaching misogyny, patriarchy and human slavery in their colonial outposts in Bingtown on the mysteriously and dangerously magical rain wild river between that river and an ocean that is apparently becoming more infested with sea serpent dragons that are in the ocean water.
The book then jumps between multiple viewpoints which include Althea, the disenfranchised heir of the liveship, Wintro, her cousin, who has forced out of a quiet life in a meditative priesthood to take over the ship.
In Althea's place, pirate Captain Kennet, who wants to be the pirate king.
Three generations of vestrit women, Veronica, Kefrea and Malta, and even a point of view through the eyes of the sea dragons.
And I actually think I missed a few on there.
There's just a ton of stuff happening in this book.
Through the book, the action is mostly about these relationships.
And these are relationships between captain and crew, mother, daughter, granddaughter, older generations and younger generations, between people of different cultures, different social strata, including free enslaved people, and even between magical ship beings and the humans who possess them.
Most of these relationships involve a sort of pride and prejudice of the morally, which makes the characters very morally complex.
They have pride that they are better than some of these people.
They have prejudice against some of these other folks.
So that no true hero emerges.
But we do get a complicated story about interesting and complicated people in a magical world.
Anything to add, gentlemen?
Speaker C
00:11:42.600 - 00:12:01.740
Yeah, I think as for characters, Paragon, a live ship, the mad ship, right?
Yeah, yeah, it's gone mad.
Is an absolutely great character that comes into his own in the later books as well.
And Amber as well.
The Trader in Bingtown.
Speaker D
00:12:02.060 - 00:12:52.710
I thought what Hobbes did so well was just really explore a concept.
And so it seemed, I mean there was a chapter devoted this to this right at the start, just liveship.
And it really set the scene and it sort of explored, you know, what a life ship was, you know, the relationship that some of the crew had with the live ship.
And then of course the different types of live ships that you had, like Paragon, the Mad One, you know, a non sentient one, a sentient liveship.
It went through that so, so well and explored at so many different angles.
And it was kind of like a nice little like a lesson on how possibly a DM could explore a concept in their own game.
And maybe I'm preempting things a little bit, but I think Hob, great job with the whole life ship story.
It was really well done.
Speaker B
00:12:52.710 - 00:13:11.650
Now we're going to move on to how you were right, you were kind of leading us into that.
How can we put this into a tabletop role playing game?
If we were going to run an adventure of live ships here in the, in the live Trader universe, what game system we think would work best at that?
Rich do you want to lead us off?
Speaker D
00:13:12.930 - 00:15:13.100
No, I think so.
Mighty almost sort of mentioned just a few moments ago that I was sort of running an Eberron inspired campaign and that included magical things, flying ships type of thing.
From a 5th edition point of view it was such a flexible little system there that would quite easily manage sort of like a essentially a sort of swashbuckling pirating type of campaign.
It's such a flexible system and with the Eberron setting as well you can pretty much do anything.
That was really well done.
I thought maybe sort of you could for a life ship itself you could maybe sort of reskin the indie magical item that they have the apparatus and quite stylish or something like that.
It might, you may have to sort of like squint a little bit from the DM's point of view but you could sort of make the case it's such a flexible system to, to have like a flying ship or whatever the case may be.
And also something that sort of inspired me for my pirate war campaign to some extent was Thousand Thousand Islands.
And so this is a.
A sort of like a nautical theme to RPG system made by some Malaysian content creators at ZXU and Man Cow.
And so they all have sorts of unusual Malaysian themes in a sort of nautical way.
And so one of the, the peoples they have in that setting is there's a village that, that has sentient boats but these are not boats themselves.
There are people with heads for boats.
It's done through sort of like just some really sort of evocative illustrations and you have these sort of the, the sort of the front end or the prow of a boat as a head.
And so when you see like an image like that that sort of spurs off like it's immediately like ah, I want to have something like that that sort of twist on.
On like pirates or boats or things like.
Speaker B
00:15:13.100 - 00:15:18.220
That's fantastic.
And again I agree, very evocative.
Tom, do you want to take it from there?
Speaker A
00:15:20.300 - 00:16:50.500
Yeah.
