Okay, so.

The last time I was here, about two years ago, I tried running a game.

Then, just as I was starting it, RL intervened, in the form of my GF breaking up with me and I'll admit, that sorta...sucked the enjoyment out of everything for me. My apologies to those who were playing. Totally uncool of me to just walk off like that.

Annnnyway, two years+ later, I've gone from employed then to unemployed to, now, in school.

A punishing schedule, and I need something...anything...to blow off steam with.

So, I'm going to set this out in two sections: One, specs I'm looking for games to play in...Two, thoughts re games I'd be willing to GM.

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So far as play goes:

My system knowledge used to be good, but has now declined to just sort of passable.

Hence, I'm avoiding playing hackers, technomancers, or magic-users...Just straight physical-types for me, right now.

SR4 only...4 or 4a, I care not which.

I prefer 400 bp-ish campaigns.

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As far as GMing goes:

I can do a variety of scenarios. Simple shadowrunners are okay - I'd also be willing to do a mercenary or cyberpirates campaign.

Because of my current weakness re system knowledge, expect any campaign I run to be high on plot, low on crunch - possibly changing as I become more confident, but I'm not sure. I like it a bit better that way anyway - over the last few years, my roleplaying has come almost exclusively through MUSHes, MOOs, and PBEM groups. I'm adapted to that.

I'd work out the details of any campaign with those playing, of course.
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So, um, yeah.

Thus is where I stand.

Hmmm...mercenary or cyberpirates could be interesting. I've been itching to get back into online games since getting back from Dragon*Con.

I'm pretty new to this site, and to SR4e in general, but I'd love to get involved with ... well, anything, really. I've just put up a character on the Cast of Shadows thread; check it out and see if you might be interested in working with me. I'm mostly interested in forum RP over, say, IRC or something where I'd have to be online for a certain period of time every few nights. My wife and I just had our first child, so I'm really super-busy. I've still got plenty of time to sit down and write a few forum bits each day, but anything more regular is probably out.

-milk.

I'm up to joining a game! Honestly, over the forum posts would work best with my schedule, but I can see about fitting about a chat or Skype game.

This would definitely be a forum game - perhaps even email if people want that.

I don't have Skype, and I'm not sure I type fast enough for a chat game.

Cool, I'd be very down for a forum game.

Sounds like there's a fair amount of interest in a forum game, how soon could we pull something together? And is there anything potential players could do to help?

-milk.

I'd be very much interested in playing a forum game. Pretty much any topic would do. I need something fun to do to kill the morning hours before I gotta get my butt in to work.

I've played SR4 quite a bit, even ran it. I'm kind of new to forum game type things, but I'm pretty sure I could gel well. If who ever is running wants help with rules and stuff, I would gladly lend a hand, but honestly I really want to play.

Pretty much any character is fine with me, whatever the team needs. I know I haven't played a mage in a good long while...

If you can use another player I'm up for this, though if there's limited room I'll bow out for someone who isn't in a game already.

I've been meaning to play a mundane character, honestly. It'd be interesting to see how such a team would work without magic/hacker support, though perhaps we may need some minor hacking.

You guys next need to pick a theme. I'll then pick (or draw up) the starting location...

Themes:

Mercs. You'd be a squad-sized unit at first, though I could see money being invested to expand to platoon or company size.
Cyberpirates - this campaign would likely have espionage/investigatory elements to it, not just shooty. Not pirates so much as privateers.
Straight shadowrunners - is what it says on the box.

Regardless of theme: I'm not a fan of Pink Mohawk style play, I personally didn't like the 80s, but neither am I the type to necessarily overworry on the details. Regardless of theme, expect me to be ruthlessly realistic on the sociopolitical and economic (setting stuff) where it makes sense, but to be somewhat cinematic otherwise.

Majority vote wins. If there's a tie, the lowest vote getter drops out and we move to a runoff.

I can take any number of people, up to 10. After you pick theme and I present the first draft of the setting, I'll lay out expectations for characters.

I'm looking for an SR4A-compliant character generator, btw. Can't seem to find one....And too clueless to figure out how to mod an existing one to be compliant.

Expect this to be a game with a weekly-ish pace. I'll try to post more often, but I'm going back to school at the moment, too, to become a paralegal. That being said - weekly means weekly or better. Activity matters in online RP, and I will likely be ruthless on that score, both to myself and to you all.

