Creating Teamwork in RPGs

As I have pontificated this week, a big part of Pieces of Eight is going to be teamwork. Here is a tentative breakdown of how ship-to-ship combat is going to work, to illustrate the point more clearly.

This is the icon for the Seamanship talent. Some pirates are going to have it, others not.

When a ship is sighted on the horizon, you make a 3d6 roll to determine the distance between the two ships. The explanation for variation is weather. If you get a low result, you narrate the presence of fog or light rain that makes vision more difficult. High results = clear weather.

So lets assume an average result of 10 for this example. Your ships are 10 distance units apart (nautical miles?).

Now everyone on your ship makes a Seamanship roll (1d6). Those that have the talent get a success on 5 or less. Very good odds. Those without the talent succeed on 3 or less (50:50 odds). The Captain gets to roll twice. This gives you a number of successes. The opponent also makes some rolls and gets some successes.

You can use these points to change position (i.e. sail closer to or further from the enemy) or you can use them to fire cannons. If you fire cannons, your crew gets to make a number of rolls based on how many cannons you are carrying on your ship (batteries of 4 being the standard unit). So if you have 24 cannons, you can make 6 rolls per point spent on cannon fire. These must all be made by different crew members, so the number of people in your "party" does determine how big a ship you can benefit from.

So lets say you get 4 successes. You are 10 units away. So you can move to 6 units away, or 14 units away, or you can fire your cannons 4 times, or some mix of that. The captain makes the decision on this (it is one of the benefits of being voted Captain), but the Quartermaster can veto (a benefit of being QM).

If you do manage to close the distance completely, you can board the enemy and there is a similar mechanic but it involves swordfighting instead of cannon fire. And the Quartermaster is the power player, not the Captain.

So as you can see, everyone in the party is contributing. Some more than others, but everyone gets to take part. And the failures of people to toe the line can cause disharmony. Disagreements between QM and Captain can cause disharmony. But in general, you are working together towards a goal.