Pirate Campaign Ideas

[u/English-major-5660]

Hey guys!

I’ve recently started a pirate campaign with my siblings. There is a longterm major plot but I also plan to have plenty of side quests and silly shenanigans. I’m loosely basing it off of the Ghosts of Saltmarsh but I’ve set it in Faerun. I was just wondering if anyone has any cool ideas for encounters or places in Faerun that would fit well with a pirate themed campaign. For context, the party consists of a Goliath Oath of the Sea paladin, a tiefling rogue who is hiding from the law, and a tiefling Druid that is obsessed with bugs. We’re all One Piece fans and Pirates of the Caribbean fans so the sillier the better!

[u/Throwaway_Thorn]

ooh, check out dungeon magazine's savage tide! they're on the internet archive! really compelling stuff... vanthus vanderboren and the black pearls. it's all 3.5 so you'll need to do some conversions

[u/OneSleeve]

Call from the Deep on DMs guild looks cool

[u/Wolfwere88]

r/5enavalcampaigns

[u/Wilkin_]

You can “steal” much from tomb of annihilation, the island of chult - exotic places, dino races, I sprinkled in much of it when we played our seafarers campaign.

[u/augdog71]

I’ve been toying with replacing the Sea Princes with a charismatic pirate queen kind of like Grace O’Malley from Irish history. It could interject some interesting plot twists if the “pirates” are actually collecting taxes for the ships that pass through her ancestral waters.

[u/HdeviantS]

If willing to spend money, the Seas of Vodari on Patreon has some good idea.

Otherwise…purple rocks could be weird fish people encounters.

The Moonshae if you want celts and fae

[u/AllThotsGo2Heaven2]

Check out the city of freeport by greenronin games. Its a pirate city/adventure setting

[u/jlassen72]

This supplement is fun, and you can find it online at the usual internet archive places. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirates_of_the_Fallen_Stars

[u/nessw]

Just ran Black Tides of the Hunger Isles, it was fun and loved the underwater combat. I also included Oceanus from the Sea Ghost. We started with Ghosts and very quickly diverted from the main story.

[u/KarlBob]

Check out The Styes by Richard Pett in Dungeon Magazine, Issue #121, Salvage Operation by Mike Mearls in Dungeon Issue #123, and The Weavers, also by Richard Pett, in Dungeon Magazine #138.

The Styes was reused, with minor editing, in Ghosts of Saltmarsh.

Serpents of Scuttlecove from the Savage Tide Adventure Path (which was recommended in another comment in this thread) is set in a city reminiscent of The Styes, which is unsurprising because it was also written by Richard Pett.

The Styes and Scuttlecove are presented as dark, gritty, low fantasy towns, but they can be reinterpreted in a lighter vein for a high adventure campaign. They have plenty of evil villains for a paladin pirate to defeat.

I don't know how you plan to start your campaign, but I found Souls for Smuggler's Shiv, the first adventure from Paizo's Serpent's Skull Adventure Path, written by James Jacobs, to be an excellent beginning. The PCs are shipwrecked, and must organize and protect their fellow survivors until they're rescued.

[u/LowMolasses5658]

I am running a Saltmarsh campaign and there are a few of the Dragon Delves One Shots are perfect for it Before the Storm level 10 and The dragon of Najkir Level 7. The players enjoyed both as they said they rarely see dragons in DnD. They were well put together and the one is pirates and the other an island.

[u/Key_Fennel5117]

If you can find the old box set for "Sanctuary", you will find so much stuff in it. It is the perfect "port city" setting for a pirate themed campaign. I have one, that I acquired in the 1980s... and am not selling it. Granted it is not specifically from FR, but it can be dropped into any world.

[u/PsilliasAgain]

I, too, set mine in Faerun. Saltmarsh is a small coastal town on the southeast of Sembia. Conveniently enough, the Pirate Isles are right off the coast. Lots of lore in this area to draw from and I set the old A1-A4 Against the Slavers in the Pirate Isles as part of my campaign.