Some Pirate Lore

[kaladorn]

Since Corsairs are such a wonderful (and excitingly divisive!) topic in the average TU, I thought it might be interesting to have a place to place some interesting links to pirate lore that GMs might adapt to their campaign.

NOTE: This is NOT a place to argue about the merits of piracy or its viability - that has been done and should be done elsewhere.

This is simply a forum (I'm suggesting) to post interesting bits of pirate lore from the real world or from your TU such as might be of interest to a GM planning to run a pirate game or who might wish to use pirates as villains or threats in his or her game.

So, since I had this inspiration, let me start it off with this curious piece:

Four and Twenty Blackbirds - Or - How To Recruit Pirates!

 

[vutpakdi]

Some information on modern sea piracy:

Pirate Attacks Plummet (from the Strategy Pages).

Ron

 

[Hal]

I created a piracy scenario where the pirates make a point of hitting the Steward while the crew is planetside, and making it look like a random act of violence spurred by a "failed protection racket" attempt. The captain, needing a new steward, hires a "temporary" steward for his crew and works the guy in - never realizing that the steward - who only wants work for 2 to 3 months, is really a pirate insider. His task? To be the inside man and to take a passenger manifest of passengers he himself authorizes. As these will all be pirate/hijackers, the Captain of a ship has some major problems. First, the steward makes the coffee etc and can poison the drinks/food in preparation of the hijacking. The steward has limited access to the ship that is more than what the passengers SHOULD have access to. Just make sure that you have a computer expert who can bypass the anti-hijacking software and control the ship once the "uprising" takes place. If needed, the pirates can "jump ship" via vacc suits and be picked up by a fast boat if their hijacking failes (presuming of course that the ship has no functioning turrets!).

 

[kaladorn]

That's interesting. Not a bad adventure seed, though if I let new crew on my ship, I don't necessarily trust them entirely up front. Add to which the Steward does not have access to key computer systems (maybe not even to the Bridge or Engineering without being let in by someone). But the idea is good and maps well to a workable pirate scheme.

 

[Fritz_Brown]

And, of course, kaladorn, those items you mention would be a good part of the role-playing. Maybe the PCs are pax or not-in-the-know new hires, but they can see what's going on, and think the Captain's blind as a bat for NOT seeing it.

 

[Chuck Anumia]

Perhaps the new steward finds out that some of the crew don't agree with all of the captains policies and gets them to give him access to certain programs to mess with the captain, for a joke of course.

 

[kaladorn]

Them'd be the crew I was offering a long walk out a short airlock....

Sure, lots of ways to twist it. But I think that the twist is necessary.

 

[Hal]

Originally posted by kaladorn:
That's interesting. Not a bad adventure seed, though if I let new crew on my ship, I don't necessarily trust them entirely up front. Add to which the Steward does not have access to key computer systems (maybe not even to the Bridge or Engineering without being let in by someone). But the idea is good and maps well to a workable pirate scheme.

That's the point. The Steward isn't likely to have access to either of the Bridge proper or the Engineering proper. The key here is that he has access to the Cargo bay (as part of his job) and has access to the food production facilities as well as the ship's crew lounge and staterooms. If the steward can get to these locations, so can the hijackers with the Steward's assistance.

What would be fun is for some GM reading this to spring this scenario on some poor unsuspecting player(s) with the understanding that he is testing a scenario out. He hands one player the stats on the Steward, and roleplays the "harbor encounter" where the steward character is taken out of action by a seemingly random act of malice. Then have the captain choose between full time stewards looking for a job, and two stewards looking for a working passage type job. Let the "defending" team hire on the temp steward and have the player who originally played the first steward play the second one. Have the data available for the steward's player such that "This steward is a stoolie for the hijackers, your goal is to successfully hijack the ship. The original plan is to poison either the captain or the engineer and somehow gain access to both the bridge and the engineering deck."

It would be interesting to see (in an after action report) what the end results are

Imagine how much fun a devious GM can have by making the Hijacking crew all women for instance (playing on the hidden social concept that women just don't do this!). Imagine doing a mix of innocent passengers and hijackers such that the Hijackers now have hostages? Ah well...