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I'm in a pirate-y mood again and am casting my eye back over Skull & Shackles. One of the things I'm looking at is to apply some granularity to the crew and ship roles rather than just handwaving their impact.
I have some familiarity with kindgom building and mass combat from Kingmaker (and the more recent Ultimate Campaign Guide), and I'm looking to lightly adapt those rules to the running of a pirate ship.
The ideas are still vague, but I wanted to sound them off the boards in hopes of getting some feedback from those of you with more experience than eye, or with just a different perspective. Or in some cases maybe just a point in the right direction if a rule already exists which I missed.
Here are some key points I'm aiming for (spoiler tagged to manage space):
Create a "cost" of sailing such that maintaining the ship in and of itself isn't assumed. I'm not looking for something with extensive bookkeeping, though, so I'm considering using Disrepute Points to represent it.
The idea is that a pirate captain will keep his crew's morale up by engaging in all the acts which are rewarded by earning Infamy and Disrepute, so Disrepute can be used as the currency to "pay" for a pirate crew. If a captain starts sloughing off on his pirating, he won't be able to "afford" his crew, but a captain who goes above and beyond will have the ability to draw and keep a larger crew.
Basically, I'm looking at the size of a crew compared to the size of an army as depicted in UCG and declaring that a captain must expend Disrepute Points rather than Build Points in order to meet his army's upkeep.
I haven't worked the numbers to see what's actually sustainable, so don't know if it'll be charged monthly or weekly (as armies are).
Since the crew counts as an army, there's a game mechanic for establishing the effectiveness of the crew versus another crew, and the crew's morale comes into play (as it should) dependent on how well the captain has maintained his reputation by spending Disrepute. Clearly not all tactics and upgrades are available (or appropriate) to pirate crews, but the mechanics are there.
In this scenario, rather than having the results of a shipboard battle be a ghostly mirror of the PC's combats, a savvy command staff could find that their crew saves their bacon even if they can't win a fight (or alternately a PC staff could win a fight only to turn around and find themselves surrounded by a victorious enemy crew).
In Kingmaker, only one player can be king, but the other players are kept involved by giving them government roles which effect the kingdom. I'd like to see similar roles aboard a pirate ship for the PCs to fill. An old post by sabedoriaclark (which inspired the post quite a bit) has some great ideas for PC roles, and I'm especially interested in establishing roles for a pilot, siege officer and assault leader.
NPCs can be put in these roles if the players would rather just mob the enemy captain (as the AP assumes), but there's the option for characters to be able to apply their skills and bonuses to ship-based actions like maneuvers, siege engine attacks, and deck-to-deck assaults.
In my slight rebuild of some of the AP, I'd like to see the development of a town be a condition of becoming a member of the Pirate Council, and using a simplified version of the UCG's kingdom building rules should work. Any island the PCs claim will likely be only a single hex big, so I'll have to run some tests to see if a single hex can even support itself. The UCG has a handy rule about reducing the value of build points-to-gold for smaller kingdoms which their harbortown will certainly be.
I intend to combine many of the government roles (or ignore many of them) because I don't want to punish the players when they decide to go a-piratin' rather than governing, but like shipboard roles, there will be a definite advantage to filling in a position to help the colony thrive and earn a seat on the council.
Those are the areas where I wish to add some complexity. Any insights, counter-arguments, or suggestions?
I'll admit, I'm more familiar with kingdom building and mass combat than with the pirating rules (I've never used the latter in play), so if there are already rules addressing some of these points, or I've misunderstood what the rules say, please point me in the right direction.
Thanks, all.
Create a "cost" of sailing such that maintaining the ship in and of itself isn't assumed. I'm not looking for something with extensive bookkeeping, though, so I'm considering using Disrepute Points to represent it.
The idea is that a pirate captain will keep his crew's morale up by engaging in all the acts which are rewarded by earning Infamy and Disrepute, so Disrepute can be used as the currency to "pay" for a pirate crew. If a captain starts sloughing off on his pirating, he won't be able to "afford" his crew, but a captain who goes above and beyond will have the ability to draw and keep a larger crew.
Basically, I'm looking at the size of a crew compared to the size of an army as depicted in UCG and declaring that a captain must expend Disrepute Points rather than Build Points in order to meet his army's upkeep.
I haven't worked the numbers to see what's actually sustainable, so don't know if it'll be charged monthly or weekly (as armies are).
First off, I'm not familiar with either Kingmaker or the Ultimate Campaign Guide, so I'm not doing a comparison here. That said, when I read "cost of sailing," I thought of the cost of maintenance for the ship. However, it seems you're thinking more of the crew.
The Skull & Shackles AP does have a mechanism for paying the crew. Pirates attack other ships and take "points of plunder", which thus handwaves the need for making up cargoes of X many feet of lumber worth Y gold pieces, or so many hides worth what a square foot, or whatever. A ship just has a certain number of points of plunder, the pirates take them, and then use "points of plunder" to pay the crew.
On the other hand, I have not found a mechanic for ship upkeep. When ships are damaged they lose hit points and must be repaired, but I don't recall any other maintenance being addressed in detail. If there is a 'castle maintenance' mechanic, it might be interesting to see if that would translate over to ships.
