Oh Captain My Captain! review — A narrative tool

Lately, when I play Tabletop Role Playing Games, I’ve found myself wanting more storyline out of my games instead of focusing on chunky mechanics, numbers, and dice rolls. As a result, I’ve been researching OSR games and narrative focused experiences, which led me to Oh Captain, My Captain! (known as OCMC moving forward) from Adams Media, created by James D’Amato. Let’s dig in. 

First off, OCMC is a “short form worldbuilding and rpg”,  that places characters as members of a crew of adventurers. The captain has a dangerous yet potentially lucrative mission. Players draw cards containing questions prompts, their answers building the world, the Captain, and themselves, ultimately making the decision to go with the Captain or not. This is an unusual entry in the world of role playing games, and that is partially because of the author.

James D’Amato is the author of The Ultimate RPG Series, which focuses on tools for Dungeon Masters focused in worldbuilding, the cofounder of the One Shot Podcast Network, and host of the One Shot and Campaign: Skyjacks podcasts, and his focus isn’t so much on game mechanics as it is about world building, education, and storytelling. These characteristics come out in OCMC, as the “gameplay” involves the players drawing a card and answering a question. Over the course of the “game”, the players end up telling a collaborative story and fleshing out the Captain

The entire game is a deck of cards, including 16 rule cards, 15 Captains, and the rest are narrative, including the questions, potential endings, and an X Card, which comes into play if a player is uncomfortable with answering a question, signalling that they want to move on to another topic. The cards are high quality, the box is small and easy to store, but with the rules being cards, you might lose them. Not that it’s a big deal, this game is incredibly easy to play, take with you, and store.

At game setup, the players decide on a Captain, and they run the gamut of genres. From pirates to hockey players to space warriors, the illustrations are fun and can inspire a ton of answers, world building ideas, and other narrative hooks. All of the cards as you can see follow a specific style of illustration, which while nice, could have also been changed up to add more depth to the Captains.

Then the players decide on how many questions they want to answer. For my table, we’re talkers, so I chose 14 question cards, which took us a little over an hour. You can reduce or add cards in order to shorten or lengthen the game. Play goes around the table until the deck reveals the Decision card, in which players describe the nature of the treasure, and vote on the most important truth of the Captain. This then leads to one of four ending cards.

Some of the questions you may come across about the Captain build details about you and them, and your relationship.

“The Captain once confessed a regret to you. Why does this haunt you?” 

“The Captain trusts you. When did you abuse that trust?”

“In the Captain’s employ, your body underwent a major transformation. How did it change?”

The questions are deep and can lend to some real narrative depth. I was impressed with the range and quality of questions, and the answers they provoked. Outside of this experience, I could see players using them to build either NPCs or their own characters. Gameplay is entirely dependent on your table, so if they’re more used to RPGS, this will be an excellent experience.

The only negatives I can point out here are that the rules are stuck on cards, which means if you lose one, you’ve lost a part of the rules, but as I mentioned earlier, it’s not that big of a deal.  However, the only other part that sticks out as a sore thumb to my table was that the Endings aren’t that interesting. We felt that the card we chose didn’t really fit the narrative we had established, but it was a small blemish on an otherwise fine experience.

I recommend this to a table that needs a breather in between sessions, or to game masters who are looking for an interesting new storytelling tool.