For my next campaign, which is going to be starting soon, I'm thinking of having the players be pirates in some kind of crew or whatever, probably starting in the Pacific Ocean, as I've got an idea for a campaign that involves the Ring of Fire.

I'd like the players to be the "leaders" of the crew/gang, because I want them to have a fair amount of control over what they do, I'm tired of running campaigns that basically amount to having some kind of "boss" tell you what to do, even though you have to decide how to do it yourself. But I was thinking of maybe giving them the option to create an NPC crew, like using the method for creating contacts or something? And perhaps giving them some kind of like "communal BP" that they could use to buy ships/hideouts/supplies. I am little worried because some of players are inexperienced, so possibly dropping too much customization on them could be overwhelming, but at the same time I think it could be cool.

So anyways, does anyone have experience doing something similar? Can anyone think of some method for simplifying something like this, without making it too cookie cutter? I guess I may also make the first few sessions about them gathering up crew members or something too, maybe that would be simpler. What do you think?

Also, if anyone has some ideas about just general interesting things that could happen to a pirate crew in the Pacific, that would be nice too

We found it was a lot simpler to keep the crew limited to the PC's-as most craft in 207x can be automated to a certain point. If they get successful enough then let them worry about recruiting a crew, and the troubles that come with it. I'd work real hard with the PC's in making some solid hooks-reasons why they need to make money, or be out on the seas, or gain notoriety.

You definitely want to try to find a copy of Cyberpirates!. Even though the rules are outdated, there's a lot of good (and fun) information in there for a sea-faring Shadowrun game.

Rules for buying and upgrading ships are already a part of the game, with Arsenal carrying the brunt of the material. There's no reason to come up with a set of convoluted house rules to take care of something that's already built into the system unless for some reason you're not particularly fond of those rules. Besides, chances are they'll be scavenging and stealing other vessels rather than upgrading them (beyond their initial ship design). The main thing you'll want to do is help them decide on their initial set-up in that regard, if not outright design it yourself and then let them look for something better after the game begins. The movie Waterworld, while pretty lame all around, does has a lot of ideas you can borrow, too. The use of gyrocopters and waterskis in addition to a main vessel being one of the big ones.

For the crew, you can just make it a Group Contact (Runner's Companion) that they all get for free, making them only pay for the Loyalty rating. That's really the easiest way to handle it, I'd say.

I'd also put some serious consideration to your locale. Obviously the source book Ol' Scratc mentioned-CyberPirates is a good start,but you can really use any source-book you choose. Any place with access to a large body of water could work. In another vein, sky pirates is a possibility-obviously that can get a lot more expensive and dangerous. (Falling out of the sky has some different ramifications as opposed to falling out a boat right?)

The NPC crew is fine as long as you remember to roleplay them as actual people and not just automaton's that will do whatever the players say (depending on your players, a mutiny might be in their future)

I would suggest "just in case" the group have the skills "Pilot Watercraft", "Nautical Mechanic", and "Navigation" with a specialization in "Ocean" somewhere in it... you never know when all that wonderful technology is going to suddenly not work. Also make sure at least one if them has a decent "Leadership" score (really, mutinies do kind of suck)

Finally, they can all be "over" the crew, but they can't all be in charge... one of them (ideally the one with the highest Leadership) will need to be Captain and another will be First Officer - the rest will be under the First Officer and each should be in charge of one section of the ship Chief Engineer, Head of Security, Chief Steward (in charge of living conditions), etc

If that all seems a bit much then skip the crew and automate as much as possible, but they'll still need to make sure all the main ship functions are covered (engineering, navigation, etc) and one of them should be the Captain.

Please its all about sky pirates sail powered zepplins ftw!

We had a fun game that revolved around the PC's trying to rob a Zeppelin cargo herd.

@Paul: yeah, that makes sense, I may just have them start off on their own, I am going to have a good sized group (well, 6, but I'm used to like 3 or 4.) Part of the reason I wanted a crew actually was so that they'd have to pay them and buy food for them and such. I don't know, I guess I haven't yet thought of any good money making hooks, besides "You are hungry and shit." Well and the ever present "You would like better stuff."

