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Game Design for 'Seas of Night'

The one-line summary: you're crew on a ghost ship, trying to make your way in the 'world'.

The ghost ship is crewed by ghosts and by the Damned. Ghosts can fetch and carry, and can fight with sword and cannon. They can't be killed, and so are an utter terror to living defenders. Ghosts feel the pain, cold and hunger of their wretched afterlife day and night, and feel relief only when they feed on the warmth and strength of the living or the Damned.

The Damned have bodies, and strong ones, though they slowly decay. Each is branded with the personal mark of the captain who stole his soul. They burn constantly with the lust for vengeance on the captain who controls them and on the living who failed them. The Damned, if killed, rise again as ghosts.

The crew travel in a tattered ship upon the Sea of Night. The waves of the Sea carry ships between the worlds. Neither sun nor moon shine upon its surface, and only rarely does the wind shift or a fog roll in. Each tattered ship has a captain and a crew of sailors and freebooters, pirates all. Living captives aren't taken on board. The crew sails from port to port upon the Sea of Night. The ports can be separated by thousands of miles, by millennia, or by boundaries between worlds. The Sea has no connection to ordinary time or geography, and the distances between ports have no relation to their true distances in time and space. Navigating the Sea is very difficult, and the captain and navigator usually guard the secrets of the skill closely. Certain ports aren't known by most ships, and a truly skilled captain or navigator will know several ports that aren't on the maps.

A ghostly night raid on a port, or a ship near the port, can only go one way. The living simply cannot stand against unkillable enemies. The only question is how many of the living flee, and how many are killed or captured. The Damned crewmen can be killed, but they turn into more ghosts. The living, if captured by the crew, can be turned into more of the Damned.

The process of conversion is simple, and horrific. Living captives are lined up. One captive at a time, the captain pulls the burning metal brand from the fire and sets his devilish mark upon the unfortunate. The captive convulses, thrashes, and after a few seconds wakes up again, either as his own man or Damned. The former are usually put to death, and may never be successfully converted.

The Damned are supernaturally strong, about twice as strong as a man, and vigorously healthy. They are immune to normal amounts of heat and cold. In a fight or a raid, the captain may call them to battle rage. The battle rage makes them even stronger, and very quick, and allows them to do damage even to ghosts. When raging, they will mindlessly defend or obey the captain that converted them, even to the point of their death. The rage exhausts them, and afterwards they must rest.

At once the footsoldiers and the lifesblood of the ship, the Damned feed and strengthen the ghosts among the crew as well. Simply being nearby makes the ghosts a bit more substantial and capable, and for greater power they can feed parasitically. While this weakens the Damned, it lets the invulnerable ghosts go into combat with some of their power, without risking the death of the Damned themselves. It also briefly quiets the supernatural hunger and cold of the ghostly crewmen.

Mutinies are frequent. Ambitious players will often aim for captaincy. There are several obstacles to a mutiny. One is navigation -- the crew won't mutiny unless one of the mutineers knows how to navigate, which often requires the complicity of the original navigator (directly or otherwise). Another obstacle is that the mutineers must be stronger in a fight than the loyal crew, preferably far stronger. Even if the would-be captain can sway the majority of the ghosts, the Damned obey the captain involuntarily if they were converted by him. A mutineer can have the entire crew's cooperation, but still the Damned will fight for the captain when the rage strikes them -- they have no choice. And finally, the new captain must have the approval of the ship.

The ship obeys only a single captain, and will choose another when the first is destroyed or resigns. However, it won't necessarily choose the head mutineer in a mutiny. Its decisions are inscrutable, and being forsaken by the ship is another worry on the head of every mutineer. It is possible, but very unusual, for the ship to choose a crewman and he simply sails for the captain, though only rarely will this occur.

A captain's first defense against mutiny is to convert many of the Damned, since they fight only for him, and they keep the ghostly crew fed and satisfied. The captain is also careful to keep the secrets of navigation, of branding the Damned and of the ship's favor close to his vest, lest others learn them. And when he first takes a ship, many a prudent captain will find an excuse to kill off all the Damned on board. They were converted by the old captain and do not serve the new one as loyally. As ghosts they are no more loyal -- but ghosts are weaker, and may be more easily kept in check. After a few good raids on ports the new order of the Damned will rule, and the ghosts will grow more content with regular feeding.

