Set Sail… For Adventure!
Back Grounds:
Chosen by players during character construction. These reflect generally your character's up bringing. They give a certain set of skills to start with and in some cases talents, if it doesn't list talents then they are rolled randomly.
Society Born: You were born in one of the major powers, England, France, Spain, or the Holy Roman Empire. This reflects someone brought up in a "proper" setting.
Skills: Speak Language - Whatever matches your country of origin, Common Knowledge your country, Common Knowledge Special: For England, France, etc, pick one of the other countries or religion. For Spain and the Holy Roman Empire it is religion, Common Knowledge Pick one.
Talents: 2 Random
Native (Africa, Islander, etc): Taken from your home as a slave, you have freed yourself and now are part of the crew.
Skills: Speak Language - Native tonuge, Speak Language - Choose any, Survival.
Talents: Resistant to Disease or Strong Willed, One Random
Arabic: A traveler form a distant land.
Skills: Speak Language - An Arabic one, I'm not looking these up, Speak Language - Any one, Common Knowledge Arabic, Common Knowledge: Choose a major power.
Talents: 2 Random
Port Born: A bastard child of semi-globalization.
Skills: Speak Language - Any 2, Common Knowledge - Any one
Talents: 2 Random
Chinese: You come form half-away across the world, just what happened to make you a pirate? A pirate crew makes you feel much more at ease then being in these white devils' cities.
Skills: Speak Language - Chinese (either dialect), Speak Language - Any one besides tribal, Sailing, Acadmic Knowledge: Asia.
Talents: Seasoned Traveler, 1 Random --Gdaze 15:28, 16 April 2009 (MST)
Stats: Stats are rolled and then assigned. After rolling but before assigning a player may move around up to 10 points from one stat to another, but can take not more then 5 away from a stat.
The Occult: It exisits, spells and what not. It is not very common but enough that people will buy trinkets and what not. The further away from civilzation the better magic tends to work.
I'm not really sure how widespread I want general occult crayness to be as I fear it make take away from the flavor. I at least want to put in stuff like ancient treasures, undead, giant sea monsters, stuff like that. I think the idea is that the world is not yet defined, and is becoming defined by those currently exploring it.
Expect the Catholic Church to be very active.
The Hook: (HA!) I was hoping to get some input from the players on this (on the talk page). Pirate empire? Seeking anicent lost treasure? Revenge for a fallen captain?
Rules: I'm almost 90% sure I will use a varent of the WHFRP system. Some changes are going to be slightly revised character paths and different starting skills based on where the character comes from.
Players will be able to pick someone from anywhere. Asia, Africa, Europe, Native American, Islander, Arabic, whatever.
Action Points: So far what I have in mind for this idea is as follows... You can use all your re-rolls for the evening to perform a feat of Swashbuckling... Swashbucklery? Anyway, you can spend all your re-rolls and whatever the action you take, you perform it. I'm not sure about this yet, as I don't know if we want these amazing things happening everytime, part of being a pirate is failing, and it makes for a good story. But I WILL put in a system to allow auto-success actions.
Reason for this is, while failing is good for a story, sometimes it makes for a great story if a character does something he has been building up to. I'm thinking of putting in a rule where the said action must be great, it must be witnessed by a number of people, this way it can't just be used for some mundane action. Again this is something I'm playing around with.
Other Ideas:
Things that can be done to change it up.
Air Pirates - Look up Skies of Arcadia, all the usual stuff but a bit more techish, steampunk like. The air pirates from Tailspin would be a good example as well.
Magic - As noted, introduce magic, but this would deffently be more like Conan or WHFRP magic.
Dune Pirates - PA + Pirates, you have a machine that like... goes on sand, or something stupid like that. I dunno, at this point throwing anything out there.
