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

[Lanefan]

Definitely watch Black Sails if you want the full gamut of pirate motivations! Amazing three season show with a beginning, middle and end. Captain Flint, Callico Jack, Anne Bonney and Charles Vane are excellent.

Four season show, in fact; and yes, it's excellent.

It's out on DVD but be warned, the DVDs are not great quality and seem to deteriorate fast (says he, who has gone through two sets now),

 

[Zardnaar]

Four season show, in fact; and yes, it's excellent.

It's out on DVD but be warned, the DVDs are not great quality and seem to deteriorate fast (says he, who has gone through two sets now),

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

 

[Celebrim]

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.

So typical pirate movies have ships that correspond to age of sail frigates. They have crews in the range of 240 to 350. So, the moment you start running a game that looks like a pirate movie, you immediately jump from dozens to hundreds. And that's probably going to happen to you as soon as 7th level or so. Like 1st level the crew might be the party, but by second level it's a dozen and by fourth level it's forty. And it won't be impossible depending on your player's choices that they have armada of ships one for each player and a thousand employees by name level.

"Pirate" is one of those ways you jump into end game play early, with the PC's as little mini-lords. That's the thing most people saying, "We want to play pirates!" don't understand. You either give them that and then it becomes overwhelming, or else you do the Traveller "being a space trucker sucks" thing that prevents them from ever achieving success.

 

[Celebrim]

Has Pathfinder Skull and Shackles been mentioned?

Worth mining.

We tried to play it. The introductory scenario were you get pressed ganged is awesome and the minigame of being a sailor aboard a terrible ship is a great little minigame that really impresses on you life sucks. I would be more than happy to run the first adventure.

But leaving aside some issues of balance in the first scenario, it just goes off the rails once the PC's get to be pirates and have their own ship. The writers are just not up for the challenges that represents. They try to keep it all abstract to avoid the complex book keeping and the mass combat, but it doesn't work abstract and I couldn't suspend disbelief in part because the mechanics of the abstraction were encouraging us to be worse tyrants than the villains we overthrew. And if that had been a conscious decision by the designers I would have respected that, but it was blind and accidental on their part. And there was just no interesting minigame for actually running and owning a ship. All the mass combat was waved to the background, but as players we didn't know that so we were recruiting these big crews only to find they weren't used. All the piracy was sort of background and clearly intended as something you'd get bored of doing. The ship to ship combat rules were terrible.

I don't know that I would have noticed how bad it was except I have played a real piracy campaign with ship to ship combat and boarding actions and tense battles resembling battles of the great age of sail, and well, that was fun and the designers decision that the modern audience just wouldn't be interested in that was disappointing to say the least.

 

[bedir than]

"The complex bookkeeping of running a ship" keeps coming up.
But what part of the pirate literature/movies/games are you emulating when you do that?
Pirates the Caribbean isn't a bookkeeping exercise.
Black Sails has a couple of merchants that have books, but that's not their stories or scenes.
No part of One Piece is accounting.

If the Appendix N you use as inspiration isn't focused on those things why would your D&D table focus on those things?

 

[Zardnaar]

We tried to play it. The introductory scenario were you get pressed ganged is awesome and the minigame of being a sailor aboard a terrible ship is a great little minigame that really impresses on you life sucks. I would be more than happy to run the first adventure.

But leaving aside some issues of balance in the first scenario, it just goes off the rails once the PC's get to be pirates and have their own ship. The writers are just not up for the challenges that represents. They try to keep it all abstract to avoid the complex book keeping and the mass combat, but it doesn't work abstract and I couldn't suspend disbelief in part because the mechanics of the abstraction were encouraging us to be worse tyrants than the villains we overthrew. And if that had been a conscious decision by the designers I would have respected that, but it was blind and accidental on their part. And there was just no interesting minigame for actually running and owning a ship. All the mass combat was waved to the background, but as players we didn't know that so we were recruiting these big crews only to find they weren't used. All the piracy was sort of background and clearly intended as something you'd get bored of doing. The ship to ship combat rules were terrible.

I don't know that I would have noticed how bad it was except I have played a real piracy campaign with ship to ship combat and boarding actions and tense battles resembling battles of the great age of sail, and well, that was fun and the designers decision that the modern audience just wouldn't be interested in that was disappointing to say the least.

Yeah thats why I said mine it lol.

 

[Zardnaar]

"The complex bookkeeping of running a ship" keeps coming up.
But what part of the pirate literature/movies/games are you emulating when you do that?
Pirates the Caribbean isn't a bookkeeping exercise.
Black Sails has a couple of merchants that have books, but that's not their stories or scenes.
No part of One Piece is accounting.

