• NOW LIVE! Into the Woods--new character species, eerie monsters, and haunting villains to populate the woodlands of your D&D games.

Swashbuckling plot help! (My Players Out!)

If you've got enought time i would suggest you the first book of lankhmar by fritz leiber.It talks about two friends(one thief and one barbarian-thief-bard) and their adventures in a big city.Many ideas for two character adventures.

______________
The Wizard
 

log in or register to remove this ad

OK, I ran an intro vignette and the house robbery scenario, though cool, is not going to work any more. Oh well, it might come around some other time, I'm keeping it on the back burner (I could easily run it at higher levels when the house could have cooler defences).

My two PCs are Jonnie Skaflock, a sleazy petty criminal, and Carlota Matarre, a dashing female pirate. At the end of the last session they parted ways, which has interestingly enough given me a focus for the campaign, because it can be episodic - the PCs separating at the end of each scenario and being thrown together at the beginning of each new one. :)

And now we have a brilliant situation between the two PCs, as the last time Jonnie saw Carlota she was threatening him with a pistol. :cool:

Anyhow, I've got an interesting idea for an opening scene to lead into (I think) a site-based scenario. I want to start with the PCs waking up in the hold of a ship with bad headaches and no real idea how they got there, just jumbled memories. It is, of course, a ghost ship.

I really like the idea of a creepy, deserted ghost ship, but there have to be NPCs (ghosts! but living NPCs too probably) to interact with and I have to figure out why these two first-level antiheroes have been grabbed aboard a ghost ship and what is going on...

Got last memories though:

Jonnie: You're running down a dark alleyway, running at full pace, running for your life, and there is something coming after you that doesn't make a sound.
Carlota: You're standing on a jetty, and as the sun comes up and mist is rolling in, a ship appears on the horizon. As it moves into view, a bird - a kestrel - flies towards you, and lands on your shoulder.

Help anyone?
 

randomling said:
I really like the idea of a creepy, deserted ghost ship, but there have to be NPCs (ghosts! but living NPCs too probably) to interact with and I have to figure out why these two first-level antiheroes have been grabbed aboard a ghost ship and what is going on...

Got last memories though:

Jonnie: You're running down a dark alleyway, running at full pace, running for your life, and there is something coming after you that doesn't make a sound.
Carlota: You're standing on a jetty, and as the sun comes up and mist is rolling in, a ship appears on the horizon. As it moves into view, a bird - a kestrel - flies towards you, and lands on your shoulder.

Help anyone?
If you can get access to it, I think you should take a look at Dungeon Magazine Issue #107. In the Polyhedron section there is a Freeport adventure that you might find inspiring. It is made for 1st levels.

In it the adventurers start out on a ship that is attacked by another ship manned by insane pirates. After the encounter, they meet the ghost of Captain Fletcher, a pirate lost at sea. He asks them to find the wreck of his ship and recover his body. The wreck lies of the coast of an island populated by sahuagins led by an evil aquatic elf shaman in possession of precious religious relic. The rest is very much tied into the Freeport setting, but I thought the adventure might spark an idea or two.

Another thing, that you might want to consider to get them aboard the ship : Pressgangs. In the Age of Sail, quite a bit of the crews of ships were forcibly pressed into service. You had gangs of thugs prowling the docks to get a few "volunteers" to compliment the crew. How about a ghost pressgang ?
 
Last edited:

Hand of Evil said:
More random thoughts...

What if the item is cursed - if taken from owner the party falls under the spell BUT the catch is the curse is not passed to anyone GIVEN the item. This means the guys were set up to take the fall. Now they have two reasons to work together, one to get the curse lifted and one vengenance. Yes, it does sound like the curse of the black pearl.


I love it! it's evil, but I love it! :lol: :] :lol:
 

I'm working on a swashbuckling/Pirate game for my players at the moment as well. Dragon Magazine has 40 Adventure ideas, and an article about how to buckly your swash.

GW
 

Into the Woods

Remove ads

Top