Does anybody know where I could find a copy of the old 20 (or 50) questions thing? I'm a big fan of detailed characters, even detailed NPCs when I can help it.

Can't be of much help on an SR4a Char Generator or a way to track down the questions, but my money is on a Privateer campaign.

A large pack of shadowrunning smugglers sounds like it could be tons of fun. I'm definitely not a Pink Mohawk kind of player, last Gen Con I got through almost 30 hours of Shadowrun without emptying a clip. Planning first, the doing the job, THEN crazy wacky plans to escape.

Is it too late to jump in?

I'm up for whatever, but I wouldn't mind some straight 'running.

There's an updated Excel Character Generator that works really well.

I'm on my way out the door for work right now, but I wanted to post to let you know again that I'm interested, and to say that when I get home tonight I'll post my 2c on what I'd like from the setting as well. And thanks again for putting something together for us, man. I know I appreciate it.

- milk.

Not at all.

As I connect from school (damn bus slotted me to get here almost 2 hours BEFORE my class, and my laptop's battery doesn't run nearly so long), some quick thoughts:

We have...4? 5? right now...Good size. I can handle up to 10 before I go "Ahhh my poor brain". It's really "the more the merrier". If by chance we go *beyond* 10? Then I grab someone to help GM. Until that point, I'll be the only GM.

If we wind up with a 3-way tie, I'm going to pick a theme at random to knock out. By random, I mean I'm going to close my eyes, point at the screen, and do 'eeny meeny miny moe'. No, I'm not kidding. We'll then do a run-off vote between the two remaining. If we get a situation where we have a plurality (nobody gets 50%+1), the lowest vote-getter goes byebye and we vote again.

Once we have a theme, I'll figure out a name and set up the OOC thread for character-building. Figure it will take me 2-3 days to write up setting stuff, decide on chargen requirements, and post it all up.

For now, I'm going to set a deadline on the voting at Wednesday night, 2359 US Eastern Daylight Time.

Sign me up for sure.

I've been into the Shadowrun setting for quite a while (played the Sega game when I was a kid, and really got me hooked), but I've got very little experience actually playing the RPG. Having said that, I'd personally prefer more of a straight-up Shadowrunner type game, you know? But I'm really not picky; I'll be happy just to play, no matter what theme we decide on. Standard character creation rules, right? 400bp? I've got a character I'm slowly fleshing out over on the Cast of Shadows thread that may work, depending on where you want to place your story, but I've got a few other guys swimming around in my head at the moment -- any of them would be cool to play.

Let me know if there's any way I can help or contribute in the meantime.

-milk.

Are you alright with a mage Penta? I can go with a mundane if you're not comfortable, have several characters I'm developing on the side.

Like milk ducks I too have an ex-military guy (mage healer/scout) that I've been trying to flesh out, and I'd be interested in playing him. If you want to go with a straight up experience I'm good with that too.

I'm fine with mages - don't expect much in the way of crunchiness, but I can handle whatever you guys throw at me.

Guys - hold off on developing characters till a theme is picked.

Turns out the first class of real estate law was even more dreadfully boring than I thought it could be (shame it's a required course), so I had time to think.

I will almost certainly have certain skill and/or contact requirements in mind as I write setting consistent with whatever theme is picked.

With that said:

Please please please -pick- a theme. If you're okay with anything? Great! But just saying "I'll play whatever" doesn't help me figure out which of the three themes I set out above (mercs, normal shadowrunners, cyberpirates) you want to go with - or which one to work on.

I need some guidance.

I prefer cyberpirates or normal shadowrunners.

I'd definitely like to play in a cyberpirates/cyberprivateers game.

Straight runners or cyberpirates/privateers sounds good to me.

Not a lot of combat eh? No worries there.

Straight shadowrunning is easily my first choice for a theme, followed by Cyber-privateering (though to be honest, I'm not 100% sure I understand exactly what that entails -- but I'm sure it's nothing I can't wrap my head around). The merc company idea is a good one, but it rounds out the bottom of my personal list.

- milk.

Straight running is my vote.

Here's the 20 questions:

A privateer is an authorized pirate, in essence... they have a letter of marque from a government (or in 2072, a corporation). Say the new government of the Philipines doesn't like a particular corp... they'd give letters of marque to people with armed ships and say "Go attack (other government or corporation's) shipping and take their stuff."

Cyberpirates gets my vote.

Oh, really? Yeah, that doesn't appeal to me at all. If that ends up being the selected theme, though, I'll give it a go.

