Campaign Concept: Rogue Trader as Guardians of the Galaxy. Also: Starfinder

A few weeks back I described my inspiration for a Rogue Trader campaign driven by Black Sails, Starz amazing pirate series. Over the weekend we watched Guardians of the Galaxy for the first time in a long time and I think I have found the inspiration for the opposite of that other campaign concept.

Black Sails is serious, gritty, full of scheming, betrayals, and violence.

Guardians is far less serious, not nearly as gritty, does have some betrayals, and does have violence. The movie does involve dealing with powerful artifacts and overly powerful opponents so it's a better fit than I thought at first glance.

Rogue traders do have less chance of being put in jail ...

So there are some common elements, enough to make a good game for sure, but the tone would be completely different. I think "grim and serious pirate" Rogue Trader would be significantly different from "comic book movie" Rogue Trader, to the point they might not even feel like the same game.

It's OK Captain Flint, let's talk through this.

Key elements of a GotG Rogue Trader campaign in my mind:

• Characters are in slightly over their heads, despite being basically competent. Maybe they just recently fell into their positions and the campaign starts on "Day 1" of this new life.
• Less concern about details, technology, and "realism", looser style
• Action over plotting and scheming
• Focus on organizations
• name
• goal
• leader as recognizable NPC
• one or two lower level members as recognizable NPC's to put a face on things
  (example of what this means: Guardians RT would probably be more "that's Zolo's ship!" than "that's the Red Fury!" when identifying a new arrival)
• More emphasis on "doing the right thing", even reluctantly and less on "personal gain", comparatively
• Humor - this would be accepted and encouraged as part of the feel of the game. The closes "other thing" to this kind of feel is probably Firefly - there are serious consequences to actions of the PC's but that's no reason we can't be funny in getting to them.

Organization + recognizable member NPC

There are some differences in the scenarios. A Rogue Trader has a massive crew - they would probably have to stay mostly in the background. It's a massive ship but it's still smaller than serious warships so there are still things you will need to run from. Just think if the Black Sails crew was put in charge of the Enterprise or a Battlestar vs. the Guardians crew - how would those two stories be different? 

Also as I started to think through this I wonder if GotG might be better 'adapted" to a Starfinder campaign. We don't know much about the game yet but a lot of Pathfinder and D&D games start with "out for gold" and end up "doing the right thing" not far into the campaign. 

Yep, that looks about right for a "First Contact" for a lot of my games ...

So I may have talked myself into thinking through a Rogue Trader-like campaign that may end up using Starfinder instead of RT rules to help keep the right tone. I suppose we will just have to see how they fit together when the rules come out.

Campaign Concept: Rogue Trader as Black Sails

It's not like I needed another campaign, but the ideas come when the ideas come.

So is that picture above really all that different from this:

The Rogue Trader typical campaign as presented is basically you can do what you want while staying one step ahead of any local governors, admirals, inquisitors, and the other agencies and aliens and military units in the area, but the big picture take is that you're (at least on paper) on the Imperial side. You don't really have to stick with that though. You get far enough out on the fringes of the Astronomicon and "the will of the Emperor" gets pretty fuzzy.

I mean, you could probably try and run it like a Traveller free trader campaign. Why though? You have more wealth than many planets! It's not like you're scraping to buy fuel! I'd say for that game just play Traveller.

You could try and run it more like a Star Wars smuggler campaign but how does it work when the smuggler has a Star Destroyer? Star Wars does the smuggler game better I think.

In terms of power level the game is much more like Star Trek - the players are in charge of a ship that could level most planetary defenses all by itself. In RT they also have enough wealth to wreck most planetary economies if they chose to do so. It's civilization-destroying power! Yet they are not bound by a Federation-style Prime Directive or oaths of service. You could say it's more like a Klingon campaign would be but it's different even from that as it's not just honor and military might - economic goals are a big part of it.

With a Rogue Trader game the longer term goal might be to locate a long-lost planet from pre-Great Crusade days. Assuming the party eventually does that the outcome might be exploring it and putting a colony on it, exploring it and looting it, exploring it and eliminating any competing interests (including xenos), using it as a secret base, or returning and selling the location to the highest bidder!

