In honor of Talk Like a Pirate Day, we’re putting a new adventure online for adults who want to run a game for their kids.  This is using the PCKS (Plaid Chameleon Kids System) which we’ll be tweaking a bit as time goes on.  <!– /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:”"; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:”Times New Roman”; mso-fareast-font-family:”Times New Roman”;} span.EmailStyle15 {mso-style-type:personal; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-ansi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; font-family:Arial; mso-ascii-font-family:Arial; mso-hansi-font-family:Arial; mso-bidi-font-family:Arial; color:windowtext;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} –>

Each child begins by creating a character. He needs a name and an idea of what kind of game the group is playing. Then each player selects 8 marbles and places them in a small opaque bag (like a dice bag) with one black marble. The color of the marble corresponds to different skills and the number of marbles shows how skilled he is in that area. A hero with 3 red marbles is a better fighter than someone with 1 red marble. For this pirate game, the skills are :

Red : Fighting, using weapons

Blue : Sailing skills, working in the rigging or cannons

Yellow : Smarts, working out problems or talking people into things

Green : Another skill. Players may designate one other skill they want such as strength, acrobatics, keen senses or math.

When a hero attempts something with a good chance of failure, the player describes what he wants to do and then draws one marble out of his bag without looking at it. If the player drew a black marble, his attempt fails. If he draws any other marble, the attempt was successful. If the marble matches the color of the most closely associated skill, the hero achieves a spectacular success. If the attempt is difficult, the game master may require multiple marbles to be drawn. If any of them are black, the attempt fails and if all are the color of the most closely associated skill, the attempt is spectacular. If a hero is injured, he must remove a marble at random from the bag, redrawing if the marble is black.

Combat tends to be a common occurrence in many role playing games. In PCKS, we downplay the use of combat, but it still arises. Each hero states what he wants to do this round and draws a marble to determine success. If a character attacks someone successfully and they did not state they were acting defensively (or do not gain a success), they are injured. A spectacular success reduces the opponent’s successes by 1.

Note : The term player refers to the person playing the game in real life. The term hero refers to the role the player portrays.

Brown’s Brood

The Beginning

Brown’s Brood is a group of Pirates who sail the seas near Port Royal and attack the ships of the evil Eastern Naval Institute. The Eni ships rob and pillage from the people of the New World and the only ones brave enough to stand up to them are the men and women in Brown’s Brood. This began fifteen years ago when Jeremiah Brown and his wife Kathryn came to retire here to Port Royal. However, the Eni Captain Robert Rogers captured their ship and set them adrift. Jeremiah and Kathryn vowed to bring Rogers to justice. In the years since, they’ve gathered a crew and begun a family. Now Brown’s Brood numbers twenty hardy men and women, but a dozen children also serve aboard their ship. In fact, the crew often leaves the ship in their hands while the grown-ups venture into port. Which is where we begin the adventure. It’s just past dark and the grown-ups are in port while you’re anchored in a nearby small cove.

Ask the players what they like to do on the ship and one word to describe their personality. Suggest that some might work in the sails, others prefer to prepare the guns and others take care of the wheel. The purpose is to give every player a chance to define themselves by their position and get a feel for each other. It’s probably a good idea to put a picture of a ship on the table so they can get a feel for where they are. After they’ve introduced themselves, continue on.

Suddenly, you hear someone crashing through the underbrush. A minute later, a man staggers out of the woods. It’s Simon, one of the crew and he’s been hurt. He climbs the gangplank and falls to the deck, exhausted. He motions you forward and whispers in a raspy voice. “It was an ambush. Captain Rogers was waiting for us to come ashore and had men ready. We were no match for them. He was going to throw us all in jail, but Brown told him that we’d found Barnacle Jones’ sword. Rogers says he’ll let the crew go if we give him the sword, but we’ve got to bring it to the beach by the big willow tree by dawn.”

One of the other children steps forward. “But we don’t know where the sword is! Brown found a Barnacle’s map with some clues on it, but he didn’t have time to figure it out.”

Simon shrugs. “Well then, it’s up to you to find that sword and get it to Rogers by dawn.”

Simon is willing to help the heroes, but he’s too injured to leave the ship. The other children will bandage him up and tare care of the ship. Each child can bring only one item, including the map, from the ship. Allow any reasonable items to be taken, so rope or a knife are possible, but a cannon is not. First, they must find the map.

Stepping into the captain’s day cabin, you see light oak paneling, several closets with gear and the table where he keeps his maps and charts. The top sheet is a hand-drawn map of the island with writing. This must be Barnacle Jones’ map. Barnacle was a well-known pirate who claimed he had a magic sword that shook whenever it pointed north. Its handle was also covered in gems, so people have been looking for it ever since he buried it with the rest of his loot.

