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

[Celebrim]

I began a new game with four players, and the main theme is : Pirates!
My goal in this campaign is to focus on rp, exploration and giving the players more agency than ever (a sandbox, if you will). I'm looking for ideas of sea-based adventures for my players; do you have any ? I'm also curious on what is your view of a campaign where the players are pirates. I already have in mind the inclusion of a few adventures (re-worked for the world of the campaign) of Ghosts of Saltmarsh in mind, but I search more.

(For more context : The campaign sets on the Nomad Lands, an archipelago. At the center of it, the religious captial of Toram extends it's dominion over the Nomad Lands, but not entirely. I suppose the main interest of the players will be the the lands outside the dominion, where tales & legends of the people come to life.)

Most GMs are not prepared to run a campaign about "Pirates!" if by pirates they mean something like "Captain Blood", "Treasure Island" and "Pirates of the Caribbean". The trouble you are going to run into is once you get past a few levels and the size of the ships and the crew grows, you are going to find you need wargaming rules.

You are also going to find that there is little way to make vehicle combat engaging for all participants unless everyone has their own vehicle (which is going to complicate things even more).

There is also going to be a massive amount of bookkeeping. The reality of being a pirate is you are running a business and you have employees and to make it work you have to be a good businessman and good at delegating authority and interviewing people and managing things and bookkeeping. The life of a pirate officer (or a pirate) involves a lot of hard work.

 

[Celebrim]

A good way to get around the Pirates are bad people issue, is make them Robin Hood of the Seas.

Another way to go about this is to consider Piracy just another extension of warfare. The PC's are patriots working for some nominally better government fighting against some larger more powerful empire. Perhaps they are seeking to assist freedom fighters in obtaining their independence from the massive Evil Empire.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Most GMs are not prepared to run a campaign about "Pirates!" if by pirates they mean something like "Captain Blood", "Treasure Island" and "Pirates of the Caribbean". The trouble you are going to run into is once you get past a few levels and the size of the ships and the crew grows, you are going to find you need wargaming rules.

You are also going to find that there is little way to make vehicle combat engaging for all participants unless everyone has their own vehicle (which is going to complicate things even more).

There is also going to be a massive amount of bookkeeping. The reality of being a pirate is you are running a business and you have employees and to make it work you have to be a good businessman and good at delegating authority and interviewing people and managing things and bookkeeping. The life of a pirate officer (or a pirate) involves a lot of hard work.

My games have found ways to make vehicle combat interesting, in particular sci-fi games and starship combat, which in many cases has elements that can be ported over to an Age of Sail setting. I've done so myself more than once. The running a business part can and has also be reasonably modeled in an RPG, so I don't see these as particularly daunting obstacles, unless you're operating on the assumption that folks don't like those aspects of play for some reason.

 

[GrimCo]

If you are going pirate, ditch D&D. It's seriously isn't that great. I would suggest 7th sea, 1st edition. It's game about swasbuckling adventures and pirates fit right in (there is also Pirate nations expansion).

While spellslingers in dnd have some long range spells, fireballs 150 feet is just 50 meters. Most broadsides were at ranges of 200-300 meters (600-900 feet) or even larger distances. Even old scorpion type balistas had some 450-500 feet range.

Or you can 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 ( throw in occasional seaside skirmish)

 

[Micah Sweet]

If you are going pirate, ditch D&D. It's seriously isn't that great. I would suggest 7th sea, 1st edition. It's game about swasbuckling adventures and pirates fit right in (there is also Pirate nations expansion).

While spellslingers in dnd have some long range spells, fireballs 150 feet is just 50 meters. Most broadsides were at ranges of 200-300 meters (600-900 feet) or even larger distances. Even old scorpion type balistas had some 450-500 feet range.

Or you can 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 ( throw in occasional seaside skirmish)

7th Sea 1e is a great game. Why would 5e be a problem for the genre? Too much magic?

 

[DeviousQuail]

7th Sea 1e is a great game. Why would 5e be a problem for the genre? Too much magic?

At times it can be. I used Control Water with a cleric to take an entire ship out of combat with a Cleric one time. Any wizard or druid could do the same if they're 7th level or higher. While I've never seen it I've heard a similar thing happened in a season of CR (at least I think it was CR).

 

[Micah Sweet]

At times it can be. I used Control Water with a cleric to take an entire ship out of combat with a Cleric one time. Any wizard or druid could do the same if they're 7th level or higher. While I've never seen it I've heard a similar thing happened in a season of CR (at least I think it was CR).

