Piracy on the high seas

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Piracy on the high seas

Postby Ithilwen on Wed May 22, 2019 7:30 pm

So you want to be famous, rich and notorious, but you want to do it through the high seas and the life of a pirate. Well then you've stepped into the right place. The first thing you are going to need is a ship, so head down to the real estate agency and the boat werks to pick up a ship.

Okay you have a boat and are ready to start your life as a pirate. The first thing to note is you will be using the ship combat rules for piracy to determine your success or failure. So the first thing before we get to piracy combat is to determine what your trying to steal from. In order to do this you will be rolling a 1d8

Ship Encounter roll 1d8

1. Varakian 50 tons of cargo
2. Cherube 50 tons of cargo
3. Man-o-War 75 tons of Cargo
4. Imperial Dragonship 100 tons of cargo
5. Ocean Sloop 100 tons of cargo
6. Margarian 100 tons of cargo
7. Bastion 150 tons of cargo
8. Amorianas 250 tons of cargo

Take note of the cargo amount each ship has. This is half of the ships total weight, and applies to your ship as well. This will be important later.

Example: you own a Varakian class ship and have 50 tons of cargo space due to the ship weighing 100 tons. You encounter a Imperial dragon ship class which has 100 tons of cargo due to being 200 tons. Your ship can only carry half the ships cargo if successful. The rest is lost to sea or recovered by authorities.

Now to determine what the ship is carrying you will roll a 1d9.

1. Gems (appraisal gems)
2. Slaves (appraisal slaves)
3. Horses (appraisal horses)
4. Weapons/Armor (appraisal weapons)
5. Jewels (jeweler)
6. Ores (metal smith)
7. Leather (leather worker)
8. Potions (potion making)
9. clothes, fabrics, silk (tailor)

Not that you've determined whats on the ship its time to see how much the cargo is worth. For this you will need to roll a 1d5

1. Cargo is worth 20 mhl
2. Cargo is worth 40 mhl
3. Cargo is worth 60 mhl
4. cargo is worth 80 mhl
5. cargo is worth 100 mhl
6. cargo is worth 120 mhl
7. cargo is worth 140 mhl
8. cargo is worth 160 mhl
9. cargo is worth 180 mhl
10. cargo is worth 200 mhl

Appraisal: Gems; Appraisal: Horses; Appraisal: Weapons/Armor; Appraisal: Slaves add +1 to your roll. If you have the ranked job skills of leather working; Tailor; potion making; metal smith; jeweler add +1 to your roll for each rank in the skill.

Now remember how you can only carry cargo up to half your ships total tonnage. For each 25 tons of cargo you were unable to take -1 from your total roll. roll can not go below 1.

Piracy with friends.

When with a party the caption of the ship will roll a 1d8 for the encounter. Cargo and pay will be determined by the average roll of the entire party. If two or more players in the party are captions of there own ship they will each roll a 1d8. This will generate a trade fleet for the party to encounter. They can choose to go after a single ship or multiple ships. Note: it might be a good idea to go after a single ship if the ships generated have a higher cargo value then the parties ships.

If we use the previous examples You have a party with two captions each use a Varakian which can carry 50 tons of cargo. One players generates a Imperial Dragonship while the other generates a Cherube. Both ships generated carry 150 tons of cargo. If both ships go after the imperial dragonship they can recover all 100 tons of cargo split between there ships. If one goes after the dragon ship and the other goes for the Cherube. They will miss out on 50 tons of cargo and suffer a -2 to the pay out roll. No payout roll penalty will be applied if the Cherbue in the first example escapes since nothing was recovered from it.
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Re: Piracy on the high seas

Postby Farvel on Wed May 22, 2019 9:23 pm

Ithilwen wrote:Not that you've determined whats on the ship its time to see how much the cargo is worth. For this you will need to roll a 1d5

1. Cargo is worth 20 mhl
2. Cargo is worth 40 mhl
3. Cargo is worth 60 mhl
4. cargo is worth 80 mhl
5. cargo is worth 100 mhl
6. cargo is worth 120 mhl
7. cargo is worth 140 mhl
8. cargo is worth 160 mhl
9. cargo is worth 180 mhl
10. cargo is worth 200 mhl

Appraisal: Gems; Appraisal: Horses; Appraisal: Weapons/Armor; Appraisal: Slaves add +1 to your roll. If you have the ranked job skills of leather working; Tailor; potion making; metal smith; jeweler add +1 to your roll for each rank in the skill.

Now remember how you can only carry cargo up to half your ships total tonnage. For each 25 tons of cargo you were unable to take -1 from your total roll. roll can not go below 1.

Not sure how this makes sense. If your ship can carry 50 tons, and the enemy ship has 50 tons, you carry 50 tons. If the enemy ship has 100 tons, you carry 50 tons as well. Yet those same 50 tons would be less valuable in the second case for no good reason?

Also, if your ship carries 25 tons and you attack a ship with 25 tons, or if your ship carries 200 tons and you attack a ship with 200 tons, you will on average get the same value for your booty, even though you're carrying 8 times as much?

Overall I like the system, though.
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Re: Piracy on the high seas

Postby Ithilwen on Thu May 23, 2019 3:03 am

Farvel wrote:Not sure how this makes sense. If your ship can carry 50 tons, and the enemy ship has 50 tons, you carry 50 tons. If the enemy ship has 100 tons, you carry 50 tons as well. Yet those same 50 tons would be less valuable in the second case for no good reason?

