Barnacles & Bilgewater

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Voyage 50: A Stab in the Dark

Voyage 50: A Stab in the Dark

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Starting characters should be balanced compared to one another, but that doesn't necessarily mean that none of them can start with magic items or special powers. You just need to weigh them all up and make sure they're consistent with the character's back story, but if they are you can allow all sorts of things.

And if a player wants to start with something that's really too powerful, don't simply ban it. Allow it! Just attach a curse or some other sort of limitation on it. Whether you tell the player about that part or not is up to you...

In the real world of the Barnacles & Bilgewater universe, of course, Pirates of the Caribbean doesn't exist. That's the premise of this entire comic, after all. But most of the other things we know and love (such as magic compasses) do, albeit modified by the lack of Pirates of the Caribbean:

Transcript

Will Turner: Jack's mad! We'll never find Elizabeth by blundering across the open sea in the dark!
Gibbs: His madness have method to it!
Jack Sparrow: Arrrr!!!
Jack Sparrow: Gibbs be speakin' the truth! My magic compass will lead us anywhere I desire.
Jack the Monkey: How come you got to start with a magic item?
Jack Sparrow: Because I actually have a character background that justifies it?
GM: Meanwhile, on the Black Pearl, Elizabeth is having a pleasant dinner with Captain Barbossa.
Barbossa: So Missy, are ye gonna tell me where ye got this trinket?
Elizabeth Swann: Sure. After I... stab you in the chest! I roll a 15!
Barbossa: Well that's not very nice now, is it?
Elizabeth Swann: I run out to the deck!
GM: The entire crew are rotting skeletons!
Elizabeth Swann: What, even Pete?
GM: All of them.
Elizabeth Swann: You took Mute, Monkey, and Undead as disads?
Jack the Monkey: When the GM said I could play a "Primate of the Unholy See", I thought that meant I'd be a chaotic evil high priest!


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