Apprentice Pirates

On one of my all-too-brief visits to the home base over the weekend we managed to work in a visit to Pirates of the Caribbean On Stranger Tides and predictably the apprentices were all fired up walking out of it. They started asking me about "that pirate game" that I had been reading some time back and wanted to look at it when we got home. Once we got back I pulled out my copy of Pirates of the Spanish Main and handed it over. Much of the rest of the weekend was spent poring over its pages and those of a copy of the Savage Worlds rulebook I also loaned them to prevent fighting over who got to read the book first. PotSM includes full rules but I also wanted them to see what else the rules could do.

Of course this now means that they want to play a Pirates campaign. Normally I would love to harness this kind of enthusiasm but only having 2 nights a week at home means I am not starting any new campaigns or really even running my existing campaigns until late June/ early July. Even trying to maintain the existing Basic D&D, 4E D&D, and Star Wars campaigns, much less starting my long-planed supers campaign, has proven just about impossible between other kid activities, obligations, and, frankly, fatigue. As much as I would like to do some of them, it's just not a priority.

I do like the idea of having them try out Savage Worlds, though. It's a system geared for the kinds of action-oriented stuff they like to play. I might start a game as PotSM and then switch them over to 50 Fathoms which is a more fantastic setting featuring pirates and seafaring adventures. They know about Necessary Evil too and that might be fun down the road a ways too.

Clearly, once I get back home for good we're going to have to have a conversation about what they want to play. I would vote for D&D, Star Wars, and a Supers campaign but if they still want pirates then I suppose we can do that instead. Since this current mania seems to be movie-driven, I'm hoping that Green Lantern, Thor, and Captain America ignite the fire for some costumed adventuring. We will see.