Wicked Pirates

[Troels]

Hello there

Poison'd sounds interesting, and reminds me of an interesting pirate experience I had some years ago, so I thought I'd share. In the pre-Forge days of yore, when what we had by the way of roleplaying theory was pretty much "Suspension of Disbelief is the Light and the Way", we played a game of wicked pirates.

We played in a fantasy world in which we had already played a long and succesful heroic fantasy campaign. In the name of holy SoD, I had come up with opponents for the original heroes who were evil in a "realistic" way, not just orcs whose deaths were made righteous by their bad complexions and black hats, most memorably a city-state of slave-trading pirates. Our run-ins with them had been very memorable, so when we came up with this idea for a pirate campaign in which our pirates would be romping around half the world looking for clues to the location of the buried treasure of Grumbar Ax-Prow, we thought:

"We already have lots of material on these interesting pirates in this cool world. Let's play some of those!"

A mistake, as it turned out, though an interesting one. These very Sim pirates had established business practices and economics, more like ancient mediterranean slave-raiders than carribean gold-chasers (I'm a historian, by the way), and they consisted of raiding villages over a large area, shackling people in stinking holds, selling them to gross-trading companies belonging to the heavy pirate lords, who would then sell them to the decadent empire next door. Our pirate "heroes" embarked on a quest set to last months, even years, so of course they had to make a living along the way. In the name of SoD, we did'nt skip it, but played it out. After playing for a couple of months, we found that we were no longer enjoying the game. We didn't want our pirates to find the treasure of Grumbar Ax-Prow, because we really didn't like them. We talked about it, and found ourselves agreeing that we *hated* and despised their cruel, greedy, murderous guts. So we stopped. It was just too bloody awful.

Now, we aren't faint-hearted. I can play terrible people. I can play nazis straight. Every other monday I play a sorcerer who's a sexual predator. But they have to believe, somewhere, that they are misunderstood heroes, that they are right about something. The experience of playing people who divide the the people of the world into meat and meat-eaters, and that's it, I cannot enjoy for more than a session or two.

So, before I buy Poison'd, how and why are those pirates evil? I don't want shallow Hollywood-cliché calorie-light pirates, but, if it makes any sense, I want evil that I can bear.

Yours, Troels

[lumpley]

Hey Troels.

First off, that's a great question and I'm delighted to answer it, whether you go on to buy the game or not.

I wouldn't say that the pirates in Poison'd ARE evil. Instead I'd say that they HAVE some things: each pirate has some capacity for violence, based on how life has treated him; some capacity for trust (in both directions - to trust and to be trustworthy), based on his own sense of himself as a human being; and some dissatisfaction with his lot in life (sometimes DEEP dissatisfaction), based on the above plus his ego plus his sense of justice.

You can already start to see the combinations: one pirate has a vast capacity for violence but is basically trusting and hopes for better for all; another pirate has the same capacity for violence but trusts no one and will turn on anyone who stands in his way; another isn't capable of such violence but will stand beside you when you need him; another has a weak stomach and preys on others' trust to serve his own vainglory.

And THEN, you don't play out the business-as-usual of these pirates' lives. The game starts at a moment of upheaval - the old captain's just been killed, there's a power vacuum and some urgency to fill it, it's an opportunity for all the individual pirates to strive for better (whatever "better" means to them individually).

Some individual characters will divide the world into meat and meat-eaters (a characterization of evil I can really get behind, by the way), absolutely. Others won't, when it comes down to it. One of the cool things is, when the game starts and you look at the characters, it's not at all clear which will be which. You have to play to find out.

-Vincent