Avast, ye Matey! Thoughts on Pirate RPGs.

Recently, there's been renewed interest in Pirate themed RPGs. 

What do you want in a Pirate RPG? Pirates, Ships, Flintlocks, Treasure Maps, Swashbuckling Adventure!

7th Sea (1999 / 2016)

I have the 7th Sea (2nd edition, 2e) redesigned by John Wick (no, not the character Keanu Reeves plays in the John Wick movies) in 2016, but a game designer with a high reputation. Original 1st edition (1e) was released in 1999. There was great excitement for the 2e KickStarter which raised more than $1.3M. A very good amount, but like all successfully raised KS by a KS-newbie, it ran into trouble and Chaosium took over the production of the line in 2019.

1e criticisms was that it was too crunchy, too traditional with loads of rules for everything. 2e is narrative with not enough rules. 2e is really a completely different system.

I love the art in 7th Sea (2e), but since the game is more narrative, the source books are heavy in narrative descriptions and light on stats. The world building is impressive. So, you're mainly paying for art and lots of narrative text.

The fan base for 7th Sea had hoped for a streamlined version of 1e, not a completely new system. Without the support of the old fan base, 7th Sea floundered.

One cool thing in 2e was the death spiral. As you get injured, your skills improve. A precursor to Alien RPG's stress dice which I love.

I've played 2e several times. The system didn't really wow me, but sometime in the future, I might run it.

Freeport (2000)

I grew up with hack and slash, murder hoboing, but didn't play D&D for years. Then I heard about Freeport trilogy, an award winning campaign for best adventure. I wanted to try this out and I had purchased a set of D&D 3.5 years ago and it just sat on my shelf in mint condition. So, what could go wrong?

There's various versions of Freeport for different systems. I ran it using D&D 3.5. Basically, it's D&D 3.5 with a pirate theme slapped on it. The adventure was OK, but there are flaws inherent in using D&D, a combat heavy based system. One of the things I couldn't forgive was when an assassin targets the party members, the clue as to who sent him is on the assassin's body. Seriously? What assassin carries on them the hit contract? Lame and stupid. And of course, the assassination attempt has to fail and the PCs MUST loot the body to find the next clue. WTF.

So, Freeport is OK if you want pirates in your D&D campaign. The city, its laws, and politics are well fleshed out.

50 Fathoms (2003)

I've never played this. Savage Worlds system. Interior art looks a little cartoonish/Disney-ized.

Blood Tide (2014)

I've never played this. BRP system. BRP is the base system for Call of Cthulhu.

Corsairs of Cthulhu (2021)

A KickStarter that isn't out yet. Call of Cthulhu system. The sample art on the KS looks pretty good. New Comet Games have produced other quality CoC books. No QS, so I can't comment on the contents.

Between the Devil & the Deep (2022)

A KickStarter that isn't out yet. It uses the GUMSHOE system. Publisher did the Journal d'Indochine and Sassoon Files which mainly had period photographs. The illustrator they hired for portraits does do quality work. The KS promised ship-to-ship combat rules and large fleet engagement rules. No QS, so I can't comment on the contents.

Cursed Captains of Cthulhu (2023)

A KickStarter with a free QuickStart (QS). Leveraging the popularity of Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, what could go wrong?

I'm glad most new KS RPGs come with a free QS for you to look over the rules and try them out.

I really like the art and the system was built to be a pirate game. I like the characteristics. They're more evocative of the pirate theme.

It uses a new 4d6 system. My issue with the system is that I feel the designers didn't model the probabilities fully.

You basically roll 4d6 + characteristic + bonuses, then compare it to: 4, 8, 13, 16, 20, 25, 30, 34+ for degrees of difficulty. WTF? If you look at the difference between each Target Number (TN), it's: 4, 5, 3, 4, 5, 5, 4. Even if you're taking into account the bell-curve, it doesn't look right. On average 4d6 = 14, so on average without any modifiers, you'll beat the 13 TN which is the Easy difficulty level. To get to Medium difficulty (16 TN), you need at least a +2 for your average die roll of 14 to succeed.

Characteristics

In some cases you can nudge a die up one # and/or reroll up to 3 dice that haven't been nudged.

4 x 1's is a Critical Failure. Um, that's 1 in 1296 chance. WTF. In D&D it's 5% (1 in 20). In CoC it's 5% or 1% (1 in 100) depending on your skill level.

4 x 6's is a Critical Success. Still 1 in 1296, but with nudges and rerolls, it's more often.

The weapon damage table is wonky. Most weapons do set damage and some do die roll damage (vicious damage). I've seen systems that do set armor stoppage and set damage or you have to roll damage dice, but not both. In the QS, they don't explain the mechanical benefits of vicious damage.

The pirate ship and crew are abstracted, which is fine, as are ship ranges. The Pirate Ship rules seem pretty well fleshed out, allowing PCs to affect crew effectiveness.

At a glance, the art looks great and I think the game will play fine, but I have issues with some of the design choices.