Part of our environmental series where we look into a different environment each week and see all the role playing options that can be had. In Above the waves lands we discuss the many adventures that can be had in this biom. We go over the many hazards and opportunities to run a game. We share out thought and notions of what we thought when sailing the sea of blue.
Find all our links below:
https://linktr.ee/nerdandsonpod
Who are we?
We are just a couple of nerds who enjoy the game. Ralph, who has been running games, and Conner, who has watched his father run the games and who has ventured out into the world to run some of his own. Together we talk about our passion for role playing and some of our adventures along the way.
Please enjoy this journey with us.
Notes: Above Part 1:
Pirates baby!
Pros:
If you like pirates and sailing, just the mention here will sell you and you’ve already bought in
Many of the same fantasy tropes, but shaken up
Booty
I’m 100% in on pirate adventures, so I can’t fathom other reasons
Media:
Pirates of The Caribbean
Our Flag Means Death
Muppets: Treasure Island
Sea Of Thieves
AC IV: Black Flag
How?
Where there are boats, there are pirates
I’ve seen people say to treat islands like you would dungeons, but I personally disagree, I say, treat dungeons like dungeons, they fit so well into the setting already
The ship and the crew are characters in their own right
Crunchy or casual?
There’s a lot of problems that sailors had to face:
Scurvy
Boredom
Dehydration
Hardtack
You can choose to use these or ignore them at your leisure
Where do you start them?
With a ship, as the captain’s council
Maybe one of the players is a captain
As the crew, and they have to rise through the ranks
Pirate campaign we did was kind of like Star Trek, where there would be an away team to go do the mission when we landed on the island
Goofy
Just like my media examples, pirates can played for laughs and goofs
Roles for players:
Campaign ideas:
Steal from sea of thieves: find pieces of a map to lead you to a larger treasure hoard
Pirate Lords, and how to become them
Curses
Character ideas:
People became pirates for a few reasons; social outcasts, opportunity, greed
Believably play strange races
Enemy ideas:
Pirate hunters, The law, The navy, Sea Monsters
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Encounter Corner.
The Tower of the Iron Wizard
Sea elves come up to a port town in need of adventures.
They need help to find an object in a sunken tower that was stolen from them and to rescue the 3 previous groups they sent in that have not returned.
The only hint of what was inside was found in the rubble when the tower was sunk.is the corpse of an iron snake.
History
They befriended a wizard that was living on a small island with a single tower.
The wizard helped them with a Sahuagin tribe that was trying to move into their territory.
The wizard was gifted an artifact of immense power for his help.
After the battle the wizard was secretly kidnapping sea elves for experiments.
The sea elves were unaware until an escapee was found and let the elves know what was truly going on.
The sea elves could not beach the tower so they called upon their god and sunk the island.
Every attempt to reclaim the artifact has come up empty.
Encounter
The sea elves take care of their breathing needs
Besides the 3 levels of the tower that hold no real value. The basement levels is where the experiments take place.
Random creatures will include all Iron creatures including an Iron Golem. Pulse weird half sea elves half machine and weird automtrons.
Some areas will have pockets of air and still dry.
The 3 other parties have been captured and are in the process of being experimented on.
The wizard will be a tough battle due to the artifact he was given but if described by the elves then a weakness may be known.
