D&D General What's your view on a pirate-driven campaign?

[TheSword]

I would be open to running a "pirate setting" but wouldn't know how to go about it. I have heard of, I think, D&D's Red Steel but otherwise my knowledge of "sea settings" is is sparse. I have only done three campaigns in total in terms of roleplaying. Otherwise, I want to try my hand at DMing some-sort of nautical setting since I like the vibe of, say, Pirates of the Caribbean or Black Sails.

I am looking at options right now, but any pointers on where to look further would be welcome.

The best pirate setting I have seen is Razor Coast by Nicholas Logue - a veteran of Dungeon Magazine and many of the best Paizo adventure paths. It’s written for Pathfinder but easily adaptable for 5e.

 

[TheSword]

So typical pirate movies have ships that correspond to age of sail frigates. They have crews in the range of 240 to 350. So, the moment you start running a game that looks like a pirate movie, you immediately jump from dozens to hundreds. And that's probably going to happen to you as soon as 7th level or so. Like 1st level the crew might be the party, but by second level it's a dozen and by fourth level it's forty. And it won't be impossible depending on your player's choices that they have armada of ships one for each player and a thousand employees by name level.

"Pirate" is one of those ways you jump into end game play early, with the PC's as little mini-lords. That's the thing most people saying, "We want to play pirates!" don't understand. You either give them that and then it becomes overwhelming, or else you do the Traveller "being a space trucker sucks" thing that prevents them from ever achieving success.

It’s possible for a fantasy game to borrow from multiple sources and carry the flavour of a genre without being constrained by historical accuracy. Otherwise every fantasy city in RPG would starve from the lack of food and water and be bankrupted/collapse under the prohibitive cost and dimensions of their sewer systems.

It kinda feels like your researches into the area have created a set of really high expectations (unfeasibly high for most people). Which is fine if you enjoy that and want the complexity, but really crappy if it sets the bar too high for most people to engage. So while I respect your standard i don’t think it should be taken as essential or even advised.

For instance running pirate ships with 20-30 crew average is absolutely fine for a fantasy game. It doesn’t hurt anyone. It’s enough people that you can well detail half a dozen key roles and randomly generate a name for a regular dude as and when required. Without creating an undue burden on the DMs and players.

 

[Celebrim]

For instance running pirate ships with 20-30 crew average is absolutely fine for a fantasy game. It doesn’t hurt anyone. It’s enough people that you can well detail half a dozen key roles and randomly generate a name for a regular dude as and when required. Without creating an undue burden on the DMs and players.

UPDATE: Ooops. Sorry. I thought this was a response to a post about the Skull & Shackles AP. What I wrote isn't actually a response to what you are claiming.

So, if you don't have ship to ship combat like people expect when they imagine pirates, and instead you have something more medieval like Viking pirates in long ships or Greek galley pirates I think your expectation is fine. But it won't take my level of research for this problem to start rearing its head in just about any setting where you have some sort of reified ship to ship combat and boarding actions. The average person probably hasn't thought much about it but once they start thinking about it the idea of a crew of 20-30 starts falling apart.

Let's say that they do believe a crew of two can sail a frigate to Tortuga as in Pirates of the Caribbean. At some point though they are going to want to fire all the cannons. Well, you've got like 15 cannons on your broadside. Even if they only think it takes two people to fire a cannon they now have a crew of 32. And they are probably going to think, "Well, we do still benefit from having people on deck and in the fighting tops during the fight. So they go, "Well, the ship is like 120 feet long so one guy every 5 feet is like 24 marines/pirates plus a few snipers up on those platforms whatever they are called." And now you've got a crew of 60 before you even do any research into what it takes to actually sail a 120 foot square rigged ship and fire a cannon.

And then you go, "Wait a minute, what if the enemy in those big galleons we are raiding for treasure gets more soldiers than us?" How many soldiers are on the Spanish Galleon analogue?"

And that's not even getting to whether the average gamer has played something like Sid Meyer's "Pirates". It doesn't have to be a very realistic game at all before you realize having an army can be better than not having one for certain things you might want to do.

Irrelevant older response clipped:

Spoiler

That sounds good on the surface but it requires having a fantasy setting where no one expects any ship to have more than 20 or 30 crew.

And the problem with this is not only is this not made explicit by the adventure or the setting or the rules, but the rules actually give players the opposite expectation. For example, it turns out under the rules that the most powerful ships in the setting are rowed galleys with crew of like 600 or something (or some other large number I don't remember). So it's not just my expectations about how a square-rigged sailing vessel works that are pushing me to think "we need a bigger crew" but also what I can glean from the rules themselves. Because remember, at this point we're only like 3rd level characters. Hundreds of even 1st level characters is an overwhelming force to us.

