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I'm curious what recommendations people have for expansion material for the Skulls and Shackles AP. Are there good pirate themed adventures, source books, etc.?
I'll start with a recommendation.
Buccaneers of Freeport from Green Ronin is a great source book if you want to give details to other pirate ships. It details the personality's of a pirate captain, officers and crew for 9 different ships. It give backgrounds and NPC motivations. It devotes 15 to 20 pages per ship. It gives a map of each ship in 5ft square scale. It does not give stats which makes it easily transferred into any game system.
I'm going to stat out most of the ship crews from this source book to Pathfinder and use them as additional rivals for the PC's.
Lots of 3.5 stuff around on RPGNOW
Dead man's chest by necromancer games, sea sourcebook
Book of the Sea by Mongoose publishing
All Freepost books
All Swashbuckling Adventures by alderac for ideas, some good bits from 7th sea too for extra setting ideas.
Pirates of the isles for conan d20
Im putting together some bits myself as I'm thinking of doing a low magic swashbuckling campaign mixing elements of Conan D2O and PF to get a grittier Fantasy game(I love the magic and combat in Conan)set in the 16oo's era ie age of sail, firerams and Draing do but Fantasy. Im hoping I can use most of Skull and Shackles as well.
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There's also the 1994 TSR Al-Qadim "Corsairs of the Great Sea".
I might crack the shrinkwrap on mine and hook some material from it in as a diversion in the middle of Skulls & Shackles, especially if I run the AP on a slower XP path. Or the players might decide to abandon the main quest anyway, in which case this would be a good transition to a more "Arabian Nights" setting (I've got several other Al-Qadim odds and ends).
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Am I the only one who liked Stormwrack? Not for the monkey people, but for like, the monsters, the hard rules and crazy D&D environmental stuff. I dunno.
Here's what I've been using over the last 2 years for my pirate campaign.
1. Everything Freeport! Biobeast, you may be interested in knowing that they published stats for Buccaneers of Freeport and Cults of Freeport as Web enhancements. See here. Buccaneers and the Pirate's Guide to Freeport and the Pathfinder Freeport Companion are great, but so are the Death in Freeport and other adventures and all the other books, there are many. Tales of, Denizens of, Creatures of, Treasures of...
2. Ice Titan, you're not alone on Stormwrack. I use it for a bunch of sailing and weather rules and have used several encounters - Shatterhull Island and the Sable Drake. You can see how those went in our session summaries.
3. Sinister Adventures' "Indulgences" are good for encounters and rules, not sure if you can buy them any more. Razor Coast is clearly never coming out, more's the pity - syncing that up with S&S would be beautiful.
4. I looked at a *lot* of ship and sailing rules. I hate the "silly fantasy" kinds (gnomish paddlewheelers!). I liked two 3e bopoks from Living Imagination, Broadsides! Naval Adventure and Pirates!.
5. For NPCs (not statted for D&D), also "The Pirate Nations" for 7th Sea.
6. There's a whole game with loads of stuff for it (15 adventures!) called Pirates. Set on Earth but mineable for plots and stuff.
7. I used some of Adamant Adventures' Tome of Secrets (swashbuckler class, etc.) for my pirate game.
8. I like my old Citybook II: Port O'Call From Flying Buffalo for seaside town locations, NPCs, and some ships.
9. I like Atlas Games' En Route II: By Land or by Sea for encounters and adventures.
10. Zak's Wavecrawl Kit and associated "Today at Sea" random generator on Abulafia.
11. Paizo's From Shore to Sea module and its sister product Sunken Civilizations from Open Design.
12. Black Powder Weaponry from LPJ Design, to replace the lame guns in the APG.
2. Ice Titan, you're not alone on Stormwrack. I use it for a bunch of sailing and weather rules and have used several encounters - Shatterhull Island and the Sable Drake. You can see how those went in our session summaries.
I plan on reading all of these summaries eventually, but which ones are the Stormwrack encounters in so we can look them up more quickly?
I plan on reading all of these summaries eventually, but which ones are the Stormwrack encounters in so we can look them up more quickly?
Sure. Season One, Session Three is the Sable Drake (they meet some of the goblins in the previous session, and the captain comes back later in Riddleport), combined with Water Stop from En Route II. Season Two, Session Thirteen and Fourteen is Shatterhull Island.
The OGL lists Dead Man's Chest. I haven't read it, but I'm interested to see that ferrinwolf recommends it. What's in it?
Well having finally gottrn round to reading everything it lloks like im going to use the following:
Book of the Sea: Has some very good ideas and rules for ship travel, really like the luck and bad luck elements for the ship, weather is simplified wh
ich is good. Neat way to handle crew morale and mutiny but as I dont have the AP yet I dont know if anything is mentioned in book 1. Also has some good ideas for ports and trading if it is usuful. Ship design not that good though as it uses a different system and stats for the ships.
I will be using the rules for ship and fleet combat in the players guide and ap as these will use the ship stats given in the players guide. Howvever, I have found a really good and fun way to hold ship borad combat in conan pirate isles that uses crew stats and maneuvers for the players which gives a good swashbuckle feel.
Green Ronin have a great Duel machanic in thier 3.5 noble guide which uses cards with moves on them, again perfect for a swashie/pirate game.
Dead Mans chest does have a few bits I will use, the ships travel is a bit too mathmeatical for me as is the weather so I wont be using that but the weather charts are good. Ship mods are in the players guide so tahts already been used. The back of the book has a fab table for ship board encounters using a d100 def using that.
Im also thinking of adding in the conan combat maneuvers and maybe using them with hero points. These look like they will give a heroic swashie feel to the game but I will need to work on them as they may overpower the game somewhat.
Im thinking of using the Freeport material for Port Peril too and just substituing it. A fully fleshed out pirate town is too good and oppertunity not to use.
Oh and one more thing, 101 pirate traits gives some fantastic pirtate traits for players to use but I would be careful as some are powerful and may unbalance the game but def worth a look.
I recommend the adventure Ship of Fools, a short, nasty piece of work that takes place on a sinking ship. It can easily be slipped in as a side encounter later in the campaign.
Ok, so yeah, I helped write it ... but take a look for yourself (there's even a free preview). We've gotten some darn good reviews on it already. ;-)
I've just picked up some WizKids Pirate boosters and the ships are perfect for naval warfare.