Subject:
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A couple rounds of Evil Stevie's Pirate Game
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.pirates
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Date:
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Sat, 2 Dec 2006 04:32:03 GMT
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For his 17th birthday, my son David asked to get some of his friends together
and play Evil Stevie’s Pirate Game. This sounded like fun, except that:
- I had never played ESPG
- I had never game-mastered (well, once, but that was 16 years ago)
- We didn’t have enough pirate lego
No problem, right? Ha.
So over the course of two months, I dug out the pirate ship sets, bought parts
off Bricklink, studied everything available online about the game, desparately
tried to find photographic evidence that anyone had ever built a 10-wide ‘brig’,
built a small fleet of cutters, wrote up combat reference sheets, read more,
built more, drove my wife crazy more, made some islands ...
You get the picture.
Anyway, long story short, we got together on November 3rd and had a blast.
Well, I had a blast as the GM. I think the players had fun. There were 5
teenagers playing, Kristin played hostess and official photographer. We had
pirate music, birthday cake, lots of Arrr!s and some sailing and looting.
Kristin dressed up with a big parrot-head hat. We ended up playing from about
1pm until we had to break up at 6pm (we had another thing to go do). As an
added bonus, each player got to take home the cutter he started out with.
Since I had never played before, and neither had most of the pirates, we took it
easy -- everyone started with a cutter, and they were split up into 2 alliances,
with one side trying to take out the other. Nobody actually ended up sinking
anyone else, but we had fun trying. At the very end of the game, we had just
started doing some encounters, but no one had a chance to capture a prize yet.
After putting all that effort in preparations, and since it was so much fun, we
decided to do it again. On the Saturday after Thanksgiving, we all got together
again (well, actually, only 2 of the original players could come back), and we
did a full scale game. Players sailed around, landing on islands to search for
treasure, or trying to capture whatever ships they found. This time, Kristin
dressed up in a pirate maid dress -- in 80’s pastel colors. It was a long day -
we started setting up about 10am, and played until 9:30pm! Definitely more fun
the second time. :)
We played the game mostly as a sail-and-shoot, with the addition of the
encounter rules from the campaign game. All the islands were laid out the whole
time. A couple of people made it back to port for trading, but not many - at
one point, I offered a double-speed bonus for anyone who headed directly to
port. Nobody ended up landing, they all got distracted.
We didn’t have any major issues, except that the GM didn’t seem to be able to
keep track of which turn we were on. A small whiteboard to mark the turn number
would be a good thing. Any other issues (like too many turns with a light wind)
I just worked out as we went along.
The only real deviation I made from the rules was with the special abilities --
instead of having players buy special abilities for their crew using bonus
points, I assigned specific types minifigs to be the special characters. The
special character were mixed into the random pirate box, and were pulled out as
part of normal crew selections. Eliminating the bonus points really simplified
startup -- players created their captain minifig, picked a cutter, and I handed
them a crew. If a player got a special character with non-standard weapons
bonuses, I would give the player the choice of getting the standard
pistol-and-cutlass, or taking the special weapon for that character.
Besides simplifying startup, the special characters also made it easy to put up
NPC crews with special abilities. And added a random flavor element. Since
most of the ‘specials’ are pretty minor, it didn’t make a lot of difference.
The only special that makes a great deal of difference is the Loyal Henchman --
you need him so you can sail more than one ship, or leave an ‘away team’ on an
island. We never really got to the point where we desparately needed more LH’s,
although the players were definitely aware of the issue. Toward the end, since
Navigators were basically useless in our arena (there wasn’t really any way to
get lost) I ruled that Navigator figs were also Loyal Henchman (making sure no
one actually had a Navigator already). But it didn’t end up coming into play.
I put up a listing of the special characters at
http://www.lugnet.com/~699/pirates/evilstevie/specials.
We did use rulers, with the 4-studs-equals-one-inch rule. I missed the point
about reducing the cannon no-penalty distance from 24” to 18” -- I think that
makes sense.
A few high points from the second session:
John Falstaff and Bryon Scar (who were sailing together) had the misfortune of
running into a Navy brig in turn 3. The ensuing battle was inconclusive, but
the Navy boat managed to knock out both of their cannons, and they had no cash
to buy new cannons. :( So they sailed around for awhile, until they figured out
to go look for treasure on islands.
Later, Dave Blackbeard had captured his first prize, a merchant cutter. Trying
to figure out how to keep the ship without risking a coup, he ended up towing
the ship to a nearby island. Then he forced the surviving merchants to search
for treasure. One of the merchants found treasure, and unsuccessfully tried to
hide the discovery. So David had the unlucky merchant flogged, sailed the
merchant’s ship away from the island, and lit it on fire. Then he sailed away,
with the treasure. (He earned a reputation point for that interaction).
