Quote from: Soylent Green;587340Setting aside system considerations, how would you run a cinematic Space Pirate campaign? By cinematic I mean that the space pirates aren't really evil; they may plunder but it's done with style and daring.

Random thoughts:

- Who is the Enemy, thus capitalised? Have a good enemy that the PCs can raid / fight against without moral baggage. Others have addressed this already. An evil empire, nasty corporations, hostile aliens, etc..

- What's the loot? Piracy is all about loot, so you should make it interesting. This, of course, ties into the wider context of the setting. What sort of things are being transported between planets / solar systems and why? If your typical pirate loot is a small case of diamonds, why is it so? Are they industrial diamonds, and if so, what are they used for? Are they jewellery? If so, who's going to buy them, is there a local aristocracy with money to burn on useless luxuries (and who might become important later on)? Is data good loot? Without FTL communications, that only way to transmit any sort of data from private correspondence to corporate records is to put them on datacard or something and load it on a ship. Are foodstuffs or medicine good loot, are planets self-sufficient in these (in which case most stuff would be grown locally, so less cargo of the type)? Are a million cubic meters of construction-grade concrete and corrugated metal good loot? Who will buy that off the pirates, and won't the Construction Worker's Union send their hitmen after the PCs?

- What are the pirates' toys? Age of Sail pirates have cool toys: cutlasses, rapiers, pistols, a fast ship, cannon with a variety of shot, grappling hooks, etc.. What do space pirates have? Again, this ties into the technological assumptions of the setting. What's the weaponry like? How do they take over an enemy ship? Shoot the engines and guns with lasers until they blow up? EMP mine floating in space? Computer virus? Breaching pod? Teleporter? Docking clamps? How do they find their quarry? Are ships easily spotted from halfway across the system, or do you need special sensors? Do you need special equipment to trace another ship's hyperspace jump? Do you need to lower the victim's guard by stealing the radio transponder codes of local law enforcement craft and masquarade as one of them?

1.) Watch Captain Blood, The Sea Hawk, and The Buccaneer
2.) replace wooden ships with space ships.
3.) stir

If you like manga you could also check out Crossbone Gundam. Sadly it's only available in Japanese or as scanlations, but it's a pretty awesome mix of pirates and mecha.



That's right, their ship has beam sails.

I think one big difference comes in whether you're running Space Opera or Hard Sci-fi.

If you're running Space Opera, your pirates should be basically charicatures, noble or dastardly, but essentially 17th century swashbucklers in the stars. The real consequences of what they imply should not be examined.

If you're running harder sci-fi then space pirates should be the most criminal of monsters, dooming people to a cold grave in the void, and real source of terror for anyone who travels the depths of the cosmos.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;589294If you're running harder sci-fi then space pirates should be the most criminal of monsters, dooming people to a cold grave in the void, and real source of terror for anyone who travels the depths of the cosmos.

Angus Thermopyle in Donaldson's Gap series is a good example of that archetype.

Quote from: RPGPundit;589294I think one big difference comes in whether you're running Space Opera or Hard Sci-fi.

If you're running Space Opera, your pirates should be basically charicatures, noble or dastardly, but essentially 17th century swashbucklers in the stars. The real consequences of what they imply should not be examined.

If you're running harder sci-fi then space pirates should be the most criminal of monsters, dooming people to a cold grave in the void, and real source of terror for anyone who travels the depths of the cosmos.

All true, though I thought I had specified my interest was in "cinematic pirates" in my original post with the accent on style and daring rather than realistic  and evil.

Quote from: Soylent Green;589314All true, though I thought I had specified my interest was in "cinematic pirates" in my original post with the accent on style and daring rather than realistic  and evil.

Ok, well then, Captain Harlock it is, then!

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;589294I think one big difference comes in whether you're running Space Opera or Hard Sci-fi.

If you're running Space Opera, your pirates should be basically charicatures, noble or dastardly, but essentially 17th century swashbucklers in the stars. The real consequences of what they imply should not be examined.

If you're running harder sci-fi then space pirates should be the most criminal of monsters, dooming people to a cold grave in the void, and real source of terror for anyone who travels the depths of the cosmos.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Soylent Green;589314All true, though I thought I had specified my interest was in "cinematic pirates" in my original post with the accent on style and daring rather than realistic  and evil.

I wouldn't discount a dash of realism to make the setting more believeable, though.

See, Pundit is wrong in his concept of realistic pirates being the most criminal of monsters. Realistic pirates view piracy as a business - which means finding secure ports of call to effect ship repairs, resupply, and sell the plundered goods. Crews and passengers would not be killed outright, since there can be a lot of money made from selling back hostages or even human trafficking/slavery. All of the above can be used for great adventure hooks even in a cinematic space pirates game.

Quote from: jeff37923;589557I wouldn't discount a dash of realism to make the setting more believeable, though.

See, Pundit is wrong in his concept of realistic pirates being the most criminal of monsters. Realistic pirates view piracy as a business - which means finding secure ports of call to effect ship repairs, resupply, and sell the plundered goods. Crews and passengers would not be killed outright, since there can be a lot of money made from selling back hostages or even human trafficking/slavery. All of the above can be used for great adventure hooks even in a cinematic space pirates game.