One possible drawback with using Disrepute on a regular basis (one per month to pay for keeping up the ship, for instance) is that, as far as I know, Disrepute can only be gained with Infamy. Infamy is earned, not just by doing pirate-y things but by bragging about them in various ports. When points of Infamy are earned, points of Disrepute are earned as well. However, Infamy has an upper limit - four times the level of the PCs. Especially at lower levels, this could be fairly limiting. Now, maybe there are nuances to the Disrepute system I have missed, or maybe you would be okay with it being a scarce resource in your campaign so it has to be used sparingly. It's just something for you to consider.
It is a sort of "pay the crew" idea I was looking for. I understand the concept behind plunder (as an abstract form of currency similar to the Kingmaker's 'build points'), but I can't find the reference to using it to pay for the crew.
Basically I'm looking for a system which scales up the cost based on the size of the crew, so a ship sailing with 25 pirates only costs 1 point per month (or whatever), but a 150-man crew costs 3.
The reason I'm leaning toward Disrepute is that A) I don't want to punish my players with a houserule which drains away their money, and 2) I don't see pirates working for a steady paycheck anyways, staying loyal because of their captain's reputation seems more appropriate.
Mind you, I have no experience with the Disrepute system in actual play, but I kind of hate the Impositions system (where a really nasty pirate captain can somehow teleport his ship), and using those points to offset the cost of the crew seems like a good alternate use for them.
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I had some similar thoughts for my own campaign.
As far as roles and crew combat are concerned I used a hybrid of the stuff sabedoriaclark did, Fire as She Bears! and some rules of my own devising. Its working pretty well so far (we have just started book 3) and you're welcome to take a look at what we use.
I made index cards with all the roles and ranks rules on them to hand out to the PCs which not only served as a reminder of their duties, but also as a way to visually represent officers' votes. If you're interested I can send them your way.
I also made cards for each squad (and enemy squads) to show who was engaging who.
As for kingdom building I also stumbled at the 1 hex point. The island in book 4 is WAY smaller than a Kingmaker hex, so unless you include nearby islands in their territory or 'sea hexes' to fish/plunder etc I guess you'd have to re-work the BP rules (or scale them down).
In my game the PCs have used the downtime rules to establish small bases of operation (in the equivalents of Sargava and Tidewater Rock from my campaign world). This is working ok at the moment but I want to introduce larger scale stuff when they hit book 4/5/6 so I'll be interested to see what comes of this thread.
I like your idea of using disrepute to pay the crew, wish I'd thought of that before getting too invested in making the PCs pay their crew in gp as it sounds a lot simpler (and would make them do more piratey stuff!).
I've done a little number juggling and discovered an interesting lack of variance.
Using the mass combat army rules as-is, a sailing ship with 25 crewmembers (warrior 2, based on Wormwood Mutiny) has an ACR of 1/8. If you pack the ship to capacity, you can have 140 pirates which makes it an ACR of 1/2.
The largest ship listed, the galley, can carry 450 people, making it an ACR 2 unit.
Here's where it gets bland. The weekly consumption cost of an army is 1/2 the unit's ACR in Build Points (or, in this case, Disrepute Points) with a minimum of 1. So our ACR1/8 crew costs 1 per week ('cause that's the minimum) and the fully-stocked galley also costs 1 per week. That's not at all the effect I was going for.
I wanted my nautical rules to be fully compatible with the land-bound mass combat rules, but I think I'm going to have to scale it a bit to get the cost spread I was looking for (where it becomes more expensive in DPs to field larger crews). Instead of 1/2 ACR per week, I'm thinking of 2x ACR per month. So our minimally-crewed sailing ship would cost 1 DP (again, because that's the minimum) while the fully-stocked galley is now 4/month.
Because a single port visit can grant the crew up to 5 disrepute and infamy points, I think that 4 DPs/month is pretty reasonable. And worst case scenario, being unable to afford the DPs just means the crew is operating at a -2 morale. Something to be avoided, but not necessarily the disbandment of the ship.
It is a sort of "pay the crew" idea I was looking for. I understand the concept behind plunder (as an abstract form of currency similar to the Kingmaker's 'build points'), but I can't find the reference to using it to pay for the crew.
That information is on page 12 of "Raiders of the Fever Sea," the second part of the AP.
That information is on page 12 of "Raiders of the Fever Sea," the second part of the AP.
Well lookee there. A late add to the plunder rules, it seems. Thanks.
I had considered using the army combat rules from Ultimate Campaign for running the battles between ship crews, but when I looked at them, it just seemed like it'd be too much trouble for not much payout.
The thing I've learned about running APs is that it's easy to go overboard with sub-rules, options and side quests and you have to make sure what you're adding will bring a significant level of dimension to the game without over complicating it or just being superfluous.
I've found that a lot can be done with the AP as written and it doesn't need layers and layers of extras put over top of it to be good. Most players just don't need that kind of depth and the options become overwhelming and get left by the wayside. For example, mine frequently forget all about using their disrepute powers and that's a standard part of the AP!
What I'm saying is don't overwork yourself unless it's necessary. It takes lots of prep time which becomes frustrating if your players never even interact with your do-dads. This AP is pretty complete, I think.