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First off, thanks for checking out my game! I'm thrilled to hear you're into it. I'll do my best to answer your questions and hope you're satisfied with them. 

How long does it take to travel?

The honest answer is "an indeterminate amount of time that the GM determines is appropriate for the narrative," but my rough rule of thumb is that the boat can travel out, do a round of fishing, and travel back in a single day. 

How many times can you fish at any given hex/point when you finish current travel?

A similar honest answer as above, but my rule of thumb has been every player can fish once. The idea is that the result isn't a single fish but a type of fish abstracted across the day's catch.

Also what should a player roll when sailing?

They roll Traits like with any other Risk. I've always had my players designate a Captain to make the roll, whoever has the best Traits for sailing a boat.

How does the Risk work for fishing? 

Yeah, the Fishing risk is the one that works a little differently. Instead of having a fixed TN, fishing is rolled against the chart. The better the roll, the higher the TN they clear, and the better the fish they catch. (Don't forget to have the GM roll 1d10 to check if their catch is Aberrant!)

I see TNs on fish that are cosmicly high, like TN100. What should players roll to try to get that number?

Things to consider: There are three standard traits they can roll (Profession, Personality, and Drive), each of which can give up to three dice, so your max possible roll on those dice is 54. 

After that, you can look at Tools, which can give another three dice, increasing that max total to 72. 

If they upgrade their boat's Tackle score three times, they get a flat +15 bonus for all fishing rolls, bringing us up to 87. 

Now, what closes the gap is Dark Traits. The game is designed with the intention that the characters WILL take on Dark Traits. Since you can add as many Dark Traits to a roll as you can justify, I think it's pretty easy to argue adding Hysterical Strength (physically managing the line), Intuition (knowing how to esoteric patterns in fighting the best spot to fish), and Vision (watching the waters for any tell-tale signs of fish). Now, each of those at three points gives you another 54 points towards our max running total, bringing us to 141. And if clever players can argue for Violence, Insinuate, or Domination... good for them!

Then there is Egregore. If you have a group of four players with an Egregore of three, they can all give it to each other, adding nine more dice to everyone's pool or ANOTHER 54 points (because it's three players contributing to the fourth player), bringing that max to 195. Obviously, if there are more players, there can be even more Egregore... or less with less.

So, is TN100 ridiculously high? Yes. Do you need to get lucky to hit it? Yes. Do the stars need to align for you? Yes. Is it impossible...? No, it's just VERY difficult.

Also how many players can fish at the same time? 

Everyone makes their own Risk.

How much time does it roughly take? 

My rule of thumb is every set of rolls (every player rolling once) takes a 1/3rd of a day, leaving 1/3rd to travel out and 1/3rd to travel back if needed.

If you reach the given TN while fishing do you only get a fish that is behind that specific TN? 

Yes, but the intention is that it's not a single fish but an abstracted "catch."

And again - while fishing should you really use your traits to add dice to your roll? 

Yes, you use your Traits.

Can all players roll for fishing?

Yes.

What if you get multiple mythos events?

This is something that's not clear in the text and something I should revise (I also have an adventure I wrote I need to edit and publish... but my autism has shifted to a new favorite interest, so I need to wait for it to circle back to this idea.)

The GM checks for a Mythos event when the boat first enters the Waters. So if the players sail out to the Sunlit Ocean, upon arrival, the GM rolls 1d10, and on 9-10, they experience one of those events INSTEAD of being able to go fishing.

Thank you for such a long and helpful response :) I would like to present some ideas for my hacks and homerules for the game and possibly get your feedback if you think it's gonna work or is it going to break the game.

I feel like it's a good rule of thumb to say that travel and fishing take one action, having three actions during day in total (and one action at night I feel, which you would probably want to use for resting). I would also add that Mythos Events take at least one action (as you described you encounter them IN PLACE of fishing spot if MG rolls specific number on d10), and possibly they can spark the whole long encounters, lasting who-knows how many hours or days.

I think the three action per day rule could work with the idea of traveling to deeper sea - you can either stop at every step (so you go from port to costal waters and than you go to sunlit oceans) but every step takes one action, OR you can rush it and try to make it from port to sunlit ocean in only one action but it would force you to meet TN20 in a single roll, etc.

