D&D 5E Actively Evil PCs & a Pirate Sandbox?

[pickin_grinnin]

Though it depends on what types of players I have and how comfortable they are with the concept, sandbox games are my preferred way of running campaigns.

This is how I tend to do things:

The world continues to turn and things happen regardless of which choices the characters make. Everything doesn't revolve around them. What happens in the campaign is dependent upon what they choose to do with it. If they decide to run around, kill things, and gather treasure, that's fine. If they decide to open a tavern and have all their activities centered in one town, that's fine, too. If they decide to establish a library, or find a way to explore the planes, or establish their own colony, that's fine. My job is to present them with a world and (most importantly) use the internal logic of the world to determine what affect their actions have and what challenges they encounter.

DMing a sandbox world necessitates a fair amount of flexibility and ad-libbing. Not all DMs are comfortable with that, and not all players enjoy that sort of thing. When I get the opportunity to run a sandbox campaign, I spend a lot of time talking to the players about what that means, and explain that the burden of having exciting things happen falls partly on their shoulders.

If you run a pirate game, one sandbox element I would suggest is establishing shipping lanes for the various countries and ports. Make yourself a map that shows all the standard shipping lanes, and come up with all the specifics of the ships that run along them. Establish rough shipping timetables, what each ship carries, what cargo is most valuable in which ports, etc. Create a lot of ships, along with well fleshed-out captain NPCs and notable crewmen. Put the detail into each ship that you would put in a dungeon or castle for a land-based adventure.

As your characters sail around, have them encounter ships based on which shipping lines they cross, and what times they cross them. Part of the challenge for the characters should lie in figuring out all the shipping patterns and timetables so they can more easily find their targets. They also need to learn what goods they can sell in each port to maximize their profit. Don't give them this information - make them learn it through research, trial and error, etc.

Make sure that they have to worry about their food, water, and other supplies on their ship. Make them pay attention to upkeep, repairs, crew staffing levels, etc. These are all things real pirates have to consider.

 

[pickin_grinnin]

I don't require my players to pick an alignment, unless they are playing a class where it matters. I just require them to play their character consistently and logically, with the understanding that sometimes people do things they normally wouldn't, and sometimes people change over time. To me, alignment restrictions often keep people from playing their characters with complex personalities.

Even if you play with alignments, remember that people who do bad things are not always inherently bad people, and people who ARE bad people often don't view themselves that way. Within the alignment system of D&D (and Pathfinder), it is quite possible that a neutral character may consistently do bad things within certain situations. For some people, the basic survival instinct (or need to protect a loved one) can override their sense of what is right and wrong, in certain situations.

Good, evil, and neutrality may refer to motivation more than action, if you choose to interpret it that way. I can think of a number of people I have known in real life who have done a lot of really bad things, yet believe that they made ethical and moral choices, given their circumstances. I have also known people who made choices that they feel very guilty about, but were ultimately the right choices to make in those circumstances.

A lot of people are also easily influenced by the norms of the subculture in which they find themselves. Crowd/herd behavior can be a strong motivator, as can the need to be accepted by their peers. Some people have ethics and morals that are specific to their roles - they may do things within their professions that they could never justify in the everyday lives. That's why you get odd situations like a bloodthirsty dictator who treats his family and pets with nothing but love.

In the Golden Age of Piracy (and even today), people became pirates for all sorts of reasons. Some were kidnapped and forced to serve on pirate crews. Some were just in it for the money. Some were sanctioned by monarchs and preyed on ships from other nations. For some, it was the only way to get out of a life of terrible poverty. Though their actions were what we would tend to consider evil, their motivations - and the ethics of the subculture - didn't necessarily put them in the "bad, horrible people" class.

 

[Inchoroi]

How is it going, [MENTION=6752135]Inchoroi[/MENTION]?

Not as well as I'd like. I did, however, discover a game that has almost exactly the setting I wanted, called Seventh Sea. I was considering using that, once I can find a bloody copy of the game that's not out of my price range right now; I haven't met someone yet who's familiar with the game so I can pick their brain. My current group is on hiatus while a couple of players deal with family health issues, too, so I haven't done a whole lot beyond make a bunch of notes for the quests.

As of now, the structure of the game will be three-fold.

1. Random Encounter Piracy. I'll have four tables, probably with a d20 for each, and each one is calculated to have challenges that go up every 4-5 levels or so, so the first table is level 1 through 4 challenges, and so on. There will also be treasure-maps in these encounters, which will be separate side-quests (these maps will be part of booty found by the group when raiding shipping).

2. Pirate Side-Quests. These will be quests that the party can choose to do, or ignore as they see fit. It'll be fetch-quests, steal a certain item, kill a certain person, sink a certain ship, etc. They'll fall into two categories, one that is done as a request (re: order) from the Pirate Lord that the group chooses to serve, and the other being side jobs from different NPCs in the cities around where the game will take place.

3. Main-Quest. These will four decently sized adventures, which mirror the difficulties of the Random Encounter Piracy tables. This part would be the biggest problem, as what I had originally planned might or might not work with Seventh Sea, if I decide to go that route. From what I can tell, the setting for Seventh Sea mirrors my own ideas almost exactly, save for the necessity for Mithril (which I stole from Glen Cook's Garrett, P.I. novels anyway). If the original ideas are not, and I decide to go with the Seventh Sea setting (which I do, because it seems just about perfect, even down to there being an inquisition), I'll have to come up with new adventures to fit in with the setting.

 

[Unwise]

Personlly, in the OPs position, I would just make a world without good guys. I like the pirate idea, though I would tinker with it a bit. How about a land where you have evil Aztec style folks on a newly discovered area, the islands around it have evil voodoo people (pacific islander cannibal tropes), there are two major world powers that have sent their (more) evil versions of East India Company to enslave the islanders and loot the golden cities of the Aztecs.

Amongst all of this are the pirates, ex-members of the 'trading companies' or navies that have made a "free port" in the area and want to loot everything for themselves, everybody is a valid target.

The advantages of this is that evil guys can still have an us vs them mentality. There are no good factions, every group is bad and ripe for the plunder. As a player and GM I would prefer this to raiding orphanages and good people. It has lots of rich cultures and history to tap in to.

 

[Quickleaf]

[MENTION=6752135]Inchoroi[/MENTION] Looks like you've got lots of advice about sandboxes. I actually have something specific about 5e & pirate games for you: Check my sig for Spell & Crossbones, or alternately click the group icon of the skull in crossbones to the left of my post. You'll find tons of resources I made including some awesome random encounter tables for sea, port, island, and "the abyss" which are great for sandbox play. References to unique monsters refer to my Buccaneer's Bestiary in the Homebrew section (there's a link to it somewhere in there). I also highly recommend Skull & Crossbones an OOP Green Ronin d20 book available as a PDF from their site.

Cheers matey!