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I am with a new group and having a hard time with a few "pirate" characters. These players, who in game, claim to be pirates, but seem to have a really warped view of what a pirate is. I, and my in game character are rather confounded, as when asked there are no acts of piracy for these pirates, just some free love hippie philosophy, that goes with a bit of fight the establishment attitude. This is a bit of a problem as the character I have does not mesh well with these "pirates" who don't do any thing, at least not anything mean. Any advice for dealing with these, weird "pirate" players?
let them meet REAL pirates. Plunder their ship and if the pirates can't use it for themself, burn it down, on open sea, with your Johnny-Depp-pirates on them.
Or just a bar brawl with real pirates.
Be Davy Jones.
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Sell their souls in an infernal bargain for a better crew and ship.
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I am actually playing a LE lizardfolk Unarmed fighter, with a seething hatred for elves, orcs, and spellscales. I literally crush my enemies with my bare hands. We are all after some god slaying McGuffin, and without the promise of god slaying power, I can't see my character not murdering his flamboyant allies. How have others dealt with silly fellow players?
If your character is cunning and intelligent.
Talk them into doing the stupid stuff that will get them hurt for playing like flamboyant wanabes.
Or
Talk to the GM and remake your character to fit in with the rest of the group. This was probably their idea of a grittier game. If you go much beyond that, it is likely to cause out of game problems.
Kydeem makes a point. My ex and I were part of the same RP group. Her idea of grit was just that someone's feelings gets hurt.
Without knowing what / how much you know, I'm going to make a blanket / blind suggestion. Read up on piracy a lil more. Treasure island has a lot to answer for. I according to one article I read, some pirates weren't too much worse than the British navy.... though that's less a reflection on the pirates as the navy.
The best option I can think of that springs to mind?
Play it straight with your char as if he's never met a pirate before, nor having heard that term before. Pirate? What's that? Some sort of fraternity brotherhood thing where they go out and rob from the right to drink it all themselves? Sounds great. Where do I sign? Take it as some sort of fancy pants Yacht club that these guys are in called 'Da Pirates!' International membership and recognized? Awesome. So I can go whereever I want and just take a boat? This sounds better and better.
Of course, you have heard of pirates in another language, and KNOW exactly what keel hauled means. However, you haven't made the link yet that the viking raiders, and carribean buccaneers and so forth are actually what these guys think they are emulating. See if you can talk to your GM to have enough cultural difference between the pirates that your char knows vs local that they just don't mesh and there is no association.
Because by the sounds of it, it's like a couple of kids with trail bikes calling themselves 'Bikers', where-as when you think 'Biker' you think of the % of them that all the hardcore biker badness happens with (Drug labs, turf wars, weapons smuggling, hits etc etc etc). It lets you keep that bit of perspective in play without having that association between people who keel haul you for fun, vs a bunch of frat boys. It also means that if you EVER encounter a REAL bunch of pirates you can have the penny drop when they start talking about their 'brothers' over o that boat where you get to sort the whole mess out.
Or as Kydeem says, re-roll / redesign your char so it's not so much of an issue.... I'd also though check your GMs opinion as well though. Being the only sane one (IE. the only one who knows pirates aren't funny accents and parrots) MAY save your party if the GM gets the irrits with the party not knowing what piracy is like in his book and finally does put them up against Blackbeard.
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I am actually playing a LE lizardfolk Unarmed fighter, with a seething hatred for elves, orcs, and spellscales. I literally crush my enemies with my bare hands. We are all after some god slaying McGuffin, and without the promise of god slaying power, I can't see my character not murdering his flamboyant allies. How have others dealt with silly fellow players?
This is an error from the GM, everybody makes mistakes sometimes.
During character creation the GM has to set expectations so that everyone is on the same page, clearly this has not happened.
This is why I get my players to create characters together around the same table, eliminates these kind of clashes straight away.
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The weird thing is, these particular players do not really see the full extent of the silliness. They really seem convinced that these fun loving free love pirates existed some where, at some time. Other than these two players, everyone is on the edgier train. I started to explain to them once that they confused me, and my character, and why. It went poorly, and they spent a time looking at me like I was telling them the world is flat. My DM shrugged, and now I am trying to figure out how to handle things so that everyone is happy, including me.