And then I have a question - rules state that when you want to visit a depth where you have already been the TN is halved. So Do I understand it correctly that if you had already been to sunlit ocean, and then you returned to the port and the next day you want to sail to sunlit ocean again, then your TN changes from TN20 to TN10 forever? 

Second point - so every angler can roll once for fishing at given spot (and this whole process takes one action during day), but I was thinking about creating a profession trait called "fishing" or smth and communicate to players that "as anglers you have one point in it for free during the character creation, and you can add points to it as normal rules states," And maybe you could spend some kind of EXP to advance that skill during the game like "if you spend at least 3 actions, learning fishing from somebody with experience, you can add one point to your fishing trait up to three points"?
Personality traits I guess could work kinda well with the RISK vs Fish, and then drives probably always fit because you most likely fish in these waters SO YOU CAN achieve whatever goal you have. And dark traits will fit as well of course.

What do you think about that? My motivations are that I feel like getting high TNs for rolls connected to fishing would force us to really stretch the idea of character's traits to fit within the roll. Like "hmmmm I'm a dentist so how can I describe it in such a way that it would make sense to help me with RISK vs fish roll.." Like, the whole Unspeakable system works awesome when it is the players who come up with ideas of how to deal with threats they face. The process of fishing on the other hand feels very 'mechanical', it is a quite straighforward action in my mind. You throw your baits, your fishing rods or nets and than you wait (and possibly struggle with the fish that are bigger and fight for their lifes). What matters the most is your skills connected to fishing experience, your gear and that's it I feel. That's where the idea of specific 'fishing trait' comes from

Speaking of gear I'm thinking about creating a price list for more things in port (stuff like a bed in a motel, price of a flat, food and things like that) and I'm also considering adding a possibility of buying better fishing rods or stronger nets, so the gear that would add dice to the fishing checks and that would fit with the idea of "tackle trait" of the player's boat.

And one more thing for now - I would love to see (or maybe create one myself) a list of possible encounters/problems/sightings/omens or smth in the game. It would be very helpful when you get failed checks while sailing or fishing or doing some other stuff. Or you can go more storygame's style and create more of a inspirational, bit more abstract list of simmilar things and then GM could ask players of what went bad etc. (with the rule that players can't invoke supernatural stuff which is available only for GM and the Mythos Events and what comes from them).

Hmmmmm :)

Anyway I'm not expecting that you are going to read through all of that, it's just that I became quite passionate about the project (it hits all of my sweet spots if you know what I'm saying) and I'm already set up with my players to play a few games of the Shadows Beneath. So I'm going to come back with some feedback and thoughts afterwards for sure :)

Again - very orignal and awesome and interesting game. Can't wait to play it! 



I think your action economy would work just fine. None of that sounded too outrageous to me.

Your read on how halving TNs work for traveling out is correct, but don't forget that Mythos Events "reset" the waters. The goal is to drive the players further out so they encounter more and more horrifying events.... Then do it again!

I don't think there is a big issue if you want to create a free one point Fisherman Profession that everyone is given for free. Especially with my recent update, where I reduced the number of starting Profession points. I'd be careful with allowing players to improve their traits, though; the game is intentionally designed so that the only "improvements" come from losing Sanity and gaining Dark Traits. You don't want to take away that carrot too much.

And you're spot on, if you only have a single Profession trait and it's "Dentist"... you're not going to be very good at fishing. You're reliant on your Personality, Drive, and Tools at that point. The Risk vs Fish mechanic is intended to be a lot more mechanical than narrative. It's just an excuse to get the players out to sea to experience spooky stuff. I didn't want to encourage the game to dwell too much on it.

Creating price lists for more things at Port is a fantastic idea. It's something I wanted to include but ran out of room. I gave myself a strict 40-page limit so the book could be easily saddle-stiched if printed. I print copies at home and bind them for my friends and playtesters, and going over 40 pages makes the booklets bind poorly.

I'm thrilled you're excited about it. When I wrote this, I assumed it was too niche to appeal to many people. It was just me making something I wanted. haha