If the whole world ld is pirates, how do they grow lumber? Who makes the ships? What kind of socioeconomic status would a shipwrighthave? Is there eine on every ship?
What kinds of stuff are under the water? How do people get fresh drinking water?
I now see you play in the sea of fallen stars. Make sure to read up on the lore of the pirate isle. There is also a book titled sea of fallen stars detailing all islands and underwater stuff. I think it's for 2e
In terms if crew positions, mine might not be the most realistic but are designed to give the players interesting roles and ways to effect things.
The Captain - gives orders, makes in-the-moment tactical decisions
The Quartermaster - in charge of the crew and keeping them fed and watered, in charge of rum rationing as well
Lookout - doesn’t seem like much, but if you put a PC with high perception in that role, you’ll spot stiff better
Cook - has a big effect on the morale of the crew
Shantyman - perfect role for a bard. Also has a big effect on morale and can inspire great feats from the crew with performance checks.
Bosun - in charge of maintaining the ship, when repairs are needed, etc.
There is a pirate code that they are expected to follow. Captain Verse insisted on this when he helped the players take their ship. Its quite long but the big points are:
All booty must be shared equally, with tge Captain and the officers getting two shares each.
All major decisions must be decided by vote (such as whether to take a prize, where to burn a ship or take it…). The crew may even vote out their captain if they dislike how the ship is run (although in practice I’d likely just do a good old mutiny).
No one may steal from another member of the crew, on pain of being marooned, keelhauled, or killed.
No murdering each other, although fights are tolerated within reason. If they get really bad they must be settled ashore.
you can’t leave the rew until you’ve at least helped the make a prize.
No freeloading, everyone pulls their weight
Generally the pirates work together, and if there was a local pirate leader that would be Captain Verse. Some go rogue or shun the pirate code, like the BBEG pirate captain Blackfin, who’s crew are mostly undead and who has no allegiance other than to his Demon Lord, Orcus. Verse has done a great job of uniting at least rhe pirates in the Western regions of the Isles, and hopes to lead an uprising against The Company and start a pirate republic.
They used to say that a good shantyman was worth 10 strong men, because he got everyone working in sync so they worked more efficiently, and he motivated them to keep working longer.
Plus I love sea shanties! I actually used to run a regular sea shanty singing night at a local pub!
“There’s an island to the North, right? Surrounded by a maze of coral reefsit is. No one has been able to find a path to it, even by rowboat, but folk have been dashed on em even taking it careful like. Sailors swear they saw the foral move! BUT my mate Ron, he said he heard off his mate Jim, that there was this druid on his ship what wildshaped into a pelican, right, and flew over it. Said there was some kind of temple or shrine in the middle of it. But he couldn’t get close. This deafening voice booming in his head, saying he had to pass the test and find the way there! Couldn’t resist the voice he said. Had to donas it says like it was pulling his strings! Now, I reckon, if there’s a test, there’s a prize! I bet it’s treasure!”
There’s rumours of a kraken, of course. But it could just be ships lost to pirates, or sunk in storms, or taken over by the sahuagin…
Speaking of the sahuagin, they have been a lot more active lately, there attacks more frequent and more organised than before.
There’s a rumour that the dread pirate Blackfin has been killing while ships of people just to turn em all the zombies. He’s building an undead armada! He’s friend to none, pirate or civvy!
As for superstitions, they’re sailors, so they are a very superstitious bunch. One of my party killed an albatross, and the crew were going spare at the bad luck. They made him wear it round his neck as penance for the bad juju, and the ship was becalmed for days, drifting with no wind. The players tried all sorts to lift the curse but it was actually an encounter I found on reddit one time, the Sinister Seagull. It takes the wind from a ship’s sails and can mind control the crew. They spotted one of their crew throwing gems to the seagulls and had to have a battle with it. They couldn’t tell which was the evil one son they were blasting every seagull they could see. Ingrave the Sinister Seagull basically every non lethal psychic spell I could find and had fun casting confusion, crown of thorns, power word pain, etc, on the party. They took very little damage and it was a frustrating fight for them, but when they finally exploded the right seagull, they were very releived
We have a death cleric, a transmutation wizard, a bard and a fighter. So it won’t come up, but I’m allowing most things, I want the vibe of the campaign to be fun and chaotic and it’s worked well so far
How do pirates force other ships to stop? I always struggle with ship-to-ship combat in DnD. Obviously, we don't want to give them easy access to cannons as that would lead to the question: Why aren't cannons used elsewhere? But at the same time, the ancient form of naval warfare of ramming, arrows, and boarding has its own challenges. Mostly that it doesn't translate well to the game mechanics.
First, the actual interesting part would be the outmaneuvering and positioning of ships. Something that just doesn't work with DnD rules so it has to be simplified or even handwaved. But also that ship crews are rather big. So every fight has a ton of low-level fighters involved and would just take forever without being interesting.
With merchant ships, you can kinda solve it by having a few higher-level fighters, and the rest surrender once they are dead. So you just have a regular DnD experience but with warships, you would have a crew that easily could go into the hundreds.