So Eric, you mentioned in your intro about Pride and Prejudice.
I did, which was excellent segue for me.
So part of the book, it's very small part of the book but the youngest vestrit daughter gets involved with the society of Bingtown which involves trader families, balls, debutantes being presented to society.
And it's only.
I'm sure it gets explored more in the, in the later books but it's, it's a part of the society that I find quite interesting and I think there's some good games that deal with the Regency era that could be ported into, into Bing Town and the different alliances and things with the different families.
So a couple of systems.
You've got Good Society which is a Jane Austen role playing game where you're.
I think you're playing different members of the aristocracy and you're trying to get through the ball season and find good matches and playing that side of things.
So no, no swashbuckling there.
There's also a free system that I've found called Virtues and Scandals which is a bit more Bridgerton esque where you, you play as different members of the gentry trying to get ahead and everyone's got different, different objectives that they're trying to get.
And I think it could be a really fun game to set that in Bing Tain with that sort of piratical swashbuckling background, but trying to be proper and do everything right in that sort of situation.
Speaker B
00:16:50.500 - 00:17:14.380
I will mention that they do have an expansion which is called Good Society and Expanded Acquaintance which includes spellcraft and swordsmanship specifically into it.
So if you were going to do the.
If you're going to use Good Society to do the Liveship game, I would recommend you get that expansion as well.
Just because it's got all those little bits and pieces already sort of programmed in for you.
Speaker A
00:17:15.100 - 00:17:18.460
Perfect.
Even better.
I didn't know about that one, so I'll have to look up.
Speaker C
00:17:19.500 - 00:19:03.140
So for me I was thinking of Pathfinder, the first edition.
I had a.
An add on book called the Ultimate Campaign and part of that book deals with the downtime that your heroes have sort of in between adventures like building inns and taverns and training and trading.
And I thought it'd be pretty cool to run something as a Bingtown trader family who's maybe just invested in a live ship.
So you have this massive intergenerational debt hanging over your head.
So you've got to pay back a certain amount each year to the rain wild families.
So you've got to be.
It's all about trading and building up your.
Your assets.
And then every now and then you could send your characters off on a voyage somewhere and have a little bit of adventure, but most of it would be about training.
And I thought you could, you could have it over multiple generations as well, sort of as time passes.
So you could eventually, hopefully by the end, quicken your ship if you haven't lost it by then, which I think could be quite fun.
And then also last night I was just sitting in front of my bookshelf pouring over all the games I've Bought but never played.
And I started reading the new Manira rule book and I thought that you could do Numenera as the rain wilds, where these sort of artifacts come from up the river.
No one knows how they work or the.
Or they're sort of magical to.
To most people, they're sort of unknown, which is a lot like Numenera, sort of lost technologies, which I think could be quite fun as well.
Speaker B
00:19:04.060 - 00:19:48.670
That's a great way to look at that.
That's fantastic.
Okay, so when we talked yesterday, I led off with saying 7C is a really great, really great system.
It's got a lot of very culturally oriented magic.
It's got a lot of culture versus culture bits in it.
And there is a lot of that here in the.
In the Liveship series.
But actually, the more I thought about it, the more I actually went back and after hearing you guys talk about Pirate Borg, I went back and read through some of my pirate board stuff and I'm like, yeah, I would totally play Pirate Borg for this one.
The whole thing with like Devil's Luck and the Pirate King Kenneth, like that man lives on pirates on Devil's Luck.
That's just fantastic.
Speaker C
00:19:48.670 - 00:19:49.870
And absolutely.
Speaker B
00:19:49.870 - 00:20:29.400
Yeah, quite literally.
And they have special naval combat rules and they've got morale.
And I think you could modify the.
The undead dust thing that I was reading through.
I think you'd probably modify Ash to be like Wizard Wood or at least use some of the same rules to kind of make Wizard Wood a thing.
Although obviously it's Mortborg, so it's a lit.
It's pretty dark and can be a little gruesome.
And I don't think this, this book is still a little dark, but maybe not quite as dark as Mortborg.
So maybe a.
Somewhere in between the more swashbuckly seventh C and the more.
And the darker and harsher Morkborg.
