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View Full Version : DM Help Pirate Base Adventure Ideas?



crazyeddie
2016-05-10, 08:51 PM
I planned for my players to take a freighter from point A to point B, get stopped by pirates, defeat the pirates, then head on to point B. Instead, they decided to skip the freighter, sign on with the pirates, go with the pirates to their base, and take a smuggling ship from the base to point B.

This is all cool and awesome, but now I have to figure out what fun they could have at the pirate base, and I'm tapped out on ideas. (I think my brain may be too Neutral Good for thinking up "Fun at the Pirate Base" scenarios.) Any ideas?

A bit of background if it helps:

Setting:
The setting is based on 17th Century Europe - tail end of the Thirty Years War and the middle of the English Civil War. Primative firearms are a thing and have rendered arrow-based ranged weapons and most armor obsolete.

Magic exists and is known about, but wizards are huddled in their studies. Magic items are reasonably common but still expensive and not in everyday use. (Wizards can pawn off things on the sly easier than they can openly perform services. There's also religious distrust of magic.)

No clerics or paladins, since throwing divine magic - bona fide miracles - into a bunch of holy wars was a bit of an RP headache. Druids exist, but are persecuted almost everywhere.

The pirate base is Dunkirk, in modern-day Belgium. Officially owned by the Spanish, raiding on French, Dutch, and occasionally English shipping.

PCs:
* A female Catholic mercenary captain from the Germanies. (Gender dynamics are the same in this world as they were in our own - she's just that bad-ass.) She does speak most of the languages that are used in Dunkirk.
* A Native American sorcerer. The only European language he speaks is English, which won't be spoken by many of the locals.
* An Irish pirate from the pirate ship they grabbed a ride on. Should be able to get by in a mercenary pidgin. He has a kid sister living in Dunkirk with the family of another sailor.
(The player isn't entirely happy with this character. His other character, a Changling rogue, pretty much got mission-killed. He's still floating around out there, but has split from the party and probably won't be turning up in Dunkirk.)

Honest Tiefling
2016-05-10, 09:00 PM
1). Firstly, who controls Dunkirk? (I am assuming you aren't going off of history 100% here). Someone in the base wants to control it, and involves the PCs. You could have a three faction war, with one faction controlling it, one approaching the PCs hoping to make a deal, another hostile to the PCs for some reason. Sprinkle in a few traitors who might be secretly working for the other powers. They could get framed for the murder of one of the head honchos of these factions and either need to spring their compatriot from jail, or prove their innocence.

2). Someone decides that if they are pirates, they don't need to adhere to all of these social norms. Maybe some sort of pro-Druidic or pro-Arcane magic faction that wants to practice openly. Others might want the PCs to deal with them, or they might wish to recruit the PCs.

3). They visit a tavern. A lady of the night approaches the party, but she's really the diversion for a pickpocket. Go chase him down before the ship leaves!

4). They hear of a brave captain whose interested in taking on more crew...He might be interested in hiring the PCs, but this might result in not going to point B.

5). A ship of pirates come in. Their ship is badly damaged, and some of the crew are dead. The ones who did make it back are injured, sullen and in bad health. But the players spot them tossing something into the ocean before leaving. They're rumored to be cursed...So what did they toss over, and can it be salvaged? Or will it come onto shore...?

crazyeddie
2016-05-10, 09:38 PM
1). Firstly, who controls Dunkirk? (I am assuming you aren't going off of history 100% here). Someone in the base wants to control it, and involves the PCs. You could have a three faction war, with one faction controlling it, one approaching the PCs hoping to make a deal, another hostile to the PCs for some reason. Sprinkle in a few traitors who might be secretly working for the other powers. They could get framed for the murder of one of the head honchos of these factions and either need to spring their compatriot from jail, or prove their innocence.

I'm at least initially trying to keep it close to history, on the no-doubt false notion that it'll make my story-telling easier. Tracing back the changes magic would add to the history would just about require rebooting the entire story of human history, so I'm letting the changes trickle in as I get used to the setting.

Only two changes so far:

1) I figured out that Bards would make awesome navigators since 8th lvl Bard = scrying. Scrying + raven living near a big clock = practical yet expensive solution to the Longitude Problem. Plus Bards have the right mindset for transoceanic navigators. So all major ships and some small ships have a Bard acting as almost a co-captain.

2) Native Americans might well be trying to figure out Western Magic, since that would be easier for them to support than technology. A spellbook might be a lot more portable than an iron smelter.

I'm willing to throw history out the window for the sake of story, but the PCs are already involved in a politics-heavy main storyline. (They're being sent to intervene in the political cluster**** that is the English Civil War... on the loosing side.) So I don't think a political side-quest would be good. Need something more like a fun monster-bashing weekend.


