Campaign: Skyjacks Primer
Aug. 3rd, 2020 06:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
schneefinkYou may have been wondering what this "Skyjacks" thing is that I've been having so many feelings about recently. I finally got around to writing a primer! I've never done that before so that was exciting, and I even managed to mostly use words instead of just exclamation marks.
Soundtrack: Call of the Sky
Join the crew of the sky pirate ship Uhuru on their adventures! A teenage mage, a changeling, a mysterious swordfighter and a necromancer try to hide the fact that the captain is a zombie while they fight a megacorporation and eldritch sea monsters and visit festivals.
Campaign: Skyjacks is a hilarious, exciting and dramatic TTRPG actual play podcast with fantastic characters and wonderful music.
The game
The podcast is hosted by game master James D'Amato, who also hosts the One Shot podcast, and the players are Johnny O'Mara (Travis Matagot), Tyler Davies (Jonnit Kessler), Liz Anderson (Gable) and Joan Patrick Coan (Dref Wormwood.) All of them are comedians and have played together before, some even for years in the previous Campaign: Star Wars, and are already very comfortable with each other. I really enjoy James' GMing style, which gives the players a lot of freedom to design and influence things themselves, and it works because they never abuse it. The production quality is excellent, including the editing and the soundtrack (a Kickstarter for the soundtrack is supposed to come out later this year and I can barely wait.)
The game system is Genesys, which I hadn't heard of before but is very easy to follow. Unlike D&D, where especially in combat you constantly have to calculate numbers and it takes a while, Genesys operates with a far simpler system of successes and failures, modified by advantages and disadvantages. The world was inspired by the music of The Decemberists and the card game Illimat (it's not necessary to know those in advance) and the card game's Luminaries are an added gameplay mechanic, basically like appealing to semi-deities. James adds his own homebrew mechanics for things like bird races and large-scale combat.
Episodes come out weekly and are on average slightly over an hour long, including a "Dear Uhuru" segment at the end where new prospective crew members are being interviewed. So far there are over 70 episodes, as well as some specials.
It's definitely not a podcast for kids, as there's swearing and sex jokes etc., but there is a kid-friendly spin-off set in the same world, "Skyjacks: Courier's Call."
The story
They're sky pirates! Half a year ago the captain of the Uhuru, Orimar Vale, died and was reanimated as a zombie by the ship's doctor, Dref Wormwood. Since then, Dref and the helmsperson Gable, as well as newcomers to the ship Travis Matagot and Jonnit Kessler, have hidden that fact and established themselves as the captain's "inner circle," leading the ship in his name.
In the world of Spéir, a church worships a god slain centuries ago, the monstrous Mariner spreads fear of the waters, and the Red Feather Syndicate has a monopoly for featherweave, the material allowing ships to fly. Over the course of their adventures the Uhuru will clash with all of them, and more besides.
Magic builds on stories (and sacrifice). Skyjacks is full of many tropes I love, including hurt/comfort, found family, and loyalty, as well as occasionally very effective horror elements. They also ride giant birds sometimes! There's some combat, but the focus is on the characters and the story. Overall, despite the world they're in and the things that happen, the story has a very uplifting and hopeful tone and I love that.
The characters
Protagonist classifications taken from this Tumblr post.
Jonnit Kessler: The YA novel protagonist. A fifteen-year-old mage, very powerful but barely trained, who believes in his own Destiny. Jonnit is very sweet, but also determined and should not be underestimated.
Dref Wormwood: The audio drama protagonist. Dref is nineteen (but claims to be older), very anxious and not a fighter – but that's okay, Orimar can do the fighting for him. Necromancy is barely known in this world, which is why nobody would suspect him to be one, or that the time he spends with the captain is used to repair and train the zombie.
Gable: The video game protagonist. Gable is a seven-foot-tall genderfluid non-human swordfighter with a mysterious past. I loved the reveal of what they are, so I don't want to spoil it here, but for those undecided if they want to give it a try I've put some more information about their background at the end.
Travis Matagot: The Netflix Original protagonist. Travis is the kind of asshole who denies caring about his definitely-not-friends even as he dies for them without hesitation. Though for him that would be trickier than for most, since he's a changeling. Every night he turns into an animal: coyote, raven, rabbit or snake, depending on the season.
Orimar Vale: Pretending to be the line of communication between the captain and the crew would have been easier if any of them had known Orimar Vale well. As it is, there are some surprises in store for his "council" about his past. In addition, Dref has never reanimated a zombie like Orimar Vale before, and sometimes controlling him is not that easy…
The rest of the crew: It's an ongoing joke that nobody is sure just how many members the crew has. Most of them start out as jokes (the prospective new hires in the "Dear Uhuru" segments are usually submitted by Patreon backers, and there are some very, uh, colorful characters, like Otto Van Von Veen), but some develop unexpected depth, and – look I just love Nodoze a lot okay, and he's not allowed to die.
Spoiler for Gable's and Travis' backgrounds
Gable is a fallen angel, who can't remember anything from before their fall. Travis being a changeling was a boon/curse from the mysterious Forest Queen. They are both immortal and first met each other about two hundred years ago.
The fandom
The fandom is quite small (it doesn't even have its own AO3 tag, but shares "Campaign (Podcast)" with the Star Wars Campaign) and spread out across Tumblr, Twitter, Discord etc., but there is some great fic and art already.
You can find the podcast here on the website, or on other podcast distributing sites.
(If you support the show on Patreon you get access to some bonus worldbuilding/background episodes.)
Let me know if there's anything else you want to know! I'm very happy to keep talking about my favorite sky pirates :) And I would love to have more people to talk about them with.