No ship stays long at any one port of call. Even though they can't be defeated by swords or cannonfire, the ghosts will turn insubstantial and weak in the sunlight, and eventually be consumed entirely unless the Damned can continue to lend them strength. The Damned lose much power in the daylight as well, but won't be destroyed by it. Keeping a beachhead occupied for long would require many Damned and few ghosts, and would need to raid the surrounding land often.

Unfortunately the crewmen, Damned and ghosts alike, cannot travel far from the ports where they dropped anchor -- a fog, solid to the crew and invisible to the living, blocks them if they get far. This is also the reason that few ever desert the ship they came in with. Without it they are limited to a small area, to wait until the sun comes up. Occasionally a ghost is intentionally executed this way, left behind by his crewmates.

There are a few ports that are islands on the Sea of Night itself. The crew can relax and take shore leave there, and meet the crews of other ships. Occasionally crewmen will desert on these islands, jumping ship for another captain and a new crew. Information, strange objects and unusual services are available for purchase on these islands. Such services are also available at night in a few terrestrial ports where the bizarre is winked at and heavily charged for services rendered.

There are a few things specific to ghosts and to the Damned that can be catered to. Ordinary alcohol will do little to the Damned and nothing to ghosts. However, certain potent beverages are available at great price for consumption by the supernatural. There are also supernatural restraints which can be used to clap even a ghost in irons. This is normally how a ghost is restrained if he is left at a port to die.

(I really like the following idea, but I'm not sure how to avoid inflation -- if Essence can be seized by force then players will destroy NPCs to get it, and if it can be extracted from oneself they'll destroy their own freshly logged-in spirits. If an Obol may be extracted but it costs XP, they'll be able to produce them en masse by botting... Dunno, not sure how to prevent this happening. Maybe with a difficult-to-get skill and creating Obols will drain points of this skill? I'd still need to figure out the economics) Normal money is used for many transactions, but the rarest currency, used for the weightiest purchases, is the Obol. The Obol can be absorbed directly by a ghost, and is thus often impossible to steal. It is seen only rarely, as a blue ellipse of light, and is extremely valuable. A ghost that is destroyed takes its wealth, at least in Oboloi, with it.

Ghosts can be destroyed by prolonged exposure to sunlight or far more slowly by starvation. Feeding from the living or the Damned will reverse damage from starvation. It will also reverse sunlight damage if the ghost can feed before fading away entirely. Ghosts can harm other ghosts, and the Damned can harm ghosts as well. Rarely one of the living can do damage to a ghost through religious faith or other supernatural power. Ghosts can also be tossed overboard on the Sea of Night, which presumably destroys them as well.

Religious faith among the living will make them far less likely to become Damned, but make them far more powerful if they are converted. Very strong faith can drive away ghosts. It can harm ghosts or the Damned, or offer them the chance to convert and join with God. Ghosts and the Damned, if converted, are usually immediately destroyed. An exorcism is possible, and the rumors of what happens to an exorcised ghost or Damned man disagree wildly. Very, very few have ever seen the results firsthand.

We use the male pronoun through almost all of this document. That's because females are far less likely to become ghostly pirates, and rarely convert successfully to the Damned. Most frequently, female captives are killed outright rather than being captured for conversion. Primarily, that's because it's considered very bad luck to have a woman on board the ship.

In fact, all sorts of things are considered bad luck. Killing or chasing away certain air and sea creatures is bad luck. Having a woman on board is bad luck. Having the captain navigate, having no navigator and having a foolish navigator are all considered bad luck. So is trying to convert a priest to the Damned. When a ship goes down that flagrantly flaunts these laws, it gets talked about across the width of the Sea. When the Drowned Rat goes down, you're sure to hear if there was a woman on board, or if the lookout tended to sleep on duty, particularly if it was related in some way to the reason for the ship being lost.