Editing Scum: We Is Scum (section)

==A Piratical Bent==

As roleplayers, we have to take our anti-heroes and turn them into protagonists that we can care about and relate to.

The approach that this game takes is to look at common media, and look for depictions of anti-heroes. 

A good match here is ''pirates''.


Like pirates, the chavs are seen as the ''scum of society''. They are feared and loathed, and exist outside of the system. Like pirates, the chavs are hedonistic, drunkard and money-grabbing. They both mix gregariousness with a treacherous nature. They both approach violence and sex casually.

Its a small step then to take elements of pirate stories, and to layer them onto the setting of ''Scum''. How much you want to do this depends on your style. 

A subtle GM might just take certain themes - buried treasure, mutiny and the like - and use them as background elements. This is the default approach, recommended by the author. Pirates are a useful mental placeholder to give you ideas as to how you can make villainous folk into protagonists that you can root for. Piratical fiction also runs the same gamut of styles and ranges that you might want to consider in a game of ''Scum'': humour balanced with darkness, and grime mixed with sexuality.

A GM who wants to emphasise the theme might take piratical tropes and modernise them. Perhaps walking the plank might be a gang's way of executing someone, but making them walk off a building's edge rather than into the sea. A map with X-marks-the-spot might be a London Underground map with a big X over one station. 

Finally, a heavy handed GM may want to lift elements wholesale, and hammer in the genre tropes. Perhaps a pub called the Admiral Benbow, or the boss chav being called "Cap'n" and having an eye patch. This approach, of course, lends itself better to heavy humour games, and ones which want to break further from realism.
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