jossbo

I hope I'm doing a x-posr right, I'm pretty new here. I assume you can follow this link to join the conversation. Let me know if I messed up 😋

First off: Sawbones, Moonie, Reeva or Mygg, if you're reading this, DON'T!

I'm running a pirate-themed homebrew campaign set in a homebrewed place which I've plonked down in The Sea of Falling Stars. I call it The Southern Isles, and its rife with piracy. The de facto 'government' is The Southern Islands Company, who run the place for profit and starve the population with high taxes and tithes, and who brutally suppress any rebellion. I've used every pirate and maritime trope I can think of in planning the plot, creating encounters and filling it with characters.

I figured this will help me add flavour to the world, and could be a good resource for anyone planning a similar campaign, or one shot or whatever.

Edit: I should maybe note I already played quite a bit in this setting and after a long hiatus I am starting it back up for Season 2, so partly this is a way for me to get it all fresh in my head again.

Please be careful with spoilers from major campaigns, particularly Curse of Strand cos I'm playing through that atm please thank you 😊

I'll go first...

I'm running a homebrew pirate campaign and I have a character called Rusty Ben who's great fun to play. He's a warforged in the form of a skeleton made of rusted iron. He wears a pirate hat and he has a stuffed parrot nailed to his shoulder. He's a great sailor, who never tires, or eats, and he even keeps watch as he 'sleeps', because warforged. He's also handy with repair work, so he's a valuable member of the party's pirate crew. He's very friendly and speaks in a kind of silly Southern US accent. When he asked to join the party's crew, he held put a gold piece and said "I can pay my own way!". They declined and one of them gave him a silver piece as wages. He was bowled over by their generosity. Another player offered him a copper piece as well, and he got all serious and said, "No, no... let me earn the copper piece."

He acts as a kind of sailoring guide for the party. He has worked aboard quite a few pirate ships, until he was aboard one that sank in battle. He walked for a long time across the bottom of the sea and eventually found an island and just walked up onto the beach, where he met the crew of The Candlestick Maker’s Revenge and joined them, which is where the party met him at the start of the campaign. They took passage on that ship to get to the island chain that is the setting fornthe canpaign. He's one of my favourite people that I've ever made up!

I'll go first. He's a reborn necromancer wizard, with a 1 level dip into death cleric.

His backstory comes with a clichénwarning for lost memories..

He lost his memory just before the start of the campaign. He was conducting a gruesome experiment on a dog, when something went wrong involving lightning. He died, but also didn't, and came to wandering around his lab years later, clutching the skull of the dog, which had rotted away to just bone.

He didn't have a name at the start of the campaign. I let a different player name him, as his character knew mine from before the accident. He came up with the truly awful name Melvin Kingston, which I've grown to love. He had a massive fear of death, having died once already, and was quite the coward in early levels.

His memories have been slowly returning, and he's had to come to terms with all the evil things he did in his previous life. I recently took a level in death domain cleric, cos we had no healer, and I found the god Jergal, Scribe of the Doomed, who is concerned only with documenting the dead in his great book. Melvin's faith has allowed him to come to terms with death, and accept it as a part of life. (His newfound ability ro wear medium armor has helped as well, lol). I love having 8 cantrips, and so so many spells to choose from. I have so many options!

I love playing him, and I'm loving the progression he's gone through. I have more planned for him.

Now your turn!