That sounds a lot more like a pirate type game than a straight-up merchant campaign. A distant but powerful authority that's theoretically in charge, multiple independent competing parties looking for wealth and personal power, local and regional authorities with vary degrees of power and influence, foreign entities competing as well,  all taking place in an area where knowledge -and maps - are incomplete. Violence is at least as common as negotiation, and betrayal is all too common as well. It's an environment where one man could "change the map".

Black Sails is in its 4th season and is concerned with various pirate captains and crew and governors in and around Nassau in the early 1700's. It's also a prequel to Treasure Island so there's one idea of how a "sequel" campaign might go. Various issues during the course of the show include things like :

• How can we take that giant Spanish treasure ship?
• Who has that giant gold hoard?
• What are the Spanish doing?
• Who is this new governor and what are his plans?
• Where is Blackbeard?
• Who's the best captain?
• How long is this new captain going to run his mouth before someone kills him?
• What's this about a secret island settlement run by escaped slaves?

There's a ton of intrigue, infighting, and maneuvering for power. 

• Some of the captains just want to raid ships and be left alone
• Some of the captains have a vision of an independent Nassau and have been fighting for that for years
• The newly-appointed governor sees this as his chance to secure his family's position by bringing order to this corner of the Empire
• The business operators in Nassau are caught between the independence movement and the governor

Constraints they operate within:

• Go too far and you might force the British to take action - like sending in a new governor, which makes things difficult for most
• Go too far and you might anger the Spanish, making everyone's lives harder in a different way
• Go too far and some of the legendary pirates might find their interests in Nassau's fortunes rekindled - like, say, Blackbeard.
• Get too stupid on the island and you might force the plantation owners from the interior to band together and take action
• Move too fast as governor and you might find the pirates unite to oppose you

Substitute in Eldar, Inquisitors, Space Marine chapters, the Imperial Sector fleet, and various local governors and you have pretty much the same scenario. 

I think it has a ridiculous amount of potential. Sure, maybe you start out as "agents of the throne" in the beginning but will you stay in that role? Opportunity abounds, but the more constraints you place upon yourself the more those opportunities slip away. What will your crew think? What about your profit factor? Your ship? Your place in history?

I think a nudge in this direction eliminates any chance of "well what do we do now" happening with most sets of players. Rogue Trader, of all the 40K RPG's, gives players the most freedom to do as they wish. For the GM that might be tough to manage with all of the interesting things in the 40K universe. Start viewing it as a pirate campaign, particularly a location-based one ala Black Sails, and I think you have an awesome mix of "centered" freedom for a great campaign.

 

Final Complication: The "Hyborian Sector" is something I wrote up for Traveller a long time ago. The jungle planets of Kush, the trade stars of Zingara and Zamora, the "local empires" of Aquilonia and Nemedia ... I'm not sure I need it for this campaign but I do have to consider it. Is mixing in yet another "inspiration" too much? Not sure yet. I'll let you know.

Black Sails Update

I see it's been awhile since I posted about this show and that's a shame. I recently caught up on season 2 and have been watching season 3 and it's a really good show. I talked about the pilot here and season 1 here (wow two years ago!) and I liked them quite a bit.

One note: the phrase "the Urca gold" will come up a lot. If it hasn't been meme's already it should be. I figured it was just the main plot for the first season but it has become far more - halfway through season 3 it is still a major plot element - who has it? where is it? how much of it? It's a great example of not ignoring consequences, specifically dropping millions of pounds in Spanish gold into a relatively poor island teeming with pirates and surround by rival empires. There is no reset button with this show and while that has become more common in recent years it's still refreshing to see it done so well.  

During season 2 one group manages to steal a Spanish Man of War. This is the rough equivalent of having your players in a Star Wars game "liberate" a Star Destroyer - they feel awesome but there are consequences there too. It takes a lot of men to crew it. It has sails with giant red Spanish crosses on them which stand out far more than the black flag at the tail of the ship. These things all come up during the show and matter. Again, it's not afraid to stir up the status quo. Things change regularly and permanently and not always in a good way but not always in a bad way either- this isn't Battlestar Galactica.

There is some good character development too. In season 2 we learn Captain Flint's background and how he came to be the man he is today. In season 3 we learn more about Captain Vane and Blackbeard! We also learn more about Rackham and Anne and a fair number of supporting characters too. There are complex motivations. Sure, there's greed, lust and revenge - those are probably a given with any show about pirates - but there are characters aiming higher as well. I also found it to be a really good example of the different kinds of "damage" a character can suffer. Sure, there's the physical stuff but there is also emotional damage - disappointment, betrayal, rage. Relationships take damage and friends become enemies ... or they just weaken and dissolve. There are a lot of "pairs" of characters and over the course of the story so far there are many peaks and valleys between each of them.

