"On the Seven Seas Question" Topic

Played a game of this last night, pirate crew entering a town to sack and they get ambushed by A British Colonial Garrison. Two sets of Brits were in buildings whereas one group was hunkered down in the jungle.

So anyways pretty cool game except for:
1. Morale- the rules state that a morale check is made at the start of a turn, you roll one d10 for each faction member killed in the last turn.

- I assume this means you roll only if you lose a member in the last turn. So I took it as you roll only if you lost any men in the last turn, 1 d10 per man killed last turn. However there is only a 30% change of the fear going up for each man killed.
- What I found is that the sides of 15 would basically almost fight to the death, that does not seem right to me.

So the question is do you roll only if you lose any mean or do you roll a d10 for each faction member you have lost in the game?

Let say you start at fear 5 in the game, and you have lost 3 men of your 15, that is basically a 90% chance of your fear going up 1. If you lost let's say 1/2 your faction with 8 losses, your fear should have gone up 2.4 overall. A fear of 10 is needed to lose the game.

I think it would be better to test per man lost in the game, if you took any losses in the last game???

Thought for any players of OTSS.

Our group has been playing this recently.

The rules are perfectly clear about this issue: you roll for each figure lost in the previous turn.

Remember that losses aren't the only cause of increasing Fear levels. Ambushes and striking colours also factor in morale tests, and outside these there's the possibility of using your Captain to intimidate an opposing faction during the Command Phase – with a greater chance if he's rated as Terrifying.

Beyond the causes specified in the rules, there's nothing to stop you building additional 'Fear inducers' into scenarios, such as having to roll to check whether Fear increases when entering a particular terrain feature/area (rumours of cannibals/sea monsters/restless spirits, or genuine fear inducers, such as having to swim through shark-infested waters). Use your imagination.

And ultimately the fragility of a faction depends to a large extent on its initial Fear level,so if you want to make factions more brittle just start with higher values.

Starting with fear at 5 is too low. You need to start with at least 6 or even 7 with a small force of 15. The book recommends this on p17.

Also, use encouragement and exhortation. The whole game is about the charisma of the leaders.

Cheers,
JohnG

I did what the book suggested with rolling a d 10 and re rolling 1-3 8-10?

However regarding exhortation etc. It says you can't do it if any men are in hand to hand??? I thought that strange but it's there.

The problem with the default morale levels recommended by Mr Peers is that the more severe morale effect (the prohibition on firing) can't come into play, because even with Greed set at 6 (and it can only increase in the game as written) when Fear reaches 4 points above it the faction automatically breaks.

Another option for morale checks, if you don't mind playing around with the rules, is a compounding Fear effect created by trying to roll above the current Fear level, rather than the mandated standard 8 or more. This will of course accentuate and accelerate differences in Fear levels.

Henry that is a great idea. I like it.