[The Legend of Saucy Jack] Exploring pirate legends, drawing treasure maps.

[Zach]

Hello. I've been lurking on-and-off for a few months now, and finally decided to register and contribute to the forum. My name's Zach, and I'm looking to get some ideas down and prove that I'm not just dreams and talk.

My indie cred, as it is, consists of Intergalactic Cooking Challenge. That will warrant its own post once I find the slightly better version, which I left at school. This post is about The Legend of Saucy Jack.

While acquainting myself with Christmas gifts this evening, I began to think about pirates. Not the real sort, but the cinematic variety who commonly make their way into role-playing games. It was then that The Legend of Saucy Jack began to form. It will end as a free .pdf, or be cannibalized for the parts thereof.

The framing narrative in Saucy Jack takes place in a dockside tavern. The players are all old salts with checkered, but essentially dull pasts. Dull, with the exception of the time that they sailed with the most famous pirate of their time. Being old salts, the players have arranged a story-telling contest to see who gets the comfy stool away from the draft for the night. Of course, all of their stories revolve around the master pirate who they once sailed with. It's the, "How do I know? Because I was there!" vibe.

The player who is the old salt (OS) sets three scenes coresponding to different parts of an epic pirate quest (the lure, the epic battle, what he did with his loot, something like that.) For each scene, the OS gives a one-sentence start-off and assigns character roles:

"Squiddo, you look kind of like the wench that was there. Pierre, you remind me of the arrogant Frenchman..."

From there, the view fades back in time to the standard role-playing/shared storytelling mode.

The only person with statistics, however, is the mighty pirate (the hero) who the OS talks about. These are determined by consulting a treasure map that the OS has kept with him since his youth. They explain the character of the hero. After all, a pirate's prime location of investment tells a lot about him. Every time that the OS tells a terrible fib, one of the other listeners makes a challenge and says, "Unlikely!" or something even more knavish. Then the OS rolls his tenacity skill (based off of the number of jungles on the treasure map), backing up the hero's actions with his legend. Enough successes, and the other listeners would be convinced. Enough non-successes, and the listeners would not be convinced. Seeing that hole in the story, they would grow doubtful that no one ever found the hero's treasure, as the OS insists. Thus they would draw a few lines on the treasure map, getting ever closer to the X. When the dotted line reaches the X, it becomes apparent that the hero was really just another lubber with a silly hat: fodder for the real pirates.

The challenge mechanic is what's giving me the most trouble. It isn't fun if everything that the OS says is challenged, but on the other hand he should be crafting his story conscious of the fact that everyone wants to tear him apart. Perhaps each OS could have an occupation like animal tamer or cutlass-sharpener. They could only call challenges on matters relating to their specialty. Or they would receive a large bonus to do so.

The treasure map idea has been stewing in the back of my head since one of the earlier game chef contests requested non-standard character sheets. The components that I'm thinking of right now include:

Jungles/forestland: The hero's overall tenacity, skill, and gumption. Any contested actions are rolled against this number on 3d6.
Desert/beaches: The amount of land that the hero claimed. Hit points, if you will.
Cunning traps: Similar to tenacity, only the hero's caginess. The more traps that a hero has on his island, the greater is his reputation for feats of intellect and guile.
Weird features like stone heads or dinosaur bones: Lucky charms. Dice rerolls. They also indicate the gullibility of the OS who owns the map. It's easier to tell amazing stories to a guy who believes aliens crash-landed on a certain island and mined its copper for spare parts, leaving wild rock formations.
Secondary sources of wealth: Plunder that the OS was able to secure for himself. Whale blubber, treasure from a previous inhabitant, or spices. These can be exchanged for tavern services.

Tavern services: Buying a round of drinks makes the scene more believable. All difficulties are lowered.
Display a cool scar: I don't know. It has to be in there though. "You thought that whales were friendly, full of tricks, right? Well, here's a trick for you: It bit me liver clean out, and then had 'alf a kidney for dessert! Lookit this!"
Incite a riot: Stops the story where it stands. The player to the right restarts the story with, "So, you were at the part where (something that didn't happen) happened." The OS then runs with it. If this happens too many times, the tavern is shut down.


The game ends when every OS passes out from grog-consumption or the tavern is shut down due to excessive rioting. This hopefully coincides with each OS having told a three-part story. Since it is all about pride, however, the stories could keep on going. In that case, more adventures in the middle that don't have a set topic are acceptable.