If possible, I advise anyone who's interested to check it out, preferably without spoilers. There are some really good twists and surprises along the way.

Gaming Notes

• This show is a great example of how one could run a sustained realistic pirate campaign. Character arcs. Politics, both internal and external. Economics. Greed. All of these things are big factors in the show.
• As I mentioned above there are consequences. The bigger the action undertaken the more likely someone else will notice and take an interest. Some just want to get by, others want to shake the world. 
• There is a total lack of the supernatural here. There are no "Cure Light Wounds" or healing potions. A lot of people are running around with blades and guns and hostile attitudes. Yet somehow it still works. I tend to think of most non-supernatural settings as boring or limited when it comes to gaming but this show demonstrates how it could work.
• Structurally it's interesting too -  set up an environment (the pirate town of Nassau in the Caribbean circa 1700), Add in player characters in major roles - not newly-arrived nobodies (though there sort of is one of those) but major players - the primary fence, the madam, various active pirate captains, the semi-retired pirate captain who controls the fort above the town, the first mates and quartermasters to those captains. Then turn the players loose! Let them set the agenda! Let them compete or cooperate and ally or betray each other without DM intervention other than the reactions of the other pirate crews and powers in town and the reactions of England and Spain if they attract that level of notice!

There's a limit on the examples I can give without spoiling a bunch of the show so I will refrain for now but there is a lot of value in watching it as an example of a great RPG campaign put on film. 

It's also just a really good show.

Motivational Monday

Black Sails - Season 1

Well season #1 had 8 episodes and I've managed to see all of them now. I don't see a lot of sailing ship/pirate era type shows on TV so if you're even slightly interested it's worth tracking down. That said it is Starz attempt to open their own HBO-style series so there's lots of nudity, sex, violence, and bad language. Keep in mind, it is a show about pirates. I will keep this largely spoiler-free in case some of you want to go check it out.

Captain Noblebeard and crew

Notable point: 8 episodes: Sometimes less is more. This is a good way to introduce a show and gauge the interest level. It'e already been renewed for season two so we will be seeing more of this story. A determined couch commander could burn through it in a day.

Captain Abs and crew

Characters: It's a fairly tight cast of characters. Each main character has 2-3 associated companion characters. There are interactions within these smaller groups and interactions between the larger groups that drive the show.

• The woman in charge of the island/pirate port and her "crew", mainly her right hand man and girlfriend
• Captain Noblebeard and his crew, mainly his first mate and bosun
• Captain Abs and his crew, mainly the Bad Girl and Not-Jack-Sparrow
• The individuals - the "cook", the land-based captain, the mystery woman, and others all making their way and developing relationships between the main characters

There is heavy pressure on each of the leads, both from within their own "team" and without. Good and bad decisions are made during the season - sometimes you see them coming, sometimes you don't. Quite a few minor and several major characters are lost over the course of the season as well - so far the "reset button" has not been a big issue. There is an overall plot that develops right from Episode 1 all the way through the finale. I can't really go into more detail there without spoilers but I'll probably talk more about that when season 2 comes along.

Also note: There's nothing blatantly supernatural in the show so far, so it's a step closer to "real" than Pirates of the Caribbean. 

 

Island Girl and her right hand man

From a "guy who has considered running a pirate campaign" it has some things to offer too:

• The PC's don't all have to be the crew of a single ship. Putting them on different ships opens up opportunities for both competition and cooperation. It's an especially effective way to handle players with differing schedules. If player A can't make it this week he must be out hunting merchant ships (if the campaign focus is in port that week) or he must have had to return to port (if the focus is out on the sea). The characters could end up going after each other but they are playing pirates, right? Seems pretty true to the genre.

• It could be run as a sandbox but a pirate town is not typically a "safe" town so that particular convention doesn't fit well. If the port is under a truce and is only a place where deals get made and loot is sold then it might work but it might miss some opportunities too. 

