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

[Zardnaar]

I think most people would drop bows once firearms become relatively commonplace, so this isn't an issue for me. Slow cannon fire is just how it is (although I'm not above some degree of abstraction here).

Bows were superior until the 19th century.
Problem was logistics and training. Mary Rose had longbow on it iirc.

 

[Zardnaar]

OK how to make piracy work in D&D. I'll post some ideas from an okdc2E game. We used gunpowder weapons from combat and tactics.

I cant remember all the details its been 27 years.

1. Big bads. Elven imperialism. Mix Rome with Drow and the British Empire.

2. Domain rules. In 5E this is bastions. PCs had a hone base "Port Royal". They used the loot to build a shipyard. This was to service their own ship then small fleet.

3. Population. Rescued slaves. Elves were slavers.

4. Turns out the Elves had factions. Only the worst ruling house were the demonic loving ones. The second house was elven Sparta and formed the bulk of the Empires military.

5. Elf emperor was dead killed by a Hunan paladin. His sword was missing.

6. Buried treasure.

7. Based out of not Africa. This gave them access to ivory and a place to grow crops for rescued NPCs in their Freeport.

8. Exploding gunpowder barrels with bolts inside them duplicate fireball well enough. Force, fire, piercing damage pick your poison. Gunpowder would probably be fire damage. Smoke or rune powder force.

9. Vampire spawn with guns. In 5.5 turns they're roughly on par with a level 5 sorecererous burst spell but piercing damage. Exploding dice mechanic.

10. A pet elephant became a major NPC. They named him CliveTrained for battle, enchanted boarding, stoneskun spell. Towards the end they wanted to build a giant trebuchet and have Ninja Clive parachute onto enemy ships via feather fall. Elepult

11. Custom magical cannonball and spells. Think fireball AoE crossed with old school disintegrate spell.

12. Lost cities of gold. 4 or 6 legendary locations scatter them around.

Other general advice. Focus exploration more. Lost islands, South Sea vibes. Isle of Dread, Isle of the Ape type vibes. Lost treasure, a famous sword to find, ships a vehicle to get from A to B.

You need an enemy if youre not doing an evil game. I used a British Empire stand in. An awakened demonic orange dire ape following Demogorgan could work. Undead, aberrations, demonic or infernal foes works.

Steal NPCs from favorite pirate shows and game. Have a list of 8-10 captains that are famous. They're mini bosses. Cervantes from the Soul Calibur games sure.

Factions. Different nations, houses, merchant Guilds etc. I like 4. They're the not Dutch, British, French, Spanish. Replace with D&D equivalents. Keep the mockery to suitable levels (this basically means open season on the not British not French let's be honest).

Magitech. Can exist. Dwarves have monitors, Gnomes have transforming submarines. Lighthearted tone.

Suitable research options includes Sid Meiers pirates and Assassin Creed Black Flag elements. The Isu are basically your not Netheril equivalents. Atlantis as well.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Bows were superior until the 19th century.
Problem was logistics and training. Mary Rose had longbow on it iirc.

I know. I still think most people would drop them, for the reasons you stated.

 

[Micah Sweet]

OK how to make piracy work in D&D. I'll post some ideas from an okdc2E game. We used gunpowder weapons from combat and tactics.

I cant remember all the details its been 27 years.

1. Big bads. Elven imperialism. Mix Rome with Driw and the British Empire.

2. Domain rules. In 5E this is bastions. PCs had a hone base "Port Royal". They used the loot to build a shipyard. This was to service their own ship then small fleet.

3. Population. Rescued slaves. Elves were slaves.

4. Turns out the Elves had factions. Only tbe worst ruling house were tge demonic loving ones. The second house was elven Sparta and formed the bulk of the Empires military.

5. Elf emperor was dead killed by a Hunan paladin. His sword was missing.

6. Buried treasure.

7. Based out of not Africa. This gave them access to ivory and a place to grow crops for rescued NPCs in their Freeport.

8. Exploding gunpowder barrels with bolts inside them duplicate fireball well enough. Force, fire, piercing damage pick your poison. Gunpiwderci would probably make fire danage. Smoke or rune powder force.

9. Vampire spawn with guns. In 5.5 turns theyre roughly on par with a level 5 sorecererous burst spell ut piercing damage. Exploding dice mechanic.

10. A pet elephant became a major NPC. Trained for battle, enchanted boarding, stoneskun spell. Towards the end they wanted to build a giant trebuchet and have Ninja Clive parachute onto enemy ships via feather fall.

11. Custom magical cannonball and spells. Think fireball AoE crossed with old school disintegrate spell.

12. Lost cities of gold. 4 or 6 legendary locations scatter them around.

Other general advice. Focus exploration more. Lost islands, South Sea vibes. Isle of Dread, Isle of the Ape type vibes. Lost treasure, a famous sword to find, ships a vehicle to get from A to B.

You need an enemy if youre not doing an evil game. I used a British Empire stand in. An awakened demonic orange dire ape following Demogorgan could work. Undead, aberrations, demonic or infernal foes works.

