If you are looking for an adventure on the high seas with the smell of cannon fire and a tasteful amount of plank walking, has plenty of hidden rules and adventures that can lead you on the path of fulfilling your dreams of plundering treasure.
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Since the Golden Age of Piracy differs in many ways from traditional D&D settings, there can be some confusion when determining what to keep, add, or throw away when designing your own campaign that mimics many of our favorite movies and games featuring pirates. There are a handful of things you'll want to keep in mind before putting Xs on your map.
10 Borrow Rules From Ghosts Of Saltmarsh
The adventure anthology Ghosts of Saltmarsh is the only D&D 5th Edition sourcebook containing seafaring and crew management rules. It includes stat blocks and unique interactions for six example ships which you can use to homebrew custom ships depending on your needs.
However, Ghosts of Saltmarsh kind of exceeds what is necessary with ship travel in adding morale rules which will likely complicate ship travel with unnecessary upkeep and doesn't expand enough on ship combat to help you understand how your players interact with the mechanics outside of officer actions. Despite this, the additional rules, enemy types, and adventures are enough to help you round out a campaign full of plunder and booty.
9 Add Flintlocks And Cannons
Because Ghosts of Saltmarsh takes place in the Sword Coast setting, the ships are trading cannons for ballistae and enemy stats don't include flintlock pistols. If you want a true Golden Age adventure, consider upgrading the technology while using optional rules for cannons, pistols, muskets, and bombs from the Dungeon Master's Guide.
You can also use this opportunity to lean into the fantasy aspect to create unique, magical ammunition or enchanted flintlocks with special properties. The thing you'll want to keep in mind before arming your pirates and ships is how common these weapons are and how difficult they are to obtain.
8 Create Realistic Factions
An expansive archipelago filled with treasure and secrets will likely have several factions and organizations vying for control. To mimic Golden Age conflicts, consider including an occupying military force with strongholds and strict laws that give pirates a reason to fight back or a rich bounty to target.
Even pirates develop factions within their ranks and will target each other if it means earning a handful of gold coins. The more conflict you have between various groups, the more plot hooks you will have to introduce to your players and expand on the overall story.
7 Research Real Pirates
Tales told from the Golden Age of piracy can sound like they come straight from a D&D campaign. It's said that the headless body of Blackbeard, who stuck lit fuses in his beard and led a fleet of ships, stalks the coast of Virginia looking for lost treasure. A legendary ghost captain and his undead crew is the sort of cliche pirate adventure that translates well to D&D.
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Part of playing in a themed adventure is experiencing the expected, and on the seven seas, your players will want to look for buried treasure, board ships amidst the smoke of cannon fire, and hunt for cursed artifacts. Within these plot hooks and adventures is where you add interesting characters, motivations, and twists that can help make your campaign unique while still keeping in theme.
6 Are You Fighting Pirates Or Joining Them?
One of the first asked questions by dungeon masters to their players during session zero is whether they want to play evil characters. In a pirate-themed campaign, this can drastically change the outcome of the story and gameplay. If your players decide they want to plunder merchant ships and gather hordes of treasure, make sure you establish hard boundaries about which evil acts are considered allowed at your table so that you avoid uncomfortable situations.
If your players are adventurers hunting down pirates and taking on privateer bounties, consider the same moral restrictions for your BBEGs. Although pirates in history were ruthless killers, some pirates, including Blackbeard, have complicated motivations that make them almost understandable. By avoiding every pirate sounding like Barbossa from Pirates of the Caribbean, your players will become more immersed in the story.
5 Plan Your Sea Map
A complicated part of world-building is determining travel time and distance between significant locations. When determining distance, make sure to consider if your players need to worry about crew rations, how many random encounters they'll face, and what major events are happening behind the scenes while they are at sea.
You'll also want to avoid settling most islands with villages or towns. Deserted and abandoned isles are hotspots for plot hooks and mini-adventures, including anything from a lost treasure from an ancient civilization to rescuing a stranded merchant crew from harpies.
4 Use Random Idea Generators
One of the challenges of running a campaign containing thousands of ships, flags, and diverse characters is having to design and name them every time they appear. Especially when that inevitable player asks you the name of an NPC you made up on the spot. One way to manage this is by using generative tools like FantasyNameGenerators to list dozens of ship names, pirate flag designs, or pirate names as quickly as you can stall for time while typing away behind your DM screen.
While not meant to replace the job of dungeon master, these tools can be valuable for finding inspiration or just saving time. You can also use tools like donjon to generate calendars, track initiatives, map dungeons, or even create treasure maps.
3 Be Careful Using Random Encounters
During early levels of play, random encounters while your players are on the road or at sea can help establish the theme and introduce plot hooks to your players. However, as they level up and narrow their focus, constant random encounters start to bog down the overall story and can even frustrate them, especially if the only thing between them and their goal is the open ocean.
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Every time you introduce a random encounter, it's important that the players directly benefit from the roadblock by the end of it. This can be with a unique magical item, important information, or even an excuse for role-play. Examples can be sirens nesting in the crow's nest of a half-sunken ship, sahuagin sneaking onboard to steal an important item, or a stranded NPC drifting on a rowboat in the middle of the ocean.
2 Decide If Ships Need Resources To Sail
Depending on what your players are looking for and what was discussed during session zero, managing a sailing ship can be a hassle when finding crew and planning long voyages. Ghosts of Saltmarsh adds optional rules for maintaining crew morale that can have significant positive or negative effects depending on what kind of campaign you want for your players.
You might want to consider that requiring resource management could hinder your ability to power scale at later levels. If your players want a large ship with significant firepower, that means a large crew with more mouths to feed, coin to pay them, and a more difficult time maintaining morale. Consider what level you want your campaign to last until and plan resource management accordingly to your players' wishes.
1 Flood Existing Adventures
Coming up with a campaign setting from scratch can be more work than most DMs plan to spend time on, and despite the cover art, Ghosts of Saltmarsh is hardly meant for adventures on the high seas. One easy way to keep the pirate theme and use existing modules is to flood them.
For example, Curse of Strahd contains various locations with important encounters and lore contained within, with very little along the way other than the occasional wolf encounter. By turning these points of interest into islands, you can have the Golden Age campaign on the high seas while having a prebuilt adventure to do most of the work.
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