I'm sorry, Paraborg is what I would probably land.
Would depend on the crowd, whoever the crowd was I was running with.
So.
Speaker D
00:20:30.360 - 00:20:41.560
Yeah, absolutely.
That's a great recommendation.
It's super easy.
There's a lot of undead in Pirate Ball.
You just sort of remove that and it's just pirate on pirate action.
So easy peasy.
Yeah.
And.
Speaker B
00:20:41.560 - 00:20:45.480
And I have an experienced GM to let me know that it's a good idea.
That's always the best thing.
Speaker A
00:20:45.560 - 00:20:45.960
So.
Speaker C
00:20:45.960 - 00:20:53.000
Yeah.
Yeah.
Less eel wrestling.
Speaker B
00:20:55.080 - 00:20:55.640
Okay.
Speaker D
00:20:55.720 - 00:20:56.440
That was good.
Speaker B
00:20:58.200 - 00:21:28.330
I'm telling you, man, top tier.
Every time I talk to you guys, it's, you know, warrior nuns, eel wrestling.
It is already such a Great time with you guys.
Speaking of cool things that happened in in games, let's talk about cool things that happened in this book that we would want to port over to our campaigns.
Martin, do you want to start off and let us know what is your favorite thing that you'd want to swipe from the Live Ship books?
Speaker C
00:21:29.210 - 00:22:10.150
Well, for the ultimate campaign setting that I was talking about, the interactions between Veronica and the Rain Wild families just where they, they have these traditions about handing gold over where they have tea and they've got a keep up appearances all the time.
The, the trading families are just living sort of season to season now that the slave trade is sort of affecting a lot of the trade.
And I think, I think that sort of pressure would be fantastic to add into a campaign like the ultimate campaign.
The downtime trading, having to keep up appearances is always.
Speaker B
00:22:10.150 - 00:22:33.850
It's a great way to limit players in a way that doesn't feel railroady.
Like there gets to be a point particularly when characters get much.
I'm speaking of course of a kind of D and D based thing, but particularly D and D characters and, and Pathfinder characters can get outrageously powerful and if you're not hemming them in with some sort of social structure like that, it could be.
It's like we can do anything.
I'm like oh geez.
Speaker A
00:22:33.850 - 00:22:34.530
Okay, fine.
Speaker C
00:22:35.090 - 00:23:02.510
Yeah, yeah, that's right.
There is a.
As you say especially Pathfinder has a tendency to get very, very powerful very quickly.
So I think setting those limitations where you, you're sort of living hand to mouth and is.
Is fantastic.
Sorry.
The Rain Wilds is just such a, a great setting as well.
I'm really interested in, in that which comes further in the books.
But yeah, no spoilers right ahead because.
Speaker B
00:23:02.510 - 00:23:05.790
I can tell what's going to happen.
But I haven't read that yet.
So.
There we go.
Speaker C
00:23:05.790 - 00:23:07.030
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker B
00:23:07.190 - 00:23:10.630
Tom, go ahead.
You want to tell us what you might want to port into your campaign?
Speaker A
00:23:10.710 - 00:25:00.570
I've got a few things I'm just following on from Marty's having the Rain Wilds as a great again great place I think porting a river that's acidic and really dangerous but got some amazing treasures that will make you rich.
Would be a great campaign where you're a crew of people going up this like really horrific location.
A little bit Stalker esque I guess.
You know, like the video game Stalker where you're going into this horrible place trying to get, trying to get treasures out.
But for me the, the location of Bing Town with all its factions.
I Love factions and I love the.
The competing factions.
And in Bing Town, you've got the old established traders, you've got these new traders coming in.
You've got the Satrap, which is like an empire who's got an interest in Bingtang and wants to try and take it over.
Then you've got the Rain Wild traders trying to survive as well.
You've got all these factions competing with each other and trying to ally with each other.
And I think that makes for a really great location to drop your party of characters into.
And then they're trying to negotiate their way through the sort of factional politics and then maybe not so much for a gm, but as a player, I think it'd be really good fun to play Wintro Vestra, a character a bit.
A bit like him.
So he's a monk who's having a great time being a monk and living a quiet life.
