Two compounding factors met in a wood. They mated. And created a game idea.
The first was the bastard child of the Interactive Module, the idea of using that kind of presentation as a part of game mechanics presentation. The second is Christian's appeal for a way to recruit in more female gamers by appealing to non-combat factors. Not that Christian is the first person to say this, I have written my own posts on the matter. But something in the way he said it really resonated with me, and I have spent the last several hours thinking about it.
So I am also going to throw in a coin of my own.... Pirates. I love Pirates. Pirates have been big in the culture lately, just like vampires. And there is even a new Pirates of the Caribbean scheduled to come out in just a few weeks. This is a genre that I love, a genre that I feel doesn't get a lot of respect in the RPG community, and I am going to bring my A-game.
The Basic Framework of the Game Right Now:
Each player controls a pirate that is a crewmember on a pirate ship. So the player begins by creating a pirate name (Blackbeard, Bermuda Red, Calico Jack, etc) and the group must decide upon a name for their ship.
Every pirate can attempt any pirate action by rolling d6 and getting a 3 or less. Fifty-fifty odds. They can also take 3 talents, 1 from each of three choices. At these talents, they succeed on a 5 or less. No two pirates in the same game can have the same wild talent.
Combat Talent:
- Swordplay
- Shooting
- Poisons
Sailing Talent:
- Seamanship
- Navigation
- Gunnery
Wild Talent:
- Inspires Fear
- Escape Artist
- Beloved by the Men
- Bone Digger
- Storm Crow
- Tiger Shark
- Paddler
- Monster Slayer
- Drinker
- Dead Reckoning
So that's it. You have three talents. Very basic and easy to teach.
The game is divided into a series of cruises. Every time the ship leaves port on a new cruise, the players must elect a Captain and a Quartermaster. These pirates gain a double share of the loot, but gain additional responsibilities. The captain makes a range of decisions in the game, over which the Quartermaster has a veto. The captain is rewarded in-game for being bold and decisive, while the Quartermaster is rewarded for being cautious and conservative.
The GM in in charge of putting a lot of tantalizing things into the game. Everything from juicy Spanish treasure ships to island governors with their own petty politics to sea monsters stalking the ship (yes, sea monsters are going to be real). The game mechanics are going to be set up in a way that encourages backstabbing, deceit, and trickery among the players; yet simultaneously force them to pursue shared objectives. Even though there are combat skills, there will not be traditional RPG fights with round-by-round combat.
Pirates are expected to die. Frequently. In a James Raggi vs 1st level adventurers kind of way. When you die, you just create a new character who kind of "emerges" from the surviving crew as a force to be reckoned with. This should eliminate the conservatism of long-term character building strategies. Even in the case of a TPK, everyone just makes a new pirate and starts over with a new ship. Traditional player death situations: solved.
The goal of the game is to accumulate treasure by doing well with each pirate, and then retire at the end of a good run; banking the treasure accumulated as points. The player with the most points at the end of the agreed upon time wins. While there is a non-zero-sum aspect to the game, this objective both provides a traditional goal for someone who is new to roleplaying and encourages people to look out for themselves even when cooperating.
The whole document will be non-linear like my new module. I have been putting together a lot of great ideas on how to do this over the past few days. Until Christian triggered this idea, I was planning on doing a kind of conversion of Errant in that manner. But now, this will be the guinea-pig.
So that's all I got to share right now. Expect more in the coming days. Maybe even a logo later tonight.
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