Would you play this? Do the rules add to the already enjoyable proposal of sitting around and telling pirate stories? While rolling dice is thematically appropriate, I'm still exploring the possibilities.

[joepub]

Hey Zach, welcome to The Forge!


This made me laugh very hard reading it at points.
Some great stuff there. My favourite part:

For each scene, the OS gives a one-sentence start-off and assigns character roles:

"Squiddo, you look kind of like the wench that was there. Pierre, you remind me of the arrogant Frenchman..."

Anyways, I will read through more thoroughly when I get the chance - I just wanted to say a.) I would totally play this, and b.) I love the flavour.

[MikeSands]

Regarding the maps, it's a cool idea.

However, the way you have it now it's really a normal character sheet with non-standard (and relatively difficult) ways of noting things down. The map doesn't add anything that you don't get with a character sheet listing:
Skill: __
Hit points: __
Cunning: __
Rerolls: __
Treasure: __

To really get this going, maybe the old salt needs to mark the path on the map as you go? That way, you can use the bonus from everything that's within (say) an inch of the current position, or maybe everything you have travelled through so far is available? This adds relevance to choosing where the pirates went, and maybe you can expand the idea in other ways too.

Would everyone have their own map or would you reuse the same one?

Also, where is the "X" that marks the famous pirate's buried treasure? Shouldn't that be mandatory?

[joepub]

I think Mike might be onto something.


Maybe put a starting position, and an X. And then gaining bonuses looks like this:
Move to a feature, which is closer to the X than the last.

You gain a Complete Bonus (maybe +2) from that geographic feature, as well as Partial Bonuses (maybe +1) from each like feature you have already crossed.


That way, the player has the option: draw out the journey so that when I get to The Big Difficult Task (the X) I've got more experience and bonuses.... or just cut to the chase, because every conflict is another risk.

[Levi Kornelsen]

There's also the potential for drawing the map "from memory", as you go along.  Which could be interesting in itself.

Also, the methods of 'calling somebody' on their balderdash could conceivably be made a mechanical source of color - a betting mechanic of some sort ("I'll bet my hat on it" springs to mind) could get nested in there if desired.

[Zach]

Thank you for the Christmas-time response and thoughts to mull over. I'm starting to solidify some ideas, and may even have a rough play test in the works.

Maybe put a starting position, and an X. And then gaining bonuses looks like this:
Move to a feature, which is closer to the X than the last.

The starting position and the X were part of the original plan. The idea that they are the only points, without a fixed track, is a good one. Here's the new idea:

To really get this going, maybe the old salt needs to mark the path on the map as you go? That way, you can use the bonus from everything that's within (say) an inch of the current position, or maybe everything you have travelled through so far is available? This adds relevance to choosing where the pirates went, and maybe you can expand the idea in other ways too.

It would be the invading pirates who mark the path so that the decision-making falls to them after successfully besting the OS at a challenge. They would do well to avoid the features that assist the OS, but hopefully there would be enough foresight during island design to make the decision a challenging one.

An island is composed of terrain and widgets. The three types of terrain are beach/desert/cleared, forest/jungle/swamp, and mountain. Widgets are sources of wealth and lucky objects.

When a fib is successfully called, the PC with the greatest stake in doing so (monkey beats hat beats eye-patch...) moves the gang of invading pirates a number of units equal to the success of the challenge. This is modified by the terrain.

For example, the veteran plank-washer calls the OS on his recounting of Billy Bones' famous swan dive into eel-infested waters. Billy's reputation plummets, thus his treasure is threatened. Surely no one would need to resort to lies about him if he had actually been a great pirate. The plank-washer can move the pirates on Billy's treasure map four inches across the beach, two inches through the forest, or one through the mountains.

Every island has a mandatory minimum of beach/cleared space. It's also the only place that treasure may be buried. On the plus side, it's cheaper to purchase widgets on cleared land during island creation (I'm not sure about this part.)

Forests remain similar to their previous use. Pirates marching through forests or swamps become aware of how tenacious the man was who originally buried the treasure. If pirates are in forest or swamplands, the hero gets a bonus to his tenacity rolls.

Mountains are good for protecting areas and keeping pirates away. However, the more time that a pirate band spends in the mountains, the greater the chance is that they'll trigger a rockslide that destroys a helpful widget.

Would everyone have their own map or would you reuse the same one?

Everyone would create his or her own map. There was only one survivor from the Unmasking of Bloody Pete, and he's standing before you today. Also, I'm assuming that everybody likes to draw maps.