And even like the GM were to have a discussion with the players (which he eventually did) where he says, "OK, in the rules your crew size doesn't matter and for that matter it doesn't look like the crew size of the opposing ship matters." (because the rules of the ship minigame aren't player facing) that really only works if you can suspend disbelief that your ragtag crew of 20 can overwhelm and defeat the opposing ships crew of hundreds kind of off stage while you are doing the whole fight with the enemies leaders. But that doesn't really work intellectually or in terms of the game, because Pathfinder isn't abstract in its combat gameplay. It has deck plans and tactical movement, so this fight between the two crews isn't really off stage somewhere it's supposed to be happening all around you.

You'd be right if this was a Spelljammer like setting and there was some rule about breatheable atmosphere that limited crews to 20 or 30, only IIRC there are plenty of fortress sized spelljammer ships with crews of hundreds or thousands, so there isn't really a setting where there is reason to imagine crews don't matter to the outcome of combat and shouldn't join into it.

 

[TheSword]

UPDATE: Ooops. Sorry. I thought this was a response to a post about the Skull & Shackles AP. What I wrote isn't actually a response to what you are claiming.

Irrelevant older response clipped:

Spoiler

That sounds good on the surface but it requires having a fantasy setting where no one expects any ship to have more than 20 or 30 crew.

And the problem with this is not only is this not made explicit by the adventure or the setting or the rules, but the rules actually give players the opposite expectation. For example, it turns out under the rules that the most powerful ships in the setting are rowed galleys with crew of like 600 or something (or some other large number I don't remember). So it's not just my expectations about how a square-rigged sailing vessel works that are pushing me to think "we need a bigger crew" but also what I can glean from the rules themselves. Because remember, at this point we're only like 3rd level characters. Hundreds of even 1st level characters is an overwhelming force to us.

And even like the GM were to have a discussion with the players (which he eventually did) where he says, "OK, in the rules your crew size doesn't matter and for that matter it doesn't look like the crew size of the opposing ship matters." (because the rules of the ship minigame aren't player facing) that really only works if you can suspend disbelief that your ragtag crew of 20 can overwhelm and defeat the opposing ships crew of hundreds kind of off stage while you are doing the whole fight with the enemies leaders. But that doesn't really work intellectually or in terms of the game, because Pathfinder isn't abstract in its combat gameplay. It has deck plans and tactical movement, so this fight between the two crews isn't really off stage somewhere it's supposed to be happening all around you.

You'd be right if this was a Spelljammer like setting and there was some rule about breatheable atmosphere that limited crews to 20 or 30, only IIRC there are plenty of fortress sized spelljammer ships with crews of hundreds or thousands, so there isn't really a setting where there is reason to imagine crews don't matter to the outcome of combat and shouldn't join into it.

No problem.

I mean I get it. I personally would have loved a detailed Master and Commander style campaign where each ship is a mobile settlement. The problem is every other PC would have to want this too, which is highly unlikely with most groups.

I have come to terms with the fact that Skull and Shackles can work as a cannon-less pastiche of 15th & 16th C pre/early age of sail when ships were smaller and before the conventions of later naval warfare became established. With crew sizes reduced because that’s what the story requires for it to work.

 

[Celebrim]

I've tried the squad-as-swarms approach, but it felt too mechanical for me. Didn't suit the fiction. But I don't think you really need large numbers of combatants to do pirates. If you look at pirate movies there are rarely more than a dozen extras on either side, and the original pirate story - Treasure Island - only has that many, even without budget constraints.

IIRC correctly, that's because Treasure Island has no actual piracy. It features a mutiny by former pirates against the owner of a merchant vessel who was unwise in hiring his crew. There are only about two dozen crew aboard the schooner, so naturally neither side of the mutiny can have more than about a dozen men in it. Also, note that this means the 100 foot schooner which is not armed as a warship has crew of like 24 to 30, which is reasonable for a merchant vessel not intending to defend itself from a crew of cutthroat pirates.

Now watch Captain Blood, The Crimson Pirate, The Black Swan, or The Sea Hawk.

 

[bedir than]

Its normally because you need to stat the ships out.

Turns into a different game. D&D neer had good rules for that sort of thing.

PCs who lack range or required weapon proficiency tend to get bored. The people firing the weapons or sailing/piloting the ship tend to have all the fun.

Basically the naval combat side of things.

If you play Sid Meiers Purates, Assassin Creed Black Flag or Odyssey the computer does most of the work.

We've done Spelljamming pirates 2E, pirates 3E and Pathfinder.

Ship to ship combat in Star Wars D6, d20 and SWSE d20.

Pirates literature is essentially age of sail. D&D models it poorly.

Best of them were Spelljammer and old D6. d20 versions espicially poor.

