D&D General Talking to Players

[Paul Farquhar]

Oh, better far to live and die
Under the brave black flag I fly,
Than play a sanctimonious part,
With a pirate head and a pirate heart.
Away to the cheating world go you,
Where pirates all are well-to-do;
But I’ll be true to the song I sing,
And live and die a Pirate King.

When I sally forth to seek my prey
I help myself in a royal way.
I sink a few more ships, it’s true,
Than a well-bred monarch ought to do;
But many a king on a first-class throne,
If he wants to call his crown his own,
Must manage somehow to get through
More dirty work than ever I do.

 

[Umbran]

A historical campaign is a lot more interesting when the DM is knowledgeable about the subject matter!

It was only supposed to be a humorously pedantic bit about fish...

 

[Vaalingrade]

See this is another disconnect I did not think of. There are "good" pirates: they are called Privateers, or something like Freebooters. But not "good pirates" .

Privateers were pirates with a letter of marque, no less bad or more good.

Pop culture pirates are rollicking anti-heroes (at worst) out doing fun heists or scooby-dooing some nautical supernatural stuff.

 

[Clint_L]

When I think "pirate" game, I'm thinking of a dark, gritty, unrated, evil type game. I'm not thinking of the happy guy swinging on a rope saying "tally-ho".

So are you making this campaign for you, or for them?

Being blunt, your posts give a vibe like you don't really respect your players and are trying to make some kind of point about their historical or cultural ignorance by creating a D&D campaign to teach them lessons. I hope that's not the case and I really don't like speculating about motives, but you seem really fixated on avoiding the obvious answers to your questions: Pirates of the Caribbean. Mission Impossible. There are plenty of published D&D materials that fit exactly the tropes your players are describing, including the most recent WotC adventure.

So this shouldn't really be that difficult. That it is suggests there is something else going on.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Oh, better far to live and die
Under the brave black flag I fly,
Than play a sanctimonious part,
With a pirate head and a pirate heart.
Away to the cheating world go you,
Where pirates all are well-to-do;
But I’ll be true to the song I sing,
And live and die a Pirate King.

When I sally forth to seek my prey
I help myself in a royal way.
I sink a few more ships, it’s true,
Than a well-bred monarch ought to do;
But many a king on a first-class throne,
If he wants to call his crown his own,
Must manage somehow to get through
More dirty work than ever I do.

Clearly, those were the “Swashbucklers of Penzance”, not the “Pirates of Penzance”!

 

[nevin]

So, I have a new group and I find myself with some questions I'm hoping someone can answer.

So the players are all new to me as I've only known them a couple weeks. They are all younger then myself, so they all have a different view on things compared to me. I have a 5E Spelljammer game that they are all know each other. Some of those Spelljammer players convinced this group to stick with me. This group was previously a "goofy casual game with a Buddy DM". they have only ever played 5E D&D, and have no interest in any other game. As my game is a Hard Fun No DM Help type game, they had to agree to that and all my house rules. And they did.

So we did something of a session zero. Mostly they were making characters. They loved the part where I'd let them be any character they wanted. So they did not settle on "what" game they wanted......but two ideas were mentioned a lot. But I feel could be problems.

So the first idea is they might want to be "Secret Agents". And this is a common game idea I get from players. Though I don't think it will be a good fit for this group of newer players. As they were making characters they did not have must interest in "agent" like characters, and were "stuck" with the D&D 5E all combat characters. And I know this game will have the Mission Problem. As Secret Agents, they will be given a mission ("a quest"), but it won't be something they "want" to do. At best they will just turn down "all" Missions and the game will go nowhere, at worst they will drag themselves along something they don't want to do and the game will go nowhere. I can tell they are not the type of group that just takes ANY mission and makes a great game out of it or "does not care about the details" of what they do in the game.

So, how to avoid that?

1. So what is the draw to being a Secret Agent? Even more so for younger gamers. I did ask them this, but no one could articulate and answer, other then they are "cool". For me the draw would be going on missions. You get the mission "steal the scroll" from a vault, you TAKE it. That is part of being a Secret Agent. For me. But if not random missions, what does a younger gamer think a Secret Agent game would be about?

