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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7818924" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>Well, while we have all assumed Harrigan will be some sort of reoccurring villain, quite honestly I don't consider Harrigan a remotely important NPC. If he's a reoccurring villain then he's an antagonist which we will no doubt have to fight, which makes him no more important than a future sea monster of some sort. </p><p></p><p>Harrigan is just a stat block. He's no where near as important to the game as a character like "Crimson" Cogsward, Sandara Quinn, Rosy Cusswell, Ratliner Ratsburger, or "Barefoot" Sam' Toppins. So yes, that leaves the DM creating them largely out of whole cloth, where - were it me writing this game - I'd spend 5-7 sentences each on them providing a basis of character for what or likely to be far and away the most important NPCs in the game. That is, the character likely to be the petty officers of the PC's pirate ship for pretty much the whole campaign. As a guy with 30+ years experience and one of my strengths is the ability to breathe life into NPCs, a failure to detail minor NPCs is not a huge failing. But for the guy running a D&D inspired game for the first time, making up all this in the middle of learning the art of DMing is challenging. </p><p></p><p>But really, that's a minor complaint. The bigger complaint is that as you say, the AP does not seem to be runnable out of the box, and there are major problems with the design of the minigames designed to deliver the pirate experience. I'm in the middle of overhauling all the rules of the game to help him deliver that experience, and:</p><p></p><p>a) I'd like to know if that is normal, or if my distrust of the rules is misplaced, and...</p><p>b) If it is normal, what sort of rules sets have been adopted. </p><p></p><p>So far I've amended plunder point rules, rewritten all the ship stat blocks, created a mass combat system to run boarding actions between crews, and built a pirate officer minigame for daily operations on a ship (and automated it with a computer program so that it wouldn't get tedious like the sailor minigame). I need to do something with random weather generation, and review the Infamy rules. </p><p></p><p>The GM is going to rewrite all the random encounters to get the CR's right and the level of challenge appropriate - right now we are mowing through the challenges because we've got 30 1st level characters with short bows and ~25 1st level characters with crossbows plus the PCs peppering enemy crews in the lead up to the boarding action, and even if the chance of hit is low, that's just overwhelming everything we're supposed to be fighting. Most ships are forced to surrender even before our boots hit their decks, despite the fact the PC's are just 4th level. </p><p></p><p>My biggest remaining challenge is with ship to ship combat. I've written a ship to ship wargame before, so I know considerable details about making one realistic. However, the problem with ship to ship combat whether we are talking great age of sail or Starfleet, is that is not easy to keep everyone at the table engaged in the combat and having useful choices to make. My guess is that is the real reason that the AP writer made the ship to ship combat so unimportant, but I'd be interested to see if anyone had solved the problem.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7818924, member: 4937"] Well, while we have all assumed Harrigan will be some sort of reoccurring villain, quite honestly I don't consider Harrigan a remotely important NPC. If he's a reoccurring villain then he's an antagonist which we will no doubt have to fight, which makes him no more important than a future sea monster of some sort. Harrigan is just a stat block. He's no where near as important to the game as a character like "Crimson" Cogsward, Sandara Quinn, Rosy Cusswell, Ratliner Ratsburger, or "Barefoot" Sam' Toppins. So yes, that leaves the DM creating them largely out of whole cloth, where - were it me writing this game - I'd spend 5-7 sentences each on them providing a basis of character for what or likely to be far and away the most important NPCs in the game. That is, the character likely to be the petty officers of the PC's pirate ship for pretty much the whole campaign. As a guy with 30+ years experience and one of my strengths is the ability to breathe life into NPCs, a failure to detail minor NPCs is not a huge failing. But for the guy running a D&D inspired game for the first time, making up all this in the middle of learning the art of DMing is challenging. But really, that's a minor complaint. The bigger complaint is that as you say, the AP does not seem to be runnable out of the box, and there are major problems with the design of the minigames designed to deliver the pirate experience. I'm in the middle of overhauling all the rules of the game to help him deliver that experience, and: a) I'd like to know if that is normal, or if my distrust of the rules is misplaced, and... b) If it is normal, what sort of rules sets have been adopted. So far I've amended plunder point rules, rewritten all the ship stat blocks, created a mass combat system to run boarding actions between crews, and built a pirate officer minigame for daily operations on a ship (and automated it with a computer program so that it wouldn't get tedious like the sailor minigame). I need to do something with random weather generation, and review the Infamy rules. The GM is going to rewrite all the random encounters to get the CR's right and the level of challenge appropriate - right now we are mowing through the challenges because we've got 30 1st level characters with short bows and ~25 1st level characters with crossbows plus the PCs peppering enemy crews in the lead up to the boarding action, and even if the chance of hit is low, that's just overwhelming everything we're supposed to be fighting. Most ships are forced to surrender even before our boots hit their decks, despite the fact the PC's are just 4th level. My biggest remaining challenge is with ship to ship combat. I've written a ship to ship wargame before, so I know considerable details about making one realistic. However, the problem with ship to ship combat whether we are talking great age of sail or Starfleet, is that is not easy to keep everyone at the table engaged in the combat and having useful choices to make. My guess is that is the real reason that the AP writer made the ship to ship combat so unimportant, but I'd be interested to see if anyone had solved the problem. [/QUOTE]
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