Pirate Borg provides a supernatural and haunted nautical setting set in a reimagined eighteenth-century Caribbean. All that is needed is a dedicated and imaginative gamemaster ready to take a band of player characters pirates through a ship-borne campaign of sword fights, skullduggery, and piracy.
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Pirate Borg, the Pirate Borg starter set, and Down Among the Dead are meant to be played at the table. The writing, production quality, and usability are extremely high. Free League was kind enough to send me review copies to aid in my ongoing coverage of their extremely well-made and GM-friendly RPGs.
Several Pirate Borg supplements enhance the main rulebook. Options include the supplement Down Among the Dead, a boxed starter set, GM screen, adventures, maps, dice, tokens, coins, and even a cassette tape are available. Every product is carefully made and wonderfully illustrated in regards to the print products. Everything is also designed to be used at the table and help a GM craft an adventure and present a dangerous, lawless world of ships, muskets, undead, and Lovecraftian horrors.
Where to Start: Starter Set
For a time-strapped GM, the starter set offers character creation and the game play rules along with everything needed to kick off a campaign and start world building. If all goes well, the GM can add the core rulebook to get monsters, NPCs, locations, and another adventure.
In addition to a Player’s Guidebook with character creation and the rules and the adventure, Trapped in the Tropics, the starter set has six laminated character creation sheets with 2 dry-erase markers, dice, maps, tokens, and rule recaps inside the box lids. The page numbers in the Player’s Guidebook match the corresponding pages in the Pirate Borg core rulebook, which is handy and an excellent design choice.
Trapped in the Tropics is designed to teach both the GM and the players the rules. The GM also gets advice on tone and style as well as game modes such as using a battlemap or theater of the mind and wilderness exploration via pointcrawl or hexcrawl. This boxed set adventure is set in the default setting of the Dark Caribbean, so the GM can start world building right away. It takes place on Eel Island, north of St. Martin, located far to the east in the Dark Caribbean.
Trapped in the Tropics is filled with interesting locations like a ship hanging from vines in the jungle, a city crawl, and conflict near an active volcano. The PCs also have the chance to acquire their first ship. An excellent first adventure to kick off a campaign.
The set includes a poster map of the Dark Caribbean, a battlemap of the ship hanging in the trees, and two ship battlemaps. All of these excellent maps will really help players take in the world and visualize it.
Pirate Borg: The Curse at Skeleton Point
The adventure in the core rulebook for Pirate Borg, The Curse at Skeleton Point, is a sandbox setting including a dungeon. It is much more open-ended than Trapped in the Tropics and will require careful reading and prep time to get the adventure ready. The PCs face off against dangerous undead and make both allies and enemies as they decide what to do, if anything, about a missing woman.
The adventure takes place on Black Coral Bay, north of Cuba. It will take a bit of sailing for the pirate PCs to travel from Eel Island to Black Coral Bay. A GM can use some of the included world lore and random tables to build some encounters and bring the Dark Caribbean to life along the journey. The supplement Down Among the Dead has additional random tables that would also be useful in filling out this nautical journey.
Down Among the Dead
A GM armed with both the Pirate Borg starter set and the Pirate Borg rulebook is ready for months of his or her PCs exploring the Dark Caribbean. An excellent supplement would enhance that campaign and help it take on a life of its own quite nicely.
Down Among the Dead is a rulebook that includes three new classes, three adventures, and additional rules and options. The adventures each have uniquely colored pages, making each one easy to find in the book. Down Among the Dead provides excellent support for a Dark Caribbean world building GM. There are tables for building islands and coral reefs, along with lots of new optional rules.
Lost to the Locker
It also includes an entirely new location and adventure called The Locker where the drowned and the shipwrecked may wash up in. It also introduces an interesting new NPC, Charon the ferryman for PCs to deal with as they try to return to the land of the living. The Great Old One Dagon has an obelisk here, perhaps of interest to a PC Deep One.
Yes, PCs have the option to play a Deep One, a Lovecraftian deep sea fish humanoid. The class brings a whole new culture into the game, access to underwater adventures, and a new type of spellcasting. This class pairs well with the excellent poster map adventure, The Sinking of C’Thagn.
PCs who escape the Locker may multi-class into the new class, the Undead Soul, at a cost. They then return to the world they knew, forever marked by their descent into the Locker.
Venom in the Veins
This snake and trap-filled dungeon crawl set in the Dark Yucatan is filled with a new serpent-based culture, complete with dark forbidden knowledge. The French assassin’s guild, The Endgame Society, is also exploring the shrine. If a PC is playing the Indiana Jones-like new class, the Antiquarian, that PC could start with a partially accurate treasure map to the Slithering One shrine. If one of the PC pirates is marked for death, so much the better, at least from the Endgame Society’s point of view!
Into the Maelstrom
Into the Maelstrom takes the classic vampire hunt out of the castle and onto a massive warship crewed by Deep One vampires. The adventure is set in the east in the Dead Islands (once called the Virgin Islands). Recommended for PC pirates with a bit of experience and not afraid to face death (and perhaps come back in the class, the Haunted Soul).
This adventure is customizable and offers plenty of world building options for a GM wanting to explore his or her own version of the Dark Caribbean. It is also tied to the included in-game world poker game called the Three-Eyed Parrot. An excellent map of the Maelstrom is included along with a card reading to kick things off.
Next Steps
Pirate Borg has smaller adventures available as well. Coupled with the random table and world lore included in Pirate Borg, the starter set, and Down Among the Dead, a GM will be able to create a unique version of the Dark Caribbean and see his or her pirate PCs swashbuckling and pirating their way through harrowing and exciting nautical adventures. Time to raise the skull and crossbones and set sail to explore the Dark Caribbean of Pirate Borg!
Picture credit: Nature Landscape Clouds.