• Rival NPC's are an important element of a pirate game, both other pirates and authority figures. Players need something to push against, and as a pirate you're already operating outside of conventional civilization. Having that civilization barge in occasionally reminds them of their status and puts some pressure on them to act or react in some way. Rival pirates give them a measuring stick for those who want to rank themselves. Even a rival port town (Nassau vs. Tortuga) could make for some fun options and reasons to make and break alliances within the game.

...and Island Girl's girlfriend

Black Sails Ho!

One of the main captains

Starz has a new original series about pirates called "Black Sails". Their take on it is here. It started up this weekend and after watching the first episode I thought I would share a few thoughts:

• It's supposed to be a more historical take on pirates - I'm assuming that means no supernatural stuff like the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. I'm fine with that. There was none of that mentioned or shown in the pilot. 
• It's supposed to be a more "realistic" take on pirates too - so plenty of cussing, blood, and sex. This is a pay-cable series after all. Realistic or not everyone is very pretty on the show.
• The pilot sets up the basic situation, the major players, and the conflicts between them. We don't get a lot of character depth but I assume motivations etc. will be explored in more depth the rest of the season. 

I liked the pilot. Nothing struck me as horribly wrong (other than the prettiness of everyone but hey, it is a visual medium). We have a sea battle, a sword fight, some other conflicts, some betrayals and counter-betrayals - quite a few items on the "pirate story checklist" were crossed off. I'm going to give the full season a look and let you know if it hits any particular highs or lows.

Rivals

The timing was interesting because over the last week or two some of the kids have been watching the Pirates of the Caribbean movies and I started looking at my Savage Worlds pirate books trying to figure out how I would run a "mundane" or realistic pirate campaign. Most of the games I run have some kind of magic or supernatural or super-technological element that makes keeping interest that much easier. Running a pirate game with no spooky stuff, no magic items, and no magical healing had me a little lost. I suspect this show will give me some ideas.

Yeah ... there's some of that too ... hey it can't all be fighting!

RPG Actual Play Returns - 50 Fathoms

Well much to my surprise Apprentices Red and Blaster came up to me over the weekend and asked if we could play "that pirate game".

"The Pathfinder thing?" I asked.

"No that other one" which caused me to roll my chair back start pulling out books - because I can do that now : )

"Yeah that one, and that other one you were going to use because this one doesn't have any magic."

 "Yeah that's it"

Alright, let's see if I can find my notes - flip flip flip - Deadlands, my Necessary Evil campaign from 2010, character sheets for 4 or 5 flavors of SW, nope, nothing. I'd like to blame it on the move but my Savage Stuff was all in about 3 binders and I see no sign of it. I remember thinking that I would have them make PotSM characters (since it has all of the rules in one book anyway) and then I was going to transport them to the world of 50 Fathoms which is much more fantastic and probably more to their liking. Alright, I can wing that.

So a few minutes later we're working on characters - Red still had his character from this episode so he decided that he was going to be the captain and that Blaster's character could be the first mate. I gave them a two-master as their starting ship, assigned generic "pirate" stats to the crew and set up the starting situation.

They were somewhat new to pirating on their own. Blaster had been found at sea years before after his merchant father was killed and his ship sunk by a pirate. The ship that found him was Red's father's where Red was serving as well. They decided that Red's character's father had been a successful pirate and Blaster had joined up as he had no place else to go. Eventually Red's father had been killed by a rival pirate captain - the same on who had killed Blaster's father all those years ago. Now they had used some hidden treasure to outfit a ship of their own and hoped to eventually seek revenge. I thought this was a pretty good story and gave them some extra money and a few XP's for it.

I don't like the assumed starting point of 50 Fathoms - about the only thing I don't like about it - so I had them starting in the "real world" (sorta) of PotSM headed back to port. This grounds them in this  world and gives them a place to return to when the 50F finale is over if they choose to do so. The racial notes for human characters in 50F contains a decent description of what humans experienced when they were transported to the campaign setting (humans are not native to the world but there are a bunch of them there now - there's some magic afoot) so I used that to describe what was happening and to jump right to the good part they ended up trapped in a sargasso mess with debris and bodies in the water at night with a storm approaching, and with zombies climbing up the sides of their ship. Cards, dice, and poker chips heat as we refresh ourselves on how combat works.

 Those are Heroquest mini's on a ship map from the D&D 3E Savage Tide adventure path with counters from the old Yaquinto game Swashbuckler standing in for the crew. That's about a 25 year span of gaming materials but hey, it was close by and guess what type of miniatures I DON'T have? That's right, pirates. Great.

