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So, why Elvish Pirates of Caribbean?
Oct. 16th, 2011 03:43 pmI'm working on the game again, and thought I'd share why I'm using this setting, other than the innate coolness factor of pirates.
In the past I've explained about the edge, the place where adventures happen. Away from, or in the cracks of, regular civilization with its laws and controls. Which is one problem with most pseudo-medieval settings for fantasy RPGs. Those societies had laws and courts and lawyers and frowned on heavily armed vagabonds stirring up trouble. So you set the game on the edge. A distant wild land, a secret society hidden in plain sight, or something like that.
You also, for the traditional FRPG, need monstrous opponents and places of mystery (dungeons) to loot. The problem here is civilizations tend to be very good at clearing out predators and threatening tribal states. Also, look at our grand tradition of grave robbing. Most tombs rumored to contain riches are looted soon after the builders look away for a moment. So again, you need to move the setting away from the centers of population. It also a helps if you establish a fallen civilization that left behind numerous ruins filled with goodies and monster lairs. Making that lost empire more advanced in technology or magic only heightens the desire to risk life and limb in exploring cursed towers and subterranean labyrinths.
Which leads to the New World as a natural setting. The real explorers found huge cities and temple complexes, the Yucatan is riddled with caves and underground rivers, and the region had kingdoms that at one time rivaled anything in Europe. Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital, had an estimated population in the 200-300,000 range. The Mayan and Incan cities and palaces were no less impressive. As our real history shows, there was plenty of gold and gems to be plundered, along with "treasures" like tobacco, chocolate, and parrots. Which is why piracy is so linked with the Caribbean. England and Spain (and to a lesser degree France) used privateers with gleeful abandon, stealing from each other and raiding each other's settlements. Like all "edge" moments, the Golden Age of Piracy was short-lived, 1650 to 1690 by most accounts. Which is more than enough for any campaign.
The presence of firearms is a big reason why I'm doing this. Even before Pirates of the Caribbean I was a big fan of Errol Flynn movies, and I like the swashbuckling style. So a well dressed fighter won't be in field plate, he'll be dressed in a chain shirt with a brace of flintlock pistols and a sword. It's really poor form to just exclude gunpowder by GM fiat. The formula was well known in the late middle ages. Transporting and storing gunpowder in a setting where wizards can produce fireballs is left as an exercise for the reader. Dexterity will be an important stat for fighters, and Rogues will come into their own. This campaign is Captain Blood, The Sea Hawk, Dumas' Three Musketeers and Count of Monte Cristo. Forget Great Cleave-ing a bunch of orcs, this will be dueling smallswords on the deck of a burning galley as zombies crawl from the depths...
My campaign setting presumes that passage to the New World was blocked for centuries by a magical barrier caused by the equivalent of a nuclear exchange between the Dwarfs of South and Central America and the Elves of Mexico and the northern parts of Central America. In short, there was a war, the dwarfs were magical steampunk dwarfs, and the elves, in desperation, summoned something bigger than their collective heads. Killed almost all the dwarfs.. and a huge number of elves. What wasn't killed was twisted and changed. Ruined cities and citadels dot the shattered landscape. In 2245A.U.C the Genoan Navigator-Archmage Cristobal Colon succeeded in breaking the barrier and sailed on to discover many new lands for his patrons. Word got out, and the rush was on.
In the Thousand Island Sea, the Throne of Castile and Aragon competes with the uneasy alliance of the elvish ard-Rí and the King of France and Navarre to tame and loot these strange lands. Buccaneers, corsairs, and "legitimate merchants" cart the riches of the new world to the old. In every alleyway of Port Royal and Tortuga danger lurks. Travel to the mainland means death or fortune. Rumors and intrigues fly faster than the fastest pirate vessel, and every man, dwarf, or elf who travels to the new lands has a secret. And everywhere there are signs of a long-slumbering evil awakening...
In the past I've explained about the edge, the place where adventures happen. Away from, or in the cracks of, regular civilization with its laws and controls. Which is one problem with most pseudo-medieval settings for fantasy RPGs. Those societies had laws and courts and lawyers and frowned on heavily armed vagabonds stirring up trouble. So you set the game on the edge. A distant wild land, a secret society hidden in plain sight, or something like that.
You also, for the traditional FRPG, need monstrous opponents and places of mystery (dungeons) to loot. The problem here is civilizations tend to be very good at clearing out predators and threatening tribal states. Also, look at our grand tradition of grave robbing. Most tombs rumored to contain riches are looted soon after the builders look away for a moment. So again, you need to move the setting away from the centers of population. It also a helps if you establish a fallen civilization that left behind numerous ruins filled with goodies and monster lairs. Making that lost empire more advanced in technology or magic only heightens the desire to risk life and limb in exploring cursed towers and subterranean labyrinths.
Which leads to the New World as a natural setting. The real explorers found huge cities and temple complexes, the Yucatan is riddled with caves and underground rivers, and the region had kingdoms that at one time rivaled anything in Europe. Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital, had an estimated population in the 200-300,000 range. The Mayan and Incan cities and palaces were no less impressive. As our real history shows, there was plenty of gold and gems to be plundered, along with "treasures" like tobacco, chocolate, and parrots. Which is why piracy is so linked with the Caribbean. England and Spain (and to a lesser degree France) used privateers with gleeful abandon, stealing from each other and raiding each other's settlements. Like all "edge" moments, the Golden Age of Piracy was short-lived, 1650 to 1690 by most accounts. Which is more than enough for any campaign.
The presence of firearms is a big reason why I'm doing this. Even before Pirates of the Caribbean I was a big fan of Errol Flynn movies, and I like the swashbuckling style. So a well dressed fighter won't be in field plate, he'll be dressed in a chain shirt with a brace of flintlock pistols and a sword. It's really poor form to just exclude gunpowder by GM fiat. The formula was well known in the late middle ages. Transporting and storing gunpowder in a setting where wizards can produce fireballs is left as an exercise for the reader. Dexterity will be an important stat for fighters, and Rogues will come into their own. This campaign is Captain Blood, The Sea Hawk, Dumas' Three Musketeers and Count of Monte Cristo. Forget Great Cleave-ing a bunch of orcs, this will be dueling smallswords on the deck of a burning galley as zombies crawl from the depths...
My campaign setting presumes that passage to the New World was blocked for centuries by a magical barrier caused by the equivalent of a nuclear exchange between the Dwarfs of South and Central America and the Elves of Mexico and the northern parts of Central America. In short, there was a war, the dwarfs were magical steampunk dwarfs, and the elves, in desperation, summoned something bigger than their collective heads. Killed almost all the dwarfs.. and a huge number of elves. What wasn't killed was twisted and changed. Ruined cities and citadels dot the shattered landscape. In 2245A.U.C the Genoan Navigator-Archmage Cristobal Colon succeeded in breaking the barrier and sailed on to discover many new lands for his patrons. Word got out, and the rush was on.
In the Thousand Island Sea, the Throne of Castile and Aragon competes with the uneasy alliance of the elvish ard-Rí and the King of France and Navarre to tame and loot these strange lands. Buccaneers, corsairs, and "legitimate merchants" cart the riches of the new world to the old. In every alleyway of Port Royal and Tortuga danger lurks. Travel to the mainland means death or fortune. Rumors and intrigues fly faster than the fastest pirate vessel, and every man, dwarf, or elf who travels to the new lands has a secret. And everywhere there are signs of a long-slumbering evil awakening...
