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Any D&D/D20

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[Harry Baldman]

If anyone is interested in joining or following along with the game, let me know and I'll make a thread for it with more details/story in the coming weeks.  Playtime would likely run 2-4 hours, either weekly or bi-weekly and my hopes is to have the story over and done in 10-20 sessions, so you have an idea what sort of commitment it would be.  What time of the day we play is very open to discussion as I don't work at all in the winter, and the one dedicated player I have works nights (in USA east) so he said he'll wake up/stay up for any time of the day.

Sign me up! More Pathfinder can only be a good thing.

[Sirus]

Normally I'd agree, but I'm not so keen on making a character only for it to run 10-20 sessions. Gimme something more long-running.

[Harry Baldman]

Normally I'd agree, but I'm not so keen on making a character only for it to run 10-20 sessions. Gimme something more long-running.

Dude, that could run on for half a year or longer. Besides, it's pretty rare for a game to achieve its full aim anyway.

[Sirus]

Half a year isn't all that long with weekly/bi-weekly sessions. In any case, the fact that levels will shoot up from 3 to double-digits in that timeframe means that players probably won't have all that many opportunities to explore new abilities and spells as they earn them.

I prefer a slower-burning game, is all.

[kilakan]

The general idea is to get a group together who I can count on to then be able to run a longer campaign, possibly even continue that one on for a longer time.  As for experience gain, that's actually more indicative of that I tend to make traps/enemies/encounters quite hard.  I figured I'd set a shorter time-frame goal, since the last couple times I've tried to set up a longer campaign, people have rapidly started failing to show up three to five sessions in.

[Tawa]

I wanna run one of those play-by-post Pathfinder games I'm infamous for but I've gotten stuck in worldbuilding: part of me wants to do a game in the vein of Beowulf or Sigurd the Volsung where the players are Norse-ish warriors of incredible skill in fictionalized Viking Age Scandinavia and part of me wants to do a game where the players are pirates in the fictionalized Golden Age of Piracy Caribbean Sea. I've done a lot of research to create rules and restrictions to make the Viking setting more accurate but something seems more captivating about the idea of a pirate setting.

Bluntly, which one sounds more fun?

[Jimmy]

Vikings. You've got your piracy already built in as a Viking raider, but less time spent out on the open sea means less stretches of boring. Vikings were mostly coastal raiders, or you can go Skyrim style of Nord Viking and go delving some ancient crypts.

[BlackFlyme]

Having tried a piracy campaign before, I can say it felt quite boring very quickly. Not as much variety to oceanic combat. Other pirates, pirate hunters, ghost ships, and the occasional kraken/amphibious water beast. Also an obscene amount of downtime between ports.

Go with the Vikings, I'd say. Just don't forget to add ninjas and samurai in there somewhere!
^{Seriously though, I found out that Pathfinder has Viking Ninjas/Samurai in their lore.}

[kilakan]

They also have ninja-swamp dwelling ranger pirates.

[Jimmy]

Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot? Totally doable in Pathfinder.

[My Name is Immaterial]

I wanna run one of those play-by-post Pathfinder games I'm infamous for but I've gotten stuck in worldbuilding: part of me wants to do a game in the vein of Beowulf or Sigurd the Volsung where the players are Norse-ish warriors of incredible skill in fictionalized Viking Age Scandinavia and part of me wants to do a game where the players are pirates in the fictionalized Golden Age of Piracy Caribbean Sea. I've done a lot of research to create rules and restrictions to make the Viking setting more accurate but something seems more captivating about the idea of a pirate setting.

Bluntly, which one sounds more fun?

As someone who's run a pirate setting, pirate games are really focused around player freedom. If the players can do whatever they want, the setting is better. It's great for open ended, sandbox-esque games, and really not fun for either the player or the DM if the DM goes for a more linear experience. The players are going to want to run around, spend an undue amount of time and gold customizing their ship, and basically growing their ego as much as possible.
I can't say I've played a Viking game, but I can imagine it'd work as a linear or open ended game.

[Kadzar]

For a pirate game, one thing you wanna curb is players making all their money just selling captured ships, since it can lead to ridiculous amounts of money coming into their possession very quickly.

Luckily, you can solve this by taking some lessons from reality. By maritime law, all ships must be registered in and fly the flag of a country. And most countries aren't going to be willing to register some ship that has neither proof of legitimacy from the manufacturer or transfer of ownership from the previous owner, so, costly as they are, merchants wouldn't be interested in a captured or stolen ship, as they wouldn't be welcome in most ports (if you happened to come across an abandoned ship or captured a pirate ship, port authorities might be grateful for you surrendering it under their custody, and might be willing to sell it to you, maybe even at a discount).

Meanwhile, pirates present a much smaller market than merchants, as there are less of them, and they will usually already have the ship(s) they need or capture or steal them themselves. If you have a particularly nice ship, someone might be willing to buy it, or they might try to obtain it by other means (though the Pirate's Code will probably stop them from outright stealing from other pirates in most cases). Otherwise someone might be willing to buy an unregistered/untransferred ship for maybe or maybe not legitimate purposes at a significant discount.

If players really want to make money capturing prize ships, they'll need to get some sort of letters of marque.

[My Name is Immaterial]

If players really want to make money capturing prize ships, they'll need to get some sort of letters of marque.

Unless, of course, they have some source of reliable, trustworthy, cheap labor. If they start capturing ships, but the DM doesn't let them sell them, they'd start building a fleet, until each character has a small armada.

[scriver]

There are so much more to the golden age of piracy setting than just piracy, though. Exploring ancient ruins in the jungle for treasure, fighting off indignified depictions of natives, colony politics and intrigue, seducing governors' daughters, insult sword fighting... The usual stuff! Basically, being a pirate just gives you a mobile base. There's no reason the campaign would have to take place at sea.

[Jimmy]

I plan to give my players an adventure hook soon that involves sea travel. Obligatory kraken encounter and repair journey to small tropical island is expected.

Three words: Halfling Barbarian Cannibals.