-milk.

Definitely still liking the cyberpirates plan. Even though we have been using the word "privateer", I'm not sure if that was the exact theme intended by Penta. Also, even if we were "corporate sponsored" we'd likely be way out on boats by ourselves left to our own devices nine time out of ten.

I think it could be really interesting turning it into a profitable smuggling route and knocking over some corp boats too big for their breeches.

You're right, CD: The description given makes it sound much too much like you guys are just shadowrunners on the water.

Nope!

The way I see it, any privateer angle will come from the occasional mission you can pick up from contacts...But most of the time, you guys will be finding your own targets, exactly as described in the old Cyberpirates book.

Ohhh, I remember that book now!! *runs into the basement to try to dig it up*

(Still sounds awesome btw)

For those of us who don't have it, can you guys expand a tad?

Seems like we'd be pirates who occasionally get offers from corps or whatever to prey on a specific target. But otherwise we'd be smuggling and pirating on our own. What do you do in your spare time then? We look for our own targets?

Yeah. Or training, or other things.

You'll have, as I see it, a primary sponsor (the lot who issues you the Letter of Marque that ensures you don't get hanged for piracy).

They issue this letter in exchange for occasional missions (which also bring money with them). Otherwise, you find your own targets, fence whatever you might capture, plan your own actions. Keep in mind that this theme puts a lot of the work on your end - I may dish out missions, but 90-99% of the time, you'll be responsible for moving the story along.

In reality, the occasional mission from your sponsor(s) is a way to nudge you into activity when things seem drifting, from a GM perspective. Sometimes the missions will be on the water, sometimes they'll be on land. I guess I kinda fibbed a bit, without meaning to: the Cyberpirates campaign will sometimes be a lot like regular shadowrunning. The merc campaign will occasionally see you on the water.

The difference is in the sort of focus.
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Similarly, straight shadowrunning will fill all the tropes of Shadowrun so far as that goes. I reserve the right to mix things up, but shadowrunning is shadowrunning.

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The merc theme, in my humble opinion, is a choice if you ever wondered what military ops in the Sixth World are like. I learned to read, I shit you not, with technothrillers...and while my understanding is rather more advanced nowadays, I still try to keep up with matters military.

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My current issues:

Not a showstopper but potentially one:
I fully admit to not really, uh...knowing the rigging rules for SR4. At all. I especially have NO IDEA how to build vehicles, something that seems a major gap. I don't know if a way exists to convert vehicles from Rigger 3 Revised to SR4(A) - if one did, it'd make life a lot easier.

Not a showstopper at all, but it'd be nice if we could fix this:
SR, it suddenly strikes me, could really use mass combat rules. It has none at present, capping the size of any battle at about 10 entities (be they people, vehicles, ships) as a practical matter...If someone were to play and help me create some, I would be grateful.

Not at all a showstopper:
Similarly, I have no idea whatsoever how one would work air-to-ground or surface-to-air or air-to-ship combat.

And finally, a curiosity point:
Does anyone know of a program to get automatically-calculated range/radius circles on maps? I think Google Earth Pro can do it, but that costs deep money I don't have.
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Yeah, you read that right. Regardless of the theme picked, I'm a GM who will in many cases be relying on you the players to help me out.

Your GM, in case you don't know me, is somewhat disabled (mostly blind, to be exact) IRL...and, oh yes, currently a poor student, having recently gone back to school after long unemployment.

Hence, I'm a big fan of free ways to get things done. One of which is essentially off-loading the stuff I don't know how to do, or can't do, to you all. Don't worry, I'll still be doing the majority of the GMly work. It's just the occasional thing I may go "Okay, need help here".

I will (potentially regularly) post, on the OOC thread (after we get started), the odd request - for help mapping and illustrating things, for help with rules, etc. These will often come with 'bounties': The best submission may get Karma, for example. The catch is that to keep things moving, they'll often also come with a deadline, after which the reward gets reduced, progressively, until it reaches nil.

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These posts always come out rambling. Lo siento.

I have not personally found anything to make updating drones and vehicles from 3rd to 4th easy peasy. That said, I've been playing a drone rigger in missions for quite some time and I know Arsenal has really simple rules for vehicles and upgrades. I'd gladly help you out with some sort of ship or whatever you would need stated out for the party. Of course, you may not want me stating out the drones of our enemies...


