Crisis in Freeport

I probably read "Gangs" and "Crisis" out of order in my Freeport Trawl. "Crisis in Freeport" was the official Green Ronin adventure that came out that year (2006), while "Gangs of Freeport" was a 3PP module produced by Adamant. In a quick summary of "Gangs" I see that Commissioner Xander Williams is still the commissioner, whereas his death was a major plot point in "Crisis." Whoops! Oh, well. I still believe that I'll find "Gangs" to be an unconnected one-shot, and that kind of weird issue shouldn't be one that I'm subject to anymore. After I read "Gangs" I have a relatively lengthy stint where I read 7-8 or so "pseudo-Freeport" modules; the entirety, I believe, of the Bleeding Edge line, in fact. All of these are nominally set in the Freeport setting, although mostly on the Continent, and only the last of them is actually set in Freeport. But I thought it odd to read the last of the Bleeding Edge series without reading the rest of them first, so I said, what the heck and added the entire series to the Freeport Trawl. Most of these modules aren't that long; I'll probably get through them relatively quickly, I think. 

The Bleeding Edge modules also started coming out in 2006 and all of them came out in either 2006 or 2007—although because they're numbered, I don't have to worry about accidentally reading them out of order. I've actually read the first few a long time ago, but I don't remember them very well, and I never finished the whole series. I do recall thinking that they were much more serious, dark and edgy compared to much of what Freeport had been prior to that. Long gone were any hints of silly puns and dad-jokes, and the modules had the feel almost of horror modules rather than high fantasy ones. Robert J. Schwalb was either the writer or co-designers of most of these; he'd been working at Green Ronin for a couple of years or so at this point on other dark, edgy products like Black Company, WFRP and stuff like that. I think he's just the guy to bring darker, edgier and more serious vibe to products. After all, his signature product is Shadow of the Demon Lord and its fairly hefty line of products. 

"Crisis in Freeport" is also in that same vein, as was the DCC module "Shadows in Freeport" which I read prior to that (also authored by Schwalb.) I'd read some dude's review of "Crisis" where he accused it of being grimdark and "squicky", full of gratuitous nastiness and rape and stuff. (I don't think he used the term grimdark. It's an older review, and I don't think that term had become mainstream yet.) So I wasn't quite sure what to expect; I don't like that kind of gratuitous nastiness for shock value and nihilistic despair that's a feature of famous grimdark like Joe Abercromby and George "Rape Rape" Martin at all. But in spite of this review, "Crisis" isn't like that at all either. While the reviewer obviously read the module, because he references some details of it, I don't know how in the world he came to that conclusion. "Crisis" is more serious, more dark, more edgy, and it doesn't pretend like pirates are "Arr, talk like a pirate day, matey!" DisneyWorld employees hanging around AdventureLand in pirate costumes. Yeah, they're actual pirates, and therefore pretty bad people. That said, if there was any rape, it's alluded to in such an indirect way that you can be forgiven for thinking that there wasn't actually any at all (although if not, then there's certainly plenty of torture—also alluded to indirectly at best). It's not any more "squicky" than Captain Blood, a novel written a hundred years ago when overt references to that kind of thing would have been disqualifying for publication entirely—although allusions to it happening off screen or women being menaced by the threat of it was certainly OK. That said, I've read a lot of other essays and reviews by that reviewer off an on over the years. I'm not surprised that he saw stuff that literally wasn't there, and was kind of offended by it, even though it literally wasn't there. Now, the fact that there's a succubus in the form of a 13 year old cabin boy on the pirates' ship is a little less easy to ignore, but again, the allusions to what happens to him are pretty veiled. But hardly shocking, all things considered; the famous quote about the British Navy attributed to Winston Churchill was that the British Navy was famous for "rum, sodomy and the lash" and they weren't even pirates. Officially, at least. In any case, alluding discretely to what happens and outright wallowing in it are two different things. I don't mean to suggest that you don't get the drift—although given the fact that the "cabin boy" isn't a cabin boy at all and is a succubus demon in disguise, I'm not sure who is really victimizing whom in this scenario—but I guess after reading talien's review on RPGNet, I expected something pretty different from what I got. The illusions to "squickiness" were hardly more explicit than they are in Lovecraft's "Shadow Over Innsmouth" which has people mating with freaky fish people, after all. "Crisis in Freeport" is less AdventureLand Pirates of the Caribbean the ride and more a darker, edgier module that skirts the line between a hard PG-13 and a light R rating. Which, in my opinion, is where it should be. If this is the direction the line is going to take for a while, and I think it kind of does, then I'm excited to continue. The idea that a semi-horror game who's two main pillars are lawless piracy and Lovecraftian horror wouldn't be somewhere on the line between PG-13 and R is kind of ridiculous. I hear Pirate Borg is even darker, fer cryin' out loud. Anyway, maybe I'm belaboring the point, but the review I read belabored it and it wasn't even accurate, so it kind of set my expectations and I felt that mentally I needed to respond to those expectations.

