I picked up Swashbuckling Adventures from an online auction last year. I was very familiar with the Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 system and I loved the pirate genre. When I was prepping for the Character Creation Challenge last month, I noticed that there was no separate character sheet for Swashbuckling Adventures like there was for games like Prime Directive D20, Star Wars D20 or Judge Dread D20, so I ended up using a D&D 3.5 sheet. Like the Prime Directive and Judge Dread, it referred to the D&D 3.5 Players Handbook for basic concepts, but added on with campaign specific classes and items of their own.
So while the character creation rules are on page 6 of the 3.5 Player’s Handbook, the campaign book for Swashbuckling Adventures talks about Nationalities on page 5 with new character classes starting on page 13. In Swashbuckling Adventures all of the characters will be human, but what region are you from? From the descriptions the regions are heavily inspired by European countries all the way down to the Middle-East on a planet called Theah. The region you select determines some languages and class skills.
I looked at the new character classes listed in Swashbuckling Adventures. The Highwayman sounded interesting. So did the Inquisitor. But if I’m playing a game called Swashbuckling Adventures, I’m playing a Pirate class. The abilities that the pirate favored the most was strength, Dexterity and Constitution.
So I rolled the 4d6, dropped the lowest die and selected where each score would go to each of the standard attributes in 3.5. I ended up with the following for this character. STR 15, DEX 15, CON 14, INT 11, WIS 13, CHA 8. For the country/region that my character came from, I selected Avalon (think the British Isles).
As a pirate, the hit dice is d10 (I rolled a 4 and added +2 from my CON for 6). They also start with 3d4x10 for starting money (called Guilders instead of gold pieces). My character started with 200 G. I selected my skills and feats (primarily from the Swashbuckling Adventures book) and gathered my equipment. This character is ready.
Dirk Clarkson was originally going to be a sailor in the navy when his captain announced that they were going privateer. Clarkson discovered that he loved the Pirate life so much that when his vessel was sunk, he hooked up with a gang of pirates instead of returning to Avalon. He now looks to earn his share of the booty on the next adventure.
Afterthoughts:
If you’ve played any Dungeons and Dragons 3.5, then you know the score. It was interesting reading about the different kingdoms in the campaign setting book. They had some items very detailed while leaving others available for the GM to fill in as they saw fit. If an opportunity came up to play in this setting, I would jump at it.
Additional Notes:
The publisher for Low Fantasy Gaming responded to one of my social media posts with their game. It was kewl to see the interaction. When I posted the Tiny Spies character yesterday I received a request to do Tiny Wastelands. While I own that game, I don’t have it in the 2023 schedule. I’ll have to add it to the 2024 lineup.
I’m using a new scanner this year. So far, I haven’t been impressed with the scan quality. I’ll have to see if I can improve the scan for future posts.
Coming Up Next:
John Carter of Mars
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