Vehicle combat rules in SR4 are a LOT less crunchy then they were in 3. A lot of it is very much "make a check, make something cinematic happen". Generally when it comes to car chases or VTOL crash tests I'm cool with that, of course, if we are going to be firing salvos at other vessels all the time we might have to work something up taking what they have now as a base. Or you could keep the rules as-is and focus on the actually boarding of the enemy vessel...if we are seeking loot, we'll be sure not to sink them!



I can't help you here.

It would be a lot more open-ended and PC-directed than a "vanilla" shadowrun... Instead of "Go to this company's building at this time and steal this device, and then leave this powdered paint in the vice-president's showerhead on your way out, it would be something like "Renraku ships a lot of goods through this area of the ocean that you happen to have a heavily armed boat full of dangerous people on. Do us a favor and sink/steal all you can, would you? That'd be great. We'll tell the navy to look the other way."

And @Penta, vehicle customization is a lot easier in 4e than 3... there's no more messing around with how many cubic feet you have... you get X number of modification slots and each item or mod takes up so many... Cars have between 4 and 14 slots, so there's not a massive amount of fiddling around you can do.

Knight: That solves one of my concerns...

However, one reason I was asking if anybody had converted R3R vehicles to SR4?

The targets...And the vessel you'll be using as a base. Both are likely to be rather bigger than anything in the book, at least on the target end. (A modern freighter is huuuge.)

I think there are a few such projects (SR3 to SR4 conversions) but a quick search doesnt' reveal much.

http://www.knasser.me.uk/content/shadowrun/cargoship.pdf <- 134m cargo ship

http://www.gods-inc.de/macavity/IsleOfShad...cles/ships.html <- various nifty vehicles, though I think with SR3 stats.

Oooh, thanks.

Most cargo ships are pretty standard, so I only need a few types to play with.

If they're that big, doesn't that mean they just need a floorplan instead of a whole set of stats? Given the up-close and personal killing skills that SR characters can get, a perfectly viable piracy method would be using jetskis to zip up to the cargo ship, board it and engage the crew with small arms and hand to hand. More economical than firing anti-ship missiles at it, and it saves you effort if you if you can just pilot the ship to Local Lawless Hellhole Port and unload it there with non-union labor, rather than doing it yourselves at sea.

I have no comment.

If you're still taking on more scallywags, I'd like to report for duty as well; arr.
Oh, and I vote for the cyberpirates theme.

Arrr. This makes...6? Unless I'm counting wrong?

Well, that all depends, zipping in on Jet Skis seems more then a little risky...however, I do agree that stating something that big out would prove generally difficult and that thinking of it as a building might be better. Unless you anticipate going into full scale ship combat, but that doesn't seem very profitable to even the most ballsy of privateers.

If you want to take a ship you will need more then just kill-o-matics on jetskis. You are going to need to conceal your approach for as long as possible (I'm thinking magic tri-D phatasms or the like coupled with a dedicated hacker) and then you are going to need to ensure that nobody aboard the ship can radio for help. Likely we could be in and out before the help actually arrived, but why take that risk?

After you've incapacitated the guards and crew, you don't just have a free boat. Freighters are going to have all sorts of security, and as soon as it goes missing (likely as soon as we are forced to jam communications and the freighter drops off RADAR) its going to be wanted. You can't just take a ship like that into a port, even if it is ridiculously corrupt. You are going to need an expert face with connections at multiple ports of harbor to have even a chance of getting a ship into port, not to mention off loading all the stolen goods.

Perhaps the most efficient way would be to realize that time is on our side. Take the freighter (assuming we ever actually have the fire power to snag one) spend months with a dedicated hacker and rigger cleaning the ship of every identifying mark and waiting for the heat to die down. Then maybe MAYBE you could sell something so huge.

On the up side, just about every character type would be required to pull this off. Personally I'm toying around with the idea of making a Phys Ad capable of boarding and taking down the opposition as well as having face skills and connections in maybe half a dozen ports of harbor. Sort of a half face/half short range combatant. Anyone got a problem with me being the face of the team?

Well, that all depends, zipping in on Jet Skis seems more then a little risky...however, I do agree that stating something that big out would prove generally difficult and that thinking of it as a building might be better. Unless you anticipate going into full scale ship combat, but that doesn't seem very profitable to even the most ballsy of privateers.

If you want to take a ship you will need more then just kill-o-matics on jetskis. You are going to need to conceal your approach for as long as possible (I'm thinking magic tri-D phatasms or the like coupled with a dedicated hacker) and then you are going to need to ensure that nobody aboard the ship can radio for help. Likely we could be in and out before the help actually arrived, but why take that risk?