So the question is:
Are mages on ships just way more common and do they take over the role of cannons?
Do ships just have lower crew requirements than real-life ships would have?
I have cannons in the setting, just cos I wanted the players to be able to use them, cos fun! I’ve developed a way of doing ship-to-ship combat that has been working quite well.
I balance the encounter with a manageable number of enemies to match the party, and maybe one or two named NPCs. They battle it out while the two crews fight around them. The crews go in with a set strength rating that translates to a modifier. At the start if each round, both crews roll a d20 and the loser takes one away from their modifier. I determines the starting mod for the players by assessing morale if the crew, how well fed and we’ll armed they are, etc. I use the results to add flavour to the battle. So it’s like the party are fighting some of the crew, but I’m simulating a larger battle around them. If their crew is losing, the PC cam use their actions to affect the larger battle and swing it back in their favour.
Each turn, each ship can move its movement speed and fire cannons/ballet’s on either side. The players can use their actions to do these things or, if they have enough crew left, they can give orders to have them do it.
Makes are still very useful aboard ships cos they can do stuff like create a gust of wind for a burst of speed, or create a fog cloud for visual cover. Also fireballs!
If you can, it might be worth looking into the old games workshop game “Battlefleet Gothic”. While it’s spaceships in space, a lot of the rules and ideas could easily be remapped onto sea battles. Some of the rules would actually make MORE sense for a sea navy rather than a space navy. It could help for things like getting caught in a multi fleet battle, without getting bogged down too much.
well, since its in the Forgotten Realms settings, access to cannons are rare and limited - and really expensive - where a small island of a weird gnome sect in the far south west of the continent hold the monopoly to guns and cannons. Mostly, mages and other magical users would be employed to either power the sails and/or defend from attacks.
as for the maneuvering part, one can roleplay a ship chase, running mages dry, and then the more powerful ship has the chance to get away or attack the remaining fighting crew as one would. And since a ship will fight for its very existence, unless the opponent are slavers, every man will fight, which shouldn’t be fought out unless you group all combatants into one “group” and roll for them to see how they are doing.
More ideas:
Slavers are a topic in such games. One could think about the wealth distribution among the crew, among certain factions, regions, and flesh out the region accordingly.
Check the campaign guide for trades countries would ship overseas, what items could they want to smuggle?
What kind of taboos exist on land, which your crew might flee from and become Privateers?
How are Pirates supplied?
Where is their landing port, safe haven? How is it defended when the main part of the fleet is gone? Access to repairs? How do they recruit additional crew?
What enemies are there? What “Kingpins” of the Underworld (can also be intelligent Monsters) exist, what foes? (how a about a beholder “kraken”?)
How are the landlubbers acting towards the crew, what kind of people are there? Do you have primitives, voodoo shamans and a carribbean setting or do you prefer the privateer British setting, with more refinements and fortified towns - or something in between?
Source: FR Campaign Guide & Drizzt Books
notable mentions to check out:
(TSR/2nd ED): Pirates of the Fallen Stars
(D20): Corsair the definitive Guide to Ships / Gareth-Michael Skarka
Burial at sea mostly would e standard, with a ceremony where they take turns speaking about the deceased and moments from their time together. Or they would try to emulate the traditions of the individual’s culture. Pirate crews are made up of all sorts of folk from all sorts of places, so they are a melting pot of different traditions.
Profitable pirate ventures need to be built on rich trade routes so they have big, fat, juicy merchant ships to plunder and pirate.
What competing powers does your pirate area sit between?
What are those powers doing to patrol the waters and stop their trade ships from being plundered?
Whose the most famous pirate hunter in the area? What’s their methods and what’re they doing right now?
Whats the latest ‘big haul’ the pirates have pulled in? What were they rumoured to have found? Similarly whose the last pirate to have been caught or killed? How?
This sounds like tonnes of fun, hope your players enjoy!
The Southern Isles are in the location that The Pirates Isles are in vanilla DnD, I just thought the original name was lame. I have used some of the original lore for some of the islands, but mostly it’s my own stuff. That means the surrounding powers are Sembia, Turmish, These, Aglarond, etc. Yo be honest I’ve not put a lot of research into those. The Isles attract a sorts of folk from all sorts of places.
The Southern Islands Company are a proxy for the Turmish government, and it is them who patrol the islands looking for pirates.
The most famous pirate hunter is probably Commadore Roger Todgeson. He has a long standing enmity with Captain Verse, a pirate captain who has the lofty goal of ousting the Company and starting a pirate republic. Currently he is on his way to Thatch, a town in the Western region, and the place most newcomers to the Isles make landfall The party are also on their way there. Captain Verse feels it is time to try and liberate the town and has asked the party to come to his aid. The Company sense unrest is afoot and have call s Commadore Todgeson to help sure up their forces. The party and their crew, along with Verse and his own crew, will try to take the town before he arrives, and then defend it on e he does.