Steal NPCs from favorite pirate shows and game. Have a list of 8-10 captains tgat are famous. They're mini bosses. Cervantes from the Soul Calibur games sure.

Factions. Different nations, houses, merchant Guilds etc. I like 4. They're the not Dutch, British, French, Spanish. Replace with D&D equivalents. Keep the mockery to suitable levels (this basically means open season on the not British not French let's be honest).

Magitech. Can exist. Dwarves have monitors, Gnomes cave transforming submarines. Lighthearted tone.

Suitable research options includes Sid Meiers pirates and Assassin Creed Black Flag elements. The Isu are basically your not Netheril equivalents. Atlantis as well.

This all sounds awesome! I'm favorite-ing this page!

 

[Tonguez]

And, of course, this brings up another point. Age of Piracy era is pretty anachronistic for D&D. We're talking several centuries ahead of what D&D is typically pegged at. If you keep to Medieval (say 1400 (ish) (yes, yes, I KNOW that's not right, but, it's a decent rough number, sit down in the back) level technology, then the ships are a LOT smaller and easier to work with in the game. Crews of 5-10 aren't unreasonable at all for most of these ships, which means you can have the PC's plus a nice, manageable number of NPC's on the ship. I would recommend keeping things lower technology, especially since you're not likely to be using cannons and gunpowder anyway.

English raiding of Hanseatic shipping on the Flemish and Baltic coast was rampant, in the 1400s and through the Hundred Years War. as was piracy in the Mediteranean.
For DnD I have no problem with ships having access to Greek Alchemist fire, chinese rockets, primitive cannons, achimedes solar rays, lightning spears or Kwalish Apparatus

Embrace Anarchronism

 

[Zardnaar]

English raiding of Hanseatic shipping on the Flemish and Baltic coast was rampant, in the 1400s and through the Hundred Years War. as was piracy in the Mediteranean.
For DnD I have no problem with ships have access to Greek Alchemist fire, chinese rockets, primitice cannons, achimedes solar rays, lightning spears or Kwalish Apparatus

Embrace Anarchronism

But in EUIV i used the Hansa to invade England........

Erm nevermind.

Secret sauce was forming Prussia after eating England.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Do you really want a 17th century galleon with hundreds of sailors? Or an 18th century Ship of the Line with closer to a thousand people on board

Plenty of 17th and 18th century ships weren’t huge. If you can build a big ship you can build a small ship. And once you start adding in magitech anything is possible.

Size of ship is largely a combination of available materials and the socio-political situation. If your setting has no oak or equivalent trees you will be limited to Polynesian style multihulls until you have the tech for steel hulls.

But we have already discussed using abstract combat if you have very large ships.

 

[Hussar]

Plenty of 17th and 18th century ships weren’t huge. If you can build a big ship you can build a small ship. And once you start adding in magitech anything is possible.

Size of ship is largely a combination of available materials and the socio-political situation. If your setting has no oak or equivalent trees you will be limited to Polynesian style multihulls until you have the tech for steel hulls.

But we have already discussed using abstract combat if you have very large ships.

I was simply providing a solution to having to deal with very large crews. And, by very large, I mean anything over about a dozen. Once you get to what I am calling platoon level, the game just doesn't work really well and you have to do all sorts of jiggery pokery to get it to work.

OTOH, if you actually STICK to smaller ships, all the problems go away. Yes, I realize larger galleys existed, but, they are not particularly seaworthy. There's a very good reason they stuck to the shores of the Mediteranean and other seas. If you want to sail more than about 20 miles off shore, galleys don't work very well.

Even on a viking longship, you're looking at about 20-30 (typically, although, yes, they could carry more) which is the absolute upper end that I'd want to deal with as a DM.

Now, as far as the,"Oh, you don't want to sink the enemy", I'd point out that Water Breathing lasts for a LONG time and affects multiple characters. Sink the enemy, then retrieve the treasure is not terribly out of the question for most groups.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Now, as far as the,"Oh, you don't want to sink the enemy", I'd point out that Water Breathing lasts for a LONG time and affects multiple characters. Sink the enemy, then retrieve the treasure is not terribly out of the question for most groups.

Pretty much a Tintin story (Red Rackham's Treasure).

The thing about wooden ships is they are quite difficult to sink. But what you don't want to do is get the "treasure" which might be something like tobacco, wet. Or inflict any more damage than necessary on the prize ship.

But, as already pointed out, a pirate story doesn't need your actual piracy, so it's not that important.

 

[Lanefan]

Now, as far as the,"Oh, you don't want to sink the enemy", I'd point out that Water Breathing lasts for a LONG time and affects multiple characters. Sink the enemy, then retrieve the treasure is not terribly out of the question for most groups.

Depending, of course, how deep the water is.

Most of the Mediterranean is relatively shallow, as are most coastal waters*. The open Atlantic or Pacific, not so much; and while Water Breathing lets you breathe down there it doesn't solve the pressure problem...

* but not all - there's places within a few miles of shore here with depth of over1000 feet, and while humans can in theory survive the pressures at that depth, in practice it's not something I'd want to risk.