2). Someone decides that if they are pirates, they don't need to adhere to all of these social norms. Maybe some sort of pro-Druidic or pro-Arcane magic faction that wants to practice openly. Others might want the PCs to deal with them, or they might wish to recruit the PCs.

That might be fun, but Dunkirk would be the wrong place to do it. The Spanish are the national authority, and they're the most heavily anti-Arcane and anti-Druid power in the world. The local authority (the Dunkirk city government) is pretty much a "pirate's republic." They're more pragmatic than the Spanish when it comes to magic, but they wouldn't want to rock the boat since they've got a good thing going. Keep the magic out at sea, guys, no dancing lights when you're on shore... Pretty much anybody on that political tact would have defected to the Dutch, which are a bit more relaxed on such matters.


3). They visit a tavern. A lady of the night approaches the party, but she's really the diversion for a pickpocket. Go chase him down before the ship leaves!

That sounds like a good hook for a larger adventure. But it needs a bit more meat...


4). They hear of a brave captain whose interested in taking on more crew...He might be interested in hiring the PCs, but this might result in not going to point B.

I'm afraid my players don't need any help going off the rails :D


5). A ship of pirates come in. Their ship is badly damaged, and some of the crew are dead. The ones who did make it back are injured, sullen and in bad health. But the players spot them tossing something into the ocean before leaving. They're rumored to be cursed...So what did they toss over, and can it be salvaged? Or will it come onto shore...?

That sounds possible... I'd have to work on it a bit. About the right level of meat, but needs to be drawn into the larger story somehow. I'll throw it into the pot to stew, see what happens.

Any ideas that might involve the pirate PC's kid sister?

Honest Tiefling
2016-05-11, 12:27 PM
Wait...Did Native Americans have any access to Cure Disease? That...Would have changed quite a lot. Such as potentially stopping or slowing down the fall of the Aztec empire...

As for the sister, what is her situation like? Is she well taken care of? Does the sailor taking care of her have a love interest who doesn't want a useless brat hanging around? Does she have magical powers? Is the sailor in debt? There could be a fire that leaves them quite homeless. She'll probably need some training in how to take care of a home, how is she learning to support herself/snag a husband? What sort of religion does she follow? Is she following the same one as the sailor?

crazyeddie
2016-05-12, 12:49 AM
Wait...Did Native Americans have any access to Cure Disease? That...Would have changed quite a lot. Such as potentially stopping or slowing down the fall of the Aztec empire...

Hahaha! That's what I love about DMing! Things are going to explode, but I don't know how, all I can do is set up the gunpowder and wait for the purty fireworks!

What would giving Native Americans that kind of magic do? Well, Remove Disease is a 3rd lvl spell, so you'd need a 5th lvl Druid or a 12th lvl Ranger to cast it. I would think those would be few and far between, so it might be useful for saving the life of a VIP, but unless you can get to Patient Zero in time, I don't think it'd do much about an epidemic that could wipe out 80-90% of your people. The big spell-casters can only be in so many places at once. Resistance spells might actually be better, give more people at least a fighting chance. (Assuming there's some way of extending the time on one without spending the XP for permanency... Is there some rules lawyering that would get that? There's cloaks of resistance, but that could get expensive...) Even so, that might just mean that you have "only" a 70-80% die off.

Also, keep in mind that Remove Disease and Resistance are both touch spells. You might have a problem with your healers being knocked out early on. I figure that the Black Plagues might do a lot to explain why all the European clerics disappeared. Unfortunately, I still can't explain why God didn't just empower another generation of clerics beyond Because The DM Said So.

At any rate, having the Aztecs or the Incas still standing would be the kind of "reboot of history" stuff I'd like to avoid for now. And I think I can justify it in-universe why the Native Americans wouldn't have those specific spells in their quiver quite yet: Given that they had lower disease rates than Europeans pre-Contact, there wouldn't be that kind of pressure to develop those kinds of spells. I am planning to have a delegation of magic-users from the Indian PC's home tribe show up in-game, looking to add European spells to their arsenal. That could be just the kind of spell they'd want.


As for the sister, what is her situation like? Is she well taken care of? Does the sailor taking care of her have a love interest who doesn't want a useless brat hanging around? Does she have magical powers? Is the sailor in debt? There could be a fire that leaves them quite homeless. She'll probably need some training in how to take care of a home, how is she learning to support herself/snag a husband? What sort of religion does she follow? Is she following the same one as the sailor?

