This place has never failed me, so I call upon ye seasoned Masters again.
I am running a pirate campaign in 5e. My players are a team of wanted pirates-- they want to stick it to the ruling Monarch and have taken and refitted one of their luxury liner ships as their own, and just waylaid a war ship and took what remaining crew surrendered into their own.
Insight:
They began their arc in a town called Scuttlemore, where they found the Matriarch kept in a bunker below the town for 25 years. Due to Mature Rated Dealings, she was turned into a Gorgon by her husband and he kept her there "as a mercy." He then took her fortune and left Scuttlemore on a 'mission' to cure her, became an influential council member in the city Saltmarsh, and stayed in touch with his wife through letters and routine shipments of goods to her bunker while a Puppet ruled through his orders. The party cast Removed Curse on the gorgon, making her realize it was that easy all along and she had been used. She wanted to send a message to her husband and sent along demands and divorce papers-- which they just delivered amid a masquerade ball.
The party celebrated, got drunk, made new connections, and sailed their way back to Scuttlemore with the good news-- returning to a port town set ablaze in the evening. Spectral green ghosts and shambling skeletons attack the dock, killing NPCs that the party had come to befriend. A massive black wooded Man-o-War rests in the bay, and upon it is a Captain standing over 7 feet tall, lighting a cigar and using Thaumaturgy on his voice to call down to the Golden Exile, which flies an eerily similar Banner the ones that fly on his ship called The Damned.
"Who is it that flies my flag?"
---
The up-coming session:
They will face a terror hinted out through sea shanties and rumors spread during the campaign, and he is from the Player Captain's backstory-- that Man-o-war belonged to her father and they lost their crew when he attacked some 100 years before. He is a Lich who attempted to become an aspect of the Goddess Umberlee, failed, and became a broken vessel. He kept all of her chaotic ideals but lost any humanity he had. Since then he and his undead crew have become the scourge of the seas and neither the Sea Princes or the Naval force of Queen Nessa will bring their ships in his sights.
The party is written to lose; witness the destruction of Scuttlemore, the loss of their ship the Golden Exile, the deaths of several NPCs they fostered friendships with, as well as the Captain turning to her patron Umberlee for help, sending her down a corruption arc. (Umberlee despises the Lich for his failure, thus will leverage help in exchange for missions leading the captain to becoming another Aspect. Thank you guys for your help with that!)
I have planned that the Player Captain fights the Lich, loses handily and witnesses the fall of Scuttlemore before losing consciousness, the other players are rushing to the docks to stave back the undead crew raiding the town. Once their ship is destroyed, the Lich calls his crew to return, and what doesn't fade away at dawn's light will return to the sea-- not resisting any attacks against them. When the party finds their captain in the bay, survivors emerge from a cave down the coast to call them down into the bunker where some residents of the town managed to make it. Here is where they meet with the Matriarch who will help nurse them back to health.
Here is where it gets a bit uncharted...
Time to Rebuild:
This is the part I am unsure about. I want the players to keep agency, and enjoy a session where they could build something of a pirate cove that they can come and go in without fear of arrest. I have some ideas of what they could do, which likely requires heavy role play, but I worry about it taking up too much of the ~6 hour session. (We meet once a month as well.)
After such an intro, this could be a "downbeat" session where they emerge from the bunker to see the damage done to Scuttlemore. The players began their story here, they cared about NPCs here, they are wanted criminals in all places except here. If I wanted to set up a session where they help rebuild the town, how would you best recommend going about that while keeping them engaged? I have seen other forums discuss building costs from the DMG, which would involve money they do not have currently. I hope to keep them interested and involved with scenes dedicated to their particular strengths, but have not done something like this before.
For Reference:
Scuttlemore was a small port town crippled by the previous ruling body-- they have a rich mine that is not in use, untended orchards that once produced a specialty wine, and artistically inclined citizens whose work once sold for thousands in Luxury Trade. It has no current allies in the surrounding area, again stunted by a comfortable ruling party.
The Party Consists of:
Cleric High Elf- Has the grudge against the Lich, now tempted to serve Umberlee to get an even playing field. Barbarian Tortle- The Silent Muscle of the group, was fond of a Lizardfolk inn keeper killed in the attack.
Monk Human- A Swashbuckler who loves adventure and seeks to restore his family name to prominence. Often the voice of reason of the group.
Artificer Leonin- A suave merchant who lets his products do the talking for him. However, has voiced that the party should turn and flee Scuttlemore, as they owe them nothing.
So how would you make Town building interesting?
I could see the Tortle using his strength to help rebuild the docks, the Swashbuckler could assist in reclaiming the mines or Orchards, and the Artificer could try to give a few skill rolls to curry favor with the local inland towns, but I am not sure what resources I could use to make this session appealing to them and like their efforts impacted the world.
