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Author Topic: AAARRR! - The Treasure Of Scurvy Jenkins!  (Read 1478 times)

ghost-angel

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AAARRR! - The Treasure Of Scurvy Jenkins!
« on: December 01, 2007, 10:57:04 AM »
The Golden Age of Piracy - 1
Beginning the Adventure - 3
San Paulo - 4
Bartleytown - 7
The Haggard Manticore - 12
X Marks the Spot - 16
Isla de la Sombra - 21
Return of the Pirate Queen! - 25
Concluding the Adventure - 26
Appendix I - 27
Appendix II - 32

The Upside:

AAARRR! The Treasure Of Scurvy Jenkins is a D20 Modern Pirate Adventure, the third in the Quick Play Adventure series from Small Niche Games. Set in the Caribbean sometime during the Golden Age of Piracy, the adventure is a sprawling series of encounters as the Characters set out to recover the treasure of Scurvy Jenkins.

The adventure also contains a very short historical look at the Golden Age of Piracy, some of the famous pirates that existed, and general information about pirates.

Since half of the adventure is the surprise of what comes next, I'm going to try and give an overall idea of what to expect without revealing all of it, or all the details at least.

Part One - San Paulo. The adventure starts with the Characters captured by the Spanish, if you're using the provided characters  you were a group of English Privateers. If you're trying to fit this into a campaign a little more work may be required. While in jail the characters meet Scurvy Jenkins, who has bribed a guard to help make his escape, he wants to get his treasure back. The Spanish fort is being attacked by an old ally of Scurvy's, the Pirate Queen Raquel Dominique - who want's Scurvy's treasure for herself!

In the fray the Players escape with Scurvy on a stolen ship and the adventure kicks into high gear.

Part Two - Bartleytown. A pirate town where the Players and Scurvy can dock to get a full crew and supplies. This section provides not only ways to get on track for the main objective, but a number of fun side quests. There's gambling, bar fights, even a raid on a stranded group of Spanish soldiers after their ship ran aground. If you're in a hurry most of the encounters can be skipped, but they all go towards making this adventure seem a little more epic in scale.

Part Three - The Haggard Manticore. The tavern in Bartleytown is where the Players can get more crew men. More gambling, drinking games and bar fights can be found in this section. At least one bar fight should take place to keep the adventure on track, it's during this that Scurvy gets kidnapped! The next step is rescuing Scurvy from his fate to get back on track and find his treasure, hopefully with some more crew members.

Part Four - X Marks The Spot. Finally, the Players set sail for Scurvy's treasure. This section encompasses several encounters on the way to the island with the buried treasure. Sea monsters, ship wrecks, storms, and the return of Raquel Dominique! Only a few of the encounters are needed to keep the story moving, so you've got a few options to either lengthen or shorten this adventure again here.

Part Five - Isla De La Sombra. Finally, the Players make it to the island and head off to retrieve the treasure. Of course, nothing is so easy. Attacked by wildlife, savages and finally uncovered an ancient dark God from beyond this world. The Players are in for the fight of their lives as they work to keep both the treasure and their lives!

Part Six - Return Of The Pirate Queen! The end is very open, with a number of possibilities of how things can turn out depending on previous encounters and how many of the side adventures the Players got involved in, how they interacted with some of the NPCs (both major and minor).

While the adventure is fairly linear, there are so many options and places for things to go good or bad the ending has only one known factor - Raquel Dominique catches up to Scurvy and the Player Characters. How things turn out is nicely left up in the air.

There are Two Appendices, the first provides all the NPC stats and is intended for the GM. The second provides the pregenerated PCs and equipment lists. Ten Characters are provided for use, and if you have a group that large you'll need them all, if you plan on using all parts of the adventure it can become nearly epic in scope.

The Downside:

If you're trying to run the adventure in a Convention setting you'll need to likely cut several of the side encounters to fit a shorter time frame, and the Games in Bartleytown can be a great, but time consuming, distraction for any game - these really aren't down sides to the adventure, but something to keep in mind when running it.

The only actual downside is the NPC Stat Blocks included with each encounter. Many of them could have  been either placed in Side bars, or included at the end of the Main Section in a printer friendly format for the GM to make better use of. Especially since many of them are so similar they could have easily referred to a generic Character Sheet to be reused as needed. With the stat blocks where they are it clutters up the presentation slightly, and makes it a little harder to use the adventure generically for other systems.

The Otherside:

This adventure has everything, sea monsters, bar fights, gambling, ship to ship battles, ambushes, buried treasure, mermaids, betrayal, all the essentials for adventure on the high seas.

Using the entire adventure would probably take at least two four hour sessions, a quick group could get most of it in one, but it is easily scalable to fit into shorter time slots, or even drawn out a little more. Overall, I'd definitely recommend this one for anybody feeling a need to yell YAARR!! at the gaming table.
 

ghost-angel

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Get In The Mood
« Reply #1 on: December 01, 2007, 10:59:17 AM »
Pirates Of The Caribbean 3 - At World's End is released on DVD on Tuesday (12/4) - pick up the adventure and play it this weekend to get in the mood!

Savvy?
 

pspahn

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AAARRR! The Treasure Of Scurvy Jenkins
« Reply #2 on: December 01, 2007, 07:43:25 PM »
Thanks for the review, Gordon.  I know you're not too keen on the d20 system, so I always appreciate your objectivity.  

Pete

EDIT:  To add: THIS PRODUCT IS AVAILABLE IN PDF FORMAT AT RPGNOW AND PRINT FORMAT AT LULU.COM.
Small Niche Games
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