Day 16. The inevitable middle day of #RPGaDAY2022, 15 days in, 15 days to go.
The topic's been asked before, and I rarely stray from my usual answer, "What Would Be Your Perfect Game?"
The Short Answer
Session 0: Hackmaster 4th Edition - "Everyone roll up a halfling pirate."
Seriously.
The Long Answer
The Year is 1150. It has fourteen years since the War with the Master ended.
The life of a halfling sailor is a peculiar one. The towns and shires within Stronghome do fund a merchant marine and a traditional navy to protect shipping interests sailing on the Mer Kasp, but it is not the preferred career.
Halfling sailors are not in high demand, either. With the exception of searching in small crawl spaces, or getting a responsible person to man the crow's nest, sailors of at least moderate stature are preferred. When eccentric gnome titan was setting up a personal privateer navy over a decade ago to settle some old grudges, he showed no bias to any race, and the pay was quite attractive. This personal armada has gone through a number of ships, and hundreds of sailors, most outright leaving, others succumbing to illness, pirate attacks, or general incompetence.
There was a fascinating evolution of the crews over the past decade, that, for the two ships remaining, the entire crews are halfling. It could be that the short folk tolerated some pay cuts over the years, or that the new recruits did not know what the older members had started out at. It could be that this eccentric Gnome Titan burned too many bridges with too many folk, but so long as enough food was coming out of the galley, no halfling would complain too much, much less leave.
Or it could be that the Halflings left, young and old, believe in Zorin Redrock's personal vendetta against the Slavers of Roark. The Slavers had terrorized all the races and nations of the Mer Kasp for generations, enslaving whole villages, sending them to their secret cities and outposts to be sold to distant countries for unspeakable sums.
Over the years, nations, nay alliances of nations had conducted sweeping searches for the Slavers and their key port of Roark, yet the Slaver's ships proved to powerful and elusive, most were so fanatical that they would rather kill themselves than spill their secrets, and even in death, clerics were unable to pry the secrets out while contacting the spirit world.
It seemed unimaginable that some wackjob could succeed where massive undertakings had failed miserably, but the remaining crews, many green around the gills, felt a sense of loyalty to their employer. Redrock rarely participated in patrols anymore, preferring to work on logistics and other behind-the-scene operations, but the crew couldn't feel anything but motivation while working alongside him.
A recent attack on a regular pirate cutter by your ship, the Vengeance may have netted the first significant leads in years. After a vicious boarding action, where all the pirates were killed, a map was discovered revealing a secret pirate cove. It would not the first time such a map, or a cove were uncovered, but this one had a symbol of a speared fish marking the location, the symbol of the Slavers of Roark.
Now, the cove was much too small to be the actual city of Roark, but it's an incredible discovery, and if your planned raid nets any further goals, perhaps your team could report this directly the "Savage Admiral" himself and hopefully get personally rewarded before going on the next step of this crazy crusae.
During the last days of the Siege of Frandor's Keep, Zorin, his trusted pal Whitey, and the party's torchbearer, Coreena, left the Trogs to join the Gnome Titan Legions marching to relieve the keep.
While they were gone, the remaining party members at the time were kidnapped and almost enslaved by the Slavers of Roark. The four members, Cecelia Darkspruce (half-elf warrior priestess of Sif), Gwendalyn Lorax, half-elf druid, Brother Thomas, a human monk, and Marek the Learned, a double invoker, all managed to escape the ship and into the City of Roark itself. The group broke out of the city under heavy pursuit, but with the deaths of Marek and Brother Thomas (allegedly by fire-breathing velociraptors, the other two separated, and it was months before everyone was finally reunited.
Despite fantastic success, fame, and fortune at Frandor's Keep, Zorin has not been able to live down that he was not around to save, or possible fight with, his friends. He's made it his mission to destroy the Slavers by any means necessary.
Of course, finding an elusive slaving ring that's been around for hundreds of years is one thing. Trying to do it without sailing experience was problematic. He's lost most of his fortune, most of his ships, hundreds of men, and possibly the years of respect his previous career had garnered him.
But those slavers will pay.
The true GM pitch: Players will start as halfling sailors on Zorin's ship, Vengeance, prepping for the biggest raid of their career. If successful, they just might find out some information on the Slavers of Roark, and with that Zorin may have to get the band back together to level Roark, and any other outpost they discover.
This is my dream campaign, that allows the crunchiness of Hackmaster and a chance to get everyone together (probably online), recruit my other players who hadn't participated in the Burning Trogs to fill out the ranks, and finish A1-4 with righteous vengeance and furious anger.
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