Piratey Adventure Ideas

[GMSkarka]

For another source of 'piratey adventure ideas', check out Crossgen Comics' new series El Cazador ('the hunter'). You'll probably have to wait until October, though...the first issue, which only came out last week, has already sold out and is being reprinted: http://www.icv2.com/articles/home/3526.html

T.S., Ian (SLAINE) Sturrock and myself started working on Skull & Bones in March of 2001. Given the current indications that the pirate genre is back and hot (the sell-out of the comic, the success of Pirates of the Caribbean), I'm really glad that fate conspired to delay the release of the book until now!

GMS

 

[Yellow Sign]

For another source of 'piratey adventure ideas', check out Crossgen Comics' new series El Cazador ('the hunter'). You'll probably have to wait until October, though...the first issue, which only came out last week, has already sold out and is being reprinted: http://www.icv2.com/articles/home/3526.html

T.S., Ian (SLAINE) Sturrock and myself started working on Skull & Bones in March of 2001. Given the current indications that the pirate genre is back and hot (the sell-out of the comic, the success of Pirates of the Caribbean), I'm really glad that fate conspired to delay the release of the book until now!

GMS

What kind of playtesting did you do? And if so what where the games like. Piratey minds want to know!

 

[Dr. Harry]

You might want to read some fiction, though -- Rafael Sabatini wrote some great pirate fiction. I'd especially recommmend Captain Blood and The Black Swan. There's also an Erroll Flynn movie of the former and a Tyrone Power movie of the latter, if you want to save time (and in the case of the latter, get a radically different story... ) Of course, my favorite Sabatini book is Scaramouche which was set during the French Revolution...

Dang! You beat me to this one. Did Sabatini write The Black Swan.? I've only been able to find Captain Blood and Scaramouche .

Harry

 

[Dr. Harry]

If you want to have a piratey adventure, it's not so important what the adventure is about at ALL. What you need to do is to make it so that everyone, the players and the DM, must talk like pirates throughout the entire adventure. If the adventure is piratical at all, that's even better, but the important part is the mood: Talking like a pirate is an important part of the mood.

I believe that I saw in a Dave Barry column earlier this month than there is a "Talk Like A Pirate Day" in early September. If my wife hasn't thrown it out yet, I'll check and see.

 

[Desdichado]

National Talk Like a Pirate Day is tomorrow. Check out the link in my sig. And Sabatini did indeed write The Black Swan - which is my second favorite of his books, right behind Scaramouche. It's also one of the best for a pirate theme. Unfortunately, the Tyrone Powers movie from the 40s(?) while not bad, doesn't even attempt to follow the same storyline.

 

[Hypersmurf]

National Talk Like a Pirate Day is tomorrow.

It be today, on this side o' the world, mate!

-Hyp.

 

[Desdichado]

Arrr... ye ozzie and kiwi lubbers need a good scuppering for starting early.

Arrr.

 

[GMSkarka]

What kind of playtesting did you do? And if so what where the games like. Piratey minds want to know!

Well, the thing is, the development staff was spread all over hell-n-gone, so we couldn't really run a playtest together. I think that T.S. ran a few sessions on the west coast, and Ian ran a few for his groups in the U.K. (including a couple of events at the Dragonmeet convention, I think), but I'll let them speak for themselves.

Me, I ran a bi-weekly campaign which lasted for about 6 months or so. My fiancee, Laura Hanson, portrayed the female captain of The White Hart (Laura is listed in the credits of the game under "Additional Design By" for her work on several of the sections), a ship which was eventually revealed to be possessed of it's own intelligence. (using rules for Extraordinary Vessels...which includes the adding of NPC levels onto the ships themselves, giving them Feats and such, which was not finished for the final manuscript, but will appear in Buccaneers & Bokor)

The games were pretty much a mix of classical pirate tropes with occasional bouts of horror, the occult and the unexplained. One of my players described it as "Cutthroat Island" meets "In the Mouth of Madness".

The main story I ran....well, I'm going to keep a lid on that for now, since I'm planning on writing it up as an adventure for B&B, and if I tell you everything, none of you will ever want to buy the pdfs!

GMS

 

[Yellow Sign]

With Talk like a Pirate Day being tomorrow, I am going to open a good old piratey tavern on these boards in the morning. It will be in character only and only pirate talk will be allowed!!! So dust off your eye patch and polish your peg leg and get ready for a day of Arrrggh's and Avast's!

 

[Desdichado]

Dang, this book sounds exactly like the rules I'd want to have in my d20 game already. [sigh] Make that two more essential Green Ronin books to pick up this fall...