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

[Zardnaar]

I ran a short sky pirate campaign. That works if you think water is too forgiving.

Or have an acid sea. Giving new meaning to the glass bottomed boat.

I've done a poison sea in the abyss. Think it was type E in 2E.

 

[Tonguez]

Heres a Level 0 Funnel for a Caribbean Adventure

ESCAPE THE BOILING HOUSE
Barbados, 1655.
Each of you was transported in chains — a prisoner, a debtor, a loser in the war, an unlucky victim of the press-gangs.
Your labour was purchased for the plantations, a living hell of sugar cane, whips and sweat. But you are not without hope: old Healer Ama whispers that there are free Maroons in the hills and smugglers in the bay who have no love for the slavers.
You’ve spent the day labouring in the Boiling House, hauling carts and feeding the boiling vats of sugar cane syrup. Heat blasts your skin as you sweat from the toil and dodge Overseer Cribb’s whip.

Suddenly, the bells ring and shouting erupts outside — the sugar fields glow orange beneath the thick smoke and the guards rush to save the Big House before it burns.

Old Ama grabs your arm: “Now is your chance. Go! Escape the fire and this place. Become who you are meant to be…”

FUNNEL 0 Escape the Boiling House
The Boiling House
The boiling house is a long, low stone building with thatched roof, 60 ft long and 25 wide. Six large Iron vats, full of bubbling sugar syrup line the sides, roaring furnaces beneath them. Workers toil along the central aisle, pushing carts, cutting cane and hauling barrels and buckets of Molases. The air is thick with smoke, sweat, and the tang of burnt sugar. The floor is sticky and treacherous, the heat suffocating....

ADVENTURE 1 Escape from Barbados (Levels 1 -2) The PCs escape the Plantation and have a choice of raiding the Big House First, fleeing through the fields, then choosing to go up into the Hills (joining the Maroons) or Down to the Bay (Joining the Smugglers)

 

[Audiomancer]

Seems to me that if you’re doing a pirate campaign, at some point it’s mandatory to have an exceptionally strong storm blow the ship off course to an undiscovered island, and then run “Isle of Dread.”

EDIT: Also… kraken.

 

[Pale Violet Light]

Conceptually its great. The big problem is naval combat.

Even using 3rd party its sucked since 2E.
Great concrpt but kinda need to skip naval stuff.

You can take a few tips from cRPGs. Carefully study the system from Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire, and then do exactly the opposite.