What Do I Know About Opinions? Pirate Borg

Pirate Borg

Writer Free League Publishing
Proprietor Limithron LLC
Writing, Illustration, and Structure Luke Stratton
Play Testing, Beta Readers, and Contributors Tyler Stratton, Pelle Nilsson, Christian Eichhorn, Jacob Hurst, Allan Sugarbaker, Scott Sesko, Kevin Campbell, Ryan Zanger, Ben Linde, Charles William Energy Jones, Brett O’Donnell, Matthijs Krijger, Lewis Colburn, Blair McMillan, Matt Lewis, Cornelius Hardenbergh, Richard McAllister, Leonardo Negron, Maboy, Joe Moon, David Lim, the Limithron Patreon & Discord Playtest Group.
Proofreading/Modifying Jarrett Crader (MRC), Allan Sugarbaker, David H Lim, Tyler Stratton, Stijn Van Hove.
Sensitivity Marketing consultant: Bridgett Jeffries.
Public Area Photos The British Library, Rijksmuseum

Captains Log

This assessment is predicated on the Pirate Borg PDF, which is 168 pages lengthy and features a back and front cowl, a credit web page, a title web page, and a two-page map of The Darkish Caribbean. The top papers comprise a number of random tables and guidelines abstract tables. There’s additionally a two-page index.

I normally don’t prefer to reference different video games too usually in a assessment, however on this case, it’s in all probability a good suggestion to distinction this to the progenitor sport, Mork Borg. Like different “Borgs” earlier than it, this e-book has some pages with full-page background photos, descriptive textual content in entrance, and a few textual content that wraps round photos on the web page. Particular person pages could also be filled with data or have a single paragraph highlighting the picture on the web page.

The font used on this e-book is much less harsh and is extra prone to underscore thrives quite than sharp presentation, and in the event you, like me, have a tough time brilliant telephone book, the colours used on this e-book are a lot simpler on the eyes. Totally different sections have totally different colours, however along with a darker yellow than the Mork Borg backgrounds, there are darkish reds, blues, greens, purples, oranges, and browns. There are some eccentricities in structure, however extra of this e-book seems in a extra conventional two-column structure. Some layered colours create depths and an ethereal glow in some photos, in comparison with the broad colours of Mork Borg.

From my perspective, this e-book was simpler to learn than any earlier “Borgs” I’ve perused.

What’s This Sport

The presentation instantly communicates that this can be a fantasy horror pirate-themed sport. However what’s the setting, and the way is it communicated past the art work?

The map and the introduction body this as a sport that explores an alternate Caribbean the place the supernatural is harmful and ever-present in various levels of subtlety. The introduction explains the Scourge, a drive that causes the lifeless to rise, and mentions the Ash, a facet impact of the undead, altering this Caribbean from what we all know to what this e-book portrays.

That introduction solely gives a short description of the setting. The e-book is about as much as bounce from subject to subject, so a web page on the randomized results of Ash explains that it’s an addictive substance created from the stays of the undead, which has change into the supply of numerous the commerce within the area.

A number of two-page spreads introduce factions at play, together with the pirate coalition of the Brethren of the Coast, the British, the facility brokers of the French Indies, the Inquisition primarily based in Havana, and the Wretched Cultists. These are briefly introduced, emphasizing how they work together with the “new regular” of undead monstrosities and the Ash commerce.

The setting components are introduced collectively uniquely. There’s A Common Historical past of the Darkish Caribbean, damaged up into Chapters 1 via 6. Along with the chapters, some headers outline six totally different fronts of the marketing campaign, just like the battle between Spain and England or the Eldrich Tides of Doom (the countdown in the direction of the supernatural apocalypse). The group would possibly play via the historical past of the area chapter by chapter, with the occasions for that chapter rolled out one after the other till the subsequent chapter begins. A gaggle would possibly start in a later chapter, assuming what has come earlier than, or the desk can be utilized as a random generator of disjointed occasions that aren’t a part of a cohesive timeline. The general assumption is that the world is on a timetable towards destruction, however most individuals don’t realize it, at the very least within the early chapters.

From character creation, you may piece collectively that you’re supposed to play a pirate on this setting, though how black-hearted you’re is as much as you. Some characters will solely have an exterior connection to the supernatural, whereas some participant characters can have numerous presents they will use within the marketing campaign. 

The monsters and random encounters assist outline the supernatural’s type within the setting. There are bone ships, big sea creatures, carnivorous vegetation, skeletons, and zombies, lots of which can be crewing their very own ships, ghosts, deep ones, sirens, and coral shoggoths. Whereas there are mythos creatures and cultists included among the many adversaries, it’s not primarily a mythos-themed sport, a lot because the Cthulhu Mythos is yet one more vector by which the tip of the world can manifest.