And he gets plucked out of that life and forced by his dad to go on to the ships and become a.
A sailor on the ships.
And he absolutely hates it.
And I think having that character where you don't want to be adventuring, you want to be doing something else, but that you have to do it could be a really fun one to play, particularly as the campaign progresses.
The character can change quite dramatically from that initial concept and I think that'd be real fun and interesting to play.
Speaker B
00:25:00.890 - 00:25:42.360
I do really enjoy a character who has a completely background or when you take people who are designed for one sort of environment and then you drop them into another.
That clearly Wintrow just sucks at being a sailor for a good portion of this book.
And it's so unusual because you usually optimize your character for where you're going.
Right.
You don't pick a.
You don't pick a Paladin of the Ancients Wood deep forest character if you're going to go to the Arctic.
Right.
Like you're always kind of doing that sort of optimization.
But I think having a non optimal character makes for really interesting roleplay.
Speaker A
00:25:42.520 - 00:25:43.160
Absolutely.
Speaker C
00:25:43.320 - 00:25:44.120
Absolutely.
Speaker D
00:25:44.440 - 00:25:57.160
And I think the book was really well done.
I think I was literally.
I was screaming at the book once Wintro decided to leave the ship.
Sorry, spoilers.
And I'm just like, why are you doing it in this city?
Speaker B
00:25:57.480 - 00:26:02.320
Like the one, the one place that.
Well, a place where you are almost definitely going to get caught.
Speaker D
00:26:02.320 - 00:26:18.630
And it sort of led to a beautiful part of such a great part of the novel.
It's like a horror movie.
Like you know what's going.
You almost Feel like something bad is going to happen.
It's just a matter of how bad.
And it was so well done by Hobbes.
Yeah, it's such a great moment.
Wintro was an excellent character.
Yeah, completely agree.
Speaker B
00:26:18.710 - 00:26:20.150
Rich, you're next to the top.
Speaker D
00:26:20.150 - 00:29:12.430
Yeah, thank you.
So, as I sort of mentioned before, I really loved the way that Hob explored the liveship concept through different character perspectives as the plot developed.
It was so well done.
And so that sort of inspired me to sort of think, how would I be able to use that for my own, own games?
And at the moment, I'm also playing Mythic Bastion Lands with Marty and Tom's running it, which is a sensational sort of game system and also such a.
Another evocative sort of, sort of campaign that we're going through.
And part of that has myths which are kind of like mysteries that the.
The knights, in some way that you're playing will solve or encounter.
And the sort of.
The.
The really great thing about the system is that each myth has a number of omens, six omens.
And as the knights encounter a particular myth, they'll meet up with an omen.
And these omens will get a little bit more.
They're kind of like light and sort of not really that dangerous or anything like that.
But as you encounter more and more of the omens for a particular myth, it gets more.
More.
It gets heavier, it gets more significant to.
Maybe at the end, it culminates in a direct encounter with the.
With the knights and a particular myth.
And so it's just sort of thinking from the sort of the liveship perspective, how Hob sort of weaves all sorts of elements of what a liveship is through the sort of the story or the interactions that the characters have.
I was thinking, like, using that sort of element in my next campaign rather than just having, like, little encounters, have them of a particular, like, mystery or whatever the case may be, have them sort of scale up within the next encounter as they go along.
And it doesn't have to be a direct combat one.
It can be part of the mystery or something like that.
So I was thinking there's.
In my next adventure, there'll be some sort of interaction with goblins or thereabouts.
I haven't entirely nailed that down just yet, but it'll be kind of like these goblin raids.
It's tropey, but there'll be, like, the characters, rather than meeting the goblins, they can meet the refugees or survivors of the raids.
They can maybe uncover a collaborator with the goblins and of course, you know, that can go along with maybe meeting, finding some sort of fetish or some sort of footprint or something like that from that made from the goblins and so on and so forth.
So I'm just sort of trying to use that sort of concept of multiple angles for a single sort of, like, threat in a campaign.
And also inspired by mythic bastion lands.
Speaker B
00:29:13.310 - 00:29:18.470
Yeah, no, that sounds like a great strategy.