If the Appendix N you use as inspiration isn't focused on those things why would your D&D table focus on those things?

Its normally because you need to stat the ships out.

Turns into a different game. D&D neer had good rules for that sort of thing.

PCs who lack range or required weapon proficiency tend to get bored. The people firing the weapons or sailing/piloting the ship tend to have all the fun.

Basically the naval combat side of things.

If you play Sid Meiers Purates, Assassin Creed Black Flag or Odyssey the computer does most of the work.

We've done Spelljamming pirates 2E, pirates 3E and Pathfinder.

Ship to ship combat in Star Wars D6, d20 and SWSE d20.

Pirates literature is essentially age of sail. D&D models it poorly.

Best of them were Spelljammer and old D6. d20 versions espicially poor.

 

[touc]

I joined this conversation late, but I'm running a Pirate campaign using Pathfinder's Skull & Shackles pirate adventures as a framework, and my players just got their own ship after a mutiny:

• Skull & Shackles rocks for adventure ideas.
• Getting your own ship should be cool. You should want to advance your ship, which becomes a mini-game. I'm applying Fire As She Bears (3rd edition) rules on ship combat, which are an advanced mini-game wherein everyone contributes during a ship to ship combat and you can spend gold to upgrade your ship, but you could also use Matt Colville's Strongholds and Followers idea of a ship as a "base" (kind of like a wizard's tower, or a fighter's keep). Alternately, you can ditch this mini-game idea altogether and just have "cool" encounters between ships (either boarding actions, cursed ships, roleplay of merchant ships giving up their cargo to pirates, etc.).
• The Paizo forum for Skull & Shackles is invaluable for ideas. One commenter collected all Dungeon Magazine pirate-ty adventures.
• Here are most of my notes for rules on ship loyalty, infamy, vices (replacing inspiration), NPCs, the S&S rules on plunder, some DM notes for pirate language, better gunpowder rules, and our campaign guide. Might be worth a few ideas.

Finally, as far as philosophy, pirates don't have to be totally evil. Piracy is one of the earliest forms of true democracy, founded in the idea that while you don't have a voice or say or may get screwed over with pay working for "the man" (insert nation with navy), true pirates have a voice on their ship, get equal shares, and share equal risk. It might be more Robin Hood-ish. That all said, every gamer needs to buy in before you start a pirate campaign that we're not playing "goody two shoes." Being a pirate means you don't forget a slight, you keep what you can take, and ultimate freedom is the ultimate code to live by.

 

[Zardnaar]

I joined this conversation late, but I'm running a Pirate campaign using Pathfinder's Skull & Shackles pirate adventures as a framework, and my players just got their own ship after a mutiny:

• Skull & Shackles rocks for adventure ideas.
• Getting your own ship should be cool. You should want to advance your ship, which becomes a mini-game. I'm applying Fire As She Bears (3rd edition) rules on ship combat, which are an advanced mini-game wherein everyone contributes during a ship to ship combat and you can spend gold to upgrade your ship, but you could also use Matt Colville's Strongholds and Followers idea of a ship as a "base" (kind of like a wizard's tower, or a fighter's keep). Alternately, you can ditch this mini-game idea altogether and just have "cool" encounters between ships (either boarding actions, cursed ships, roleplay of merchant ships giving up their cargo to pirates, etc.).
• The Paizo forum for Skull & Shackles is invaluable for ideas. One commenter collected all Dungeon Magazine pirate-ty adventures.
• Here are most of my notes for rules on ship loyalty, infamy, vices (replacing inspiration), NPCs, the S&S rules on plunder, some DM notes for pirate language, better gunpowder rules, and our campaign guide. Might be worth a few ideas.

Finally, as far as philosophy, pirates don't have to be totally evil. Piracy is one of the earliest forms of true democracy, founded in the idea that while you don't have a voice or say or may get screwed over with pay working for "the man" (insert nation with navy), true pirates have a voice on their ship, get equal shares, and share equal risk. It might be more Robin Hood-ish. That all said, every gamer needs to buy in before you start a pirate campaign that we're not playing "goody two shoes." Being a pirate means you don't forget a slight, you keep what you can take, and ultimate freedom is the ultimate code to live by.

Skull abd Shackles I quite liked the cartography. And you can easily reuse the maps.

 

[Pale Violet Light]

Deadfire is good, apart from the central plot, which is terrible.

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.