Pirates of Dark Water

[Aldarc]

I am a big fan of the Pirates of Dark Water cartoon and setting, which was truly a cartoon ahead of its time, underappreciated by its target audience, and died in its prime. It truly is a masterpiece world ideally suited for a campaign of adventuring. Pirates, trading, dangerous and cosmopolitan port cities, treaure hunting, slavery, weird exotic races and mutants isolated on unique and ever-changing islands separated by vast seas, a world mostly in anarchy, and the looming threat of planetary extinction by a dark force. In some ways, the Pirates of Dark Water was like a High Seas take on Dark Sun. While I do not plan on exactly converting the Pirates of Dark Water, I am playing with the creation of a fictional setting which heavily borrows many elements of the PoDW.

As I am not familiar with any prior attempts to convert the setting to d20 or any company which has begun the effort, which system do you think perhaps would be the most appropriate for the conversion of the Pirates of Dark Water setting of Mer? d20 Modern, Grim Tales, Iron Heroes, True20, or some other rule system?

 

[Klaus]

Straight-up DnD.

Ren is easily a swashbuckling version of a Paladin, Tula is pretty much a druid (without shapeshifting) and Yoz is a rogue/barbarian. Niddler could be statted up as a raptoran or a hadozee (but keeping his usual appearance).

 

[Psion]

I never seriously contemplated a direct conversion, but my River of Worlds campaign took some stylistic notes from the series.

 

[Aldarc]

Straight-up DnD.

Ren is easily a swashbuckling version of a Paladin, Tula is pretty much a druid (without shapeshifting) and Yoz is a rogue/barbarian. Niddler could be statted up as a raptoran or a hadozee (but keeping his usual appearance).

Except straight-up DnD does not fit well with the style of PoDW without substantial tweaking. Ren does not cast divine spells, detect evil, ride mounts, wear heavy armor, or anything much like a paladin. Tula does not shapeshift nor really shows much druidness apart from her being an acolyte ecomancer. Ioz does not go into fits of rage when he fights. The magic is toned down to a relatively considerable degree from standard "straight-up DnD" with only the occassional acts of magic, psionics, or otherwise are shown, and even then they are far less powerful than the levels of magic encountered by even the lower level spellcasters.

In either d20M or GT, the conversion is easier to see in some regards to this.
- Ren: Dedicated Hero.
- Ioz: Strong Hero.
- Tula: Fast/Smart Hero.
- Niddler: ?

 

[ssampier]

I remember that series. I steal the concept of "dark water" (or dark earth) for most campaigns I run.

 

[jdrakeh]

Skull & Bones, maybe? With Skull & Bones, you'd only have to port in fantasy elements from other d20 games (e.g., D&D) and, honestly, there won't be a lot of porting to do.

 

[Henry]

Noi j'tat, That's a cartoon I haven't heard of in a while!

For straight-up action-adventure, D&D would work as well as any; I was playing with Shadows of Yesterday, last week, and realized that any game with plot-heavy elements where the specific mechanics of an action didn't matter, would benefit from that system, or a similar one.

 

[Bayushi Seikuro]

For the Dark Water game my friends and I played in some years back, we used the original roll-and-keep Seventh Sea - not swashbuckling adventures.

We used their world and overlayed the Pirates of Dark Water things - Bloth, the Leviathan, the treasures, the dark water.

What's also scary is... my character, the Captain, was Jack Sparrow about two years before PotC came out. Not that a foolish irresponsible captain is anything new

 

[Ry]

Noy J'tat!

 

[Goddess FallenAngel]

D20 Modern, with the Urban Arcana and D20 Past supplements would be the best fit, I think, from what I remember of the show. I also have a D20 write-up of Dark Water somewhere around here....