You're dead right here, Jeff. If you're running a hard SF setting or even a moderately hard one like traveller, pirates who are psychotic monsters should not last long.

If a pirate is in it for profit, maybe because he and his kind can't or won't live under some sort of oppressive regime, say, and needs the material goods to survive, he wants the goods. So he might contact a target vessel and offer to let the vessel and all aboard go unharmed if they hand over some cargo. A captain of a cargo ship might agree to this if the only alternative was death.

If the pirates are going to murder or enslave you in any event, you might self destruct the ship and cargo, which leave the pirate with nothing, or worse if he was close to your ship when you detonated it.

You need to decide what you want your pirates to be, heroes, villains or neutrals and how plausible you want your setting to be. In pure space opera anything goes and pirates can be stupid thugs and psychopaths.

I never liked the idea of stark raving insane evil for evil's sake pirates. There were pirates like them and they didn't last as long as the rational, calculating ones.

Quote from: jeff37923;589557See, Pundit is wrong in his concept of realistic pirates being the most criminal of monsters. Realistic pirates view piracy as a business - which means finding secure ports of call to effect ship repairs, resupply, and sell the plundered goods. Crews and passengers would not be killed outright, since there can be a lot of money made from selling back hostages or even human trafficking/slavery. All of the above can be used for great adventure hooks even in a cinematic space pirates game.

You knonw, even through the soft lens of genre conventions, I'm pretty sure  human trafficking and slavery fall under the heading 'most criminal of monsters'.

Quote from: red lantern;589580You're dead right here, Jeff. If you're running a hard SF setting or even a moderately hard one like traveller, pirates who are psychotic monsters should not last long.

I won't be running a hard SF setting and if the player choose to play psychotic monsters I will choose not to run the game. The pitch "cinematic pirates" I would hope would address both of these concerns.

QuoteYou need to decide what you want your pirates to be, heroes, villains or neutrals and how plausible you want your setting to be. In pure space opera anything goes and pirates can be stupid thugs and psychopaths.

Yes and no. The choice between heroic, villainous or something in between is going to come from the players. With the campaign pitch I would aim to set a general tone and ensure that we think about things in terms of "Star Wars" rather than "Broadwalk Empire" so that the system choice and NPCs and situations I create are consistent with each other. But within those parameters it's the player character's actions that will determine how we perceive them.

Or you put in another way as a GM, in order to foster the light, cinematic touch it's my job to present genre appropriate situations. So for instance I should avoid presenting situations in which killing all the witnesses, men, women and children is the most practical, rational option and instead offer opportunities to raid cargo ships belonging to greedy mega-corporations known to exploit the indigenous sentient population. Whether the characters then decide to go help the exploited indigenous sentient population and do the heroic thing isn't my call.

Quote from: Soylent Green;589608You knonw, even through the soft lens of genre conventions, I'm pretty sure  human trafficking and slavery fall under the heading 'most criminal of monsters'.

Point taken, but a most criminal of monsters would not approach piracy as a potentially profitable business venture. Which, may be far more vile.

Quote from: jeff37923;589557I wouldn't discount a dash of realism to make the setting more believeable, though.

See, Pundit is wrong in his concept of realistic pirates being the most criminal of monsters. Realistic pirates view piracy as a business - which means finding secure ports of call to effect ship repairs, resupply, and sell the plundered goods. Crews and passengers would not be killed outright, since there can be a lot of money made from selling back hostages or even human trafficking/slavery. All of the above can be used for great adventure hooks even in a cinematic space pirates game.

Problem is, in space (if you're being somewhat realistic) it would be very hard to take a vessel without putting it in a place where if not outright destroyed, it would be a floating coffin for all aboard.  The taking of hostages may work in some situations, but would be highly impractical in others (there's limited space; plus it puts the pirates in a more difficult situation; if they're "privateers" of some kind, working with the backing of some rogue world, that might do it, but aside from that, it would be much riskier for space pirates to arrange for hostage exchanges than it would be to just strike anonymously).

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;589949Problem is, in space (if you're being somewhat realistic) it would be very hard to take a vessel without putting it in a place where if not outright destroyed, it would be a floating coffin for all aboard.  The taking of hostages may work in some situations, but would be highly impractical in others (there's limited space; plus it puts the pirates in a more difficult situation; if they're "privateers" of some kind, working with the backing of some rogue world, that might do it, but aside from that, it would be much riskier for space pirates to arrange for hostage exchanges than it would be to just strike anonymously).

RPGPundit

In EvE Online, space piracy worked precisely because the alternative to not turning over your cargo was getting blasted into the frozen vastness of space.  We would gate camp a stystem gate, tackle the target ship (prevent it from warping away), take it down to about 25% hull strength, and then make the demand....  "Jettison your cargo or lose your ship!"  It almost always worked, if the tackle worked.  Ransoms were always honored, otherwise no one would ever surrender their cargo and you would often get less from their salvage than from what they'd hand over.

As far as inspiration materials go, reading some Alexander Dumas wouldn't steer you off course. Also there's an interesting anime called Gankutsuo which translates the Count of Monte Cristo into a space opera setting.