After you've incapacitated the guards and crew, you don't just have a free boat. Freighters are going to have all sorts of security, and as soon as it goes missing (likely as soon as we are forced to jam communications and the freighter drops off RADAR) its going to be wanted. You can't just take a ship like that into a port, even if it is ridiculously corrupt. You are going to need an expert face with connections at multiple ports of harbor to have even a chance of getting a ship into port, not to mention off loading all the stolen goods.

Perhaps the most efficient way would be to realize that time is on our side. Take the freighter (assuming we ever actually have the fire power to snag one) spend months with a dedicated hacker and rigger cleaning the ship of every identifying mark and waiting for the heat to die down. Then maybe MAYBE you could sell something so huge.

On the up side, just about every character type would be required to pull this off. Personally I'm toying around with the idea of making a Phys Ad capable of boarding and taking down the opposition as well as having face skills and connections in maybe half a dozen ports of harbor. Sort of a half face/half short range combatant. Anyone got a problem with me being the face of the team?

I counted 9 players actually. In order of thread response:

Whizbang
milk ducks
budoka05
CollateralDynamo
Marwynn
MusicMan
Knight Saber
Lok1 :)
Ears

Glyph responded but I'm not sure if he's interested.

I think that's a large enough group!

Okay...Quick nose counting says Merc Campaign gets voted out.

That leaves us with regular shadowrunning or cyberpirates for campaign themes.

Please pick only one.

Tomorrow afternoon, I'll count votes between the two.

Okay, I'm really not feeling the Cyberpirate thing. Everyone else seems to love it though, and I really want to play, so maybe you guys can sell me on it? I guess I'm worried about it for a couple of reasons; the biggest one is that, as Penta said, 90-99% of the time, the pace of the story will be the responsibility of the players. I've been involved in a fair number of RP-forums, and I've found that typically, relying on everyone else to move a story along is a pretty bad idea. Now certainly, I'm a new guy here on Dumpshock, and the community members here may surprise me in that regard ... but I've literally never played on a forum where the PCs could be relied upon to move a story along anywhere near of 99% of the time.

And as I said before, I'm new to the Shadowrun RPG (pretty familiar with the setting, though), and I'd prefer something more standard. I'm not crazy about the pace of the story being on my shoulders, because I'm really not sure how things should play out. I feel like I might need a little more guidance than that.

The second reason I'm hesitant about the theme is that because we'll have Letters of Marque authorizing us, as agents, to search, seize, or destroy specific assets or personel belonging to a rival corp / nation / whatever ... well, I mean, I think it takes away some of the "shadowrun-ish-ness". To me, a big (the biggest?) part of the game is that the players are operating in secret, outside the law; and there's nobody telling the authorities to "look the other way". And that's pretty big for me.

And finally, I'm just not feeling the Sixth World in this theme. I know this kind of stuff would happen all the time, but when I imagine Shadowrun, I think about city barrens packed full of SINless poor-folk that would do anything for a decent meal; hidden-away bunraku parlours where horrible things happen to women who can't pay their debts; perpetual, tangible haze over the city and through the streets, but it's never clear whether it's fog or pollution (probably both); cities that never sleep because the nights are full of gunshots, and every window has a gaudy neon sign filtering through. I just don't feel a Sixth World theme that takes place on the water, in the hull of a ship. But I could be convinced.

I'd still really love to be sold on this theme, but those are my concerns. Any way you guys can sell me on it?

As of right now, my vote is for standard Shadowrunning in a big way.

-milk.

That is true. Typically a smuggling/pirate game is taken to get away from the norm. And I haven't actually played a 'normal' SR game to be honest. Just straight 'running with a biggish team.

With that said, I believe that a pirate game would have plenty of 'running. I would prefer, though, that naval adventures would simply be an extension of running. We're not the Black Pearl, we're just 'runners with boats. The setting might have to be in Hong Kong or thereabouts.

Player-driven... I think we need to test it out. If it's moving too slowly then penta can move it along, but we need to make a commitment that we'll guide it along ourselves. We work our own leads, do a lot of interacting.

Milk Ducks, very well put and thought out. Very valid concerns. I, however, am excited about this concept, so let me do what I can to sell you on it.