If there is something to complain about about "Crisis" it's more the occasional ham-handed railroading. Although it tries to discuss briefly what happens if the PCs don't do what the author expects them to do for whatever reason, it does still install Maerilise Maeorgan, or however you spell her name, as the next Sea Lord (Lady?) no matter what, and without much explanation for why that's a sensible result. Just because. Green Ronin weren't full on woke (yet) in 2006, but they were still determined to get their grrlboss Sea Lord no matter what. I actually liked that talien, in his review, which was a playtest review, discussed some ways in which his playthrough deviated from the module, and that's one that he called out and did differently too. In any case, she's the Sea Lord in 2007's Pirates Guide to Freeport (or was it 2008?) and they make sure that it happened that way no matter what in this module. Unfortunately. However, I think, although I don't know because I haven't read it yet, but in the Pathfinder update to the Pirate's Guide, I believe they advanced the timeline yet again, and I think she had already been replaced. I guess I'll find out when I get to that point in the trawl. I don't necessarily have problems accepting that a woman could have inherited the mantle of leadership, or that through conniving lies, manipulation and whatnot she could have installed herself in such a role. But that's a realistic take on it; the idea of the girlboss leader who is better than a man at things that require masculine psychology to do well is a major turn-off for me, both because it's a weird time capsule of this insane woke age that seems to be (hopefully) coming to a close on us, but also because it's simply unrealistic. Women weren't "held back" from behaving like men because men held them back; they were "held back" because they were women and are both physically and psychologically generally unfit to compete in a hypercompetitive masculine arena. And more power to them for actually being feminine and applauding that instead of trying to pretend like they're masculine and making a complete disaster out of it. 

Anyway, while reading it I was also listening to the soundtrack for last year's Nosferatu movie. I didn't really love that movie for a variety of reasons, but unfortunately, that meant that I ignored the soundtrack for far too long. Heck; some of my favorite soundtracks to use for reading, writing and RPGing are movies that I haven't even seen; certainly a flawed movie that I did see can have a great soundtrack. And it does. I should have been on top of that one months ago. Anyway, I'm definitely adding it to my shortlist of the Old Night unofficial soundtrack. Another movie that hasn't even had a US release yet does have a soundtrack you can hear; Dracula: A Love Tale. It's a Luc Besson movie. I don't even know if I'm interested in watching it when it comes to our shores next year, but with an excellent Danny Elfman score, well... it's an excellent Danny Elfman score and not to be missed if you like that kind of thing.

Woman in Black 

Woman in Black 2 (minus the first track with the weird nursery rhyme, which would be very distracting)

Woman in the Yard (take out the track with the singing. The rest is great ghost story soundtrack stuff)

End of Days 

Slenderman 

Death of a Unicorn (there's a few lounge lizard tracks; three or four, that you need to remove. Otherwise this gets just enough of the fantasy wonder in, while still maintaining a nice dark horror vibe. Occasionally a few tracks have almost a synthwave beat to them. This one is probably the most divergent in sound, but I like to add it for a little diversity. Plus the synthwave gives just tiny bit of the Stranger Things 80s player vibe, which as a confirmed Gen-X guy, is right up my alley anyway. Even before Stranger Things made it faddish again) 

Alien: Covenant (the best of the soundtracks from this series, and as it was (reportedly; I haven't bothered to watch it yet) a disappointing movie, your players may have seen it but almost certainly won't recognize the tracks)

Wolfman (the Benicio del Toro one with the Danny Elfman soundtrack. He deliberately imitated the Bram Stoker's Dracula soundtrack by Wojciech Kilar, but I actually like this pastiche better. 

Dracula: A Love Tale 

Nosferatu

I don't know yet, because I don't remember it very well, but I queued up the soundtrack for Dracula Untold and that might be a good one too.