Sasserine - Your experiences?

Silver Moon · Nov 22, 2007

I am starting a new module on Sunday night centered around pirates. I needed a home port for an organized group of pirates and after thumbing through Dungeon #139 and the PDF download at Paizo.com think that the City of Sasserine might work well.

The backstory for the Black Mark Pirates is that they have been around for centuries with a fleet of approximatley 100 ships. Around 80 years ago they were forced to relocate their home port, travelling to a tropical region. I am thinking that their arrival could have coincided with a period of economic decline in Sasserine and that the Dawn Council would have worked out a peaceful co-existance with them, incorporating the approximatley 3,000 pirates with 2,000 families and followers into the city (with some of the Black Mark Pirate leaders marrying into a few of the noble houses). Much of the city's current prosperity could result from plunder brought in by the pirates.

I am not planning to immediatley use any of the Dungeon Savage Tide adventure path, although I will probably make references to some NPC's and locations as foreshadowning for future modules. Of those of you who have used Sasserine, what have your experiences been? Which of the Savage Tides modules worked particulary well?

freyar · Nov 22, 2007

Sounds like a reasonable story, and a good tweak to the setting. You might consider that a lot of the Black Mark pirates have cleaned up their act a little after getting a taste of noble life, since Sasserine isn't quite a pirate city like Scuttlecove (which comes up later in STAP).

You should keep in mind that only the first couple of adventures of STAP actually take place in Sasserine (up to about level 3-4, I think). However, there is a very interesting looking adventure in Dungeon 149 called War of the Wielded at 5th level set in Sasserine (nice backstory there), if you can get a hold of that.

I haven't run anything in Sasserine myself, though.

Bagpuss · Nov 22, 2007

The problem one with the Savage Tide Adventure Path is it spends so little time in Sasserine, only the first two adventures, and one of them isn't actually based in the city for half of it. So even though I've run the adventures my players never really felt part of the city, and I didn't get a decent feel for it as a DM.

JoeGKushner · Nov 22, 2007

If going with Pirates, why not Freeport?

Bagpuss · Nov 22, 2007

Perhaps because Freeport isn't and Sasserine is.

Tonguez · Nov 22, 2007

freyar said:
Sounds like a reasonable story, and a good tweak to the setting. You might consider that a lot of the Black Mark pirates have cleaned up their act a little after getting a taste of noble life, since Sasserine isn't quite a pirate city like Scuttlecove (which comes up later in STAP).

Since (in this set up) the Black Mark pirates would effectively be the (privatised) Sasserine Navy there's probably very little difference between noble privateers of Sasserine and the wicked pirates of Scuttlecove (except that the Black Mark now have family honour to consider)

Silver Moon · Nov 22, 2007

Reviewed all of the 12-issue path and was surprised that Sasserine only factors into the first two modules. I do plan on referencing some of the other pirates mentioned later on.

Silver Moon · Nov 25, 2007

freyar said:
there is a very interesting looking adventure in Dungeon 149 called War of the Wielded at 5th level set in Sasserine (nice backstory there) (

I've read it over and will definately be using it - the plot hook of the intelligent sword initiating the party's interest should work very well.

Hussar · Nov 25, 2007

Yeah, I've noticed that STAP is definitely mobile. Far more than Shackled City. None of the cities presented in the AP feature all that heavily overall in the series.

OTOH, Sasserine would work pretty sweetly for a pirates based campaign. It has pretty much everything that a party would need all the way up to decently high levels.