I’ve got a plan in the offing for a ‘seafaring’
Pathfinder game. D&D3.5 characters will also be welcome, but you should be cognizant that such characters will be somewhat underpowered on average. Don’t let that bother you too much, as the most important thing here is personality. As such, I’ll also consider keeping a DM-side character sheet for any freeform players who express an interest and impress me. Everyone should feel welcome.
I'll also accept characters designed in 2nd-Edition AD&D -- I can handle any necessary conversion work behind the scenes.
If you are interested in participating, please respond to this thread with a statement of interest but also send me a PM with relevant character details.
The game will be taking place on a ship in a fantastic version of outer space, in which float countless worlds as well as the realms of the gods. For those of you who are familiar with D&D cosmology, the campaign will be set in the Astral Sea, as described in the 4th Edition
Manual of the Planes and
The Plane Above. The Astral Sea resembles a sort of cross between the astral plane and Outlands/plane of concordant opposition from previous editions of the game.
I hesitate to call this a ‘pirate’ game, but the crew of the vessel will have (or need to develop) a certain flexibility to their morality. It would be more accurate to say that the ship is a well-armed trade vessel in lawless ‘waters,’ or where the only law is unfriendly, and that they behave accordingly. On the whole they are neither heroes nor villains, but count both among their number. I have no objections to either cutthroat scalawags or upstanding Navy officers.
Whichever way you go, however, a character designed for this game must have a strong sense of duty and believe in repaying their debts. Their reasons for this attitude can be their own, and they do not have to like having this sense of duty, but they must like defying it even less. They must also have recently found themselves in a situation from which they required rescuing. The exact nature of the situation is up to you; the threat could be physical, social, or even imaginary, and the rescue could be monetary, diplomatic, or an actual extraction. All that matters is that it was beyond the character’s personal capabilities to rectify or escape.
The third criterion is that they must either be combat-capable, have some kind of sailing or mercantile experience, or both. I have no objection to social-type or other skill-focused characters – in fact I encourage them – but without some kind of sailing, mercantile, or battle experience they would be of little use onboard ship. Beyond these three things, your character is your own, and I encourage you to develop as much detail about them as you can.
On a side note, I actually recommend against creating totally combat-focused characters, as one of the tricks I use to accelerate play-by-post is to encourage non-violent problem solving by making combat brutally unforgiving. If you will need combat in order to feel like you are getting the most out of your character, you may be rolling up a lot of characters. If you’re comfortable with that, then let fly all guns, as they say.
I’ll be hosting this game in the ‘light exotic’ forum, not so much because I expect this to be a sex-themed game but more so that the widest possible range of players can express an interest without me having to specifically avoid adult topics. Sex-themed characters are certainly welcome, although I would encourage prospective players to not neglect the other aspects of their characters’ personalities. It is not my intention to turn away players who are interested in harder stuff, but I hope they will be content with ‘fading to black’ or handling the scene over private messages, this time around.
Please see the
Voyage of the Securis wiki page at
http://elliquiy.com/wiki/Voyage_of_the_Securis for more detailed information. Hope to hear from you.
