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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rel" data-source="post: 3496078" data-attributes="member: 99">My schedule is super busy but I really love this campaign so I'm going to procrastinate for a few more minutes...In terms of theme, I'm shooting for something between the extremely grim and gritty feel of regular WFRP and the high adventure of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.  I'm also trying to have it stay true to a "piratey" feel with a lot of the action taking place on the high seas.  One outgrowth of this desire was that I wanted a system to resolve ship to ship battles.  So I developed one of my own and thus far it's worked better than I could have hoped, straddling the line between realism and playability fairly well.  I can post more on that if you're interested.We generated the PC's using a house-rule that excludes some of the more glamorous and martial careers as starting careers.  We, as a group, like playing a "zero to hero" sort of theme so no Nobles and Mercenaries for us to start with.  The roster of PC's came out thus:Elf FerrymanElf TradesmanHuman Tomb RobberHalfling ScribeHalfling Bone PickerThe campaign opened with this sentence:  "The hot, still air around you is filled with the reek of your own vomit as you awaken in chains."  Charming, neh?The PC's had been press ganged and thrown into the hold of a ship that was now a couple days out of Port Royal (which should have been renamed to "Port Imperial" but I dropped the ball).  From this humble beginning the PC's actually grew a grudging respect for their (female, dwarf) captain.  Under her command the PC's participated in the capture of an Estalian trade galleon and the defeat of a sloop full of Chaos Marauders before returning to Port Royal.  After an episode where a secret organization tried to blow up the Captain's Council at the Governor's mansion in Port Royal, the PC's were loaned a ship and sent to Tortuga to try and uncover the nature of this conspiracy.While in Tortuga* the PC's met some shady, underworld figures, fought a gang of slavers, ventured into the undead-infested Northtown, found their way into the sewers and almost (but not quite) got critical information on the conspiracy they were supposed to investigate.  They made a daring escape from the harbor with rumors following them that they were rich and undercrewed, making them ripe for plunder (the second part of that rumor was correct).  But they also managed to surprise and take a slave ship that was returning from a "mysterious island" where they supposedly delivered their slaves.Their return to Port Royal saw them having to fight off privateers, weather a nasty storm and then fight another battle (undercrewed all the while) with the Estalians off the coast of Jamaica.  They finally managed to limp into the harbor with two ships (neither of which they had originally set sail in).  By this point they had all changed careers to look like this:Elf Ferryman -> SeamanElf Tradesman -> Engineer (he can now fire the ship's cannons effectively)Human Tomb Robber -> SeamanHalfling Scribe -> WreckerHalfling Bone Picker -> Fence (he handles all their trade agreements, especially the illegal ones)They settled up with their old captain which meant that they gave her a ship to replace the one of hers they'd lost but she paid them well for the bits of information they'd managed to dig up in Tortuga.  They made a brief jaunt into the Jamaican jungles at the behest of a local wizard in order to open the Apprentice Wizard career to the Elf (ex)Ferryman/Seaman.  But along the way he met a witch in the woods and decided to become a Hedge Wizard instead.Then they set out on their most recent adventure that has them investigating the "mysterious island" on the charts that the slavers had.  Thus far they've discovered that it appears to be inhabited by Orcs who were buying the slaves to work in a Warpstone mine.  They also know that this island is inhabited by dinosaurs and probably some large, ape-like creature**.  And that's about where we are right now.I'm happy to answer any further questions as my schedule allows.* I used the WFRP suppliment "Barony of the Damned" as my template for Tortuga and it worked extremely well with a bit of moving bits around.  I used almost the whole book and in some ways it forms the skeleton of all kinds of plots in my campaign.** Any resemblance between "Mysterious Island" and certain movies with islands inhabited by cannibalistic natives, dinosaurs and big apes is purely intentional.</blockquote>

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