Also, if your ship carries 25 tons and you attack a ship with 25 tons, or if your ship carries 200 tons and you attack a ship with 200 tons, you will on average get the same value for your booty, even though you're carrying 8 times as much?

Overall I like the system, though.


The reward system is based on the shop steal system to a degree. When a thief steals from a shop the reward role is that they get items of up to a certain value in which case they can sell or keep. With piracy its more of a gamble, since you can't case a ship ahead of time, or know for certain what is on it. Your also stealing items in crates.

Let me give a few examples

Slaves are variable in price, based on training and condition of the slave. Gems on the other hand have a set value based on there cut. A Exceptional Bloodstone is 25 mhl while a major bloodstone is 12.00 mhl.

To say the two have an equal value is a bit hard, since 50 tons of slaves and gems no matter how you look at it is a rather expensive haul in game. I guess the best way to put it is that the reward roll is your cut of the cargo sales. So if you steal 50 tons of cargo or 250 tons of cargo. it's not that there worth the same value its just that is your cut of the possible total payout of the cargo. After all you have to give the crew there cut of the loot as well, along with other expenses such as ship repair.

I also failed to mention the skill bonuses only apply to the proper cargo. So for instance appraisal gems only gives a bonus to reward if the cargo is gems. The same applies to the ranked skill where leather working only applies if the cargo is leather.
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Re: Piracy on the high seas

Postby Rhezha on Thu Nov 05, 2020 8:44 pm

I do like this idea for a PC vs. NPC piracy attempt, but I share similar concerns as Farvel.
I would think that rather than punish those with small ships, it should reward those with larger ships. Perhaps instead of a flat reward for each roll, have a price/ unit weight for a given roll. Could perhaps have class modifiers as well, since thieves would likely have the right connections to fence off pirated goods and get a better price for them. Since Imperial warships are significantly harder to bring down, I would imagine those bring a bonus to the value of cargo since they would be guarding the most valuable items. A whole +1 bonus seems like a lot for a single skill value, though this could be offset by the fact that the target has to have the actual cargo corresponding to the skill. Perhaps the value could have more of a graded increase at the upper numbers, increasing by 10 mhl instead of 20 for rolls 6-10. If cargo is priced per weight, then some of the cargo composition might have to be altered, since having several tons of gems or jewelry is unrealistic, perhaps the presence of gem cargo is more of a bonus rather than contributing to the overall cargo weight and value. Overall, I would say that the cargo value system needs to be reworked with more factors and smaller increments as well as providing a price/weight value instead of a flat rate.
One other thing I dislike is the fact that the attackers can't choose whether they attack the ship that they roll for. If I had a little Varakian and saw an Imperial Dragonship on the horizon, I would be turning the opposite way and fleeing to fight another day. Otherwise players just starting their piracy career could be ruined with a single bad roll and have a worthless scuttled ship after their first excursion.
I like the idea of having allied pirates to bring down a vessel for sharing loot, but I think the way an encounter is decided could have more flexibility and IC connection. Perhaps something along the lines of:
Each captain rolls a 1d# where # is the total number of pirate ships to determine how many target ships they've found. They then roll a number of d8's corresponding to the number of ships in the target fleet to determine composition. Once each captain has a possible target fleet, they communicate via message spell to choose a single fleet to target, regrouping to attack the chosen fleet, or retreat if none are viable. Obviously this is somewhat unrealistic from an IC standpoint, but it feels like a balance between realism and viability for a game.

Sorry if it seems like I've ripped the system apart, I think it's very well thought out and these are just my suggestions meant to help tune the system.
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Re: Piracy on the high seas

Postby Gabriel Storm-Dancer on Mon Nov 09, 2020 12:53 pm

Some input from me...just my half-cent worth...

While the cargo recovery system seems fine, could be feasible to split the type of loot. Leather, ore, gems, slaves, stock...(might even throw in agricultural imports like coffee from other lands, exotic alcohols, etc).

For the more enterprising and freelance type...this could be a good way to promote freelance work. You come out with 50 tons of loot...some leather, gems, agrticultural supplies, etc...then you can turnaround and sell those to the Bazaar through the freelance system. Make some coin based on the bazaar prices.

Either way, I like the idea at at a baseline.
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Re: Piracy on the high seas

Postby Rhezha on Sat Nov 21, 2020 12:40 am

Gabriel Storm-Dancer wrote:
For the more enterprising and freelance type...this could be a good way to promote freelance work. You come out with 50 tons of loot...some leather, gems, agrticultural supplies, etc...then you can turnaround and sell those to the Bazaar through the freelance system. Make some coin based on the bazaar prices.


The only problem I see with this is that the cargo is stolen and is quite possibly marked so someone suddenly appearing with a bunch of quality supplies with no real explanation to sell to the bazaar would be suspicious at the very least. I would imagine that pirates need fences just like thieves do, someone who can sell cargo with no questions asked and little fear of investigation.

Of course, on the flip side of this, I could imagine someone actually becoming a fence through their skills in scribe and forgery and possibly using this to fence their own pirated goods, but this would be quite an expansion of game mechanics for freelancers.
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