@Ol' Scratch: Thanks, I'll definitely try and dig up a copy of that! I wasn't planning on completely revamping the ability to buy stuff, but I would like to give them the option to get a larger boat, without having one character spend all their BP on it or something. So I was thinking of setting aside a certain amount of BP that could only be used on gear, but could be used by all of them. I don't really remember Waterworld, but gyrocopters and such do sound useful. By waterskis did you mean Jetskis? I can't really see how either of those would be all that useful lol. I may end up doing the group contact thing too, in some way or another.


lol sky pirates are awesome, but they seem a little impractical

Thanks for the replies

One thing I would do is look up the old prize system with how many shares each person has etc so you can work out how much loot everyone gets. (also if they decide to change the amounts of loot thats when the mutiny builds )

Edit: please post logs so we can read how it goes

Oops, I did mean jetskis, and think of them using them like a biker gang of the sea. Throw a really nice weapon or two onboard, like a minigun or something, and they can do a pretty mean job of attacking other vessels.

Really?

Dammit CanRay now I have to buy that.

It's worth it. And the novel comes out soon as well.

And the three albums that are directly related and came out before. And the albums before that, before the major songwriter for the group even realized he was edging towards this storyline...

They also do a nice cover of "White Wedding".

And, more Shadowrun-realated...

Note : if you whish to itroduce some varierty and lower risk scenarios, the difference between smuglers and pirates is a thin one and can be crossed easily - if the heat goes up, a pirate crew may well change waters to smuggle goods elsewhere until itcalms down.

An important point will be what sort of pirates the players will : will they be of the high-tech persuasion, using furtive railgun-and-missile toting speedboats with drone support to take on high value corporate targets, or a bunch of lowlives from some dirt poor corner of coast using an canoe, a rusty outboard motor and a crate of late XXth century chines army castoffs to try their luck on whatever easy looking target they bump into ? Odds are you'll settle for something in-between, but you'd better decide.

Not : it's easier to aim a bit low and let a the PCs move up the tech chain, and less frustrating than blowing their high-tech toys to bit and force them to make do with an antique. And from the player's point, the challenge of turning a worn 2012 philipine navy patrol boat into a ship to be reconned with though upgrades, new gadgets, scrounging and general mcgyvering can be a lot of fun.

The tech level involved will also have an impact on where the landward action happens and influence the sea location too. A high tech boat will need a better infrastrcture than most pirate havens can provide for a reasonable price (you can probably get the high tech goodies, but delays and markups will tend to pile up).

Another point that may be raised firsthand is the moral level involved : are they professional going after cargo (and maybe the ship itself) and operating on a low-kill variety, or a bunch of maniacs who loot, torture and rape and leave behind flaming wrecks for the fun of it once they' pulled out what they want like water going barbarians ?

That sort of decisions will have a major impact on what the PCs will be and what the scenarios will feel like. The examples i've give are deliberatly picked at the extremes of the spectrum to better illustrate what difference it can make.

wow I somehow skipped several posts when I made that first response, did not even see Stalag's post, which is ridiculous because it's the biggest one.

Anyways:

@Stalag, I definitely intend to roleplay the NPC crew, that's half the reason I want them to have a crew in the first place! I was thinking that they'd be the most badass in the crew, and thus the de-facto leaders, and then let them decide if they want to have ranks and such among themselves. I agree that the crew will probably react more easily if there is an established chain of command, but as long as the players don't go around openly contradicting each other, it should be fine. So I'll probably let them figure it out, with the addendum that I will be considering the effects upon the crew. Definitely going to encourage some redundancy among essential Boat Skills, would be pretty sad if they got stranded at see because their only engine guy got geeked.

@Shortstraw prize system? I don't know what you're referring to... I'll definitely try to post some logs up, though there is a chance I'll forget. Would actually be quite useful, having a place to gather a synopsis of the happenings. Is there an accepted form of doing that? I guess I'll probably just make a thread, reserve the first several posts and edit it as I go, if that's acceptable?

@Ol' Scratch, I could kinda see that, but isn't a jetski pretty slow compared to a boat? I haven't actually looked it up I guess.

@CanRay, lol, I meant in Shadowrun-reality, okay? Sky Pirates are totally legit, and could be fun in a slightly different setting, but they're a bit too tongue-in-cheek for what I want here.

