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The post on the Spanish Inquisition still isn’t quite right. It doesn’t grab me. There’s something missing, some hook. Until it clicks, I’m going to keep fiddling with it.

A while back I posted about creating 3×5 cards with the vital bits of Savage Worlds/Pirates of the Spanish Main character creation on them, so I can fiddle with my supporting cast when I’m in situations where busting out a game book wouldn’t be appropriate. At this stage, I’ve got one card with the skill list on it. I’ve got the attributes memorized, the number of starting points for attributes and skills, and how to factor Hindrances and Edges memorized. I can remember how to factor Pace, Parry and Toughness. I know that every 5XP is an Advance. I just need to job down, probably on the back of the skills 3×5 card, the number of XP in each rank (i.e., Novice = XX points, Seasoned = XX points, etc.). I’ve got a copy of the pages from PotSM summarizing the Hindrances and Edges in my riot bag, so when I flesh out a character on a card, I can just note that I need to write in X number of Hindrances and X Edges, and pick them off a list when I get the chance.

For me, and I hope you’ll agree after seeing the Extras I’ve posted, a supporting cast can tell you as much or more about the tone of a campaign than flavor text. If you get them right, it not only gives players an idea of the types of characters that will be appropriate it, it will provide hints at the types of adventures you’ll be running. After all, there’s no point in writing up these characters if they’re not going to encounter them.

Sam Raimi refers to “mook” extras in his movies as “shemps”. After Shemp Howard, the Other Stooge. I’ve always liked that. Extras, mooksd, shemps. I’ve started thinking of certain unskilled mooks as shemps, so if I slip and use the term in something I post, that’s where it comes from.

My next project after I get all my pirate campaign ducks in a row will be Hard Times, the Dickensian Steam/Punk campaign I’ve babbled about here and there, using Spirit of the Century. More on that, later.

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In the most technical sense, el Capitan Alonso Quixano is a Spanish privateer. He sails under a Spanish flag with the permission (if not always the blessing) of the Spanish Crown. He does not, however, prey upon enemy ships for treasure; Quixano’s quest is to battle sea monsters.

A fiftyish man with the manners and appearance of a country gentleman, Capitan Quixano will come to the aid of any ship, under any flag, doing battle with a sea monster. For that reason, seafaring men of all nations who sail the Spanish Main view him as a neutral party, if not an ally. Americans and British sailors ignore the flag he flies under and give him wide berth; pirates and mercenaries tell that it would be bad luck to fire upon Quixano, because he is also quite mad.

The downside to his obsession, you see, is that he finds monsters everywhere. Quixano believes that sea monsters have the power to disguise themselves as ships, small islands, sandbars, or even bits of flotsam and jetsam. It is only the intervention of his first officer, Sancho Panza, that keeps Quixano from occasionally firing upon Spanish ships and other friendly vessels when fits of delusion are upon him. In these cases, Panza convinces the capitan than discretion is the better part of valor, and that they should run away lest the hideous beast sink them.

Another part of Quixano’s delusion is that he only sees the best in people. He’ll treat the most scurrilous scaliwag as if he were a noble gentleman and valiant knight, and all women as virtuous maidens. Fortunately Panza never strays far from his side and moderates things so the capitan doesn’t get into too much trouble.

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I like to be a prepared game master. I also believe in working smarter, not harder. So when I put together a campaign I try to anticipate the types of supporting characters I’ll need and create them ahead of time. These fall into common roles, regardless of the setting: a contact to acquire gear, a resource for information, the “cavalry” character who shows up fortuitously, someone who can patch up wounds, and so on.

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When I decided to jump back into tabletop role playing, and decided to run something new from scratch rather than reviving some old campaign or incomplete campaign idea, I set myself two caveats:

1. Don’t create more than you need; create a framework that will allow the world to grow organically through play, and
2. Use what you’ve got; don’t spend tons of money on source books specifically for this campaign.

Obviously, this led me to decide on the Pirates of the Spanish Main RPG, because it was the most recent core book purchase I’d made and it’s been a hot topic on The Dire Cafe for months so ideas were already rolling around in my head.

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To make life easy, I went to a copy place and zapped a few pages from the Pirates of the Spanish Main rulebook — the character creation summary, the lists of Skills, Edges and Hindrances, and the Equipment lists. These got three-hole punched and put into a binder, so I don’t have to lug the heavy core book around. I can also be a little more stealthy in certain situations, as an unmarked binder is less conspicuous than a hardcover role playing manual. When I meet with players to do character creation, this gives me an extra set of reference pages for people to use.

Kicking myself, I realize that the one thing I didn’t make copies of is the character sheet. D’oh! Forest, meet trees.

Unlike past world building endeavors, I’m allowing the binder to grow organically; I didn’t start one until I had something to put in it, and will add to it as I have dead-tree things to put in it, rather than thinking of materials to put in it that I might, possibly, use.

My goal is pick up as couple of extra copies of the Savage Worlds Explorer Edition, and generate a single-page cheat sheet covering things that are in Pirates but not that book. I think, without actually looking, that’s going to be a few specific Edges and Hindrances and maybe a combat rule or two.

An extra step I haven’t performed yet will be either scanning those pages into a PDF, or typing those lists into the campaign Tiddywiki. Probably the latter. I plan to use my laptop as the GM screen, and that will allow me to pull up the reference material I need without resorting to books. It always seems that table space is at a premium, and the more material I have in electronic format the better. In the past, I’ve sat in games with my laptop in front of me and a tray table full of books next to me, and it’s a pain in the ass.

I was going to write a blog post about the Tiddlywiki, but I’ll probably just create a sanitized (spoiler-free) version and post it in the near future.

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