Understandable. For my part I have no problem limiting the availability and/or effect of problematic spells, so long as such changes are discussed in session 0.

 

[GrimCo]

7th Sea 1e is a great game. Why would 5e be a problem for the genre? Too much magic?

You can run a pirate-themed campaign in 5e, but it’s not a great fit without some serious adjustments. The rules are built for land-based, small-party adventures, so naval combat and ship management rules are underdeveloped. The few official rules for sailing (like those in Ghosts of Saltmarsh) are pretty bare bones from what i read, leaving most of the exciting ship-to-ship action up to the DM to invent.

5e default is high-magic which clashes with the gritty, swashbuckling style many pirate stories aim for. Spells like Control Weather and Water Breathing remove the tension of sea travel and storms, and by mid-levels, characters become so powerful that danger and desperation fade away. Also, classes are designed for epic fantasy heroes, not the rough, morally gray scoundrels who thrive in pirate tales.

Exploration and resource management are barely supported by the rules. Long voyages, supply shortages, and ship upkeep don’t have meaningful mechanics and some of that can be circumvented by magic. The economy is based on getting stuff that gives boost to personal power of character (aka the magic items) while in the same time, make money past certain point useless, so rewards for plunder, smuggling, or trading cargo are not there in meaningful way. Crew and morale systems are nonexistent, so running a ship with dozens of NPCs usually boils down to flavor text.


Last, but not the least, 5e lacks mechanics for the intrigue, betrayal, and social maneuvering that define great pirate fiction. If you have group that can do all that by pure role play, great. If you have group that would like some mechanical backing, tough luck.

 

[Lanefan]

One thing I haven’t figured out how to do is make certain kinds of ship-to-ship combat engaging for everyone. If the pc’s ship is in a cannon fight with another ship, it’s going to have an unequal distribution of agency, since the captain (or whoever is deciding where the ship goes) is the only one making real decisions.

Solution: have the captain be a quasi-PC shared among all the players and let the players collectively make the captain's decisions, die rolls, etc.

Other random thoughts on a pirate campaign:

--- as @payn already noted, checking out the Black Sails TV series is a must!
--- you can slip in a few land-based adventures as well, while most of the action will be at sea, not all of it needs to be
--- an out-there option is to give each PC their own ship and have them operate as a fleet
--- pirates did change ships now and then if they captured one that was better (or less damaged) than the one they already had
--- you'll need to design a setup whereby your pirates can turn their ill-gotten booty into cash or goods
--- be ready for evil PCs and-or PC-vs-PC arguments and backstabbing, it kinda goes with the territory

Were someone running this in person here in town I'd sign up in a heartbeat!

 

[Micah Sweet]

You can run a pirate-themed campaign in 5e, but it’s not a great fit without some serious adjustments. The rules are built for land-based, small-party adventures, so naval combat and ship management rules are underdeveloped. The few official rules for sailing (like those in Ghosts of Saltmarsh) are pretty bare bones from what i read, leaving most of the exciting ship-to-ship action up to the DM to invent.

5e default is high-magic which clashes with the gritty, swashbuckling style many pirate stories aim for. Spells like Control Weather and Water Breathing remove the tension of sea travel and storms, and by mid-levels, characters become so powerful that danger and desperation fade away. Also, classes are designed for epic fantasy heroes, not the rough, morally gray scoundrels who thrive in pirate tales.

Exploration and resource management are barely supported by the rules. Long voyages, supply shortages, and ship upkeep don’t have meaningful mechanics and some of that can be circumvented by magic. The economy is based on getting stuff that gives boost to personal power of character (aka the magic items) while in the same time, make money past certain point useless, so rewards for plunder, smuggling, or trading cargo are not there in meaningful way. Crew and morale systems are nonexistent, so running a ship with dozens of NPCs usually boils down to flavor text.


Last, but not the least, 5e lacks mechanics for the intrigue, betrayal, and social maneuvering that define great pirate fiction. If you have group that can do all that by pure role play, great. If you have group that would like some mechanical backing, tough luck.

Ah. Bare-bones official 5e does lack many of these things. Whenever we discuss 5e I assume it's always an option to import 3pp to cover the WotC games' many gaps. If you're assuming WotC only with no deviation then yeah, there's a lot of things it can't do well.