How 'evil' is Skull & Shackles?

[Quatar]

I avoided reading much in here, to avoid getting spoilered, in case I find a game to play in. So even if that was answered already, I didn't see it.

But I'm wondering. Pirates almost by definition aren't nice people. They plunder innocent merchants, maybe even kill them and sink their ships. They murder and backstab each other when it seems like a good idea.

You can say buccaneers are different, but honestly they're not. The only difference is that they only attack innocent merchants from certain nations and not from others. They still kill and murder people that haven't done anything to them.

Even more moderate pirates don't really have the stuff heroes are made out of. They might just rob and steal and not murder and rape and burn, but that's still not very heroic.

So and now there's an AP where you play Pirates. Without spoilering too much, but just how evil is the stuff they do in the AP? Let's divide that into
a) How evil is the stuff they have to do to get through the AP
b) How evil can they be, while still operating totally within the AP

What I mean with b) is that I'm aware you can turn every AP into evil, if you want to, but that usually derails it fairly quick. I'm wondering where the "breaking point" for S&S is, if that makes any sense.

[captain yesterday]

well, you're pirates, so you can be as evil or good as you want to be, as far as i can tell the baseline assumption is probably CN. but that said if you wanna get dark with it, its not going to derail anything:)

a) nothing, its more about PC choices, you do mutiny but after that its up to you, if you wanna be CN go ahead or good two shoes, thats ok too, or even super evil d-bags, not a problem.
b) you can be pretty evil and not derail anything or you can "follow the pirates code", entirely up to you, its fairly sand boxy.

[FrankManic]

Okay, so

1.) You can raid evil shipping - Cheliax, Slavers, or just shipping companies run by a!+@@*+s.

2.) You don't actually need to engage in actual piracy. You can be the pirates who don't do anything, if you want, because there's plenty of other crap to do in the Shackles than steal things that float.

3.) Piracy is no more morally ambiguous than kicking in an Orcs front door, murdering him, and stealing his fine silver. If anything it's less morally ambiguous - Pirates are robbing for purely material reasons instead of trying to dress racist genocide up as something noble.

4.) Most merchants are jackasses anyway. You don't get ahead in the merchanting game by being lawful good

5.) How much damage you actually do to your victims is up to you. You could put everyone to the sword and burn the ship to the water line, or you could shove everyone into the hold, feed them and treat them relatively decently, and put them off at the next port.

6.) Privateering is like a magical "This is totally not evil" card because when you're a privateer you're technically part of the military and everyone knows that war is hell so it's technically not evil.

7.) Or you could become a pirate hunter, or a convoy escort. Or you could arm your ship to the gills and become a high-value cargo courier.

Really - it's not any more inherently evil than any other kind of thieving PCs get up to. Unless you're going out of your way to be cruel and destructive it falls pretty neatly into neutral territory - They have stuff, you're taking their stuff, and that's just how the game is played.

[Riggler]

Quatar,

Your question is an alignment question disguised as something else. My campaign rules for my players when I GM'd this game was no Lawful alignments prohibition. I didn't want alignments fighting against the AP. So that was the decision I made in MY game.

In short, the Lawful end of the Lawful/Chaos axis of alignment I considered a much bigger problem for the AP to run smoothly than anything on the Good/Evil axis of alignment. By banning Lawful alignments I made my job a lot easier. That's not to say a Lawful character couldn't thrive here, but a I knew by banning them my players would end up enjoying the AP much better.

To answer your specific questions, in my opinion:
1) They don't HAVE to do anything "evil" per say. Overall the morality of the AP is neutral.
2) They can be as evil as they want to be in the AP without derailing the AP. That said, the derailing can happen. And it can happen by the PCs doing something evil. But it's not the fact that the action was evil that in and of itself makes it a derailing. PCs of any moral alignment can derail this AP. But it's not the alignment that will cause the derail.

[vikingson]

Robin Hood is a brigand (or a comonfolks' hero)

Franis Drake was an English national hero and a seafaring devil to the Spanish rulers.

American privateers boldly enriched themselves on raiding British trade in the war of 1812... and were hailed as stalward heroes at home. The same goes for French privateers like Robert Surcouf

Whether a pirate is "evil" is less a question of his general work ethic, but more a factor of the morality and standards in his actions and values. And just WHO he/she robs.

SnS is not "evil", unless you intend to play a party of Abadar-ish paladins and clericsˆˆPiracy does not necessarily mean burning and pillaging, plundering and abusing your victims. It means "robbery at sea"

And yes, one could run the AP with a shipful of paladins (ok well, not really ones of Abaddar, who protects trade and abhors brigandry) if players and GM act creatively enough.

And there actually is no internal breaking point. The only problem might be ingroup player disgust and abhorrence over some actions which might affect the gaming groups cohesion. Hence handle with care and within the limits of what your group does like ?

[Gnomezrule]

Black Bart's crew had daily mass. That does not of course make them "good" but it certainly suggests that there is more to the make up of pirates than the stereotype.

[Fitzwalrus]

With apologies to Riggler, I would ban Lawful GOOD alignment PCs rather than a blanket ban on "Lawful" per se. IIRC there are LE pirate NPCs scattered among the six AP modules, and I know there is at least one CG NPC on the Wormwood.

I think the overall average alignment bias of the Shackles would be CN at best, with a definite lean towards CE or LE. (After all... "Pirates!" ;D ) This is not to say that you and your players can't run things as you see fit, but without a great deal of rewriting the AP really isn't suited for LG types.