So they fought off the zombies (without losing a single crewman!) and decided they needed to take to the lifeboats and head for port to get some help pulling their ship out of the entangling seaweed. Of course, as the sun comes and they sight land they realize that port should be over here and instead they see land over there, which means they must be seriously off course. They have no idea ...

DM Notes: What the heck was I thinking agreeing to run a miniature-friendly game that I have no miniatures for? There are some figure flats available for it so I'm probably going to go with a paper mini option for the first time ever, just for this campaign. 

Also, typically I at least skim a campaign book before I try to run something in a published setting. No chance of that here as I had not looked at either book since that discussion last year. Given their level of interest though I couldn't say no and I have been wanting to run this system again - I just thought it would be Deadlands! I have a few days before we will play again so I should have time to read through the starting situation and read back through the high points.

Despite this we all had fun with it and they want to play it again next weekend so stay tuned.

The Apprentices, Pirates, and ... Pathfinder ?!

Where to start ... the Apprentices have been asking about Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay over the last two weeks because they really liked it after trying it out for a bit. However, I've run into a problem in that ever since 3rd Edition came out (a very different game, sort of a mix of board, card, and RPG by Fantasy Flight Games) I've had a hard time finding copies of the core rulebook for the second edition game. Well, difficulty finding it at prices I'm willing to pay, since I need two of them at least. I pick up at least one spare copy of the main book for most games I plan to run but I never got one for WFRP 2E - I'm wishing I had now. Regardless, right now it's an impediment to play. I'm also not sure I want to dig in to that game with them because it tends to have a very different atmosphere and different themes than a typical D&D campaign. It's pretty gritty, you tend to deal with a lot of ugliness, characters die easily, and I'm not sure it's the best way for the teens & tweens to spend their limited RPG time over the summer.

So I started looking for alternatives. They've asked about playing a pirate game for about a year now driven mainly by the Pirates of the Caribbean movies and the Savage Worlds powered Pirates of the Spanish Main. I'd really rather run 50 Fathoms for them which is just as piratey with more fantastic elements added in. I do like the system. The "plot-point" books are really handy for the DM to run as they have an overarching adventure running through them but they also have a ton of side adventures and random generators in the book along with a complete sandbox world to roam around in. So it's a full-on campaign in one book. The only downside here is that we would have to set aside another game as we have a lot of irons in the fire and not as much time as I would like.

Additionally they expect to have a recurring D&D game and we do have our 4E ToEE game going, but the combat time is a problem on weeknights, making it harder to fit in. They aren't as keen on Basic as they once were, and the Next playtest left them unexcited. So we're looking for a good D&D option here that we can play on a weeknight.

I've also been hearing almost universally good things about the Pathfinder Beginner Box. It has a lot of nifty components and is playable up to 5th level. I was looking for a way to introduce them to 3rd Edition last year and gave up in frustration at the prices for 3.5 PHB's and the lack of a good character generator as they do like their computer-made character sheets - they've been spoiled by 4E. Hero Lab just happens to have a free downloadable character generator for the Beginner Box - how convenient! A reasonably-priced currently supported version of third edition D&D that has a free chargen program - that's pretty much what I was looking for! Then I saw the latest Adventure Path:

It's Pathfinder Pirates, with the PC's starting off as press-ganged crew members on one pirate ship and then rising up through the ranks (and the levels) to do all sorts of cool things. That pretty much sold it for me.

So tonight I am surprising them after dinner by breaking open a brand-new box set and playing through the initial adventure to get them familiar with the system. We will likely use some of the supplemental adventures from the Paizo site as well and build up a small crew of low-level characters in the small town of Sandpoint. Once we've run through that I will offer them the pirate campaign option and that will likely be one of the main games for July.

What if they don't like the system? What if I don't like the system? Well, then it gets converted to 4th Edition (though I'm already doing a lot of converting) or maybe Savage Worlds (or maybe I chuck it and go ahead and do 50 Fathoms anyway), but my intention is to proceed as planned and see if we can run through the entire campaign by the end of the year. If that works out, well, the town of Sandpoint in the beginner box is the starting point for the Rise of the Runelords adventure path which is getting a shiny new anniversary edition in the near future. If it works out REALLY well, then maybe I won't have to run that one - maybe I'll get to play it.