A Pirate's Side Quest for me:
I would still like for them to have some combat, some pirate shenanigans to keep morale up. Towards the latter half of the session I plan on having one of the Queen's warship appear on the horizon and a small envoy boat is dispatched to the budding town. One of the generals will state that they could offer protection to the town and resources if they surrender power to the Queen. When the Mayor refuses, knowing of the (currently hiding) party's status with the monarchy, the General makes a veiled threat and has one of their enforcers topple the foundation of one of the buildings they were working on. This starts a side mission where the Party can take one of the remaining, admittedly small, ships in town and attempt to side line the battleship before it gets back to the Queen.
---
Thank you for letting me share this story, and I look forward to seeing your suggestions and hearing any stories you have!
I'm going to assume you've already been warned the dangers of scripting too much before the players have a say on how events go, especially when it comes to how much players typically hate scripted defeats and removing agency through cut-scenes, so instead I'll focus on the town re-building.
I'm going through something similar in the game I'm currently running. The town isn't destroyed, but it is facing down an army and preparing for a seige, so they're having to build up the fortifications and gather resources as much as possible before the army comes. If the players decide to help with this, I've identified a few cases where they can acquire a resource that will help the town's defenses, rescue someone who's been taken captive by the enemy, (one who has important scouting intelligence and the other who is a respected/experienced commander of the watch), or engage in diplomacy in order to try and gain aid for the town. This is one of the few instances where I'd recommend adopting more of a video-gamey approach in order to gameify the re-building of the town.
As a DM, you should first identify what the town needs, and come up with a few ways the players are uniquely suited to helping them get it. Once you've identified a few things that make sense, come up with a loose kind of mission structure around that thing. Let's say, for example, that your townspeople need building material to repair their homes, BUT there are no forests nearby to get wood. One villager has the bright idea of using wrecked ships from the harbor to build with, but they can't get the wood cause it's at the bottom of the harbor right now. "If only" the villager might say, "someone could catch us one of those pleiseosaurs that float off the coast. Smart beasts, despite their appearance. I hear down south they have them domesticated. A beast like that could be a lot of help hauling up salvage!"
Now, the players should still have options, as apposed to most cases in videogames. They can try and lure in a pleiseosaur with bait and subdue it with nonlethal attacks, they could try and use animal handling to get it to follow them into the harbor, or a spellcaster could try using Speak with Animals to explain the situation to it. Or something else I haven't thought of.
The point is to break up the process of re-building into tangible goals, where the players can see the effects of their successes or the results of their failures reflected in the town after. That personalizes the town for them, and everytime they look at the houses that are half made of discarded ship parts, they'll feel that connection to it. Suddenly this isn't just some town, this is *our* town.
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This place has never failed me, so I call upon ye seasoned Masters again.
I am running a pirate campaign in 5e. My players are a team of wanted pirates-- they want to stick it to the ruling Monarch and have taken and refitted one of their luxury liner ships as their own, and just waylaid a war ship and took what remaining crew surrendered into their own.
Insight:
They began their arc in a town called Scuttlemore, where they found the Matriarch kept in a bunker below the town for 25 years. Due to Mature Rated Dealings, she was turned into a Gorgon by her husband and he kept her there "as a mercy." He then took her fortune and left Scuttlemore on a 'mission' to cure her, became an influential council member in the city Saltmarsh, and stayed in touch with his wife through letters and routine shipments of goods to her bunker while a Puppet ruled through his orders. The party cast Removed Curse on the gorgon, making her realize it was that easy all along and she had been used. She wanted to send a message to her husband and sent along demands and divorce papers-- which they just delivered amid a masquerade ball.
The party celebrated, got drunk, made new connections, and sailed their way back to Scuttlemore with the good news-- returning to a port town set ablaze in the evening. Spectral green ghosts and shambling skeletons attack the dock, killing NPCs that the party had come to befriend. A massive black wooded Man-o-War rests in the bay, and upon it is a Captain standing over 7 feet tall, lighting a cigar and using Thaumaturgy on his voice to call down to the Golden Exile, which flies an eerily similar Banner the ones that fly on his ship called The Damned.
"Who is it that flies my flag?"
---
The up-coming session:
They will face a terror hinted out through sea shanties and rumors spread during the campaign, and he is from the Player Captain's backstory-- that Man-o-war belonged to her father and they lost their crew when he attacked some 100 years before. He is a Lich who attempted to become an aspect of the Goddess Umberlee, failed, and became a broken vessel. He kept all of her chaotic ideals but lost any humanity he had. Since then he and his undead crew have become the scourge of the seas and neither the Sea Princes or the Naval force of Queen Nessa will bring their ships in his sights.
The party is written to lose; witness the destruction of Scuttlemore, the loss of their ship the Golden Exile, the deaths of several NPCs they fostered friendships with, as well as the Captain turning to her patron Umberlee for help, sending her down a corruption arc. (Umberlee despises the Lich for his failure, thus will leverage help in exchange for missions leading the captain to becoming another Aspect. Thank you guys for your help with that!)