@Manumancy, good plan with the smuggling, by "Pirates" I did really just mean "General Criminals + Boat" lol. I just couldn't think of other crime that involves a boat, but smuggling totally makes sense, dunno how I missed it. I'm going to leave it up to them what kind of "Style" they want to have, but I'm not likely to give them enough points to make super high tech a possibility. I have no idea what to expect from the group as they seem quite varied in approach and I've never played with this group together before. I definitely want to have their reputation have a significant effect on them and such.

Thanks a lot for all the input, I'll post a writeup of the players soon, we should have the characters made and such on Tuesday!

With the prize shares I was talking about this sort of stuff

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_code

I ran a very successful SR3 campaign which totally ripped off the anime Black Lagoon. Luckily none of the players knew it.

For a real, independant pirate campaign I would do the following:

You need a map. Make it big, either buy a large map of, for instance, SEA, or the gulf of mexico, eastern Africa, or whatever, or print one to make a large map covering the entire game table. Then paint in some shipping lanes, ports of interest, pirate havens, etc.

IMHO for pirating to be interesting and self-motivated, you need a gamey mechanic to locate and pick the quarry they could conceivable target. So you can't just go ahead and cruise about while looking for ships ripe for the picking, because that just results in random fights and then looting stuff. I would very precisely locate the current position of the PC boat on the map (using a pin, for instance), and also other boats within radar range, or that they have knowledge of. I would also keep track of - hidden from the players - any serious opposition they might be meeting up with, keeping in mind distances, speeds, locations, headings, response times, etc. Using pseudo-naval tools - for instance a compass to track radar range, travel legs, etc., will keep things visually tangible.

The PCs might use the matrix to find out about cargo ships or convoys which are about to take a shipping lane in their vicinity. Or they get hints from paid off harbor officials, etc, which ships might be lightly guarded, carry a valuable cargo, etc.

You also might want a game clock, after every increment of which you update positions. That way you can have real chases. Keep in mind that at sea there are few places to hide, and the distances at which people come aware of each other are rather large. So a chase could take place at several hundred miles distance.

Another interesting angle is always competitors: If the PCs start out as the new kids on the block, then likely as not there are established pirate gangs in place who will brush with them. This might provide more adequate challenges initially, before they come in contact with an Ares cruiser looking for a kidnapped ship.

And finally, you need to work out a convenient mechanic of dealing with income and costs. The spoils of piracy might be quite large, but the running costs could also be high - in the 6th world at least, where companies don't easily pay pirates, because human resources are a much cheaper asset than nowadays. I've had to deal with the problem that the runners ransomed a ship off for 2 million or so , which is a quite a hefty sum, but you need to deal with that in some way. This is what modern pirates do, so simply saying "no" probably won't satisfy them. There must be high running costs - bribes to authorities, appeasement money to local warlords, equipment, fuel, supplies, information, etc. Also, I would do away with static availabilities - you probably want the common AK or RPG-launcher to be easy to come by, but ship-mounted railguns rather less so. Perhaps it's a good idea to assign availability and price mods to certain groups of goods per port - that also makes for a good smuggling opportunity - if at one port an item is easily available, but scarce at another, you suddenly have a hook. Obviously you need to revise the buying and selling mechanics a bit - if it's impossible to sell stuff for profit, then it makes no sense to try.

Then there even considerations that come first: Where do the PCs get their ship, and what kind is it? Do they just buy a rubber dingy and then capture a ship to use as their mothership (like current pirates would)? Or do they buy a mothership? Do they attack with that, or do they use small boats? What is their threat possibility? Most small arms can't harm a large cargo ship, but of course in SR it might be easier to enter one while under way. A crew of runners might do so without even getting noticed. Etc...

These are my thoughts, considerations and suggestions on this, so far. By no means complete, obviously.

I don't know. A crew of pirate drones could be fun.


Hound
Also, you must require that at least one player have a cyber hand with interchangeable attachments that can be screwed into it, (hooks, corkscrews, etc.) and a cyber leg. Also, the rigger should have a small brightly colored drone that he carries around on his shoulder.

Modular Cyberhand package deal: The Pirate Package!

I like my world to "make sense" as much as possible. So one thing I'd encourage you to consider is how exactly your players survive in a world or spotter drones.

Sadly, I think this makes a large ship flying the jolly roger basically a no-go. You'd be hunted down far too easily.

I did some stuff for a while with a sub, and I think that can work very well, as you can credibly be a lot of places and still get out.

