| Fozbek |
So, I had a brainstorm on my way home from work the other day:
Everyone I know really wants to play a pirate campaign, but the very nature of pirates (being rather on the independent side of things) means there really isn't a ready-made adventure path, campaign, or even really any modules where the players are pirates, and it'd be a ton of effort to write one yourself.
Then I realized that the Kingmaker mechanical framework would make for an awesome pirate/nautical campaign. It's already designed to be sandbox in nature, the mechanics are already very abstract, and there are already at least basically useful rules for most everything you'd want to cover in a pirate campaign.
Thus, I committed to running a pirates campaign using the Kingmaker mechanics after our current Kingmaker campaign is done.
What I'm looking for advice on is what sort of changes could be made / would need to be made to the Kingmaker mechanics to suit a campaign that starts with a single pirate ship and potentially grows up into an entire pirate empire.
Our group doesn't mind a bit of extra complexity, and in fact we've found the Kingmaker rules a little bit too abstract sometimes, so any suggestions are good.
Right now I'm looking at adding a "notoriety" stat to the overall nation stats, which would determine how much effort other nations put into suppressing the pirates. I'm also going to remove roads because they make no sense in a nautical campaign. Obviously claiming territory will have to be restricted to just hexes containing land; it's real hard to claim any significant amount of ocean. The magic item economy will be removed with the focus instead on trade routes (the players' own trade routes as well as the NPC nations trade routes that they can pillage), with profit from trade routes being based on length and possibly on actual goods traded. The buildings available for each city will probably be re-built from the ground up, and I'm thinking of changing the non-city constructions as well.
Also, the mass battle rules will probably have to be seriously overhauled to work with ship-to-ship combat, although I could see each ship being an "army". I'm holding off on even worrying about the mass battle stuff for now, though, because Ultimate Combat will be out long before we're ready to start this campaign and is supposed to have more fleshed-out mass battle rules in it.
Can anyone else think of other changes or additions?
| Fozbek |
Warning: Mega Post Ahead.
I'm reviving this thread because I've done significant work on this and, despite the fact that Paizo is releasing Skull and Shackles next year, this campaign is set to start within the next few weeks. I have a playtest session scheduled for next weekend, then the first real session will probably be 2 weeks after that.
I'm going to be running the party through a modified version of Souls for Smuggler's Shiv (removing all the AP plot from it, basically) to get things started, so I actually do still have at least a couple months of work before my PCs get their ship and can really start pirating around.
So, here's the philosophy I've been working under:
What I mean by that can best be illustrated by comparing the benefits for constructing a tenement in this campaign vs the one for Kingmaker. In Kingmaker, tenements are houses that are simply 2 BP cheaper and cause Unrest rather than reducing it. In the pirate campaign, tenements still cause unrest (and now instability) where houses reduce it, but they are free (houses cost 6, by comparison), they increase the sell price of certain common trade goods, they provide potentially twice the building-powering benefit, and they can be upgraded further (more details on most of that later).
In other words, "dark" buildings still have consequences, sometimes even stronger consequences than in Kingmaker, but they also are usually cheaper and/or more efficient than "light" buildings. When they aren't, they provide other benefits that make them overall more attractive.
Basically, the goal with incentivizing chaos and evil is to passively guide the PCs' pirate kingdom into something that looks and feels completely different from our current orderly, good Kingmaker game, while using mostly the same (or at least similar) base rules. "Lawful" and "good" buildings still exist for the PCs to use, but they are generally more expensive, less efficient, and/or just plain boring compared to their darker counterparts. I want the players to want to build tenements, drug dens, shrines to dark gods, black markets, red light districts, and so on; I want the players to want to enact edicts that reflect the darker side of human nature; I want the players to innately re-create cities like Mos Eisley, Riddleport, Daggermark, and so on naturally, just by going the simplest route to whatever mechanical goal they have.
Now, on to some actual rules. Keep in mind that none of the numbers or effects have been playtested yet.
I also replaced the Edicts system, which was basically just three really generic sliders, with a more engaging system. More details on that later.