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The weird thing is, these particular players do not really see the full extent of the silliness. They really seem convinced that these fun loving free love pirates existed some where, at some time.
In this sense, all RPGs are silly.
Historical accuracy is meaningless in Pathfinder. Fireball-flinging wizards never existed, pirate queens never existed, drow never existed...
I would argue that consistency with mythic and pop-culture expectations is more valuable to a campaign than historical accuracy.
What I am seeing is this
Group A (including you) approached character creation with one set of expectations.
Group B approached character creation with another set of expectations.
Neither set has any superiority to another (this is something you need to realise and get over, you are not playing the game better than them).
The conflict comes from your GM failing to set and manage expectations during character creation: this is why Paizo creates player's guides for their Aventure Paths.
If your GM had told everyone: "This is going to be a fun-time, rock n roll, pirates-of-the-carribean adventure." Then you would all have known what to expect and you would be the one who was out-of-line with your punchy lizard.
If your GM had declared: "This will be a dark, gritty pirate adventure with a certain historical realism and a real lack of joie de vivre." then your good-time-guys would have been out-of-line.
But actually, if your GM had said either of those things then you prbably would have made characters which matched the campaign accordingly.
So... stop moaning about the other players.
The fact that they do not have the same cultural expectations as you does not make them 'silly' and your attitude that they are having is not coming across as very helpful.
Your GM has messed up, and he is the one who has to fix it.
Talk to him. He clearly doesn't realise the mistake he has made.
Your GM needs to reset expectations for the campaign.
there is precedence for real pirates at the side of ... lesser ones.
one serious dude in a group of silly ones, can be fun too, just hink about a discussion that goes like this
- We have captured this foe, how can we convince him to reveal the location of the secret treasure?
Pirate 1: let's ask him and give him a part of it
Pirate 2: let's tell him that he won't get any more rum for a whole week if he doesn't
Pirate 3: let's tell him that we give him to the authoroties if he doesn't.
You: *breaks his fingers and takes out a knife* "do you want it the easy way or the hard way, pal?" *puts out a cigarette in his eye".
Read as much Chris Claremont X-men from the 80's. Wolverine and Nightcrawler on the same team. Angry kill em all Dirty Harry type with a kind, playful former circus acrobat.
The question I would ask is what opportunities are they passing up that the DM is putting down. Are they waiting for government protection as many historical pirates wanted. Captain Kidd was only notorious after he attacked a british ship prior to that he was on the leash so to speak and only plundered the kings enemies.
Second question what do you mean by grittier.
Grittier does not mean no nice or honorable people. It does not mean there are no brazen womanizing rapscallions who call themselves pirates. It seems to me you want the grittier element to come from the characters and not the environment. Perhaps they are in for a wake up call when these greenhorn "pirates" get out in the wider world. Gritter worlds still have loveable kind hearted people . . . the grittier world might chew them up and spit them out of course.
This seems more like the problem of blackbloodtroll expecting a campaign with a tendency to evil alignment or at least neutral where as the rest plays lawfull good pirates or chaotic good pirates.
I thought about this stuff too and its really difficult.
A pirate campaign cannot be run with good characters.
If you look at the pre-Pathfinder adventure path savage tide, there are several problems in the adventure path good players will meet which will change their alignment.
Piracy is just not a good act. It´s impossible.
But thats a major problem with alignemt in the game at some points.
It starts with playing a good rogue and using your sleight of hand skill regularly.
This looks like a GM problem to me too somehow.
And then, forget about it.
I once played a drow rogue and after two sessions it became clear that some of my fellow players were just unable to cope with it. So i first changed the course of actions drastically and then switched to another character. Now we only play "good" alignment stuff.
Best recommendation is to adapt to them as much as possible without spoiling your fun totally. If its not possible redo your character and concept or search another group.
I would say that you can play good characters as pirates, but it would be when you have good characters acting as the agents of a good country who's at war with an evil country. So, you become commerce raiders hitting the commerce of the evil country at sea. You're privateers, which is a fancy name for a pirate with a writ from a lawful government to seize the property of an enemy nation.
