Pirates: Ye Olde Core Rules!

[Spinachcat]

"Avast there! Be ye seekin' adventure, matey?
Well, there ain't no more glorious a trade than bein' a pirate!
There ain't no laws what hold us.
There ain't no men that break us. We be free, my friend.
Free to live as kings, stuffin' our pockets fulla gold and killin' whoever gets in our way.
Ahhh, it be oh so wonderful a life, it be, but it ain't easy either.
Be ye able ta do more with yer sword than dance with it?"​

This review is long overdue.

Several years ago, I received two RPGs from New Dimension Games to review - Fantasia: the Book of All Knowing and Pirates: Ye Olde Core Rules. Fantasia is a solid RPG for Tolkein fans; I wrote a detailed review about it several years ago and just posted it on ENworld as well. Unfortunately, PIRATES slipped through the cracks. Not figuritively either. The book somehow got lost behind my bookshelf and I did not find it until I moved last month.

HOIST HIGH THE COLORS!
PIRATES: Ye Olde Core Rules is written by Matthew deMille, the brains, hook hand and peg leg behind New Dimension Games, who has published five RPGs with dozens of supplements. Matt was also Production Designer on the cult movie The Gamers: Dorkness Rising. His games can be purchased in dead tree softcover from New Dimension Games and PDFs from DriveThruRPG and Paizo's site. He offers free shipping in the USA.

Judging the book by it's cover, PIRATES is clearly a small press production. Text format is no nonsense two-column blocks. The art is black and white public domain with some evocative choices. There is a table of contents and an index. I believe the classic images work fine for a historical game, culled from two centuries of art that clearly inspired Robert Louis Stevenson, Walt Disney and Sid Meier.

I am a huge fan of the entire pirate genre. I love the history, literature, games and films so I am the target market for such an RPG. I am unsure if this makes me more critical or more sympathetic toward a piracy RPG. As I detailed in another review, my favorite such RPG is Crimson Cutlass, an amazing creation that was ahead of its time and still boasts concepts unique among RPGs. Sadly, Cutlass never found its audience and vanished into obscurity. There is 99% probability you have never even heard of Crimson Cutlass so there is little use in making comparisons. However, many of you are fans of John Wick's 7th Sea and Fifty Fathoms for Savage Worlds.

Matt de Mille's PIRATES is more focussed than 7th Sea and more brutal than 50 Fathoms. Player characters are...pirates, though from a variety of backgrounds. The setting is the "real" world of historical piracy in the Caribbean and the Mediterranean during the 17th and 18th century. Gameplay is focussed entirely on the themes of "live fast and die hard", "dirty deeds done for doubloons" and "rum, puke and whores" and these themes are enhanced by the rules at every twist and turn. There is plenty of swashbuckling and perhaps some honor among theives, but unlike 7th Sea, these characters are not superheroes and they will die like rabid dogs. This is the Deadwood version of piracy much more than the Disney version. Can you run it lighter? Sure! It can do Jack Sparrow vs. Captain Hook, but it really shines when it gets grim, gritty and nasty.

PIRATES gets the historical dicotomy of piracy. Buccaneers are the free men of their age, engaging in constant brutal crimes against anyone who has what they want. There are no rules on their behavior, except the Articles signed when joining a pirate crew. In a world being crushed by egomanic monarchs, ignorant savagery and corrupt churches, drunken pirates lived in a true democratic system where "one man, one vote" was defended to the death and even religious freedom was respected. It's no surprise these anti-heroes continue to fascinate every generation.

ROLL THE BONES!
PIRATES is class, level and skill RPG whose mechanics are based on D12 + Ability Score versus a target number, usually 12. Matt is a fan of extremes, so 1s are always a failure and 12s always a success. Moreoever, in combat these are always Crits & Blunders. The Crits are vicious, worthy of Warhammer though more succinct. Adventure Points (AP) are the system's fudging, fate, player control mechanism. You can spend an AP at any time to alter any roll by +1/-1. This is not just altering the numerical total, but literally the die roll itself so you can use APs to cause a foe to Blunder or turn your 11 into a "natural 12" scoring a mighty Critical. This is the cinematic factor of the game.

Your character earns XP by his actions, but you the player earns Adventure Points through roleplay, sportsmanship...and wearing a costume to the game. Matt believes costuming is a huge boon to immersion and he's right. I've done this too and just wrapping hankerchiefs on your head helps the mood. Plus, its an excuse to wear you RenFaire stuff. APs can also be earned by suggesting minor scenes, keeping the table focused on the game and not arguing the rules.

PIRATES simulates the sea-going gangbanger life of a buccaneer. Player characters are driven to gain their own ships, and becoming Captain is when the trouble really starts. Your fellow pirates are a murderous, mutinous bunch who are voracious for gold and spend it like frenzied politicians. They are superstitious and easily panicked so keeping morale high is always challenging. And as their morale drops, so does their efficiency in all matters. You can easily have multiple PC captains as many pirates sail with allied ships and fleets. If you succeed in keeping your crew happy via slaughter and plunder, you will earn tremendous notoriety which then brings down pirate hunters on your head. Soon you find every port hates you. Plus, your crew aren't pious soldiers. They are rowdy, undisciplined ruffians whose bloodlust and greed can often derail a Captain's schemes. So a smart pirate becomes a privateer, but the game doesn't go easy on you. Pirates are about gold and freedom, not being lapdogs to some far away king. While a privateer may be honored at court, he must beware his crew even more. So you are gonna die matey! It's just a question of how much life you enjoy first!