You guys are gonna have to tell me how that goes the next time we talk.
Speaker E
00:29:18.470 - 00:29:18.990
For sure.
Speaker C
00:29:19.310 - 00:30:02.730
Yeah, absolutely.
I was gonna just add one thing that I've already used from the book with the.
You have the whole story of the Vestards, then you have the sea serpents.
And that extra little story from a different perspective of the sea serpents is something that I've used already in a.
Did a one shot a few weeks ago for Call of Cthulhu down Darker Trails at Cowboy, where I had a.
The character's playing an adventure one shot.
But then I stopped every now and then and read a little paragraph I'd written about a family traveling down the same trail earlier.
So you have a parallel story going on, which I. I thought worked quite well, but mind saying so myself,.
Speaker D
00:30:05.130 - 00:30:05.450
I.
Speaker C
00:30:05.450 - 00:30:20.250
I loved those little.
Where you cut away from Wintro and Althea and sort of go to the serpents who are following along almost the same path, but at a sort of a different perspective.
Thought it was really great.
Speaker A
00:30:20.570 - 00:30:30.070
I can confirm that worked really well.
Yeah, it was really good.
It really added atmosphere and a sense of horror to what was going on.
It was brilliant.
Speaker B
00:30:30.630 - 00:31:58.570
I was going to talk a little bit about the sea serpents just because it's clear, even though I haven't read as far on as other folks, it's clear that they're in a sort of.
They're in a different life stage.
And as a biology person, I'm thinking of this as, like, alternating generations.
Happens a lot in plants where you have, like, one generation is designed to, like, be just the thing that gathers energy or strength or builds up, and then another one is designed.
The next generation is designed to be the reproductive one, and so on and so forth.
And in this case, it seems like there's like a hibernating sort of thing that's happening here.
Or it feels very alternating generation, which anytime I can throw in a little biology, I get super excited.
But I don't know how I would throw that into a campaign right off the bat.
But one of the things I would definitely steal right off of the top and want to drop immediately into My campaign is the character Amber.
And because she's the wood carver and the way they describe Althea picking out her particular wooden bead and how the beads have texture and that they have, it's like a minor magic item every time she's carving something like that.
Like the idea that you could have like a cool little magical common item bead, that's something I could just easily just drop into any campaign, any fantasy campaign I'm running and have that be there.
So Amber is a great character.
Character that I want to add in.
Speaker C
00:31:58.650 - 00:32:01.290
You have got to read on.
Oh my God, I'm so excited.
Speaker B
00:32:05.370 - 00:32:07.730
Yes.
Don't worry, we'll get there.
We'll get there.
Speaker E
00:32:07.730 - 00:32:08.330
We'll get there.
Speaker B
00:32:08.890 - 00:32:39.320
Yeah.
That's just fantastic.
Let's move on to media.
Obviously there are the remaining books in the series.
There are other Robin Hobb books that are set in the same world as this book.
So putting those aside, though, if you wanted to read something that made you feel like, hey, I would like to do that.
I would.
I would love to read more about this.
This is the kind of adventure I want to be reading and enjoying and going through.
What would I want to pick?
Martin, we're going to have you start.
Speaker C
00:32:40.200 - 00:33:40.670
Yeah, sure.
For me, I think I was thinking about this because I was only.
I was obsessing with Robin Hobb throughout this whole process.
But I think if you want to read something, I was thinking maybe the Wings of Fire kids books, but they're set from the perspective of the dragons, which is sort of not having non human characters is always something a bit different.
So that'd be a good way to get the younger audience in.
Other than that, I think Hornblower, which was made into a series in the 90s, I think a British series set in the Napoleonic wars about a young guy joining the navy and working his way up through the ranks on a ship is just great.
Master and Commander, the movie with Russell Crowe.
Anytime anyone's on a boat, that's my go to thing I think about.
It's just an absolutely fantastic movie.
And it's.
The young sort of officer is one of the best characters, sort of.
He's like 10 years old working on this ship.
Sort of like Wintro, I guess.
Speaker B
00:33:40.830 - 00:33:43.550
Those are all fantastic recommendations, Rich.