Using small craft from a old commercial (and importantly expendable) mother ship could work well.

Also if you're looking for a more futuristic feel, I think you could pull off shorter ranged raids using a T-bird or something like that. Maybe something with the asthetics of the Reavers from firefly (though hopefully better temperments from your crew!)

To me a larger crew equates to-in my mind as a GM:

• Significant Lifestyle Costs: You have to feed and house these people. Sure you can hand-wave some of that stuff.
• You have to account for these people. Every time you get into a fire fight or just day to day living you kind of have to have a basic idea where they are, or your GM does. That's a lot of extra work.
• You have to equip these people. Larger crews need larger and more boats, and guns. And armor.
• You have to trust these people. Good luck in a Pirate crew. (I'm someone will suggest, with a straight face, how it's totally plausible that you can trust every criminal you run the shadows with, or every Somalian with an RPG on a boat. I hope you ignore those idiots.) At least once as a GM I'd have you deal with ambitious crew members. Maybe more than once.
• Ask yourself why exactly are you starting with a large crew? Most people work long years and hard hours to build a team, crew or employee base that they can trust. To me skipping that is like skipping some of the funner chapters in the book.
• A bigger crew equals bigger boats, and that means-generally speaking-less ability to maneuver, and an increased need for smaller vessels. All of that costs a lot of cred chummer.

Anyways don't let that damper your idea, instead use questions like those to tamper it, and make it better.

Well good thing that ever since War! all warships come with Ballast Tanks for instant submarine action!



The same holds true for working your gunslinging skill. Yet nary an aspiring sammie starts out with Automatics 2.
Also, pirates, paying for things? The thought is funny, yet nothing more.

I'm surprised nobody's mentioned it yet, but have you watched Black Lagoon? It's an anime series about pirates/smugglers/general criminals in the Pacific, which is often brought up because it's so shadowrunny. Dozens of adventure ideas to be found there.

Actually it was mentioned a while ago, otherwise I'd have brought it up too. It gives you the option of avoiding the crew business. But I think the crew might be part of what the OP wants to play with.

I haven't read War! (Is it even out yet?) but if all ships can become u-boats after a little welding that does open up a lot of options.

At my table it's a question we ask. Every single time. For any character that's more than a normal person.



You clearly play a different style of game than me. Sure you can pirate a lot of stuff but eventually you'll need to buy some things, build some things maybe even plant some things. People who make everyone their enemies end up dead pretty quick. (And yes I get your answer was an off the cuff one-my answer is not meant to be a smack down, but rather just a counterpoint.)

I mentioned it.... just saying.

*Looks around blurry-eyed, stumbles around my desk, and looks inside of a bottle* Damn...

Rum is gone.

Why is the rum gone?

That's the problem with rum, you drink too much and don't remember drinking it. You only feel it.

Operating costs is an easy number to work up, and can be quite expensive and force the players to find things for the characters to do.

Pick a lifestyle (probably Low) +10% per crew member. So let's say a 15 man crew (not including the PCs), that’s ¥5,000 per month. Not much, but it will add up with the rest.

Now for the Officers (the PCs), probably want at least a Middle lifestyle. So let's say you have 5 PCs at a ¥5,000 base + 50% is ¥7500.

Now for the big expense operating costs: IMHO this should include minor repairs, fuel, and ammo as long as they are using standard ammo for the weapons. Special ammo should cost extra. This cost should be between 1% and 10% of the modified cost of the vehicle(s) in use. If the team is using a modified Frigate that cost ¥2,500,000 with all the weapons and modifications and three cigar boats that cost ¥500,000 each calculate the running costs based on how hard the equipment got worked over the month. If it was an easy month as in not much combat or hard running use closer to the 1% range, if they were in a constant state of "balls to the wall" running and lots of combat use closer to the 10% range. So in the setup above monthly operations should be between ¥40,000 and ¥400,000 every month plus the lifestyle costs. Anything that the team earns above operating costs would then be profit and usable to split, pay for more upgrades (keeping in mind that upgrades will increase the monthly expenses), or anything else the PCs really want.

Something that is not part of RAW but you may want to implement is the need to pay for their contacts, mainly to help sink extra cash if they are doing ransoms. Earning ¥2,000,000 on a single payday could need a quick money sink especially if they are able to do that regularly.

