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That was sometimes true, but not always. When you're dealing with a group of people known for robbing and murdering random merchants, it's a little dangerous to ascribe idealistic goals to them across the board. Some pirate crews were pretty democratic, but there are many, many historical...

Interesting...I definitely want to have some sort of schism that can be exploited, but I'm planning to have an old crew vs. new crew on the pirate ship already, so I'm thinking something else. Maybe something similar, though: the captain has a handful of toughs that know it's a slaver ship and...

Holy crap--again with the great ideas, Nifft! I'll go through these bit by bt. Hmm...I'm not sure it'll ever come up what the Haitians want with the educated slaves, but if it does, I'm thinking that they're a special order for some supernatural group who needs administrators: they plan to...

Mmm...the captured-and-get-hunted scenario is interesting, but if I use it, it'll be later in the campaign; I'd like them pretty quickly to get accustomed to the idea of working as pirates. Starfox, I definitely plan to play with the classic pirate tropes: buried treasure, attacking galleons...

Great idea, Danny! I'll look up Turtledove; alt-history is absolutely the route I'm going here. So I talked to some folks elsewhere, and someone made a good but devastating point: The orchid plot kind of sucks. It's random, it's DM fiat, it relies on PC actions being very specific, it...

Danny, those are very interesting ideas, but I'm not using D&D: I'm using White Wolf's system. Likewise, the sentient turtles are wonderful, but probably not suited to the flavor of the world I'm creating--they're more Robert Howard, less Tim Powers than I'm looking for, if that makes sense.

Sweet--thanks for giving me your procrastination time! :D Aztec magic is massive and epic and is fueled by tremendous blood sacrifices. Just keeping the empire going requires a constant flow of sacrifices, more than they can get these days through warfare. However, they have a rite that...

That's about it. Hopefully this won't cross any lines, but the Order of Reason (at least its current leaders) are to a scientific utopia what Stalin was to a communist utopia. Nice idea, nasty execution.

Heh--that's kind of funny. It's not uncommon for me, on watching British movies, to turn on subtitles to deal with difficult accents (especially things like Trainspotting or Breakfast on Pluto). No shame in regarding movies from across the Atlantic as foreign-language flicks! And yeah, I...

hi, folks! I started a thread a few days ago about some rules questions with an upcoming game, and the answers were fantastic, so I thought I'd throw some of the story out there to get some ideas. The kinds of things I'd love to get would be: -Interesting characters (villains especially, but...

Bingo. A botched vulgar effect with a level 3 sphere and in front of civilians is 7 points scourge immediately, nothing to sneeze at, and it'll have a base difficulty of 8; very easy to botch if you're rolling 3 dice! Absolutely true. The game will start in Spain, as well, with the...

Curses, my reply was eaten. There's no coincidental magic here, but there is an absolute need for spellcasters to go through the motions--and if the effect they're trying for isn't something that most folks think can be done with magic (which is highly subjective and something I'll decide with...

Thanks--it's good to be back! I posted some thoughts in RBDM, but I might put 'em public, too--would love to get some ideas for the game itself.

Wow, I thought the thread was about to die, and y'all bust out with some excellent thoughts. Lemme try out the multiquote feature. This is a possibility. I was also thinking about the fact that pirates aren't interested in destroying ships so much as in capturing ships, and the obvious ways...

I disagree with you. I'm not making them fundamentally inflexible in their abilities. They certainly may make an effort to create a spark in the powder room. However, they'll almost certainly not succeed at it without a great deal of work and drama. They'll find that more indirect approaches...

Hi, Reyemile! I'm certainly aware there's this feeling out there. I put these lines in the OP for just such a reason: Now, you may say that your objection is that you see my approach as railroading, and that I'd prevent PC actions in order to preserve the plot. Not true: most likely, if PCs...

Umbran, those are all excellent points--I definitely appreciate the analysis from someone familiar with the system. And nifft, consider this an enthusiastic yoink--what a great idea!

Hi, folks! Long time no see. All right, enough with the pleasantries. I'm getting ready to start a new campaign, using the Mage:Sorcerer's Crusade rules but set in 1670s Caribbean. With pirates. Natch. Someone elsewhere strongly criticized my choice of rules systems, and mocked me for...

I'm running a game with three strikers (an artful dodger, a brutal scoundrel, and a two-axe ranger). The brutal scoundrel does okay damage. The two-axe ranger loves playing swashbucklingly, and so he does pretty good damage and a lot of terrific stunts. The artful dodger uses sly flourish to...

The Lies of Locke Lamora definitely has a lot of funny bits in it. Did you laugh at Pulp Fiction? If so, you'll probably find this one funny (like Reservoir Dogs, though, it has one scene of almost unwatchable brutality, at least for me). It's not straight-up Terry Pratchett humor, but the...