The last pirate to be caught and killed… hm… I’ll say that would be Captain Jack Chaffinch. He was taking a prize out East when he ran into Todgeson’s ship. They fought valiantly but were overwhelmed and when Todgeson arrives at Thatch he’ll hang him up in the Harbour as a warning nitnto resist him. Chaffinch’s ship sails with Todgeson, having been captured. Could they take the ship back ? Apparently he’d managed to take a Theskian treasure galleon before being caught himself. Could be the gold is still in its hold, just waiting for greedy pirates hands to reclaim it!
There are tales of buried treasure, maps with a marked ‘X’, etc. But currently there is a greater prize which some of the crews and functions are frantically searching for. One particularly viscous and evil pirate captains, a sharkman necromancer named Blackfin who, along with the Southern Islands Company itself, is one of the BBEGs of the campaign. He is in the employ of the demon Lord Orcus.
You see, a great hero stole the Wand of Orcus, and then was lost while passing through the Isles. Blackfin has been promised great power if he retrieves it for his master, so he is raising an undead army to find it. He’s also made an alliance with the sahuagin, a local population of aquatic arseholes.
Signature dru k would of course be rum! Particularly spiced run, sometimes mixed with ginger beer and lime (which is a real cocktail called a Dark & Stormy)
Sade havens… there’s the idland of Oresk, on which is the hidden treetop hideout of thw pirate queen Anne Bonny. She’s beautiful and ferocious, and most of her crew are in love with her. There’s also Tortuga, a town built onto the back of a great Zaratan (giant turtle). The zaratan makes them powerful, so the SIC have not been able to bully them into economic submissions like other places. The players managed to convince the council that runs Tortuga to ally with the pirates when it comes time to topple The Company.
Exports are exotic food and spices, and gold from a mine on one if the islands. But the placement of the Southern Isles makes them a hub for trade. It is by far the quickest route for many neighbouring nations, it takes a long time to sail around them. So many still take their chances with the pirates.
People come to the isles to disappear, or in the hopes of adventure and fortune on the high seas.
Sounds like fun. I’ll have a go at some questions.
How do they get the profit? If the local population are starved and downtrodden, the stolen pirate goods have to go somewhere else. Is there some black market organisation they’re linked to which gives them the funding to run the place like their personal kingdom?
Is it oppressed in the sense that collaborators are treated well while the rest just try to survive? Or like a population of slaves and a couple slave drivers to keep them in line? How does the local community run? What are they able to do to make a living and what are they there to do? There has to be something there to be exploited in the first place.
Is the government an actual pirate crew that owns the joint or just a group that lets piratss come in and do business? What sort of security do they use? Personal army? Mercenaries?
The Southern Islands Company (SIC) is basically a stand in for the East India Company. They wear red coats and speak with posh English accents, and are basically a private army, owned by a merchant company, who in turn operate with the blessing of their home government. They are a human colonial force. There are developed towns with a merchant class, who do quite well, and an underclass made up of pirates, other races and the indigenous people of each island. The Company takes a cut of all the food that, is grown, and have recently begun increasing their cut to the point that the underclass are going hungry (and getting angry). The indigenous people are treated the worst, some sold into slavery others just worked like slaves.
The local pirates stand in opposition to them and its mostly SIC affiliated merchants who get raided. The SIC do their best to hunt down the pirates, but they are spread quite thin, particularly in the Western parts of the Isles.
There is a black market run by the pirates to sell their booty, and a lot of the goods end up back in the hands of the company, either trough seizure or through the more corruptible Company men.
That's real shame but understandable. Undeadwood was great and the talks machina was amazing compainian to the series although I guess if you are binge watching the series having a companion piece is less needed so maybe they were of their time for speculation. But again totally see why the core crew would want it gone from their platform
I'm not saying it can't be done, I'm saying it shouldn't be done.
We just saw lemmy.world collapse in ruin from a hack, for example. It came back quickly, but if it hadn't and all of the TTRPG communities had been there it would have been quite a mess to recover from.
I think it's ok to have themed instances. People are still free to create communities on other ones, even if they're similar topics. No one is saying ALL ttrpg has to be ONLY one roof. I help admin an instance that's devoted only to sci-fi and fantasy communities (any media) but only those themes. Some of the communities we have also exist elsewhere and that's the great thing about the fediverse.
No one is saying ALL ttrpg has to be ONLY one roof.
That was what I interpreted dumbles' objection to be, he didn't like that these communities weren't on TTRPG.network.
To be clear, I'm not opposed to "themed" instances. I just don't think it's bad to have communities scattered around on other instances as well as that.
people are free to go to these places and make their own communities. It wont be me as I am here on .world and as stated above !dnd has been on .world before ttrpg network existed
that's what I ended up doing, searching via kbin magazine search. Weird. I'd like to see the entre instance in case there are other communities not shown here.
Yeah, not sure I want ALL of them for subscriptions, I just wanted to see what else they had in case I did want to subscribe. I'm sure it will be back up eventually and I can go check.
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