Freeport... without a focus on pirates?!

I've come to the surprising (perhaps) conclusion that I don't actually care much about the pirates in Freeport. I know, I know... that's, of course, the city's signature element. I'm not saying that I want to get rid of pirates. But I do want to downplay them and focus more on things happening in and around the city itself. It also occurs to me that this is how Five Fingers was structured. The Five Fingers book explicitly says that there are three main themes that the city is designed to support: horror, intrigue and crime. One can certainly suggest that piracy is a subset of crime, and one should, but its really the criminal gangs in the city that are the important ones. Piracy is kind of ancillary. And frankly, I think this is the way that it should be. While swashbuckling on a pirate ship is pretty cool, it's just a single note, and you can't really structure a whole campaign around it. It's too... repetitive, I think, of a theme. Maybe this is why pirate sourcebooks for games tend to not get it right; because there's not really enough to pirating in D&D-like games. Paizo's approach in Golarion was particularly disappointing because it also wasn't really all that piratey, nor did it even have a theme at all. Five Fingers focuses more on the city itself, and honestly, so does Freeport. For Freeport, the pirate angle almost comes across as NPCs that you meet in town, and a campy "Talk Like a Pirate Day" kind of theme. Some of the adventures (upcoming "Black Sails" on my trawl) honestly do have quite a bit of pirate theming too them, but the Freeport Trilogy, for instance, that I just read had relatively little other than exploring some sea caves on the cliffs for pirates' buried treasure at one point. Freeport also is more about cults and horror and Lovecraftian threats, and crime in town, although pirates certainly hang around. Mostly, though, just adding local color rather than actually, y'know, pirating. 

But again, I think that was a good call, and if anything, I want to push towards more of that. I want to be more like Five Fingers. When pirates show up, it'll be because they're pirating, not because they're just making the town look like a themed DisneyWorld area. Freeport has a little too much of that already, but there does seem to be a legitimate core of good material at its heart, based on my read-throughs in the past of the original modules and the revised setting. It's since been revised again, and many more modules that I haven't read yet have been published, but that's what the whole point of the Freeport Trawl is; to see what of the Freeport material I can use and what I can't. And honestly, even if I find that the usable material is a low percentage of the actual material, it should still be fun to read. I thought reading the Enemy Within director's cut with the companions was fun, and I have no plans of running that at all. But there were moments here and there that I'd like to adapt, and could see as part of a 5x5 in the future. In fact, I can already envision a Corsair Coast 5x5 that starts off with a Freeport trilogy adaptation, combined with the old "Mistaken Identity" portion of "The Enemy Within". Whether or not any additional adapted Freeport adventures can make the cut is unclear at this point (I'm pretty sure almost nothing from "Black Sails" will make the cut, for instance) but I'll continue to report on it as I go through it. Anything else in the upcoming modules that I read that are sufficiently low fantasy and horror focused will be just as good as the Trilogy was. By good, I mean of course, useful for my setting, game and context. 

If there's not pirates, what takes their place? Pirates aren't likely going to be attacking Freeport, or Port Liure as the case might be, so if pirates come into town, they're more about fencing stolen stuff that they've acquired on the high seas, smuggling stuff into town, or just causing trouble like any ruffians or criminals. I also like, as Five Fingers does, that many pirate captains are associated with the crime lords in town, and can serve not only as a source of income tied to them, but also extra muscle if needed if they make a play. So, there are pirates, but the focus is really on the organized crime in town, the horror, monsters and cultists in and around town, and any intrigue, skullduggery or espionage and politics.  

I'd like to think that I'd have enough material (even after filtering out the stuff that I couldn't use because the theme, tone or gist of it isn't workable in my setting) to have a massive "Freeport-ish" campaign based on adapting modules, often maybe with radical changes to make them fit, but y'know. It would be cool if I find the whole thing doable, and not a big hot mess that I'm not sure what to do with. I hope that I do. I have high hopes for some of the upcoming stuff that I haven't read. I hope I'm not disappointed.

Then, of course, comes the inevitable crux of the matter... can I actually run it after figuring out how, in theory, I would do so?