Speaker D
00:33:45.070 - 00:35:45.000
Yeah, thank you, Eric.
I'm going to shift slightly to films and movies.
So I was thinking from the.
In terms of like the.
The story of Wintro and El.
I thought Gladiator, also, the Russell Crowe movie makes an excellent comparison.
Comparison.
And so we had Maximus starting with Roman general power and status and he loses everything.
He loses his family, his rank, of course, and he ends up being enslaved and it's in a gladiator and he has to work back.
I think we all, most of us would have seen Gladiator by now, but he sort of worked, looks back and builds allies, earns respect and eventually fights his way back to some sort of freedom, taking his revenge in a way that sort of follows Winter's arc.
This, this future, this sort of.
This plan for his quieter life.
And then he said that's ripped away from him.
He's not allowed to be a priest anymore.
He has to be dragged into a life at the sea and eventually into slavery.
And so by the end of the book he's kind of pushing back in a real big way and he's part of a mutiny and he reclaims at least some control over his life and over.
He sort of breaks his bond with his father.
And then there's Althea, who has a similar story.
Well, she's denied her place in Vivacia and so she has to find another path on the sea.
In fact has to hide her identity.
Part of earning her position back on the liveship, on her family life shed verbacea.
And so all of these sort of stories, there's the.
It sits in slavery.
We haven't really discussed this in a lot of way, but this is something that we sort of tend to avoid in sort of the.
Our home games, I guess.
But it's interesting how the Ship of Magic explores this and Gladiator and Hobbit really introduces a gritty element and camaraderie.
Speaker B
00:35:45.000 - 00:35:52.760
And those are all important things and could be really great fodder for a good role playing game.
Absolutely.
Tom?
Speaker A
00:35:52.760 - 00:36:23.780
Yes.
I'm going to go back to books.
So there's a couple that I think are really good fit here.
The first one is Red Seas Under Red Skies by Scott lynch, which is the second in the Gentlemen Bastards series.
But it's all about being pirates.
It's.
It's one of the most amazing pirates themed fantasy books I've ever read.
And I think if you want to get that sort of swashbuckling pirate sort of theme into your game, you can't go wrong with reading this.
Speaker B
00:36:24.260 - 00:36:29.220
Absolutely.
100% Agree.
One of my favorite authors.
One of my favorite books.
Speaker E
00:36:29.220 - 00:36:29.740
I agree.
Speaker A
00:36:29.740 - 00:37:58.960
And in fact there's so many things you could go into.
We should probably do it for this because it's got so many great, great themes and great locations and characters.
It's magic and Then the next one I'm going to go into a science fiction realm.
So one of the great things about the Robin Hobb book is the live ships and the fact that they're sentient and they're these ships that are thinking for themselves.
So taking that to another extreme, there's a book called Accession by Ian M. Banks.
So he's got a.
He's actually from near where I grew up in Scotland, which also means I like him.
But he's got.
He's written in this series around this world or, or this society called the Culture, which is where humans have progressed where they can.
It's.
It's.
They progressed beyond humanity effectively.
But their societies are run by these things called the Minds, which are these huge supercomputers and these.
They're sentient and they basically control society and they run around in these big spaceships.
And Accession in particular is.
Is worth a read because a lot of the book is about these minds talking to each other and trying to work out what to do do with this new.
This thing has appeared in one of the systems near the culture and they're trying to work out what to do with it.
And they've all got these amazing names like Frank Exchange of Views or, or yeah, all these crazy names.
But they.
Yeah, a lot of it is this interaction between these sentient spaceships.
So I definitely recommend that.
That's really worth a read.
Speaker D
00:37:59.440 - 00:37:59.920
Cool.
Speaker B
00:38:00.240 - 00:40:11.370
Yeah, there's those fantastic suggestions all around.
Start off with the Blade itself by Joe Abercrombie.
I think it's one of the better examples of dark fantasy and it also has magic kind of setting and we have complicated characters and they're dealing.
They're dealing with a lot of very deep and dark material.
Going completely opposite on that.
If you wanted to.
An antidote to the darkness.
Since we're doing Pirates One piece.
Either the anime or the live one that is currently out on Netflix.