I have planned that the Player Captain fights the Lich, loses handily and witnesses the fall of Scuttlemore before losing consciousness, the other players are rushing to the docks to stave back the undead crew raiding the town. Once their ship is destroyed, the Lich calls his crew to return, and what doesn't fade away at dawn's light will return to the sea-- not resisting any attacks against them. When the party finds their captain in the bay, survivors emerge from a cave down the coast to call them down into the bunker where some residents of the town managed to make it. Here is where they meet with the Matriarch who will help nurse them back to health.
Here is where it gets a bit uncharted...
Time to Rebuild:
This is the part I am unsure about. I want the players to keep agency, and enjoy a session where they could build something of a pirate cove that they can come and go in without fear of arrest. I have some ideas of what they could do, which likely requires heavy role play, but I worry about it taking up too much of the ~6 hour session. (We meet once a month as well.)
After such an intro, this could be a "downbeat" session where they emerge from the bunker to see the damage done to Scuttlemore. The players began their story here, they cared about NPCs here, they are wanted criminals in all places except here. If I wanted to set up a session where they help rebuild the town, how would you best recommend going about that while keeping them engaged? I have seen other forums discuss building costs from the DMG, which would involve money they do not have currently. I hope to keep them interested and involved with scenes dedicated to their particular strengths, but have not done something like this before.
For Reference:
Scuttlemore was a small port town crippled by the previous ruling body-- they have a rich mine that is not in use, untended orchards that once produced a specialty wine, and artistically inclined citizens whose work once sold for thousands in Luxury Trade. It has no current allies in the surrounding area, again stunted by a comfortable ruling party.
The Party Consists of:
Cleric High Elf- Has the grudge against the Lich, now tempted to serve Umberlee to get an even playing field.
Barbarian Tortle- The Silent Muscle of the group, was fond of a Lizardfolk inn keeper killed in the attack.
Monk Human- A Swashbuckler who loves adventure and seeks to restore his family name to prominence. Often the voice of reason of the group.
Artificer Leonin- A suave merchant who lets his products do the talking for him. However, has voiced that the party should turn and flee Scuttlemore, as they owe them nothing.
So how would you make Town building interesting?
I could see the Tortle using his strength to help rebuild the docks, the Swashbuckler could assist in reclaiming the mines or Orchards, and the Artificer could try to give a few skill rolls to curry favor with the local inland towns, but I am not sure what resources I could use to make this session appealing to them and like their efforts impacted the world.
A Pirate's Side Quest for me:
I would still like for them to have some combat, some pirate shenanigans to keep morale up. Towards the latter half of the session I plan on having one of the Queen's warship appear on the horizon and a small envoy boat is dispatched to the budding town. One of the generals will state that they could offer protection to the town and resources if they surrender power to the Queen. When the Mayor refuses, knowing of the (currently hiding) party's status with the monarchy, the General makes a veiled threat and has one of their enforcers topple the foundation of one of the buildings they were working on. This starts a side mission where the Party can take one of the remaining, admittedly small, ships in town and attempt to side line the battleship before it gets back to the Queen.
---
Thank you for letting me share this story, and I look forward to seeing your suggestions and hearing any stories you have!
I'm going to assume you've already been warned the dangers of scripting too much before the players have a say on how events go, especially when it comes to how much players typically hate scripted defeats and removing agency through cut-scenes, so instead I'll focus on the town re-building.
I'm going through something similar in the game I'm currently running. The town isn't destroyed, but it is facing down an army and preparing for a seige, so they're having to build up the fortifications and gather resources as much as possible before the army comes. If the players decide to help with this, I've identified a few cases where they can acquire a resource that will help the town's defenses, rescue someone who's been taken captive by the enemy, (one who has important scouting intelligence and the other who is a respected/experienced commander of the watch), or engage in diplomacy in order to try and gain aid for the town. This is one of the few instances where I'd recommend adopting more of a video-gamey approach in order to gameify the re-building of the town.
As a DM, you should first identify what the town needs, and come up with a few ways the players are uniquely suited to helping them get it. Once you've identified a few things that make sense, come up with a loose kind of mission structure around that thing. Let's say, for example, that your townspeople need building material to repair their homes, BUT there are no forests nearby to get wood. One villager has the bright idea of using wrecked ships from the harbor to build with, but they can't get the wood cause it's at the bottom of the harbor right now. "If only" the villager might say, "someone could catch us one of those pleiseosaurs that float off the coast. Smart beasts, despite their appearance. I hear down south they have them domesticated. A beast like that could be a lot of help hauling up salvage!"
Now, the players should still have options, as apposed to most cases in videogames. They can try and lure in a pleiseosaur with bait and subdue it with nonlethal attacks, they could try and use animal handling to get it to follow them into the harbor, or a spellcaster could try using Speak with Animals to explain the situation to it. Or something else I haven't thought of.
The point is to break up the process of re-building into tangible goals, where the players can see the effects of their successes or the results of their failures reflected in the town after. That personalizes the town for them, and everytime they look at the houses that are half made of discarded ship parts, they'll feel that connection to it. Suddenly this isn't just some town, this is *our* town.