JACQUE LE JACQUE
Here's character creation. Players start with 10 Creation Points that can be spent on re-rolls and special abilities during chargen. I rolled my 3D12 for each ability score and kept the middle score. Poor Jacque did poorly with Brawn 3, Agility 5, Endurance 6, Girth 5, Wits 4, Intuition 7, Charisma 7 and Luck 4. I decided Jacque would be French (but of course!) so he gets +1 to any ability so I increased Intuition to 8. Instead of picking any of the French sub-groups (Parisian, Artiste or Lover), I decided to just be a Frenchmen via the Louisiana colony. Pirates are a panicky lot so I choose Fear of Utter Silence, gaining 2 more Creation Points. Jacque is also became Superstitious (+1 Intuition, -1 Wits). For background info, I decided just to randomly roll instead of choosing so Jacque was a Sailor from a Wealthy lifestyle whose reason for piracy is to "burn the world to ease a broken heart" all of which earns me a miserable 1 point of Notoreity to begin with.

Thanks to my altered ability scores, my final tally is Defense 11 (really good), "happy crew" starting morale for ships that Jacque may captain, but my max skill level is only a lowly 2 and I get a negative when rolling for my crew's behavior in port (they wind up in jail or hung slightly more often). My base move is good so Jacque can outrun most town guards.

Classes cost Creation Points, but they only affect your initial chargen offering Defense modifiers, skill bonuses and some roleplay benefits called "selfish excuses". I spend 3 Creation Points to buy into the Swashbuckler class which grants me +2 Defense, +1 bonus if I become skilled with rapiers, longswords, climbing, swimming and shipwright, and the selfish excuse of general buffoonery in the face of cold reality. Finally, I buy up my skills spending the rest of my Creation Points and gain Rapier +3, Climb +3, Loving +1, Swim +1 and Speak Basic English. Jacque can use his +1 Loving for making sexytime with prostitutes (see Table 26!) so it less likely he will get weird diseases and more likely he will find fiery lasses who give him XP.

...AND A BOTTLE OF RUM
I am franky amazed at the amount of gaming goodness Matt has packed into 140 pages. PIRATES is packed with lots of cool little rulesets like how spending local coins affects merchants making goods more available. AKA, spending your British guineas at an English port will open more doors than Spanish doubloons. The rules are ridiculously complete with guidelines for training your parrot or monkey, modifying your pirate ship (now that's pimping your ride), trading merchantile goods or selling stolen cargo. The ship gazeteer details 13 vessels of the era in good detail, breaking them down with game mechanic differences that makes choices meaningful. Lots of nautical detail is simplified for tabletop gaming.

Beyond the core book, PIRATES has a dizzying amount of support for a small press game. The New Dimension Games website has a Core Rules Sample, six free Mini-Adventures and a Rules Reference PDF. Fans of splat books will not be disappointed. There are sourcebooks for the Caribbean, Mediterranean and Open Seas; gazeteers for the Spanish Main, Barbary Coast, Seven Seas, Hellish Havens, Bloodiest Yarns and Endless Enemies; plus 16 adventures including roleplaying through Treasure Island and Captain Blood. He also sells maps of the era so your pirates can plot their bloody course across the kitchen table. Don't forget the huge Q & A and more free additions to the game. I have not seen the supplements, but the free downloads are good quality.

LIMPING ON A PEG LEG
The game stumbles in a couple of areas. I am not thrilled by Matt's organizational choices. Fortunately, the table of contents is four detailed pages, but I was thrown by the odd chapter organization several times during my first read. We are told about how to arbitrate Ability Checks many chapters before we learn how to create characters. The separation between The Rule Book, The Captain's Book and the Player's Book chapter groupings are confusing since everything is jammed in a single slim volume. Maybe this would work better with PDF where you could create three pamphlets and then only give The Player's Book section to your grubby pirates-in-training at the game table.

The Nationality section is odd and unnecessarily problematic. It's one thing to differentiate Elves, Dwarves and Gnomes, but with real world humans? Irishmen get a Luck bonus and +1 with drinking contests. Scotsmen get +1 Attack bonus, but -1 Wits. Apparently, Mr. DeMille thinks the Irish are drunken leprechauns, the Scottish are football hooligans, but gives the French +1 to any one ability. National heritage is an important aspect to any historical game, but assigning mechanical bonuses and penalties is just asking for trouble.

Also, Matt skimps on historical context and points readers at their local libraries to bone up on the Age of Sail, the Caribbean and other topics you need to research to effectively portray the era. I believe the game could have used an overview of the time period and the locales most frequented by pirates. Instead, he saved this for his many sourcebooks.

IS IT WORTH MY PIECES OF EIGHT?
Do you love pirates? Would your group have a blast playing ruthless sea dogs? Do cabin boys deserve one in the esophagus? If you answered yes to any of these, go buy a copy. This game would be a good gift for someone who loves pirates and may be intrigued by roleplaying. The wealth of advice for new players and new Game Captains (GMs) is quite good. The whole game is 140 pages with lots of pictures so it can be mastered in an lazy afternoon by any teenager. I give it a C+ on Presentation because although the art, layout and organization are lacking, the writing is clear and succinct. PIRATES gets a A- on Quality because everything I need to run a lengthy, varied and immersive Pirate campaign is tightly packed into the book. And if I ever want more, the game support is impressive in scope.

"We be headin' into uncharted waters matey, where there ain't no rules,
and only enough cannon, dice and skill will save ya.
Ahhh, a pirate's life fer me..."​