Pirate Campaign Sugestions

Hey Veeky Forums, I want to run a pirate themed campaign in the vane of Pirates of the Caribbean, magic, monsters, and angry sea gods; sounds great, but I'm not sure where to start. I was looking at Call of Cthulhu (I've played it once before) and I think it might be a good fit for what I want. It's difficult and has only a slight bit of magic so i don't have players running around as Blackbeard 2 hurling fireballs at other ships and yelling "Fire + wood boat = I WIN" but if someone wanted to play a witch doctor or something they would incur the penalty's of the system in sanity loss. My problem is I can't find a supplement for the right time period, and I don't feel like I know the system well enough to home brew the whole setting on my own. Is there already a supplement that I'm too stupid to find? A well accepted home brew? Is there another system that will simply work better? I'm open to all ideas and suggestions. Anything that will help get the ball rolling will be appreciated.

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If you like Call of Cthulhu you should actually be using runequest instead. Call of Cthulhu is fine for pulp noir horror but runequest is the BRP system you need for adventure and fantasy.

This guy's stuff is OSR, but hex map stuff is pretty system agnostic, it's more a DM organization thing than anything else, so you might find it worthwhile to look over:

muleabides.wordpress.com/tag/saltbox/

I'm running a similar campaign. I'm using AFMBE and the recent pirate expansion book (both PDF).
I'm here to answer any questions, been running it about six months, did four times as much prep.

Thanks for the suggestions, I'm in class right now but I'll look into each of them when I have a bit more time (it's a digital drawing class btw and I already know this stuff backwards and forwards but its a requirement for my degree so what the hell I'll hang out here for a bit). What about story? Do you guys have any plot hook ideas? magic or cursed item that would work well with the theme? What kind of character would you want to play in this type of setting?

>Do you guys have any plot hook ideas?
Christ. Read the books suggested, then come back to us.
>magic or cursed item that would work well with the theme?
Hand of Glory's a good one, but you also can't go wrong with cursed gold.
>What kind of character would you want to play in this type of setting?
For me, I'd be looking at a Barber/Spy/Mountebank type.

I know I'm going to get flamed for this, but I'll say it anyway. 5th edition DnD does have stuff that can work with pirates, stat wise, character build wise, and the DMs guide has guidelines for firearms and ships and stuff. It's not the best, but for me, at least, it's sort of a tried and true fall back. All I'm saying is that it's possible and the only thing maybe you personally would have to homebrew is how limited the access to magic is.

I'll dump a few pirate images for OP because I don't have anything else to contribute.

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I know off the top of my head pathfinder has an entire adventure path for pirates, cant remember what it was called though.

If you can get access to Al Qadim ADD, there's a corsair pirate book too.

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as someone who is playing the reincarnation of blackbeard in a mage world of darkness game, fuck you for thinking thats what blackbeard was.

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Not OP here, but does anyone know if 7th Sea: 2nd Ed. is supposed to be any good, how did it turn out after that kickstarter?

I'm sure a lot of people are going to suggest 7th sea, but I've got something a bit more esoteric: Pirates of the Spanish Main. It's a pretty good Savage Worlds rpg based on the (sadly defunct) constructable tabletop card game of the same name. If you can stomach the mechanics, it's pretty thorough. The ship mechanics, while not incredibly in depth (there are some ridiculously 'accurate' and mind-numbingly tedious sailing ships simulators out there), is solid, and translates easily to the table (as it should, as it's a fairly faithful translation of the tabletop game mechanics).

There's some neat fluff there as well, mixing historical figures into the plot. The core book hews a bit more towards representing the era as much as it can, though since it's Savage Worlds, you can always use its other supplements for magic and the like.

Skulls & Shackles

3 adventures in and I don't like it

7th sea is literally made for this stuff.
Just a suggestion though, play 1rst edition. 2nd is trash.