EDIT : Alternately, if you are playing a CG/NG type who is 'robbing from the evil empire to help the downtrodden', also known as 'Robin Hood on the High Seas'.
You do know that "Real World pirates" weren't all just evil bastards who only thought of themselves, right? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piracy#Pirate_democracy - I'm on my iPad, so no linky...
In our game, I am actually playing a little more of the "Johnny Depp" pirate. I've even got my chest with a false bottom for my current jolly Roger. As I'm a kitsune, of course I'm going to try starting up the foxy pirates.
Of course I've got a little bit of One Piece in my character, and the main crew for that one is in fact the freedom loving group, but they have specific ideals, and do in fact go up against the scum of the world quite often.
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There is nothing wrong with silly characters, I just have no experience running grittier characters alongside them. I want them to have fun, but want it to remain fun for the grittier characters. I am just asking if anyone has any experience with this kind of balancing act?
Running a D&D campaign that is both gritty and silly is about as close to impossible as you can get. You made your character under one set of expectations, your fellow players seem to have made theirs under another.
Either you'll have to lighten up your character or their characters will have to get more serious. You all should talk it over with your DM and decide what sort of campaign you want to run.
If you all decide to go with a more laid back and fun campaign, then you could play the grumpy, serious foil to their characters. In that case you could lighten up a tiny bit, be a good sport, and give them someone to play off.
If you all decide to play things straight, then the DM could throw some serious event your way (mutiny, more brutal pirates, shipwreck, etc) that would give them an excuse to tighten up. In that case you could play your character more like your original concept.
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I hope to have the innocence of these "pirates" lighten the mood, but to have some sessions where the innocence is lost, with the brutality of reality. I am not looking to ruin the fun for anyone, but to allow both parties to share the limelight. I have so far, used the light heartedness to confound NPCs and seem harmless to our enemies. I just worry that when some of our other character's more brutal backstories come to play, that the lighthearted characters will feel attacked. They know it will come, but I hope to do it with style, so that all parties enjoy the experience.
If you joined their game, you should adapt your character to fit in their group.
Be honest with them and say that you didn't get the spirit of the campaign: rework your PC or make a new one and have fun.
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I was not prepared for this sort of game. All indications led me to believe I was playing in a grittier game, and I built a character around that. How does one keep the edgier feel with disney "pirates" like these?
Easy.
Go watch some episodes of Firefly. Then pretend you're playing Jayne. He is pretty much exactly what you're describing: the one gritty guy on a semi-pirate boat full of hippies.
not handled but I was in one. We had a huge party mainly because we expected multiple people to be busy with school and work at a time. Absentees would be considered to be adventuring with other groups, therefore still gain experience. We had all types of characters and filled up the 9 alignments. My CN rogue ended up getting killed by a CE ranger, our N druid kept having hissy fits, and our paladin could not stop atoning. In the end, only the idiots won, because they were simple-minded and couldn't care less what their comrades were like.
Make it clear with them what kind of PC you have in mind, and try to understand if it would be appreciate in their group.
In my group such behavior (the betraying evil PC) would not be appreciated no matter how true to the PC character and how well roleplayed and you would be asked to change your character or leave: in other groups it would be fine and the group would love you.
It really depend on the style of the campaign and on the taste of the players, just keep in mind that what for a group can be a great roleplayer for another group could be simply a disruptive prima donna.
... I am the only evil character. I do not plan on killing my fellow players, but I could very easily see him betraying them. ... I just want to make sure I don't hurt anybody's feelings.
This may be tough. I have not been in a huge number of groups, But I have only been in one that could handle this kind of thing well. Even if role played excellently. In every other group it has generated OoC bad feelings. Be very careful with this. Make sure the rest of the group and GM can handle that kind of thing before you go down that path. I could be wrong, but it doesn't sound to me like the hippie-pirate-wanabees would deal with it well.
There are 2 other semi-active threads on good and evil mixed parties. I would suggest you read through those.
And I can't remember what the other was called and i removed it from my focus list a while back.
Evil parties, how they fail, and how to fix it might also help
That was the other one.
Thx VM