Of course all of this in just my opinion and YMMV.

-D

Edit: corrected my math

You watched a lot of Tailspin as a child didn't you?

And remember that "Black Lagoon" not "Blue Lagoon" - the only thing Blue Lagoon has going for it is a young Brook Shields going au natural

Whew, man you guys came up with some good ideas, brought up a lot of things I hadn't even thought of!

@Brainpiercing: Honestly, probably going to skip the map thing. As far as stuff like that goes, I'm going to lean more towards ease of play, than realism, especially cause I've got some people who've never been involved with this kind of game before. I'm primarily expecting the PCs to use contacts and the matrix to be finding their prey, I wouldn't think that you would really want to just be driving around hoping you come across a good target, considering that you could find those targets just as easily via the Matrix. Not sure I'll use an actual clock, again I prefer a more fluid style, I lean more towards what is good for storytelling than what is likely to be realistically possible. Definitely going to have some kind of competition though, I've already got some good ideas about that. I like the idea of costing them a lot of money in bribes and such though. That whole thing about them making 2mil or whatever from one ship was something I hadn't really considered. Any information on how exactly a "ship ransom" would be pulled off in the Sixth World? Seems like a situation that could get really hairy really quickly, which is good of course. As for where the PCs got their ship, I'm still kind of deciding that. I'm thinking of having a storyline in which they were a smaller part of a larger, multi-ship crew, which broke apart after the Captain mysteriously disappeared, and they are just one of the pieces that stuck together and began operating independently. This would give them a reason for being together, a reason for having a ship, and sort of a pool of other pirates floating around that could potentially be picked up as crew, after they prove that they're leadership material. So for now I think I'm going to go with having the players be the only crew at first, and then they can recruit as much or as little as they'd like.

@Thorya: Of course! Maybe I'll give bonuses to social tests if they talk in Pirate Speech too.

@Sunnyside: Another thing I hadn't really considered, the ubiquity of spotter drones and such. Really though, even with that, the ocean is a huge place, you can't cover all of it at once, or at least not very easily. Also, considering the number of important factions, and the fact that they don't generally see eye-to-eye, I don't think it would be possible to have one huge network. So the players would probably have to rely on speed, and having a safe haven to return to would really help. I like the idea of a sub too, though it has less of that Pirate flavor in my opinion. Something I'll be sure to mention to the players.

@Paul: I've actually decided against starting them out with a large crew, but thanks for all the ideas just the same. If they decide to get a big crew, things like costs and trust issues will definitely become important! I do agree also that while pirating can solve a lot of supply issues, it probably can't do everything. For one thing, I would think that cargo shipments are normally fairly homogenous. So like, sure raiding that food boat sounds like a great idea to feed the crew, until you end up with 100 tons of various types of Wonderbread.

@Mardrax: I don't have War! so for the purposes of this game, I'm going to pretend it doesn't exist. >.>

@Ascaphalus: Yeah Brainpiercing7.6mm brought up Black Lagoon already. I have seen it, but it was a while ago, I may have to watch it again while I'm doing this.

@DMiller: Thanks for the idea about the operating costs equation. I may make it a little harsher than that, or not, depending on how much money they seem to be making. Also, I think lifestyle costs could be brought up easily, if we assume they have some kind of independent pirate hideout, or even if they are living completely on their ships. The RAW lifestyle costs assume that the character is living in a city, with significant infrastructure for electricity and water. In the hideout scenario, they would need to pay extra to provide for some kind of generator and water source, if not plenty of other things. A large enough ship could support people, but if it's for an extended period of time, that would probably end up adding to the operating cost of the ship, as it would wear down the ship's equipment faster. I definitely want them to have to pay off contacts, especially for certain things. Like a dockmaster letting them come to shore without checking the usual shit, he's probably going to want a lot of money for that, and part of the reason he wants a lot is because he's going to have to use some of it to pay off other people not to ask questions. Even in a pirate haven, the people in charge would probably be asking for significant fees to let people dock and fence their goods or whatever.

Thanks for the ideas folks!

Arrrrrr!

We ran a quite fun (and horribly bloody) adventure in the Carrib and that's a good place to start. (Shallow waters, excellent ports, multiple semi-warring countries...)
For experts, the Pacific is fucking HUGE but it's a looooooong way to the nearest gulp-n-go, experienced players required.