Heh, therein lies a tale. Unfortunately, it's a tale of party dynamics... Maybe I could use some advice on that, while I'm here.

The group has been playing together for a while, switching off the DM chair. I'm the new guy, and after I played with them for a while, they asked me to DM a campaign so they could all play on the same team for once.

One of the players seems to be a hack-n'-slasher, and he decided that he needs to brush up on his RPing. So he rolled up a Changeling social rogue. That fits in well with the campaign, since it's a political spy vs. spy.

The problem started when he starting coming up with character motivation: the Changeling pretty much just wanted to get a goodly amount of money, then dig a hole and pull it in after him. Made it a bit difficult to convince the character to join the party, but I managed it.

Because of the character's motivation, he didn't tell the other party members about his abilities. I figured that wouldn't work for the long run, so I set up some traps that would blow his cover, but hopefully build up some party trust. He triggered the first one that the party came across, resulting in a wonderfully bizarre scene where he appeared in the form of Cardinal Mazarin, the Prime Minister of France, in a French maid's outfit, on the lawn of a manor house, getting the crap kicked out him by the other two party members, while the entire staff of the house looked on in horror and sheer WTFery.

Now the character still could have talked his way out of it - if he came clean about his background. But he didn't, and went possum. The merc captain then threw him on the freighter ship they were going to take to Amsterdam, then went to arrange alternate transport for her and the Indian.

So the PC is basically mission-killed but still alive. I was hoping the player would be willing to play a different character. But the player wants to run with it, and his current plan is to shadow the party to Amsterdam, kill his replacement, and take his place. I'm okay with that, even though it's a bit PvP by my taste.

I asked the player running the merc captain about it, and she said that I should let him work through it, and the worst thing I could do would be to just hand him a new character. The next time the group got together (for a different campaign), he dropped the shadowing idea on me. "Okay, fine. But maybe you could play an NPC next game? I'd hate for you to be twiddling your fingers the entire time the party is in Dunkirk." "grumble grumble okay" "Could you roll me up an Irish pirate?" "Nah, why don't you roll up one for me?" "... okay..." <grind teeth>

So I've rolled him up a straight-up 5th lvl fighter, gave him skills in things like climb, balance, use rope - all in character for a sailor, and might come in handy for some second-story work as spy. And I gave him a +2 ancestral sword of Mercy, perfect for intel-gathering. The kid sister is just something my backbrain threw in - and none of this has happened in-game yet.

I'm reluctant to throw much drama in with the kid sister just now, since she's already doing duty as a kind of morality pet for the pirate. But I also want to involve her in whatever adventure they get into in Dunkirk, just so she can do that exact job.

For what it's worth, my backbrain is telling me that her home-life is fairly drama-free. She's staying with the family of another pirate-sailor. Might be some drama if big brother (her only living family member) decides to go with the party to Merrie Olde England, especially since Dunkirk is due to get temporarily conquered by the French next year.

I was also looking forward to doing some Cap't Jack Sparrow stuff, but I've come to realize that a pirate base is a good place to visit on the way to an adventure, but there's not that many adventures that happen at the base itself. It's kind of like Vegas - once you get off The Strip, you're pretty much in Utah, surrounded by Mormons. I suppose I could work up some kind of Ocean's 11 gig, but that doesn't feel right for the campaign, and taking on the kind of a casino that has to bounce freakin' pirates doesn't sound like a profitable job. I've worked out another adventure stolen from Horatio Hornblower they'll do on the way to Dunkirk, so they've already got a bit of a pirate fix. I was hoping for more though.

My current thought now is to have the kid sister out playing with friends when they stumble across some Norse ruins. (I read something about the Norse being involved with early medieval Dunkirk.) The Draugar or whatever grab the kid, her friends run for help, and the party goes to save her. Gets the problem player some good-old hack-n'-slash, maybe heal things up a bit.

Any recommendations on a good Norse-themed 5th lvl dungeon-crawling module?

crazyeddie
2016-05-12, 01:00 AM
Since it seems like you might be interested:

Another thing stewing in my brain re: what happens when you throw magic at this period of history: Spanish Inquisition + Zone of Truth + Witches (druids) Actually Exist = ?

My brain is shying away from this. Of course, a lot of the point of the witch trials was to grab the "witch"'s property, so the trials weren't really interested in the truth. A lot of the Spanish opposition to arcane magic might just be to avoid having to use truth magic at their trials. Plus, I think they might be reluctant to have solid evidence that the druids aren't actually Satan-worshipers, even if they are infidels.

By contrast, the Roman Inquisition might occasionally use torture, but they'd be more interested in truth and fairness and so would insist on using truth magic.