Revenge: A Pirate RPG

The Golden Age of Piracy is one of my all time favorite historical eras. A couple of friends suggested I start running a pirate tabletop campaign for fun and my mind accidentally went haywire with ideas and this happened:

Hexmap of the Spanish Main. Islands are spaced further apart for more wild encounters.

 

In my game it is 1716, one year after the Wreck of the Spanish Treasure Fleet. Sailors from Cape Cod to London have heard of the tales of the immense amount of gold scattered on the sands of the Florida Keys, itching to be took. The bravest among them have abandoned being abused at sea by Spanish, French, or English captains for little to no pay in search of their own fortunes. More on this and how the supernatural effects this world a little later.

The character sheet

Like I said in a previous post, some of the mechanics are based on The Driftwood Verses, including Afflictions (like Sorrow and Doom) and Skills (like Seafaring and Reload). I took out the deathray style saves because I like using Abilities for that.

With Skills, I use Last Gasp's style of learning skills through usage, but only on the 2nd, 4th, and other even number levels they can roll to see if they gain another dot in that Skill. Players can also interact with NPCs that may know a thing or two about the Skill to gain tallies.

The ship sheet

Ships are almost characters themselves. There are three ship types: Sloop, Frigate, and Galleon, each with pros and cons in Cargo storage, Cannons firepower, and Speed. Combat works the same as Driftwood Verses with contesting Seafaring rolls to execute maneuvers. The Move maneuver uses Speed of the ship, which is based on Pirates of the Spanish Main's usage of measuring via Longways (L) or Shortways (S) of a playing card. I found this the easiest to translate since I use their minis for combat anyway.

Resources play a huge role in dictating what the players can/need to do. Using the Plunder System helps with randomizing loot for pillaged ships, but its always a risk because it may not carry what the players need. Each hex requires Provisions to travel to, Munitions to fight enemy ships or creatures, and Wood to recover from said battles. They can also find Treasures to trade in at outposts for gold/XP gain. This aspect of resource management really drives home that the PCs are scrappy survivalists and not just unstoppable forces at sea.

I will be posting some Session Notes from this in the near future as well as some tables I've made for pirate era Items, Wavecrawl Encounters, and Crew Morale. In the meantime if you are looking for similar inspiration checkout Zak's Wavecrawl post and Weird On the Waves which also have been a huge help. Cheers!