Have you ever ran/played in a pirate campaign? Any ideas on how

Only in the sense I've played Rogue Trader. It's not a bad way to run one, but it obviously has the limitation of being in the 40k universe

Depends on if your players are going to be good pirates or bad pirates.

Bad pirates is simpler. Have rival pirates on the seas, plenty of towns and empires to steal from, and all that good sea thieving craziness.

Good pirates is a little more complex. You need to make sure the people they're stealing from and fighting are worse than the players are, and make them feel like robin hoods of the sea. An evil empire or sea monsters ruling the waves, that sort of thing.

Either way, balance ship combat, on land/on boat combat, and lots of downtime between conflicts to get the players attached to each other and their crew.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIwzRkjn86w

>>54830125
>how one would run one?
Spelljammer privateers?

played a pirate game, rolled my character's backstory and wound up with a character that hated his lot in life.
He progressed well into chaotic evil shit, but he didn't die if you exclude becoming an undead.

For one session. The DM thought it would be smart to have us be immediately boarded, our supplies stolen, and the enemy captain to take my character's son (another player) and try to chop his arm off. I tackled the bastard into the water, the rest of the party followed me instead of using the dynamite they knew we had hidden on our ship, and we ended up shipless and stranded in a cave.

>>54830125
yes, we got a ship and went a roving, nicked a bunch of loot and then got sunk by the Spanish
9/10 would do again
we use dnd because, well, every one knew the rules. there are probably better systems to use

for inspiration
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rd1ASJh_7l0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2JO-i2aPs8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOM4Y7OVRX0

>>54830125
I've played a few. One loosely based on one piece that never finished. Another where we were a small crew out to make a name for ourselves that never finished. Finally I also played a game of slightly edited Skull and Shackles that also never finished

I just want to finish a game ;_;

>>54830401
>tfw I live in Halifax

I'm currently running a pirate game in Burning Wheel.

>>54830125
I became a pirate at the end of a DnD one shot where we played as a Merchant, his bodyguard, and a ship's mate.

But other than becoming a peg-legged Dwarf with a ship and massive treasure, the only Pirate Game I've played is Rogue Trader, if you can call it that.

>>54835683
Ryan?

>>54830125
Play a system that supports gritty combat. My buddy ran a heavily modified Skulls & Shackles game in Pathfinder. It was fun for the first 6 levels, but by level 10 the pirate feeling was gone entirely.

We had a game that was supposed to be about escaping slavery that we ended up turning into a pirate game.

The DM was a bit thrown off by the sudden change, but he rolled with it surprisingly well, considering the game was supposed to be based off the plot of a video game he was making.

Least until we got to the sailing and the DM seemed to struggle with distances, considering we had a literal 4 month boat chase(that we couldn't win because the other boat was faster than us) where we ended up going about 100 miles.

We ended up escaping when we let them catch up so we could leap on, damage the boat, then escape. It took longer for them to catch up because I also went under water and destroyed the rudder during the chaos. Aegis is probably unironically the only class I really enjoyed playing in Pathfinder.

>>54837289
>We had a game that was supposed to be about escaping slavery that we ended up turning into a pirate game.
That seems almost par the course, usually

>>54830765
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-x72o5feFQE

>>54830125
Here is how you do it.
Give the players a ship
Let them modify said ship
Treat the ship like a floating tavern
Don't rail road them and let them do whatever the fuck they want.
If they don't sail the high seas and plunder the booty its there fault not yours.

>>54838349
Shame on you for not playing the best pirate song
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltWirB6jKh0

>>54838401
Going to do almost precisely that tomorrow. We'll see how it goes...