I mentioned before that I am somewhat new the forum game thing and old to SR4, sorta sounds like the opposite of you actually. And I do see that there could be a problem with giving the players as big of a sandbox as we might end up with if the GM just says "here ocean, go". Ideally I'm hoping that we will start off as some sort of crew with a mobile safe house (boat) who has just gotten hired with some vague job to do (such as, hey, go hassle these guys over here and bring back some sort of token). Some sort of direction from the GM, as well as juicy hooks early on could probably lead us along until we are coming up with our own ideas for jobs, which rapidly become self paying runs outside of our not-so-legitimate business practices. Thats pretty much the only way I can address the first concern, but you're right, everything could fall flat here if the players aren't into it.

About this theoretical "letter of marque" I agree, it kind of takes out the shadow part. Honestly, I don't see why any mega or self respecting government would put a seal of approval on a boat full of crazies and point them in a direction. I was envisioning our letter as more of..."a token nod of marque". I'm not sure if this is what Penta intended, but I was sort of assuming that some big Johnson needs some guys to do long term hassling of someone or someones, thus they hire a boat full of deniable assets to do the deed. Which makes us runners of a different color. I would be very surprised if anyone would accept any legal claim to a boat of so called "privateers" in an age of satellites and orbital bombardment. Penta, can we get some sort of clarification on our "legitimacy"?

As for feeling the Sixth World theme, I think its all there, just shift your perception a little to the right. How does piracy really work when you can get bombarded from miles away with spells (after all, all you need is line of site) what about the wireless net? Sure, you are in your own private node while way out at sea, but as soon as that little blip shows up on the radar a hacker wakes up and goes to work. Once the encounter begins, our rag-tag team of social misfits boards the corporate owned entity and takes all we want. Afterwards, we need to go to fence it. I'm hoping this wouldn't be done with a simple roll of the dice. In we pull to a hellish TROPICAL harbor, Lagos? Caracas? some place where people couldn't care less. Crime is high, the murder rate higher. We need to deal with the seedy element if we want to have a chance of pulling the profit. As we go and talk to the local syndicates, they tell us that one of their boats full of girls being shipped illegal off to their bunraku parlor just got snagged, they need a boat full of crazies to go out there and get it back......well boys, whats it worth to you?

Thats the vibe I get when I flip through this stuff, you're like Han Solo and Chewy, if Han could sling mana balls, Chewy had obvious cyber limbs, and the Millenium Falcon was actually being run by an AI. Am I way off base?

Your legitimacy is about as legit as any covert op. It'll be explained more in the story setup if we go the CP route. You'll have legitimacy...sort of...in a manner of speaking...but nobody will ever know...

Sure, if you're about to be shot by a firing squad, your employer might step forward with a letter of marque and cause a shitstorm...but your careers will then be over. You won't be executed as pirates, though!

They'll also be providing your initial boat and a relatively minor budget for gear common to the team, not owned by an individual runner. They'll also provide some initial organizational pointers.

After that, though, you'll be on your own. If you should be caught red-handed, the Secretary will disavow all knowledge of your existence, yadda yadda.
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Milk, in part, I think the reason you're not feeling the Sixth World as you describe it...is because I suck at writing the real gritty shit, okay?

I tend to get really into my writing...And I think I'd scare myself writing the real gritty end of the Sixth World.

Any campaign I run will tend to have a ray of light. It might be tiny, hard to see, impossible to see by...But I can't go as dark as some. I'd go insane if I did, because I'd go too dark. For my taste or even yours.

I'll take a whirl at it, though Marwynn and CollateralDynamo have done quite well. As far as a letter of marque, it's not the Age of Sail with two or three big oceangoing powers, where you're almost a naval auxillary... every corp will have its own navy and one will be looking the other way, since we're not raiding that corp's ships. We're hurting their business rivals for a minimal cost to themselves, doing dirty deeds and having to deal with low class, criminal elements just to get by in the selling of captured goods and the buying of weapons.

Nor would it be cruising around waiting to find a juicy ship and then pointing cannon at them... there'd be a lot of need for conventional 'runner activities... breaking into buildings to steal information (or people with information) to find that big score at sea.

It's a little more open than a single-city based game, more travel... which would show some of the great disparities between the super-rich guy on his private island and the teeming masses trying to eke out a living on a failed-nation coastline.

Han Solo with an AI Falcon is a good one, but an even better one might be Firefly at sea... a ship and a ragtag crew on the fringes of the law trying to scrape by and keep sailing however they can.