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

[Hussar]

Just to go back to the point I was (badly) trying to make. By keeping your ships and whatnot smaller, it makes running the game a thousand times easier than trying to juggle the massive numbers when you get into really big ships. The grunt work of tracking cargo, food, water, that sort of thing, all the book keeping, gets a lot easier when you're only dealing with ships with a crew of 10-15 that carry 20-50 tons of cargo. Combat is simpler, you have far less head ache of trying to keep track of a cast of dozens or hundreds of NPC's, so on and so forth.

What I've come to realize, and this is purely based on my own personal experience trying to run naval campaigns in D&D, is that something that looks like this:

is all you actually need. Sure, those massive three masted (or more) galleons with hundreds of crew and whatnot are so COOL. I get that. I honestly REALLY get that because I'd LOVE to be able to do it. As I said earlier, this is my white whale of DMing. My advice is based on hundreds of hours of failure. Every single naval based campaign I've tried has failed. Thirty years of failure.

And, again, totally just my personal opinion here, the primary reason it failed is size. It's just too freaking big to run a campaign and try to juggle these great big ships. The scale just doesn't work in D&D worth a crap. Think of it this way. Would you want to run a campaign where the PC's are running (as in they need to deal with the day to day stuff) a mid sized town? You as the DM need to be able to detail out dozens of NPC's, track all the things needed for a mid sized town and THEN you need to figure out the same thing for every other mid sized town that the PC's are going to be in conflict with. The scope and scale is too much for me. I admit my defeat.

Keep it much smaller. Stick to cogs and longships and your naval campaign will be far more successful. At least, that has very much been my experience.

 

[Celebrim]

What I've come to realize, and this is purely based on my own personal experience trying to run naval campaigns in D&D, is that something that looks like this:

View attachment 420001
is all you actually need.

I think that's definitely one of the two ways to start the campaign. The other, is that you start for whatever reason as part of the crew of the larger vessel, though that way requires the group to be OK with the game being on rails for a while.

But at 1st level, just a small 30 or 40 foot sloop or pinnace or dhow with the PC's as being basically the whole crew is perfect.

The trouble I think you will have is that there is little means to keep it that way. The advantages of a larger ship over a smaller ship in terms of seaworthiness, cargo capacity, speed, endurance, and combat ability are just too great. Plus there is something cool about having the more prestigious ship. Pretty soon they are going to want a 60 foot schooner, still sailable by 5 or so persons - mainly the PC's. And then perhaps a 120 foot three masted snow with a battery of six ballista on eiher side, and swivels on the fore and stern castle. And now we have a crew of 110. And so forth.

The thing is, I've been in that campaign. And on a smaller scale I ran that campaign. You can do it, but I agree with you that it's more work than most groups are going to want to do.

 

[Clint_L]

I just wrapped a 4 month long pirate arc in my home campaign, and here's how I handled it:

1. The PCs were crew but it was obvious pretty quickly that they had special skills, so the captain basically used them as a kind of strike team, which dovetailed nicely with the PC's own motivations for being on a pirate ship (they were trying to learn more about and ultimately defeat an upstart pirate king with devilish alliances).

2. The rest of the crew, aside from the captain and mate, became "lair actions" on the PC's side when we did shipboard combat, which was fun and kept things relatively simple.

3. The party had to split the treasure with the rest of the crew, but I planned the loot accordingly (and they had the opportunity to nab any special items).

4. There was, of course, a pirate town because that's fun. It was on an isolated island surrounded by a perpetual storm (which was the party's first clue that the upstart pirate king was, in fact, a storm giant who had made a devilish pact). The pirate town gave opportunities for lots of shenanigans and side quests.

5. I planned the arc so that, by the end, it was a natural point of departure for not only the PC's, but much of the crew, including the captain (basically, things had gotten too hot). So the party left the crew on amicable terms.

6. This was "fun pirates" (at least, the crew the party joined). I wasn't going for hardcore pirate brutality or realism - that's just not the kind of game we enjoy.

There was shipboard combat, rival factions, a zombie-infested island, three different underwater adventures, including the use of the Apparatus of Kwalish, an ancient temple repurposed to be the pirate king's lair, and they finished by running through White Plume Mountain, totally redesigned as White Plume Island.

