Thanks for a helpful review. I appreciated the description of GURPS Swashbuckers and ran out to buy that, and your description at 2:45 of the key elements of the Age of Piracy reminded me that I should add a "nations at war" element to my campaign. (FWIW, I play Savage Worlds but I'm always trying to expand my source material to improve the feel of the game.)
Glad it was helpful! I think that’s the exact key to pirate age games - the PCs have to feel constantly randomized by these great nations at war, and only through constant cleverness can they avoid getting squished by them.
@@1ShotJC Do you have any good examples of how to set the stage for cleverness? I can't seem to set the stage for Firefly, you know? PCs love a fight, I'd like to grow the "we had a plan and a backup plan" part of my games.
@@mikec64 The trick is making sure the enemies have leverage over the PCs, which usually encourages them to not break out into a fight all the time. In a pirate setting, you have to reinforce the fact that most of the bigshot NPCs have soldiers to command, who should be better trained and better armed than the PCs. Ditto with the Alliance in Firefly. Warn the PCs that these guys will HURT them, and then follow through. There have to be consequences to getting on the wrong side of these guys. Another trick is to give the PCs NPC dependents who can get kidnapped, killed, etc, if the PCs get out of line. Once, I handed out to the PCs random photos of people and had them define who they were - uncles, friends, girlfriends, etc -- these little physical props along with a player-created backstory suddenly had them caring about these folks, and were less likely to do things to endanger them. Hope some of those ideas help!
@@kayag8 helping to keep the game team on track, making sure Disney was happy and approving milestones, and ordering lots of dinners for hungry programmers working late :-)
Love your house rule on crew dice. I may have to use that.
Thanks for a helpful review. I appreciated the description of GURPS Swashbuckers and ran out to buy that, and your description at 2:45 of the key elements of the Age of Piracy reminded me that I should add a "nations at war" element to my campaign. (FWIW, I play Savage Worlds but I'm always trying to expand my source material to improve the feel of the game.)
Glad it was helpful! I think that’s the exact key to pirate age games - the PCs have to feel constantly randomized by these great nations at war, and only through constant cleverness can they avoid getting squished by them.
@@1ShotJC Do you have any good examples of how to set the stage for cleverness? I can't seem to set the stage for Firefly, you know? PCs love a fight, I'd like to grow the "we had a plan and a backup plan" part of my games.
@@mikec64 The trick is making sure the enemies have leverage over the PCs, which usually encourages them to not break out into a fight all the time. In a pirate setting, you have to reinforce the fact that most of the bigshot NPCs have soldiers to command, who should be better trained and better armed than the PCs. Ditto with the Alliance in Firefly. Warn the PCs that these guys will HURT them, and then follow through. There have to be consequences to getting on the wrong side of these guys. Another trick is to give the PCs NPC dependents who can get kidnapped, killed, etc, if the PCs get out of line. Once, I handed out to the PCs random photos of people and had them define who they were - uncles, friends, girlfriends, etc -- these little physical props along with a player-created backstory suddenly had them caring about these folks, and were less likely to do things to endanger them. Hope some of those ideas help!
@@1ShotJC Brilliant!
Great review
Spin off series with the Davey Jones pirate, please?
What job did you have? Programmer?
I wasn’t that useful - producer :-)
@@1ShotJC what does that entail?
@@kayag8 helping to keep the game team on track, making sure Disney was happy and approving milestones, and ordering lots of dinners for hungry programmers working late :-)