Just the most fun pirates I have ever had an opportunity to deal with.
If you wanted to deal with live ships and, and less serious than Ian Banks the Culture, you could read Dennis E. Taylor's the Bobiverse books.
We Are Legion.
We Are Bob is the first one.
It's about a guy who.
Whose consciousness gets transferred into an AI and he ends up making clones of himself and he's in this big spaceship.
It's a.
It's a hoot.
It's a hoot.
But it's also some really interesting sci fi.
Finally, I'm going to recommend the Amulet of Samarkand.
The first Book in the Bartimaeus sequence.
All four books are actually recommended here for a kid's book is a very deep and dark look into slavery because all of the magic in that book is based around the fact that you have to enslave demons.
And the main point of view, character book is a demon who is enslaved.
So we get to see this like intelligent, verbose, interesting character who's from another dimension who's been kidnapped.
Captain has to do magic for these terrible people.
It really does spend a decent amount of time talking about a very uncomfortable subject, slavery, in a way that's pretty palatable and at least removed enough that you can really discuss it.
So.
So the Babiverse and Bartimaeus one piece and the Blade itself, those are my four.
Like this book, it's just got so much in it.
I don't think we could talk.
We could all all give another five and we still wouldn't cover all the part of what's happening in these books.
So to be fair, I took four.
So does anybody want to add anything else in?
Speaker D
00:40:11.530 - 00:40:24.650
Robin Hobb has published so many books.
When I was reading this novel, I sort of realized that I had in the 90s, read another trilogy.
I can't remember exactly which one, but it was.
It had this protagonist, Fitz or Fritz or something like that.
Speaker C
00:40:24.970 - 00:40:27.770
Yeah, The Farseer trilogy, it's called.
Speaker D
00:40:27.770 - 00:40:40.950
Yeah.
And I don't remember very much, but I loved it.
I finished the whole.
The whole of those.
The Farseer series.
Go check out Robin Hobbs other books.
I mean, they're fantastic.
She's such a great writer.
Speaker B
00:40:41.110 - 00:40:41.910
Anyone else?
Speaker C
00:40:42.230 - 00:41:00.310
Yeah.
The criminally underrated Treasure Planet Disney movie.
The ace retelling of Treasure island is just one of my favorite Disney films.
And it's absolutely fantastic.
Swashbuckling movie could not end on a higher note.
Speaker B
00:41:00.470 - 00:41:18.000
We have talked about mechanics, we have talked about portables, and we have talked about media.
Which means it's now time to talk about stuff that you guys are going to be doing.
So we're gonna.
So we're gonna start off here and I was gonna talk to who's doing Winterfest.
Somebody said they were doing Winterfest.
Speaker D
00:41:18.000 - 00:41:50.090
I'm doing Winterfest.
Yeah.
Thanks, Eric.
So Winifst is held his little con here in WA held in a little town called Bridgetown, a few hours drive south.
So that's coming up in July in a few months time.
And so I'll be me DM a few games.
It'll be pretty cold, but there'll be a lot of great role playing.
DND energy.
So looking forward to that of that weekend.
It's.
It's a nice little, little event there.
Yeah.
Speaker B
00:41:51.849 - 00:42:03.870
Yeah.
But, but that's, that's what's happening and the, the folks who will be hearing this will be hearing this unfortunately in November.
Did you say you were doing a, a walk of some kind of also Was that you or was that.
Speaker D
00:42:04.110 - 00:42:20.750
No, I think it's Marty.
But I will be walking around Bridgetown, there's no doubt about that because I'll be running some games in the morning and then walking around because it's dead on the Blackwood river and so doing some walks in the, in the evening to get re energized and re inspired for the next session.
Speaker B
00:42:20.830 - 00:42:23.190
There we go.
Okay.
So Marty, what do you got?
Speaker C
00:42:23.190 - 00:42:28.390
So I again, it's actually October.
I looked it up so it'll be finished by the time this goes.
Speaker B
00:42:28.390 - 00:42:28.730
Okay.
Speaker C
00:42:29.520 - 00:43:13.510
Doing a charity walk for Royal Flying Doctors here in Australia, which is an organization that flies to remote locations in Australia because we're absolutely huge country and sort of does patient transfers and emergency response from airplanes.
