I’m creating a pirate hack I’m pretty excited about!
One element I’m excited about is the concept of “Seas”, essentially a string of connected islands with a shared “region”, and troubles can follow players from island to island.
One thing I’m struggling with: base AGON rules have the valiant heroes overcoming “strife” on each island. The structure of the “Arrival -> Trials -> Battle” process supports the arc of stories like that. Pirates have a fundamentally different story! I need some help in determining the best way to structure that.
Pirate goals are: grasp advantage however possible, gather wealth, become legendary, escape consequences, spend the money before you die.
With a structure of pirates moving from island to island, what are your thoughts on a structure that could support those goals? Do I just need small tweaks to the basic formula?
My initial thinking in broad strokes is “Identify opportunities and obstacles (not very punchy or immediately exciting) -> Trials ->…” I’m lost for this last part! Is it just the players trying to run away with some gold?
Well, it’s not a “canonical” pirate story but you can grab some ideas from One Piece.
Like: there are a lot of other pirates in the world, and every “episode” is around one different encounter with them.
Some need help to solve an issue (similar to the Strife), some others are enemies of the players, etc.
Oh, One Piece certainly isn’t out of the canon! I’m pulling some concepts from there, certainly.
And that varied structure fits! Perhaps I’m assuming too much about the player motivations, and not giving enough credence to many similar stories (Sinbad, etc.)
I should probably just present the situation and allow the GM and players be as “piratey” as they want.
There are some islands in Agon with different “situations” (like Tymisos); play them helps me to understand better the flow of the game - one thing I didn’t understand during the first 3 sessions was that as Strife Player you can PUSH the player in a contest.
Like, you know, a giant monster appears in front of the heroes. It’s a contest. They can try to avoid it or face it, but it’s always a contest.
That helps me a lot to figure out how to create different situations in the game.