To say that I am excited about the Skull and shackles AP would be an understatement. The prospect of swashbuckling heroism, tempestuous sea witches, evil Sahuagin, weird spirit ridden shaman, and terrible ghost ships.
But...I'm scared.
I think that the unpleasantness and moral ambiguity which should go hand in with such an AP is being pushed out of the concept. As such I want ask that you resist making the PCs the Good guys in this AP.
Without doubt they should be the heroes of the story. They should achieve great things, perhapes save the shackles( maybe even the world) from something terrible(chellish invasion or extra dimensional horrors or whatever). They should undertake acts of bravery, daring do, and passion, writing their story large upon the world.
But they don't need to be nice people to do such things. Or if they are, their is nothing that says they should find staying nice an easy thing.
We have a host of APs about being the Good guys, or atleast the neutral guys, lets have this AP be drowned in rum, sex, violence and wealth beyond the dreams of averice. Let it have freedom for the self at the expence of others, and freedom for others at the expense of the self. Let it be hard to be good, and rewarding to be bad. Let it be possible to be a murdering raider and a good husband. Let it be possible to be a mutiner and a man of principle, a slaver and a hero of you people.
Let this be the AP it should be, and don't let the draw of the safe suck the life out of it.
|
I think James Jacobs has specifically mentioned that this is not the AP to play a paladin in. That said, while I don't necessarily need my heroes to be squeaky clean, I like mine to be good people in general or at least not bad people. BUT I'm totally for letting people do whatever they want along the way. And this comes down to motivations which, in my eye, is always a problem for the GM. Knowing your characters and how they want to play them is part of the job. And there will be plundering, there will be looting, there almost certainly will be slaving, but there are certain things I never want to see in a published adventure and sex for the purpose of lewdness is just not something I'm interested in seeing at the table. Your character wants to spend some money at the bawdyhouse, great, when you get back we can roll for diseases but I really don't want to spend time on your exploits at the table when the rest of us could be having fun adventuring, thank you.
Also, there's nothing stopping your characters from doing any of those things you mentioned except your GM and yourself. Complex character are way more interesting then pure white good or coal black villainy and almost noone wants to play those characters... much. But I've seen runelords done with goblins, I've got a friend doing Serpentskull from the perspective of the Lizardmen. Why would anyone with a bit of experience, let an AP completely rule the table. If it's fun and you'd all like to do it, then do it. That's why they tend to leave them pretty neutral, to allow you to do whatever you want. If you want them to write hooks in for why a pirate might do what's necessary, I think it's pretty easy to say, to cut down the competition, to get their wealth, or remove them from power and I'm sure that will be a part of it. They specifically mentioned plundering rules at the banquet so I'm sure there will be plenty of room for the working of whatever evil little mind you'd like to play.
Creative Director
|
Look at pretty much any and every popular pirate-themed bit of entertainment, be it a movie or a novel or whatever. The vast majority have pirates and pirate characters as main characters who would not be evil if you looked at their character sheet. And quite a few of them would probably even have the word "good" on their character sheet somewhere.
The Skull and Shackles Adventure Path, being in large part inspired by those movies and stories, will work the same way.
Good PCs will ABSOLUTELY have a place in this adventure path. So will neutral, chaotic, and evil ones. Lawful PCs will probably be the ones that find the hardest fit in this AP, but even they should be able to play along.
That includes paladins... as long as you're aware of the fact that in Pathfinder, the paladin's code has been quite relaxed from its 3rd edition incarnation. Nevertheless, there's a lot of tradition with paladin characters being TOO obsessed with law and good, and if your group's one where bending the expectations and being confronted with lots of difficult choices rubs you the wrong way... you'll probably have more fun playing one of the 18 or so other base classes other than paladin in this Adventure Path.
The Skull and Shackles Player's Guide, which will be out in February 2012, will speak extensively about the campaign's expectations and will offer a LOT of advice on building PCs for it. We're still working on the Player's Guide for the Adventure Path that comes out before this one, though (Jade Regent), so we're still about six months away (at the minimum) from really being able to talk much about the topic beyond this post's assurance that good guys will have a place in the AP, but paladins might not.
Because this part I CAN guarantee: This adventure path will assume that the PCs want to be pirates.
Re Pirate-Paladins.
The Knights of Malta committed acts of piracy against their foes (themselves also pirates - being the Barbary Corsairs and the Turks). Now, of course, they are mainly known for their ambulances.
Some of the justification was religious or to redeem Christian slaves, but a fair amount was economic/defensive.
Most RW Knights of Malta would have been Cavaliers, or Clerics, or Aristocrats, but the theme still kinda works.
More interestingly, keeping in mind the supposed Templar-Pirate links, one could imagine an order of Paladins having fled Cheliax for Sargava cooperating with the Shackles pirates "for the greater good."
More interestingly, keeping in mind the supposed Templar-Pirate links, one could imagine an order of Paladins having fled Cheliax for Sargava cooperating with the Shackles pirates "for the greater good."
Which ignores the fact that the Knights Templar were more like the 'Order of the Cockatrice'in Golarion terms.
They were definitely not the good guys.
More interestingly, keeping in mind the supposed Templar-Pirate links, one could imagine an order of Paladins having fled Cheliax for Sargava cooperating with the Shackles pirates "for the greater good."Which ignores the fact that the Knights Templar were more like the 'Order of the Cockatrice'in Golarion terms.
They were definitely not the good guys.
Well, yes (neither were their opponents, however). But the Paladin represents what they were intended to be-- the Templars definitely flavored the depictions of the Carolingian Paladins in French and Italian literature. Of course, the later you get, the more villainous Paladins start appearing... though that is a critique of the nobility as much as of the notion of spiritual knighthood.
James,
I didn't really mean to imply that good aligned characters should not have a place in the AP, of cause they should, I mean just ask dread pirate roburts/Westley.
I just hope that campaign doesn't go easy on the choice to play a good character in it.