You gain a Complete Bonus (maybe +2) from that geographic feature, as well as Partial Bonuses (maybe +1) from each like feature you have already crossed.

The widgets assign bonuses similar to in my first post, but only when the invading pirates are within a certain range. Their penalties (lucky signs leading to gullibility, wealth sources being lootable) are always active.

While the OS designs his island, the invading pirates will have several choices as to which way they take to the X. They could zoom straight through the plains in the middle and pass by the lucky idol, risk the forest where they would raise the hero's tenacity at risk of looting some bonus wealth, or slog through the mountains with the potential payoff of burying a priceless archeological site under tons of rock.

It's not what you're suggesting, but that's where I ran with it. If an island has several sources of wealth, looting them would definitely be a cumulative effect worth consideration.

Also, the methods of 'calling somebody' on their balderdash could conceivably be made a mechanical source of color - a betting mechanic of some sort ("I'll bet my hat on it" springs to mind) could get nested in there if desired.

I like that. It can also be used as a tiebreaker to see who wins. If two heroes' treasures have invading pirates an equal distance away, we turn to who has the most hats or ceremonial grog tankards. An old salt has to have a certain number of possessions left at the end of the night to be considered prestigious enough for the comfy stool, after all.

[Shreyas Sampat]

I like this concept intensely, and not just because I was thinking about graphical character sheets for one of my own ideas.

I do think, though, that all these crunchy things like speed altering based on terrain and minimum areas of stuff in island design bear a strong risk of turning it into a tactical invasion game with incidental pirate colour, rather than a pirate game. I suggest thinking some more about events in the tavern - the betting and buying rounds of drinks and inciting riots and so forth - those are very distinctively interesting, and they really support the pirateyness of the game.

[dindenver]

Hi!
  OK, I think, mechanically, you need to figure out the following:
1) How to measure progress across the map
2) How to encourage players to exaggerate
3) How to discourage players from constantly challenging others constantly
4) Reward for winning the contest

  I think the map idea is good, it balances the stats. If the map is on graph paper, you can base the stats on the number of squares so that the system does not encourage multiple small jungles etc.

[Myrmidon]

Have you considered looking at another competitive story-telling game for inspiration?

The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen by James Wallis is a truly excellent example.  And it incorporates listeners challenging the story-telling by wagering coins.  The story-teller can either match their wager and pay them off, or accept the wagered coins and accept the complication that the listener adds to the story (and then explain how it was overcome).  At the end, everyone votes, using the coins they've accumulated, for their favorite story to determine the winner.

However, I encourage you to keep the treasure map as a key part of the game, since this is a very unique idea.  Good luck.

[Zach]

Hi!
  OK, I think, mechanically, you need to figure out the following:
1) How to measure progress across the map
2) How to encourage players to exaggerate
3) How to discourage players from constantly challenging others constantly
4) Reward for winning the contest

1. I keep on coming back to using thumb-widths instead of more accepted means of measuring. It sounds a little gimmicky, but it would mesh with several design goals. It would be piratey in style, eliminate the need of extra tools such as rulers, and preserve the fluidity of moving around the map. On the other hand, it would penalize players with small thumbs.

2.The other players have limited narrative control over a story in the form of the characters that the OS assigns. They work to manuver the hero into situations where their OS's specialty arises. While the hero could kill them off, it's given that at least one opposing OS's specialty is going to focus on recognizing legitimate applications of violence. 

3. A player needs to wager something such as his hat to make a challenge. After he loses enough items, all he has left is his own treasure map. An OS without a treasure map doesn't have a story, and looks foolish to his mates besides.

4. The reward is less interesting to me than the proceeds of the game. Actual food or drink would be fitting, perhaps freedom from having to pay a share for what was eaten while playing. Anything that encourages people to play would be fine. Since the winning OS also gets the best seat in the pub, he should be free to assign the order of story-telling in the next game.

Have you considered looking at another competitive story-telling game for inspiration?

Thanks! I had heard of the game before, but my friend who was explaining it was unable to provide a link. Bidding tokens seems to be a popular mechanic these days, so I'm hoping to do something more with it. Tokens could be used for the hats, drinking mugs, and monkeys necessary in the wagering stage, so I see a similarity there.

How is duelling handled in Baron Munchausen? Would it transfer well to two experienced seamen whaling on each other with tankards and chairs?

My next goal is to focus on the tavern actions: who can take them, when they're available, and how having secondary treasure sources improves them.