 

[Hussar]

I think that's definitely one of the two ways to start the campaign. The other, is that you start for whatever reason as part of the crew of the larger vessel, though that way requires the group to be OK with the game being on rails for a while.

But at 1st level, just a small 30 or 40 foot sloop or pinnace or dhow with the PC's as being basically the whole crew is perfect.

The trouble I think you will have is that there is little means to keep it that way. The advantages of a larger ship over a smaller ship in terms of seaworthiness, cargo capacity, speed, endurance, and combat ability are just too great. Plus there is something cool about having the more prestigious ship. Pretty soon they are going to want a 60 foot schooner, still sailable by 5 or so persons - mainly the PC's. And then perhaps a 120 foot three masted snow with a battery of six ballista on eiher side, and swivels on the fore and stern castle. And now we have a crew of 110. And so forth.

The thing is, I've been in that campaign. And on a smaller scale I ran that campaign. You can do it, but I agree with you that it's more work than most groups are going to want to do.

Actually, there is a very easy way to keep it that way.

History.

Three masts? Sorry, you're about three hundred years too early. They don't have three masted ships yet. Schooner? What's that cap'n? Some sort of shoe? Sloops? That's something you feed pigs right? My point being, it's very easy to keep the game smaller scale. The players have ZERO interest in there being half a hundred NPC's slowing the game down. So, again, just keep the technology to Cogs and you're pretty much good to go.

 

[loverdrive]

I apologize for not reading 18 pages of discussion, but:

I think the most straightforward approach is to use ship as the "base" characters resupply and talk to NPCs on, while most events of the session happen on various islands they can visit. Generally, having some sort of a hub location with colorful friendly NPCs tends to improve experience a lot, and it being mobile is even better.

 

[Celebrim]

Actually, there is a very easy way to keep it that way.

History.

I've already mentioned this, but technology doesn't change the dynamics and in fact just makes it worse. A pinnace could have crew of 25. Balinger's were crewed by 40. Longships could have crews over 100, and even typical ones a crew of 70. The same pressures apply. Bigger ships have more freeboard, are more seaworthy, are faster, and perform better in battle. If the overall technology is a few centuries older, then the ships handle more poorly, move more slowly, tack close to the wind less well (and so rely on oars more), but aside from being less capable all the dynamics are similar. And as I said before, the primitive technology actually meant ships of similar size required more crew - the single masts and single sails and less efficient tackle meant more sailors were needed to raise and lower sails. The less complex rigging meant more rowers were needed. Steering oars needed more men to man them especially in storm conditions than rudders. Cogs and hulks required one crew for every 10 tons burthen. A typical 80 ton cog needs a crew of eight, but crews of up to 40 were sometimes used to protect against pirates and cog and hulk great ships of up to 1000 tons with a crew of 100 did exist.

Successful piracy in this era involved wolfpacks of up to 120 galleys, each crewed by 70 or so men, capable of raiding major cities if necessary.

History isn't really the friend you are claiming. It just makes drowning at sea more likely.

And it doesn't really get better in terms of crew sizes moving to Dhow in the Indian ocean, or galleys in the Mediterranean.

You might could have "we sail about on the sea" without pressure to get a bigger boat, but if you are talking actual piracy that pays, then the pressure to get a bigger boat will be there.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

part of the crew

The PCs were crew

This is what I would absolutely avoid in a pirate campaign. Freedom and independence (and from a gameplay perspective player autonomy) are central themes in a pirate story. I would call a campaign where the PCs are crew who are sent on missions a Star Fleet campaign. If the PCs start out as crew, I would kill off the captain and senior officers in episode one, leaving the PCs in charge. I would also trash the ship, so that they have an incentive to seek wealth to fix it up. Ideally, the player-ship should progress from zero to hero like player characters do.

History.

I'll see you History* and raise you Fantasy. In a fantasy world there is no reason navel technology would follow the same path as the real world, and a mash-up of lots of different tech levels and societies is the norm. And ships can be any size the DM likes. Also, there is no reason why the PC ship should be standard for the region. For example the PCs may stumble across a huge magically advanced ship run by magical automatons - this was basically the Blake's 7 set up, which makes a good model for a pirate campaign (the recent Nautilus TV show was pretty much Blake's 7 under water).



*Large three-masted ships are on the standard D&D equipment list. You would have to run a very non-standard D&D setting to remove all the Renaissance-era technology.