2. So what does Gen Y/Menlineals think of when they think Secret Agent? Again, asking them they were "not sure", "did not know" or "could not think of anything". When I mentioned 007, Borne and Mission Impossible they did say they watched "some". They, had never heard of Get Smart, Chuck, La Feem Nikita, Alias, Covert Affairs, Burn Notice, Homeland, Citidel, Old Man or Patriot. And they don't read any books. So what are the Gen Y spy/secret agent shows? Cartoons?

The second idea....is Pirates. And I feel this would not work out either. As they like "action" they sure don't want a classic pirate game where they would attack a merchant ship that put up no fight, and they got loot of like 200 barrels of pickled fish. But, also the "gold coast" of super overloaded treasure ships of....like 50,000 gold? And this is the big clash with D&D as they will expect huge tons of piles of gold coins. And then the magic items of just the captain are worth more then all the gold on the merchant ship. But if I do anything beyond the book....they will loose and have character death super quick. I know they are not ready for ship to ship combat or naval combat.

3. So again, what is the Gen Y draw for Pirates? I'm sure they don't want to do the classic pirate game of stagey. And they are sure not up to combat stratagem. I did ask them this, but no one could articulate and answer, other then they are "cool". I love role playing in the pirate world, but what might they want?

4. What does Gen Y think of when they think Pirates? Again, asking them they were "not sure", "did not know" or "could not think of anything". Other then they had seen a Pirates of the Caribbean Disney movie. They had never heard of Errol Flynn(no surprise) or any ' sailing ship' movie like The Bounty or Cutthroat Island...and had never seen Black Sails. And they don't read any books, so they have not read Treasure Island. So what are the Gen Y Pirate shows? Cartoons?

5. Bonus. They only want to play D&D 5E....but are there any good games out there that can work well with that? I have a bunch of Pirate games...in a box somewhere. But it's been a while. Are there any with a good social system? Anything new in the past five years or so? Like 'pirate honor' and 'reputation'. Maybe a good, workable economic system? I sort of remember an older game that had a good pirate honor and law honor system. I think it was a more 'Asian' type game, but don't recall the name. Does that sound familiar to anyone?

if they turn down the mission then they get relagated to the b team. The guys that say yes get the awesome missions. Give em the one that's the most important to whoever assigns them. If they turn them down, they get a worse mission and so on and so on till they only get recue the cat from the tree. They'll either get there or quit being agents and go on to be adventurers doing what they want.

 

[nevin]

Oh and play up how the party that took the mission becomes the shining star of the organization.

 

[Hussar]

Yeah. Don’t do what @nevin suggests. That’s just really bad advice.

Look, as someone who has had to deal with a lot of new to the table players over the year, my advice is twofold.

1. Be absolutely crystal clear about your game when recruiting players. Your first mistake was just asking what they want and then rejecting what they tell you in favour of what you want to run.

You can’t both ask the players what they want to play and then insist they play what you want to run. If you have fairly specific ideas about the game, you have to be absolutely crystal clear about that to your players.

If half the players quit your game after you run a session that’s on you. You failed to communicate what they should expect from your game.

Secondly, do not try to resolve these things “in character “. You are fundamentally playing a different game from your players and any “in game” resolution will fail. They just won’t understand any more than if you tried castling in Monopoly.

In the immortal words, “What we have here is a failure to communicate.”

 

[Vaalingrade]

A new piece of reference media for Secret Agent stuff just dropped. It's a Schwarzenegger series on Netflix called FUBAR.

It's basically True Lies if Harry had a grown up daughter.

Also, True Lies. Another good one.

I'm mostly using this thread to talk about spy, heist and pirate media.

 

[payn]

A new piece of reference media for Secret Agent stuff just dropped. It's a Schwarzenegger series on Netflix called FUBAR.

It's basically True Lies if Harry had a grown up daughter.

Also, True Lies. Another good one.

I'm mostly using this thread to talk about spy, heist and pirate media.

Counter part for spies, and Black Sails for pirates…