To additional reinforce the idea of the participant characters as a pirate crew, there are quite a few random tables for treasure, treasure maps, buried treasure, and the cargo holds of raided ships. The instance journey gives probably the most direct clarification of this setting and its look.

They’re Extra Like Pointers

What cube do you roll? You’ll have to learn the person pages and the foundations they reference to see what cube are used. The bigger tables are d66 tables, which means you roll one d6 because the tens and the opposite d6 as those. The core decision is a d20 plus a modifier, measured in opposition to a problem ranking, which succeeds if the roll is the same as or larger than the issue.

Rolls are player-facing, which means that when a participant makes an attempt an motion or makes an assault, the gamers roll the cube. When one thing assaults a participant character, the participant rolls a protection test in opposition to that assault. Each time violence is concerned, the d20 can crit or fumble. Meaning a weapon can break or be misplaced, the character can take double harm from an opponent, or a personality could trigger double harm or achieve an additional assault when defending.

Gentle, medium, or heavy armor helps you to roll a die to subtract from harm. You’ll be able to spend Satan’s Luck to decrease harm completed to you. When a personality reaches 0 hit factors, you make a d6 roll to see in the event that they die immediately, begin bleeding out, take a long-term harm, or keep unconscious for a short while. Reaching zero hit factors is hard, although, as a result of you may go to damaging hit factors, and in the event you do, you’re lifeless.

Characters have the next talents:

• Energy–melee, transferring heavy stuff, grappling
• Agility–defend, swim, take fast actions
• Presence–appeal or reasoning potential
• Toughness–potential to resist bodily hardship
• Spirit–willpower and magical potential

When you roll 4d6 and drop the bottom for every potential rating, the sum is just used to generate your preliminary potential bonus, from -3 to +3. In different phrases, the 16 you rolled to get a +2 solely issues once you make the character.

Each character has a number of factors in Satan’s Luck. Satan’s Luck can enhance harm, reroll, decrease harm or problem, or neutralize a crit or a fumble. You get a random variety of these again after six hours of relaxation. Therapeutic is a bit more forgiving than I’ve seen in related video games, with characters regaining a d4 of hit factors on a brief relaxation (10 minutes) or a d8 on an extended relaxation (in a single day). 

When characters advance, the next occurs:

• Roll to see in case your talents enhance (most of +6)
• Achieve extra hit factors (randomly rolled)
• Achieve a category function
• Roll to see in the event you discovered one thing attention-grabbing (which might embrace studying a ritual or discovering a relic)

The character courses on this sport embrace:

• Brute–characters with a signature weapon
• Rapscallion–roguish characters focusing on being sneaky, fortunate, or brewing grog
• Buccaneer–sharpshooters with some secondary survival expertise
• Swashbuckler–characters with a signature preventing fashion
• Zealot–characters that may use arcane rituals in addition to having access to prayers
• Sorcerer–you may have entry to spells, in addition to with the ability to use arcane rituals
• Haunted Soul–an optionally available class that represents somebody who could have died and are available again, like a ghost, an eldritch mutation, or a vampire
• Tall Story–merfolk, half-sea creatures, and sapient animals

Every class modifies your preliminary potential scores, so in the event you change into a sorcerer, you’ll add two to spirit and subtract one from power and toughness, whereas in the event you change into a brute, you enhance your power and toughness by one and decrease your presence and spirit by one. Courses with spells or prayers roll a random quantity after resting to see what number of they will entry for the upcoming day.

Historic relics have a perform that triggers when they’re used, however as soon as you utilize them, you make a spirit test to see if the merchandise is depleted till the subsequent daybreak. On a fumble, the merchandise not has any energy. Characters that may use rituals roll to see what number of they will use for the day. Not like prayers or spells, these don’t work routinely however require a spirit roll. If rituals fail, it triggers a roll on the magical mishaps desk. The principles embrace twenty historical relics and twenty arcane rituals. 

Whereas not an arcane ritual, your crew has entry to a number of sea shanties decided by the captain’s spirit. If the crew makes an applicable check efficiently, they will set off the consequences of the shanty they’re singing. These embrace results like giving the ship a number of factors of satan’s luck, restoring hit factors to the ship’s hull, or growing the accuracy of the ship’s weapons.

Ships have statistics much like characters, with the addition of stats for broadsides, small arms, ram, crew, and cargo. Broadsides measure the harm of the ship’s main weapons, whereas small arms measure the extra transportable weapons that can be utilized. Ram exhibits how a lot harm you do in the event you sail straight into one thing, and crew exhibits you what number of crew members you want for the ship to perform effectively. Everybody takes a flip in naval fight, however so long as the crew is at the very least on the ship’s minimal degree, the ship will get to take two actions of its personal, utilizing the crew’s ability rank. 