Soundtrack: Call of the Sky
Join the crew of the sky pirate ship Uhuru on their adventures! A teenage mage, a changeling, a mysterious swordfighter and a necromancer try to hide the fact that the captain is a zombie while they fight a megacorporation and eldritch sea monsters and visit festivals.
Campaign: Skyjacks is a hilarious, exciting and dramatic TTRPG actual play podcast with fantastic characters and wonderful music.
The game
The podcast is hosted by game master James D'Amato, who also hosts the One Shot podcast, and the players are Johnny O'Mara (Travis Matagot), Tyler Davies (Jonnit Kessler), Liz Anderson (Gable) and Joan Patrick Coan (Dref Wormwood.) All of them are comedians and have played together before, some even for years in the previous Campaign: Star Wars, and are already very comfortable with each other. I really enjoy James' GMing style, which gives the players a lot of freedom to design and influence things themselves, and it works because they never abuse it. The production quality is excellent, including the editing and the soundtrack (a Kickstarter for the soundtrack is supposed to come out later this year and I can barely wait.)
The game system is Genesys, which I hadn't heard of before but is very easy to follow. Unlike D&D, where especially in combat you constantly have to calculate numbers and it takes a while, Genesys operates with a far simpler system of successes and failures, modified by advantages and disadvantages. The world was inspired by the music of The Decemberists and the card game Illimat (it's not necessary to know those in advance) and the card game's Luminaries are an added gameplay mechanic, basically like appealing to semi-deities. James adds his own homebrew mechanics for things like bird races and large-scale combat.
Episodes come out weekly and are on average slightly over an hour long, including a "Dear Uhuru" segment at the end where new prospective crew members are being interviewed. So far there are over 70 episodes, as well as some specials.
It's definitely not a podcast for kids, as there's swearing and sex jokes etc., but there is a kid-friendly spin-off set in the same world, "Skyjacks: Courier's Call."
The story
They're sky pirates! Half a year ago the captain of the Uhuru, Orimar Vale, died and was reanimated as a zombie by the ship's doctor, Dref Wormwood. Since then, Dref and the helmsperson Gable, as well as newcomers to the ship Travis Matagot and Jonnit Kessler, have hidden that fact and established themselves as the captain's "inner circle," leading the ship in his name.
In the world of Spéir, a church worships a god slain centuries ago, the monstrous Mariner spreads fear of the waters, and the Red Feather Syndicate has a monopoly for featherweave, the material allowing ships to fly. Over the course of their adventures the Uhuru will clash with all of them, and more besides.
Magic builds on stories (and sacrifice). Skyjacks is full of many tropes I love, including hurt/comfort, found family, and loyalty, as well as occasionally very effective horror elements. They also ride giant birds sometimes! There's some combat, but the focus is on the characters and the story. Overall, despite the world they're in and the things that happen, the story has a very uplifting and hopeful tone and I love that.
The characters
Protagonist classifications taken from this Tumblr post.
Jonnit Kessler: The YA novel protagonist. A fifteen-year-old mage, very powerful but barely trained, who believes in his own Destiny. Jonnit is very sweet, but also determined and should not be underestimated.
Dref Wormwood: The audio drama protagonist. Dref is nineteen (but claims to be older), very anxious and not a fighter – but that's okay, Orimar can do the fighting for him. Necromancy is barely known in this world, which is why nobody would suspect him to be one, or that the time he spends with the captain is used to repair and train the zombie.
Gable: The video game protagonist. Gable is a seven-foot-tall genderfluid non-human swordfighter with a mysterious past. I loved the reveal of what they are, so I don't want to spoil it here, but for those undecided if they want to give it a try I've put some more information about their background at the end.
Travis Matagot: The Netflix Original protagonist. Travis is the kind of asshole who denies caring about his definitely-not-friends even as he dies for them without hesitation. Though for him that would be trickier than for most, since he's a changeling. Every night he turns into an animal: coyote, raven, rabbit or snake, depending on the season.
Orimar Vale: Pretending to be the line of communication between the captain and the crew would have been easier if any of them had known Orimar Vale well. As it is, there are some surprises in store for his "council" about his past. In addition, Dref has never reanimated a zombie like Orimar Vale before, and sometimes controlling him is not that easy…
The rest of the crew: It's an ongoing joke that nobody is sure just how many members the crew has. Most of them start out as jokes (the prospective new hires in the "Dear Uhuru" segments are usually submitted by Patreon backers, and there are some very, uh, colorful characters, like Otto Van Von Veen), but some develop unexpected depth, and – look I just love Nodoze a lot okay, and he's not allowed to die.
Spoiler for Gable's and Travis' backgrounds
Gable is a fallen angel, who can't remember anything from before their fall. Travis being a changeling was a boon/curse from the mysterious Forest Queen. They are both immortal and first met each other about two hundred years ago.
The fandom
The fandom is quite small (it doesn't even have its own AO3 tag, but shares "Campaign (Podcast)" with the Star Wars Campaign) and spread out across Tumblr, Twitter, Discord etc., but there is some great fic and art already.
You can find the podcast here on the website, or on other podcast distributing sites.
(If you support the show on Patreon you get access to some bonus worldbuilding/background episodes.)
Let me know if there's anything else you want to know! I'm very happy to keep talking about my favorite sky pirates :) And I would love to have more people to talk about them with.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-06 11:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-07 04:33 pm (UTC)As for the horror elements, maybe a good example is one of the short worldbuilding prologues, about the Mariner: Tales from Spéir #3. Most of the horror elements are centered around necromancy and/or immortality, and several are of the blink-or-you'll-miss-the-horrifying-implications variety. Some (very little) body horror as well.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-08 12:42 am (UTC)Thank you! That sounds like my kind of horror
no subject
Date: 2020-08-19 07:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-19 07:40 pm (UTC)I hope you do find time to check it out :D