Shipping Up To Boston – Uncovering The Secrets To Running An Epic Pirate D&D Campaign

3 Wise DMs

Pirates. It doesn’t take long for a D&D group to want to play as pirates, swashbucklers, privateers, and sailors. In our modern day, we can blame Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean. But how do you approach running a seafaring adventure? Is it just a fancy travel mechanic? Is it just a vehicle to get from town to town? Or is it the basis of the whole campaign?

In this episode, Tony, Chris, and Dave sit down to answer a question from a longtime friend of the show, Dr. DM himself, Jason, on how to run a great, epic, and memorable ocean-themed campaign outside of just being evil pirates who rob everything.

4:00 How is this different from every other setting? Taking care of the business of a sailing vessel.

6:30 DM Dave reviews how he has been approaching this in his Melora’s Light all-girl campaign. Including the idea of generating backstories and campaign settings through Call to Adventure.

9:10 Playing with resources: water, food, rests, etc.

11:55 Lean into the danger of setting sail in a wooden ship.

14:05 Using sourcebooks, like Ghosts of Saltmarsh, to stimulate your imagination.

16:25 The unique ability to travel to vastly different adventure locales when in a ship.

18:45 Focus in on the theme of the campaign that makes it different.

20:30 What happens when the ship is commandeered or stolen?

22:40 An ocean-themed campaign can be any type of campaign – High Fantasy, Pirates, Political, etc.

23:40 DM Tony using the airship in Storm King’s Thunder.

25:25 What are the character’s goals in this ocean-themed campaign? Will that change over the whole campaign?

35:30 We discuss how we made hex crawl travel interesting with our homebrewed Journey Cards.

39:15 Final Thoughts.