So, like I said, the overall Kingdom rules remain almost completely intact. The kingdom character sheet is 90% identical; basically everything except the Edicts section is still exactly the same. I may decide to change the Leadership roles around, but for now, I'm working with the Kingmaker ones at least mechanically. Economy, Loyalty, and Stability remain, as does kingdom size controlling the DC for kingdom checks. There is one additional stat, Infamy, which is mostly plot-related; it's used to keep track of how annoying the PCs are to the established nations and thus how likely they are to draw reprisals.
Cities are also almost identical in base mechanics; they trade magic item slots for trade route slots (as mentioned), but still use the 6x6 grid and so on.
However, all of the rules from Kingmaker assume entirely land-based kingdoms. That's fine for Kingmaker, but it presents problems for Piratemaker. After all, it's very hard to claim a hex containing nothing but ocean. In fact, I'm only allowing players to claim hexes that contain land. Each hex claimed still increases the kingdom's size (and DC) by 1, but the overall expectation is that size will be much smaller than in Kingmaker. Further, there is no requirement that a hex has to be adjacent to a hex you already claim in order to take control of it.
The reduction in number of claimed hexes has a direct impact on the amount of Consumption generated by the kingdom. Kingdom size is by far the biggest factor in Consumption for Kingmaker kingdoms, and since I want to use basically the same rules but reduce the number of hexes claimed, I have to increase Consumption in other ways. The primary method of doing so is to raise Consumption by the distance to the Capital when building a new city. This serves the dual purpose of boosting Consumption considerably and providing incentive for the players to keep their kingdom fairly compact. A secondary method is actually passive: most islands aren't big enough or fertile enough to build farms on, so there aren't nearly as many ways to reduce Consumption.
This really belongs in Kingdom Rules, but it's a brand new system, so I'm placing it in a different spoiler for organizational purposes:
For Piratemaker, though, I wanted something with a little more bite. So, I eliminated Edicts as sliders and instead made them essentially optional rules that the PCs can add or remove to their Kingdom. They can have an effect on pretty much anything and everything, and can even create unique effects that can only be achieved through Edicts. They're almost like spells or magic items for the Kingdom. Here's some examples, with commentary:
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Bloodsports: State-sponsored gladiatorial combat can be quite effective in distracting an unhappy lower class, but the demand for ever more spectacular events can drain the treasury dry. +1 Loyalty per month. +1 Consumption per month.
Bloodsports is only enabled once the PCs have built an Arena in at least one city. It provides a way to shore up a low Loyalty score without having to pay any money directly or take up any additional room on the city grid, but it has a cumulative cost as the plebes get more and more jaded forcing the events to be more and more elaborate, and could lead to a Fall of the Roman Empire type scenario, where decadence and a failing treasury combine to create massive internal strife (ie, a long-term Bloodsports edict being repealed instantly drops the Loyalty rating of the kingdom substantially, causing all sorts of potential problems).
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Shadow Government: Sometimes it's best to rule from the shadows; even open secrets are powerful in politics. Per-city edict. Infamy is tracked separately for this city; Infamy generated by this city does not affect the nation, and Infamy generated by the nation does not affect this city. Instantly and permanently repealed if the government of the nation is conclusively linked to the city's government.
This edict is so that the PCs can set up "free ports" that are supposedly not affiliated with their piracy, that can be used to generate trade income without the NPC nations attacking their trade ships. Of course, the PCs need to make sure they don't meddle too much with the shadow governed cities, or they may lose all the benefits permanently when the NPC nations send spies to try and find proof.
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Devil In The Details: Devils assist in the creation and enforcement of laws; crime is all but unheard of, but everyone wonders just what the price will ultimately be. Asmodeus specific. -1 Unrest per month. +1 Infamy.
This is a deity-specific Edict, which can only be enacted if the PCs dedicate a Shrine to that specific deity. This is another example of my "incentivize evil" philosophy in action. Letting devils into your courts provides huge reductions in crime and civil unrest, but it makes other nations quite nervous. It's mechanically very strong, but it still provides penalties that aren't insignificant; Infamy is only expected to go to around 40 or so before the climax of the campaign, so every point matters.
The other major rule change is the addition of Trade Routes instead of Magic Item Slots.