Unfortunately, he had failed to take the wind into account. Within a couple of
turns, the wind blew the ship back to the island. The merchants climbed aboard,
and began fire-control efforts.
In the meantime, Bryon Slash had arrived, in order to rescue/recruit the
merchants. After waffling a bit on timing, several of his men joined the
merchants in trying to control the fire. Alas, their efforts were for naught.
With a mighty crash, the mast fell into the sea (narrowly missing the local
shark, who was lurking about). Finally, the firefighters were forced to abandon
ship, as it burst into flames.
(BTW, what does a “fire marker” look like? I had lotsa flame pieces on hand,
but nothing to attach them to!)
So the former merchants happily joined Bryon’s merry crew, and they sailed away,
leaving the shark to toast marshmallows over the wreck. (I’ve got to put a
firefighter’s helmet on Brian’s captain for next time...)
A second amusing bit was “Honest” Hans (not his real made-up pirate name). This
player would attempt any deal with anyone -- he offered assistance to one player
in return for getting the ship the other player would be abandoning after
capturing the new, larger, prize. In another gambit, he offered to split a
captured cargo with a player in return for the player’s Old Salt crewmember (the
Old Salt ended up trying to sail away on the captured cutter, and they had to
recapture the ship). When Hans retires, he will probably go into used-car
sales.
They left that recaptured ship anchored by an empty island, thinking they might
be able to return for it later. After a bit, I ended up planting an engineer
character on the island. It took the engineer a few turns (spent exploring the
island, no doubt) to discover the ship. He then swam out to the ship, and began
happily repairing it. If time hadn’t run out, he would have sailed away,
starting his own piratical career.
Late in the game, pirate Aaron landed on a mysterious island, and began
searching it for signs of treasure. His Loyal Henchman discovered a cave, which
he proceeded to enter. There was a great flash of light from the cave, and to
the crew’s horror, they were confronted with a horde of skeletons -- each
wielding twin cutlasses. (the fun part was the 5 minutes I spent equipping
skeletons with cutlasses and placing them on the island. There’s a skeleton,
and there’s a skeleton, and there’s a skeleton. Are we done yet? No, there’s
still more open space...) David was counseling Aaron to “abandon island” -
which he did, after the dismal results of the first round. But one of his
crewmen climbing the island’s lone palm tree, and proceeded to try to shoot the
odd, mummy-like figure which was now standing over the cave. With a 6” distance
penalty, he managed to nail the shot (after 3 turns of trying). In a second
flash of light, as great as the first, the island, the cave, the mummy, and all
the skeletons disappeared. Aaron was disappointed that there was no treasure,
but his captain was now an Expert Captain, and the skilled pistolman was now
recognized as an Expert Marksman.
Most of the ships we used were standard LEGO ships - we had 14 different cutters
that were based on the small ship in set 6277. We also had a Cross Bone
Clipper, Renegade Runner, 2 copies of the Armada Flagship, Imperial Flagship,
Caribbean Clipper, Black Seas Barracuda, and a Durmstrang Ship. And a small
fleet of Islander Catamarans.
We also had a number of MOC’s. They may not be much to look at, but they did
the job.
This is Jamie’s big pirate ship, cut down from a class 8 (four center sections)
to a class 6 (two center sections).
This is a class 5 (12-wide hull, 3 center sections) that David and I did a
shared build on -- I built the bottom, and he finished the top.
This is a class 3 (12-wide hull, 1 center section) with the sterncastle from a
Red Beard Runner grafted on -- I had to have the screaming skull. :)
David built an ‘stealth’ class 2 ship, dark gray hull, all black slopes on top,
but we didn’t take any good pictures of it. I’ll take some pictures of it next
time.
We also made 3 brigs, using the 10-wide bow bricks and plates.
This was the last ship I built. The sterncastle suffered from lack of time.
Ahh, good old #560. I think this one came out the best of the lot. The
influence of the 6277 cutter is pretty obvious.
Aaron had the blue brig when he mounted his (unknowning) assault on Skeleton
Island. This ship came out pretty well, I think.
When I buying parts from BrickLink, I was ... impressed ... with the cost of
cannons. To help ease the bite, I custom-built smaller cannons to use on the
cutters. At first, I tried to duplicate LEGO’s cannons as closely as possible,
but I never came up with anything that was satisfactory. I know the end result
isn’t protypical of anything, but it was practical for game purposes.
Finally, most of the islands were somewhat thrown together. For Wind Island, I
had an idea to build a large compass rose. I like how it reinforces the idea of
the playing field as a big map. :) Jamie built the tower. What you can’t see
is the GM minifig in the tower’s control room. Nothing shall escape the
all-seeing eye! Arrr!
You can see the rest of the pictures at
http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/sebliss/PirateGame, post-moderation.
Steve
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