1: Buy Cyberpirates - excellent book, deep colour commentry, breaks down the pirating life for yee...
2: Mad skills - people are going to need back-ups of back-ups. Sure, youv'e got a mechanic, but what happens if they're sitting on a stick-n-shock while the engines won't turn over?
3: People skills - contacts out the wazoo. And then some more.
4: Magic! Magicrun jokes aside, LOS = awesome on the big blue.
5: Fun! We were searching for a character's long-lost sister, had to do some legwork for the Gingerbread man, had to then impress the Gingerbread man (He wanted a message delivered. Our usual style of "AV rounds mean you're not able to hide the missile launcher" did not go down well.) with...mixed results. And our final carib run resulted in a multi-million dollar haul and saving the psychologically-scared damsel. (It was a very bad place - when the Troll takes along 2 Assualt cannons "just in case", everyone else did similar)
6: Narrow scrapes, scarcity, scurvy, seasickness! Make it good! Toss in a sea monster, and then have to capture it for an insane corp....you know, improvise:)

-Tir

Magic also comes in handy when you come across a pod of Stormdolphins.

So does an insulated tuna net.




Hiyo!

Not a good idea. The mercury levels of dolphins are astronomical!

The only thing worse to eat than dolphins are humans.

Some thoughts about teh operting costs :

One thign to keep in mind is that a ship that's efficient and somewhat comfortable to live in probably won't be effective as a pirate ship - having a 'base' ship has an added advantage in keeping the 'pirate' ship loaded with less than legal hardware (and probably pictured on some nice 'wanted' posters) out of law-abiding ports. Say a tramp freighter/liner as a base and some sort of patrol boat as the fighter.
Of course it adds crew and disperse your need for security in two locations which adds it's own wrinkles but it's good thing.And if you score big enough it may even become a profitable sideline by offering a floating cantina/brothel/clinic/workshop to other pirates to burn their money.

Pirate havens exists and can remove the need for that, but those places tends to be expensive to live in. Prices structures will be distorted, with 'luxury' goods snatched from the prizes available for pennies while relatively low value goods that don't go raided and must be brought through backchannels will skyrocket. Raiding the prey's galleys and medic bays can come very handy in that regard.

A point to keep in mind about ransomning ships is that in 2070, the shipping companies have more of a bite than now. If the ransom is too much, ther'es a real chance they decide to mount a raid to get their ship back. If they consider it a sounder investment to put 2 millions for an Ares commando raid rather than 3 in paying pirates, it can hurt.
There are ways around that : stick to the small fry, or put your prize someplace the corporation will think twice to mess with. But the service of keeping out the corps will mean sharing the loot with the local power. To make an analogy, if your steal a ship and store it in a somalian port, odds are nobody will try to get it back. But you'll have to pay a share to the local warlord, unless you want him to get rid of you and keep it all.

Tailspin? All I know is my face has a solar powered (inc solar sails) space zeppelin and is on his way to mars.

Yes, it's been out for quite some time. Don't let not having it stop you though. There's bunches of people pretending it never happened who do have it. There's multiple occasions of silliness within it, including every ship having Ballast Tanks (one of the vehicle mods from Arsenal) but clearly not being undersea-capable otherwise. There's even a whole thread dedicated to this.

That said, extensive tinkering can make any ship undersea capable. Ballast Tanks and Life Support 2 would be a solid bases to start from. Might want to oblige some extra armor as well to withstand water pressure. Be creative.

Then again, submarines can't have a crow's nest!

The reason I would go with a map isn't realism, it's to allow strategic gameplay, and hence increase the immersion. It's for atmosphere, for drama. It's so that your players can FEEL like pirates when standing around the map plotting their next move. Realistic would be using a big AR display ... yeah, I can see the problems with that. A projector, maybe?


Balkanization of security forces is a key concept of SR, without it, the entire game falls apart. Generally, it has to be assumed that the various security forces don't talk to each other, much, because they are all competitors.
The problem with spotter drones are the numerous means of providing early warning - say, a convoy of cargo ships has an escort boat with a screen of drones. That in itself isn't hard to penetrate, but it will give warning to the ships who will try to hightail it.
So basically, successfully raiding the convoy will mean drawing off the security, or creating a suitable smoke-screen. Appear harmless long enough. Take over the drones. Whatever.
This is another reason to have a fairly large tactical map, so that you can actually say "ok, we'll send the diversion in from the east to draw off the first batch of drones. When those have been taken out, the escort ship will hopefully respond, and also move to the east, at that point our zodiacs can hit that freighter to the west, board it, and immediately have it turn away from the convoy.