So I'm raising money for them in October and I've just finished the Walk for Women's Cancer Walk here in WA and just recommend people get out and raise some money for your local charities and some great causes out there.
Do your research first because some people like to eat up all of your donations in administrative fees.
There are some great organizations out there.
Raise some money and have some fun.
Speaker B
00:43:13.510 - 00:43:20.030
With your friends and get out there and exercise.
That's fantastic.
Best recommendation.
Tom, I hear you have a website.
Speaker A
00:43:22.270 - 00:45:21.040
Yes, I've got a few things.
So I've got my website which is dndatwork.com where I, I try on weekly to put out a.
An article usually around leadership.
The, the connection between leadership and playing games like DnD, but also exploring some of the gaming experience I'm having.
Like some of the games I've been playing with these guys, I do write ups about those.
We had a.
Some crackers recently.
So go and check that out then on the horizon.
By the time this comes out, I should have my book that I'm writing that should be out.
It's going to be called Dungeons, Dice and Decision Making.
And it's all about the connection between leadership and Dungeons and Dragons.
It's going to have lots of short chapters that you can dip in and out of with different facets of leadership and how you can hone that by playing the game.
I'll also include a really short game so that people who don't know how to play.
It may be in a corporate setting.
You can use this to have like one hour lunchtime sessions at work.
So that should be out by, by November.
I've got someone doing a book cover at the moment.
So yeah, it should be, it should be on the shelves.
What I'll do is I'll send you the link so you can include it in the, the show notes.
And then another thing that's going on which is going to happen in June 2027 is there's a conference, a CMM conference which is all about communication and leadership over in the uk.
I'm going to go over to for that and they, they're going to have me running sessions.
I think it's going to be about six sessions so that people who haven't experienced game, like role playing games, corporate people can actually get in and have a session and I can, I'll do debriefs at the end so you can see how you can link leadership skill, the softer leadership skills into your games.
So that should be happening in June 2027, which is a long way off.
But yeah, I'm excited about that too.
Speaker B
00:45:21.040 - 00:45:33.160
Yeah, no, send, send the link for that.
I will, I will absolutely petition my boss that I need to go and be your assistant for that.
The east coast isn't that far from the uk.
At least it's a lot closer than Perth.
Speaker A
00:45:33.160 - 00:45:33.560
Yeah.
Speaker B
00:45:33.560 - 00:45:48.650
Thanks so much guys.
Anything else before we go other than your guys are amazing.
You continue to amaze me.
You do so much good work.
You do good work in the gaming, in the gaming scene.
So kudos for you and, and thanks so much for continuing to be on my show.
Speaker C
00:45:48.650 - 00:45:50.010
It's awesome.
My pleasure.
Speaker D
00:45:50.010 - 00:45:54.050
Yeah, absolutely.
No problem.
This is great to be involved in this.
It's such a great adventure.
Speaker B
00:45:55.570 - 00:46:24.700
And that was Ship of Magic by Robin Hobb, first book in the live Ship series.
Fair Winds and following seas to our able game masters, Martin, Tom and Rich.
Another fine episode, me buckos.
Join them in December when they discuss one of my favorite books of all time, the Curse of chalian by Lois McMaster Bujold.
And come back for our next episode, number 50, when we host authors and gamers Nicholas and Olivia Atwater as they discuss their fairy punk novella, A Matter of Execution.
Speaker E
00:46:24.700 - 00:47:24.020
You can find a complete transcript of today's discussion as well as links to all of our podcasts at k square productions.com backslash.
You can learn about upcoming episodes on our social media on bluesky@gmbookclub.bluesky social on Facebook at Gamemasters Book Club, on Mastodon at gamemastersbook club, and on Instagram @gamemastersbookclub.
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Community you've been listening to the Game Masters Book Club brought to you by me, Eric Jackson and K Square Productions.
Continued praise and thanks to John Corbett for the podcast artwork and Otis Galloway for our music.
Later, gamers, and to paraphrase the great Terry Pratchett, always try to be the place where the falling angel meets the rising apartment.