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Welcome to Quest for Don Diego : One Dice Pirates and Dragons

16:23, 20th April 2024 (GMT+0)

Quest for Don Diego : One Dice Pirates and Dragons

This game is set in a "skin" or variant of Cakebread and Walton's One Dice Pirates and Dragons game. One Dice, as the name implies, is a simple RPG system in which all doubtful decisions are made by rolling one D6 and adding appropriate modifiers. Pirates and Dragons is a popular C & W RPG originally using a more sophisticated gaming system and a very elaborate campaign world. The One Dice version  uses the simple RPG system and a stripped-down version of the campaign world.
Pirates and Dragons is based on the brilliant insight: "Pirates love gold. Dragons love gold. When the terrors of the sea meet the terrors of the skies, there is bound to be trouble." The setting is the Dragon Sea, roughly the early modern Caribbean. Some islands are occupied (or shared)by native islanders, roughly like the historical Taino or Caribs. Some are occupied (rarely shared) by dragons. Some have ruins of an ancient lost civilization, Adalantas. A century or so ago, the Dragon Sea was discovered by the peoples of Uropa (Europe), and some islands have been settled by Uropan nations: Albion (England), Gaule (France) Batavia (the Netherlands) and Esbania (Spain). As in our world, Esbania arrived first, occupied major islands, and conquered and looted the mainland High Bressayle (roughly Central/South America, only on the edge of the standard game map).
In the C & W game world, the politics of the Uropan nations is roughly our world's late 18th century. Gaule has had a bloody revolution and is now a republic. Albion, Batavia, and Esbania are all monarchies. Batavia has a higher level of technology than the others and produces sophisticated weapons and devices it tries to keep to itself.
In my "17th century skin" I moved the politics back about 100 years, to match what really were the great days of piracy in the Caribbean. In my version, Batavia is an oligarchic republic, ruled by their High Mightinesses the Estates General, uneasily sharing power with a hereditary executive, the stadholder. Albion, Gaule and Esbania are monarchies. Northern Albion is the autonomous kingdom of Caledon, whose king rules Albion in a personal union.
Some people in Albion and its colonies are royalists loyal to the king. Others in Albion are dour puritanical would-be republicans ("Commonwealthmen") though as of this moment in the campaign there is no open civil war.
I also added the religious element. Esbania is devoutly attached to its Holy Church (Catholic). Albion is nominally attached to its Royal (Episcopal) Church, though some favor the Pure (Reformed) Church. Calcedon is under the Pure Church, though there are some adherents of the Holy Church in the Highlands. Gaule is under the Holy Church but reluctantly tolerates a small Pure Church minority, which has a small colony in what we would call Florida at Fort Henrietta. Batavia officially is under the Pure Church but it is the one state that is broadly tolerant.
Another variant is that in the original C & W P & D world only Islanders and those taught by Islanders can practice magic, in a form based on links to the island spirits. In my version (as in the real 17th century) Uropans may practice magic, but often in less natural bookish variants. There is folk magic (very like islander nature spirit magic), angelic magic and demonic magic. Uropan magic users start with one Magic point (see the point system in character creation) and can only gain more by finding/purchasing magical texts. They can advance 1 point of magic for each text found.
The Esbanian inquisition persecutes magicians, except possibly angelic ones, as does the Pure Church where it has real power (Calcedon, some Puritan colonies). Magic is tolerated openly in Batavia and more quietly in Albion. Privateers and Navy ships usually follow the laws of their patron nations, but true pirates accept all varieties of magic, even demonic, as long as it helps them.
Perhaps because of the Islanders (and mainland natives') magic, they are not susceptible to Uropan infectious diseases the way the Natives were in our world. For that reason, though some islanders have been enslaved, there has been no need to import quantities of Black slaves to replace dead Native workers. There may be a few Black characters who arrived from the Old World where, as in the real early 17th century, Black people might be either slaves or free people, but with less racial prejudice than later. The equivalent of Africa is not developed in this game.
Because the Natives have not died out, they have not left room for large Uropan settlements in the equivalent of North America. There are a few small settlements along the coast, but that is all. They include the Gaulish Puritan colony of Fort Henrietta in what we would call Florida, the Albionese Royalist colony of Croatoan off what we would call North Carolina, the Albionese Puritan colony of Patuxet in what we would call Massachusetts, and the Gaulish Royal fur-trading outpost Pentaguet in what they call Norumbega (Our world Acadia, later Nova Scotia).
Until the very late 17th century (1697) in our world, there was one surviving independent Maya kingdom in the Yucatan jungle at Nojpeten.
In my skin of Pirates and Dragons, there is one surviving High Adalantean kingdom in the equivalent region of High Bressayle called Zuyua. In the C & W version, the only Adalanteans are barbaric "Low Adalanteans" but in Zuyua, though the common people and ordinary warriors are Low Adalanteans, the ruling elite retain the magical skills of the ancient Adalanteans, including the ability to control a number of fantastic beasts.
The Esbanians have long been aware of Zuyua, and have failed in several attempts to conquer it. Relations between the two peoples remain bitterly hostile, though the Esbanians have not launched an attempted conquest in at least a generation. There are rumors that the current Esbanian captain-general of the region is preparing another attempt.
The other nations (Albion, Gaule and Batavia) have only very slight knowledge of Zuyua, though a few Albionense adventurers have tried to establish friendly relations with Zuyua on the basis of mutual hostility to Esbania.