Now that is an AWESOME idea!

I already have a small fleet of three merchant ships in dry dock so to
speak ... awaiting textures plus a lot of other ancilary work. I had started
to bash the Maiden to make them, but gave it up. Instead I went back to
my own designs I had made for a harbor diorama of the port in my home
town. Adding a few military ships to that lot would be so incredibly
great!

I'd love the aircraft carrier to be as impressive from an eye level view of a
game board as the Lexington was for me when I first saw her flight deck
towering above the buildings in Pensacola... blocks away from the port. I'm
not sure she is still in service anymore.

A frigate would be a nice addition too. Way smaller, but a lot of actionable
fun. I toured the Hall in Pascagoula. She was decommissioned and sold to
the Egyptian navy, but I still have the crew cap for her, a gift from my son.

The batleship looks useful - not sure yet what it would be useful for, but I am sure that I could come up with something. (Sometimes I sit on accumulated culch for years knowing that it will be handy someday... someday.) Some toys can make very useful gaming figures. I started a thread here on that topic, and have picked up one or two gaming toys that others have come up with. McFarlane Dragons, the battleship you pictured, and toy trains all have gaming uses.

The only problem I discovered was that gamers cannot resist the urge to start the train running along its plastic track.

The Auld Grump

Man did those aircraft carriers bring back memories. Back in the late 70's, maybe early 80's my father bought me a WWII Aircraft Carrier that had foam and plastic fighter planes on it. There was a spring running down the center of the ship (the whole length) and you would hook the fighters in it and drag the fighters back until a latch caught the spring.

With a push of the button the fighter would WOOOoosh down the runway and fly. You could even see the plastic propellers move.

Man that was a great toy!

That sounds *AWESOME*!!

I waish I could have seen that!!!

I played a demo of 7th Sea at GenCon years ago. It was a lot of fun, but the GM wasn't very good. Since it was an intro, we were taught the rules briefly, then had a big bar brawl, but either people rolled really well, rolled really badly, or the GM allowed things for extra excitement. I forget what the warrior race was called but they all spent all their points on this extremely valuable gauntlet... and even though it's your most valuable possession and you are a warrior race... apparently it was hanging off one of my fellow warriors belts with a thing piece of string... one of the other guys cut the string and ran off with it...

The setting itself was really interesting though. It's a shame it bombed

Arabin

Yeah, it was the Panzerhand and three of us were playing Eisen. It was indeed a player who stole it... and the player was actually dressed in t-shirt, shorts, and a chainmail coif!

You hit the nail on the head for why I thought it was completely wrong, but the fact that it's against the rules makes me more annoyed at her poor GMing skills. Still, it was refreshing to see a female GM.

Arabin

I have the game masters guide... I just haven't ever read it *blush* I don't get the chance to play rpgs other than computer ones anymore... probably why I put such focus on characters during skirmish wargames... kinda turning them into mini rpg theatres.

Arabin

I won't get into a debate about who hates the French more as this isn't the place, but although the race in 7th Sea was very interesting, I didn't want to play them because of real world prejudice

It's a shame you had such a mixed bag of players. I can understand the difficulty though. The game was designed to handle all kinds of players and was a very rich world... but it's not easy to create an adventure to suit all their tastes. It might have worked to tell them all to shut up and enjoy what they had, then provided a quest which involved brute force but rewards swashbuckling as well.

Mind you, since your players wanted more plot but complain that things were too complicated (they couldn't figure out the puzzles) or boring (they could figure out the puzzles) it sounds like there was no winning.

I don't blame you for stopping to play after that. I had a really bad time the first and only adventure I've run as a GM, when I tried to introduce three players to Judge Dredd. The mistakes I made were simple:
1) Tried my first time GMing with a world only I was intimitely familiar with, so I had to keep prodding them as there was no way they could/would figure things out in some cases.
2) One of the players I invited to join us was a long term GM who was very vocal, very argumentative, rules lawyer and didn't know how to be a player. He ruined the fun for everyone.

I've not played and certainly not attempted to run an RPG since.

Arabin

Does anyone remember the name of this toy aircraft carrier?

I'd really like to see one/look it up on the web.