Tonight I wrapped up a Pathfinder Adventure Path I’ve been running weekly for just over one year: Skull and Shackles, a sandbox pirate campaign. It’s been an amazing ride! Olaria – Human rogue captain whose mother has convinced her her father is Cayden Calien. Solaris – Human fighter first mate and intimidating tank. Deirdre – Forlorn elf who clipped her ears and is an Inquisitor of Norgerber. Hannibal – A human sea Druid formerly apprenticed to the Master of Gales. Selene – A Succubus far from home. We play once a week on Wednesday night, for 3 hours per game. The players have been gaming D&D and/or Pathfinder for 32, 7, 3, 1, and 0 years respectively. And with the exception of the ONE poor male among them, it’s an all-girl group! How I ever convinced myself that teaching a newbie how to game on an admittedly difficult Adventure Path is anyone’s guess but I have some neat anecdotes to share. First, I have great hope for the future. While there were admitted stumbling blocks and some math hurdles for the newest players, overall they tackled the world of gaming and the culture pretty damn well. Admittedly not a fan of any rules even in real life, the rules restrictions on some of the player’s more creative actions frustrated them at times, but overall I let this group ‘slide’ with an extra bonus here or there or let them get away with a little more rules-wise because of their enthusiastic nature. Second, the action and decisions were bloodthirsty and fun. These girls liked interaction and role-playing as much as the next person, but prisoners were keel-hauled, slaves ritually killed to get a minor bonus in combat and captured villagers would be killed then raised into a skeletal night crew. Dark times indeed! With the robust Pathfinder game we all know there were rope-swinging attacks, boarding actions, the threat of drowning for many games, and magic spells you otherwise would never consider. Paizo also graced us with some basic neat ship-to-ship combat rules and fleet battles games that we integrated. Third, thanks to the Pirates of the Caribbean movies everyone had a visual reference that I got to use every chance I got in descriptions and making assumptions about how a bunch of land-lubbers could act like they were old salts. It’s a thrill to describe scenes you’ve done over a hundred times to rookies and watch their faces light up! Of course I had other help as well. A very small handful of respected third party publishers made some PDFs of support material that kept me hip-deep in fellow pirates, crews and ships for them to hunt and scuttle. I had deck plans for the ships, island and port maps to explore and more. In fact there was so much support material, even from Paizo, that the story to eventually win the regatta, gather a fleet and become the Hurricane King was nearly abandoned in favor of just attacking other ships and taking their stuff. Luckily after a while they needed to move onto other things. When we started they woke up unconscious in a brig having been press-ganged to serve a vile pirate lord. After taking on a second ship they ran aground on an island, worked their way up to infamy collecting plunder and vile points and became a terror of the shipping lanes in their own right. They slowly gathered allies and discovered a plot to sell out the freedom of the shackles to Cheliax. By the time the final session came they had gathered a fleet of pirates to fend off a great Chelish armada and put down the Hurricane King of Port Peril to steal his crown and appoint the First ever Hurricane Queen to the Shackles’ throne! While it’s been a tough schedule at times Dawn and I would still light up coming home from work realizing it was a “girl’s game” night!
