u/cranewrecked

When Down Among The Dead dropped, as soon as I laid eyes on Into The Maelstrom I knew it would be so fun to run it as some kind of competition amongst my friends. We also happen to run an anthology series tabletop gaming podcast so I figured why not make it a series!

Put together 3 teams, each one went through completely random character generations and game set-ups for the Maelstrom. I decided to cap the sessions to 3 per team, so 9 total, and whichever team comes out with the most points at the end of that will win cool prizes (handmade dice trays from a Canadian woodworking artist).

We just finished 1 session per team, and each one was wild. No two teams did exactly the same thing either, which was really fun to see. All of them have been having a blast with the points system for the module too! It's not the first time we've run a Pirate Borg series, but having them try and speed run the module for the most points feels so fun with the brutality of the borg systems.

Figured if anyone wanted to check it out, I'd leave some links! Please let me know what you think if you find some time to listen or even your thoughts on the Into The Maelstrom module! I'm clearly a big fan of it (and the entire Down Among The Dead book tbh).

Team 01: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbxeL-bpIYI

Team 02: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8YEUUwHAeo

Team 03: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtmexf8Vqww

Catch the podcast here: https://shows.acast.com/strange-encounter

We'll be live again on Friday, August 14th, as we cycle back to Team 01, and then onwards from there. I'm really stoked to see how the crew(s) will handle some of the bigger elements of the module itself. Trying not to say too much to spoil it for anyone, but some situations will no doubt be brutal if not thought through enough.