Boarding a 6th world container ship might be a hazard in its own right - I would expect a full complement of rail drones, the odd LMG turret and any kind of passive defenses - electricity on all the ladders, barbed wired around the railing, etc. Nothing that a group of runners can't handle, but...


Actually in the modern world of shipping only few goods are transported in huge bulk amounts, like fuel or unprocessed ores, grain, and the like. Most goods are in containers. The container ships are the ones worth raiding.

However, the trend for ships to have Ballast Tanks has been going on for a while now. They use them (IRL) to trim the ship when needed. I see this trend continuing into the future. Though, admittedly, a Rating 2 Ballast Tank is excessive for that.

So, bad news, just met with the new group yesterday and we decided against running a pirate campaign. One of the more experienced players that I had been counting on to kind of guide the newbies dropped out at the last second (like he literally texted me 5 minutes before we were supposed to meet up saying he wouldn't be able to play.) So, considering that that leaves me with 3 brand new runners and one with only moderate experience, the group decided a more "traditional" run might be better for now. We're going to play the first campaign in Seattle, but they promised to consider the pirate idea next time. lol Thanks for all the help, sorry I won't have awesome Pirate stories to share, but you guys did give me a lot of things to think about for when I do eventually run this campaign.

the problem with a container ship is that it's a huge pile of floating money and it's likely the efforts to get it back will tend to be swift and weel-funded. If you have a 2-thousand containers ship missing, that can mean billions in goods. that's more than an enough to go for the throat with military-grade action.

And even if you're only going after some of the containers (you'll need to cargo manifest and loading plan), there's the basic problem of physically accessing the container. When they're stacked ten-high, reaching the one in the middle isn't exactly easy...

Plant explosives with dead-man's triggers, tell the corporation that they can ransom stuff back for reasonable rates, but that any attempt at forceful recapture means you'll sink the ship.

Probably the first time you have to demonstrate that you're serious about it and can really do it, but next time the corporations know they have to think about what you're saying rather than just storm in.

Make very sure you have a getaway plan in case you need to blow up the captured ship.



Go through the other containers. It's only physical matter, not an impenetrable barrier...

Let's face it: a good pirate crew needs a hacker to select targets and provide overwatch during the attempt to capture a ship.

You can't GET INTO the containers without a large crane. Like the ones that container ports have. The containers are positioned to prevent people being able to get into them and they are stacked high and deep and are very heavy.

If you destroy a $500 million dollar ship and cargo people will pay millions to see you dead. Millions in bounty will bring out the heavy hitters.

Ships are ALWAYS worth that much.

The world of SR does make a few things more difficult:
- You can't hide it. (But that's already the case now. A huge cargo ship can't be hidden, the companies always know where it is.)
- Hostages are only semi-effective as a deterrent
- killing some pirates won't raise any eyebrows anywhere
- there are nasty things like drones and flying tanks that could hunt you down

However, on the other hand, you have a lot of things in favour over the rag-tag bunch of africans pirating these ships nowadays:
- As a runner, you are 300% more awesome
- you can get detailed info about what ships are worth-while, you have a clear information advantage
- you have lots of technological toys to aid you (but so has the other side)
- did I mention you are 300% more awesome?
- in an assymmetric conflict you are the strongest weapon - if you play it smart. That's your bargaining chip. The point is not to use it.
- mounting an extensive operation is also really expensive - if they can buy the ship back for 2 million, but their op costs 5 (and it very quickly will), then where is the gain?
- as long as you keep it business, you can get away with lots of things. You're not a terrorist, you're a businessman asking a reasonable price.
- ships are insured, probably also against piracy
- they might be thinking that it was just a bunch of somalis again, but when they come they find out you are... oh wait, what? 300% moar awesome.

Seriously, the world of SR has a TON of these issues where you really have to... well, bend the realism for certain scenarios to work. As a GM it's easy to find a reason (or at least, it's easy to ask for one on a message board) as to why not every ship will be instantly repo'd by an HTR-team. For instance those might be busy doing other important work. Basically I would always just say "It's too expensive."

