D&D General What's your view on a pirate-driven campaign?

[Hussar]

For bigger battles where each side has dozens of combatants or more, it might be time to break out the Battlesystem rules or something similar.

See, the problem there becomes scale. Battlesystem is too big for ship combat. Battlesystem is for hundreds of combatants.

I've never found a decent system for what I call platoon level combat. Say 30 (ish) on a side. Which is typically what you're going to find on a D&D era ship. Base system is far too finicky for it and most mass combat systems are for army level combat where you have hundreds or even thousands of combatants. I've just never found anything really satisfying at the platoon level.

It's really frustrating to be honest. I think, maybe that switching to something like Savage Worlds, which does handle platoon level combat fairly well, might be the way to go. Or, maybe an entirely abstract system. Again, I just don't know.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

And the ship-to-ship combat! Actually
I don’t hate the main plot, it’s just too short, and poorly stapled to the rest of the game, and doesn’t give the player much agency.

Hmmm, when I say it like that it doesn’t sound so great. But big E is just so charming I can’t be too mad at him.

I thought the ship combat mini-game was okay (and possibly adaptable to D&D for a theatre of the mind approach), but the main story was the worst kind of railroad.

 

[Lanefan]

Its on one of the steamers here. Any in your part of the world?

No idea. So far I've managed to stay off the subscription-streamer bandwagon. It comes up on Starz on cable every now and then, which makes sense as they made the show in the first place.

 

[Pale Violet Light]

Its on one of the steamers here. Any in your part of the world?

As long as you have a major river nearby and a few weeks to spare, it’s very efficient… unless they get caught in naval combat, that is.

 

[GrimCo]

I've never found a decent system for what I call platoon level combat. Say 30 (ish) on a side. Which is typically what you're going to find on a D&D era ship. Base system is far too finicky for it and most mass combat systems are for army level combat where you have hundreds or even thousands of combatants. I've just never found anything really satisfying at the platoon level.

And that's why i recomend 1ed 7th sea. It has this genius thing called brute squads. Each squad is usually 3-5 people. One flesh wound you inflict-1 member down. Couple of brute squads on either side and you have 30 vs 30 people, but in play, it's 6 v 6. Oh, and best thing is, squads get weaker as you thin them down.

I copied that into D&D using swarms as base creature and modifying it a bit. Each swarm is 4-5 guys (standard fireteam). It works, but it's not as elegant as 7th sea's brute squads.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I've tried the squad-as-swarms approach, but it felt too mechanical for me. Didn't suit the fiction. But I don't think you really need large numbers of combatants to do pirates. If you look at pirate movies there are rarely more than a dozen extras on either side, and the original pirate story - Treasure Island - only has that many, even without budget constraints.

When I did the climactic battle for my short "Sky Raiders of Eberron" campaign, there were only the PCs on the (Millennium Falcon inspired) player ship, and around 25 combatants on the villain ship (mostly warrior nuns), plus a few NC crew who were too busy keeping the ship in the air. In the run up to that I did a chase sequence on a 100 ft. scale hex grid.

If you look at the history, you go from a 9th century Viking longship with up to 30 warriors aboard, to a 16th century warship with 700 sailors and men-at-arms (not all of which would be in a position to join any fight aboard!).

One thing to consider is that D&D deck plans often exaggerate the size of the ship, as authentically sized ships do not allow much room for maneuverer using 5 ft. grid squares.

 

[Zaroden]

I would be open to running a "pirate setting" but wouldn't know how to go about it. I have heard of, I think, D&D's Red Steel but otherwise my knowledge of "sea settings" is is sparse. I have only done three campaigns in total in terms of roleplaying. Otherwise, I want to try my hand at DMing some-sort of nautical setting since I like the vibe of, say, Pirates of the Caribbean or Black Sails.

I am looking at options right now, but any pointers on where to look further would be welcome.

 

[ECMO3]

For bigger battles where each side has dozens of combatants or more, it might be time to break out the Battlesystem rules or something similar.

Battlesystem would work mechanically, the issue though is that is a different kind of game. D&D is character focused and Battlesystem is more about the army/battle. It would have to be a specific kind of group for this to be effective and fun.

I remeber when battlesystem was new and Gygax was really pushing it, at the table it fell completely flat because players did not come to play a wargame.

I find it is far easier just to focus on the PCs part in the battle and the rest of it happens off screen. The Shadow of the Dragon Queen adventure had some options to do this quite effectively. You are in the middle of the chaos, but the rest of it is just happening.

 

[ECMO3]

Yeah this is why I wouldn't want aquatic races in pirate campaign.

Avoiding a main theme of a campaign seems counter productive. Eg warforged on Athas.

IME it is completely the opposite. In a pirate themed campaign every PC is either an aquatic race or an aquatic subclass.

 

[GrimCo]

I would be open to running a "pirate setting" but wouldn't know how to go about it.

I'll C/P part of my first post on this topic.

Turn pirate campaign into treasure seeking, with old incomplete or partially deciphered map, on some remote island, so you can skip hassle of ship to ship combat. You know, start with rumors in the inns, then quest to find map, then quest to find treasure. It's still pirate game, just mostly on land, with ship used for hopping around islands looking for clues. D&D is rules wise, weak with larger scale combat and ship to ship combat. So it's best to keep that part minimal, use opposed skill checks and roll initiative once boarding starts. Big thing in pirate stories are dangers of the sea itself. Storms ( you can run that as series of skill checks), iconic sea creatures (like kraken, with each tentacle being 1 opponent, give them round timer in which they have to detach tentacles or kraken damages/sinks ship).