The Curse of Skeleton Level

This sport presents its assumptions in an unorthodox approach, so in response to the designers, it could be much more essential to speak what the sport ought to seem like. In some methods, the introduction is customary for an RPG journey. It contains some background data on the state of affairs’s location and a few journey hooks for getting the PCs into the state of affairs. A bit additionally discusses the distinction between utilizing this to begin a marketing campaign or as a one-shot or brief story arc.

The journey’s construction is a sandbox the place the PCs can work together with locals and comply with up on hooks. Whereas they accomplish that, a sidebar exhibits the development of broader occasions that occur after they aren’t addressed. Numerous NPCs are introduced, a few of that are quest givers, some are contacts, and a few are villains. Every NPC has a bit on what they need and what they’re presently doing at any given level within the journey. For instance, in the event you don’t already know what Vernoique Barlette is doing when the PCs ask about her, you may roll on the desk beneath her entry, and in the event you roll a 7, which means she’s within the fort studying.

There are random encounter tables for the totally different areas within the adventures, rumors, and randomly rolled ships at port. Among the areas embrace:

• Coral City
• The Previous Lighthouse
• Carcass Seashore
• The Jungle
• The Anonymous Temple
• Loss of life’s Head Swamp
• Black Coral Reef
• Skeleton Level

The lighthouse is a smaller dungeon location, whereas the Anonymous Temple and Skeleton Level are each bigger dungeon experiences. The Anonymous Temple is break up into three areas, whereas Skeleton Level consists of assorted above-ground areas within the fortress, with a dungeon complicated beneath.

When you’ve run different sandbox adventures, this in all probability gained’t be too laborious to navigate. I recognize the development observe, which exhibits what’s going to occur and in what order if the PCs don’t take note of sure rumors or jobs they’ve been provided. As written, this does really feel a bit of extra like pirate-flavored fantasy adventuring as little of the exploration that the PCs are anticipated to have interaction with includes crusing, climate, naval battles, or studying different ships, and the misplaced treasure the PCs are on the lookout for is in dungeon complexes with a number of rooms and ranges, quite than a extra pulpy gauntlet of traps with a handful of areas harking back to an Indiana Jones film.

Landfall

The principles of this sport are clear and simple however simply granular sufficient to be participating over a number of classes. There are tons of atmospheric tables to assist the GM generate concepts for the video games they run. The character sheet is great as a result of it has all the random tables for character creation on the sheet, with checkboxes subsequent to the outcomes, so you may mark off which one you rolled. Weapon harm and sophistication talents (for all courses) are summarized on the sheet, which ought to decrease flipping via rulebooks. I just like the mirrored mechanics of relics and rituals, and it’s sensible to throw shanties in as a form of ritual-like impact.

Doldrums

It’s going to attraction to some folks greater than others, however the idea of piecing collectively how guidelines work with each other and even what a number of the primary assumptions of the sport are by leaping to totally different matters would possibly make this harder for some folks to digest. The sport does give an admonishment upfront to keep away from dwelling on the worst facets of the historical past of the Caribbean. Nonetheless, a lot of the cultures that get any element are colonists from European nations, which nonetheless introduces the aftermath of a few of that historical past, which brings to thoughts whether or not it’s higher to keep away from these matters altogether or to make it very clear that they had been at play, and present the remnants of them. None of that is framed from the angle of individuals initially native to the Caribbean, and the presence of the Inquisition and the depopulated jungle that results in the empty, cursed Anonymous Temple tells lots within the damaging area of the narrative.

Tenuous Suggestion–The product has optimistic facets, however patrons could need to make sure the optimistic facets align with their tastes earlier than transferring this up their checklist of what to buy subsequent.

I’ll not have clicked with a number of the different “Borg”-derived video games, however I actually like this product. It’s a sport about heroic adventuring with pirates and the supernatural that checks off numerous bins for me. When you’re participating with the foundations, they’re simple however not overly simplistic. I do know for some folks, a part of the appeal of the “Borg” video games is presenting a gritty fantasy model of Earth’s historical past, however I’d be thrilled to see this reworked for an entire fantasy setting that makes it simpler to keep away from even the implication of a number of the historic occasions that also solid a shadow on this sport’s setting. I take pleasure in this sport from the angle of placing all of it collectively and gaining an extended view of the way it works collectively. Nonetheless, I feel it could be more difficult for some purchasers to leap from subject to subject and draw the strains which might be normally already drawn in an RPG product.

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