Look at why piracy is so easy right now: Companies have products, they produce these at a certain cost. Now they want to do this as cheaply as possible, so they want to produce in the place with the lowest wages possible, and so they want shipping to be as cheap as possible, too. So they don't pay for security, because governments are supposed to pay for that. Private cops or paramilitaries that are more than show are quite expensive. A few thugs won't be effective (in the world of SR). Also you don't want unreliable people near your cargo.

And even so, IF the HTR comes, they are fighting you on YOUR turf. Which is the classical difference to normally. And if you're only dealing with bounty-hunters then that's a serious, but actually fairly even challenge. Do you want to live forever?

You can go through walls, you can go through containers. It's just an engineering problem.




Give the company a choice: pay a million in bounty, or kill the pirate and lose 500million in cargo.

No, the reason why piracy works is that a whole lot of people won't do the things that they know will work due to their bizarre worldview. For example, the classical answer as to what to do with a captured pirate it to kill him out of hand. But no, the EU will allow the poor dears to claim asylum, so most of the major European power won't even capture them. The US want to spend a few million per pirate to haul then across the world, give them a huge trial and lock them up forever. Do you really think Ares or SK is going to refuse to capture pirates so they don't claim asylum? And if captured the question is long will the pirates last before they become shark chow, not what the prison sentence is.

In the same way, the way that piracy was eliminated in the 1800s was that pirate bases were destroyed by navies of those ships that had been attacked. That appears to be "totally unacceptable". We know exactly where the pirates operate out of. In the 18th century the answer would have been to shell the town, then use marines to burn the rubble down. In 2011 it's to send in charity workers to find out their grievances, then act all surprised when the charity workers get robbed, raped and murdered and then sadly proclaim how we can't do anything about this. I suspect that the SR answer is a lot closer to the 18th century solution than to the 2011 solution.

Hostis humani generis baby.

Or Call Max Hardberger and his merry crew!






-k

Umm.... so what? That differs in no way from what normal runners can expect to happen to them.


You're probably just trolling, but... seriously? You want to kill millions to catch a few hundred pirates? What, because they are poor? So you wouldn't want to shell a north-american town because you got mugged there, or someone stole your truck full of goods, but because these are just nameless (read=unknown) towns in africa it's ok? That's the dimensions you would be looking at today. And let's just look at the ramifications: Say you used one of these now-obsolete old battleships from the first half of the 20th century and pounded a coastal town to ruins. (Because arty is cheaper than bombs.) Now you have maybe a few thousand dead (99% civilians), but you still have double or triple or even ten times that number homeless, starving, and really looking for a way to get back at you. And the pirates probably already moved to the next town. So now you get all kinds of rabble - islamists, other pirates, whatever, recruiting those angry and desperate people. And there are so many weapons around that it'll be really easy to pick up an AK or RPG and go after the next ship. So you shell the next town, rinse, repeat. And so what you're saying is that the only way to stop piracy is genocide?

Sure the current way is clunky, which is why the economic powers are ineffectually trying to get these people prosecuted and convicted in their home countries - which of course won't work until you actually RAISE those entire countries up to a level approaching our own. And that will never work if you just pour money into them. But that's a difficult topic. In the end, we're just going to have to deal with the fact that we have to pay for the inequality of the world in general with more security measures on the side of the wealthy. And that's all good, for now - that's jobs created and money being spent.

Of course the SR answer is harsher than today. Buf SR is a world of abundant information, and you could never erase all of it. The corps still need customers, because the competitor is right behind that corner, and it's probably not the humanist NGO people who will successfully turn this into a PR-desaster - it's another corp. So... possibly thor-shotting a few towns on the african coast won't create a huge stink, but if news gets around it'll still not be good rep. Also... how many corps can do this? The only economic way of dishing out that much destruction is thor shots, everything else will QUICKLY cost a lot more than the value of the goods lost. And if they invade, they'll have an all-out war on their hands. So the established principles of the game still hold true: You do criminal business, that's ok for a while. If you exaggerate, someone will send a more or less surgical response after you.

And in the end, as I said, the entire world of SR probably wouldn't work - it's not nearly bad enough.