If the heroes consult the map, they see a rough drawing of the island with an arrow pointing to a hill that looks like a skull.

The First Clue

Heed my words if you seek my gold

That I hid when I grew so old

Start at the skull cave for the bold

The first letters a message hold

A strange hill stands at the edge of the island. A rock outcropping juts out over the water and several openings in the cliff make it look like a skull. The openings for the eyes and nose are very shallow, but the mouth gapes wide enough to allow your row boat inside. You slowly row inside through jagged stalactites and stalacmites. At the back of the cave a skull sticks out of the wall while someone has scrawled words on the wall around it.

Puppies ignore chalky kittens.

May you never orange seven eagles.

The key to this is in the map’s clue. By looking at only the first letter of each word, the message “Pick my nose” is revealed. If a hero puts his finger in the skull’s nose and pulls, a section of the wall swings open. Remember that each hero may only carry one object and ask what they’re going to use for light.

The Second Clue

Through the dark and damp you have come

But now you must dance to the drum

Here in the dark, don’t be so glum

Tomato, banana and plum

A long passageway stretches out in front of you. The walls are all damp and water trickles down along the edges of the passage while cobwebs drift in the breeze from the door. After a few minutes, the rough stone of the passageway spreads out into a small room with colored tiles on the floor. The ceiling is not visible overhead. You see all the colors of the rainbow on the floor, but a skeleton posed on a spear stands in the middle of the tiles.

This room is a trap for the unwary. Anyone stepping on a tile other than red, yellow or purple triggers the trap and a spear thrust up from the floor. The first time a hero steps on the wrong tile, the spear will narrowly miss the hero. But after that, anyone misstepping will take two injuries for each mistake.

Further, to make the room slightly more challenging, there are a dozen bats up near the ceiling. The bats are relatively harmless, but will attack if any heroes wake them up with too much noise. The bats will concentrate on the two oldest players and make normal attacks for 3 rounds before retreating back to the ceiling. Anyone making loud noises will disrupt their radar and confuse them (preventing them from attacking for a round).

The Third Clue

Keep going and you’ll soon get wet

But please don’t mind my little pet

He’s quite hungry and never met

A fisherman he couldn’t net

The passageway continues going down and puddles shimmer in your light. Up ahead you see the passage widen into a room again. Water drips from the walls and a thick net hangs on one wall while stones litter the floor. There is a pool along the far wall and as you watch, a tentacle emerges from the pool.

This is the final challenge the heroes face. The treasure room lies in the next room which can only be reached by swimming underwater through the pool. Unfortunately, a squid lives in the pool and attacks anyone entering it. He can be defeated by normal combat, though his tentacles allow it to reach anyone using melee weapons and all distance weapons (including thrown rocks) used against the submerged creature have a 50% chance to miss. The simplest solution, suggested by the clue, is to put one end of the net into the pool. The squid will latch onto it and may then be dragged out of the water. Once pulled out, the creature is no threat, but it will die if not returned to the water within 10 minutes. Anyone swimming through the pool will not be able to bring a light source with them.

Treasure Room

As you emerge from the pool, you find yourself in a small room lit by starlight. You can make out narrow openings in the roof far overhead. There is a ledge here with two small chests treated with tar to be waterproof. Looking inside, you see one holds a small fortune in gold and jewels. The second box is longer and holds a bejeweled sword.

The heroes can head back the way they came and return to their ship with ease.

The Exchange

The game ends with a confrontation with Captain Robert Rogers. Rogers shows up with a half dozen men at the beach by the big willow tree. Brown and his crew are kept in chains on a longboat just off shore with two guards. The heroes should have Barnacle Jones’ treasure and sword. If they returned to the ship, Simon will join them as well, though he allows the heroes remain in command. They can trade the sword for the release of their parents, but Rogers just laughs at them. He states that he knows Barnacle buried treasure along with the sword and he won’t release Brown or his crew until the treasure is turned over too. The heroes can turn over the chest or attempt to convince him that they don’t have any more loot. In either case, Rogers orders Brown’s release and leaves with his men.

Otherwise, the heroes can attempt to fight Rogers and his men or challenge Rogers to a duel. As children, they are allowed to all fight against Rogers without Simon or Rogers’ men interfering. If the heroes win, Rogers offers an exchange of himself and his men for Brown’s Brood. If Rogers wins, he takes all the loot and claims he’s going to imprison Brown’s men anyway, only to discover that Brown and his crew have already escaped. They chase off Rogers who does manage to keep the treasure he seized. The heroes may also stage a rescue by having one or more of them swim out to the longboat with their parents. They only need to overpower one guard before Brown’s men break free.

Regardless of what happens, the heroes reunite with their parents and the rest of Brown’s Brood. The adults are extremely impressed that the children found Barnacle Jones’ treasure and carry the kids back to the ship with a cheer and singing.