None of this has to do with the "bookkeeping of piracy" that people are talking about.
They specifically mention things like payroll/shares, barrels of fish, barrels of water, wind speeds, etc.
Not combat.
I have solutions for combat.

But I have an easy solution for those that complain about the bookkeeping of piracy -- ignore it. None of the inspirations for the game focus on that. Your table shouldn't either.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I would be open to running a "pirate setting" but wouldn't know how to go about it. I have heard of, I think, D&D's Red Steel but otherwise my knowledge of "sea settings" is is sparse.

Red Steel's not really a nautical setting, although I'm sure you could play a pirate game there. Any time you get water in D&D, you get pirates. (Or even when you don't have water, like in Spelljammer.)

I am looking at options right now, but any pointers on where to look further would be welcome.

Pick up Pirate Borg. Even if you use another system -- although Pirate Borg is awesome -- it's basically a book stuffed full of pirate generators and includes an excellent naval combat system. (And, as mentioned upthread, you can get 5E conversion books for the monsters and naval combat systems.)

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Also, the notion that running a pirate game requires either hundreds of crew members or running a wargame at your table is bizarre. Tons of people happily run pirate RPG games without doing either.

 

[TheSword]

As I mentioned before I’m pretty convinced the route forward for fun 5e Pirate Ship operation is to abstract-the-shiz out of it. Kinda further to what @bedir than just said. We don’t track barrels of ale if the PCs but a tavern so why do it for an enterprise like this.

I’m sure a subset of the Bastion Rules could be adopted.

• Size of ship similar to size of Bastion
• Basic facilties that have effects - sails, rudder etc.
• Advanced facilities that can be added at a cost based on the size of ship (armoury, crows nest, brig, gun deck etc)
• Bastion Orders - Piracy, Careening, Repairs, Shoreleave, Blockade.
• Ship Events - Reef, Doldrums, Mutiny, Hurricane, Whales etc.

Having ran and played in several pirate campaigns the actual business of piracy is deadly dull. As was mentioned earlier, pirates don’t actually want to fight and most merchant ships can’t fight. There is no entertainment in the PCs boarding a father and son merchant vessel. It doesn’t need to play out in combat rounds.

Ship combat should be saved for that rival pirate that tries to take you down or when you’re finally cornered by the Chelaxian navy.

 

[Voadam]

I would be open to running a "pirate setting" but wouldn't know how to go about it. I have heard of, I think, D&D's Red Steel but otherwise my knowledge of "sea settings" is is sparse. I have only done three campaigns in total in terms of roleplaying. Otherwise, I want to try my hand at DMing some-sort of nautical setting since I like the vibe of, say, Pirates of the Caribbean or Black Sails.

I am looking at options right now, but any pointers on where to look further would be welcome.

Some D&D ones:

FOR3 Pirates of the Sea of Fallen Stars. Forgotten Realms 2e Sourcebook on fantasy D&D pirates.

Sea of Fallen Stars. 2e FR sourcebook, mostly about the undersea and underwater adventuring and campaigning, but has some bits on the Pirate Isles detailed in FOR3.

Corsairs of the Great Sea. Al-Qadim 2e small boxed set on fantasy Arabian pirates.

Havens of the Great Bay. Birthright 2e setting sourcebook on coastal regions with some pirates.

Rock of Bral. Spelljammer asteroid city founded by fantasy space pirates called the City of Thieves.

SJA2 Skull and Crossbones. 2e Spelljammer anthology of adventures about hunting down pirates.

HR4 A Mighty Fortress is Elizabethan time period if you want to do Sir Francis Drake stuff with extensive period firearms.

LC4 Port of Raven's Bluff. A Forgotten Realms 2e port city with pirates regularly in it.

DMGR9 Of Ships and Seas. 2e rules sourcebook provides rules for nautical adventuring and ship combat.

Stormwrack. The 3e sea themed environment sourcebook with some nautical adventuring rules.

Salt and Sea Dogs: Pirates of Tellene. 3.5 Kalamar sourcebook on nautical adventuring and pirating.

Zoa Citadel of the Bay. 3.5 Kalamar smuggler haven port city sourcebook.

City of Stormreach. 3.5 Eberron smuggler and pirate port city full hardcover sourcebook.

Eberron as a Campaign Setting. 3.5-5e has the Lhazar Provinces of pirate kingdoms but they are not as well fleshed out as other stuff with official adventures and dedicated sourcebooks and such.

Greyhawk has its own pirates areas too such as the isles of the Sea Barons and the Hold of the Sea Princes and the fantasy viking raiders of the Snow, Frost, and Ice barbarians.

Lankhmar had some pirate stuff in the setting, but not much in the D&D adventures or city sourcebooks that I remember.