Each Trade Route has a number of Trade Good slots that the associated fleet can carry at a time. At each city where the trade ships are permitted entry, the PCs can sell any Trade Goods they have assigned to that fleet and buy new ones to fill up any empty slots. Then they proceed on to the next stop on the route.
Each Trade Good has an individual base price (for example, a slot of Food costs 0.5 BP baseline, while a slot of Exotic Ores like mithral costs 3.0 BP baseline), and Edicts and buildings can modify those base prices on a per-nation or per-city basis. That price is both the buy and sell price (unless Trade Tariffs are enacted by a nation, in which case the buy price is higher than the sell price due to special taxes). Also, some goods are Restricted or Illegal in certain ports, which raises their prices and makes them lucrative products, but the trade ships run the risk of being detected smuggling goods, which causes the loss of all cargo and an increase in Infamy.
Each trade route can cover a certain number of hexes in a single turn, which functions similarly to movement on the tactical map. The route must both start and end at its home city, simply because keeping track of the specific location of each trade fleet would be way too much work. However, the route can visit multiple cities along the way as long as it ends its "movement" back at its home port. This should hopefully allow the PCs to make interesting triangle routes and so on.
Finally, each Route has a Resistance attribute that governs how easily it can survive or even repel an attack from hostile agents. Basically, whenever an Event roll determines that trade routes are under attack, some or all of the active Routes will need to make a Resistance check to determine whether they are able to trade that turn. Routes are never permanently destroyed, at least by random events.
In general, Minor Routes have excellent range but low capacity and resistance, Major Routes have excellent capacity and resistance but low range, and Moderate Routes are in between.
Edicts and buildings (especially guilds, such as the Smugglers' Guild) can alter those values.
Now, while the system provides for buying and selling goods, that's not always needed. After all, the players are pirates and in nominal control of an essentially uncharted expanse of ocean. In addition to buying trade goods, certain hexes and buildings will also produce trade goods. For example, a Cannon Foundry produces 2 units of cannon per month, which can then be loaded onto a Trade Route to be sold or used to make new ships at a discount.
That covers most of the new stuff. There's still a little to do with buildings, though:
Another change is that buildings can be upgraded by paying the difference in cost between the currently existing building and the upgraded one, and ensuring that all the requirements of the upgraded building are available. This is an extension of the rule in Kingmaker that you could change tenements to houses without destroying the tenements first by paying 2 BP (the difference in their price), applied across the entire spectrum of buildings. Here's an example:
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Tenements (0 BP; 1x1): Extremely dense housing for the very poor. Provides 10 workers and 100 population; Increases price of Food and General Goods by 0.1; Stability -1; Unrest +1.
________Shanty Town (0 BP; 1x2): Warrens bulging with the homes of the poor and oppressed. Provides 25 workers and 250 population; Increases price of Food and General Goods by 0.2; Loyalty -1, Stability -2; Unrest +2.
________________Slums (0 BP; 2x2): An entire district filled with piles of squalid tenements and their wretched inhabitants. Provides 100 workers and 1,000 population; Increases price of Food and General Goods by 0.5; Loyalty -2, Stability -4; Unrest +4.
In this specific case, there's no BP cost to upgrade, since all of the buildings in the chain are free. However, in order to upgrade a tenement to a shanty town, there must either be two adjacent tenements (in which case both are replaced by the shanty town), or a tenement with an adjacent open grid square. The effects of the tenement (or tenements) are entirely replaced by the effect of the shanty town.
A side note on the tenement building chain: they actually provide a lower worker:total population ratio than the house chain does, which doesn't make a lot of sense at first glance. After all, usually the lower class has a higher worker to nonworker ratio. However, the intent is to A) simulate extremely dense population centers, and B) make cities packed with shanty towns and slums difficult to effectively declare Martial Law in (Martial Law is an edict which provides benefits as long as the number of soldiers in the city is at least 20% of the total population of the city). The only way to do both those without making the buildings simply provide too many workers was to be counter-intuitive and decrease the ratio.
Now, with all of that out of the way, and
TL:DR:
What kind of laws and buildings would people want or expect to see in a Pirate campaign?