Set sail for the Dark Caribbean in Pirate Borg. A fast, cinematic, swashbuckling tabletop game built on the Mork Borg system. I sat down with a crew of my finest landlubbers to test out the Pirate Borg Starter Set, and here’s how that adventure went.
The Pirate Borg starter set comes with everything you need to run the game — character sheets, dice, maps, tokens, and a really cool adventure to dive into.
READ MORE: Pirate Borg: Pirates, Cthulhu And Swashbuckling Tabletop Chaos
Creating our Buccaneers
Character creation is really easy in Pirate Borg. While in other games, players usually come with a backstory and idea for their adventurer — here I asked them to go in blind and make cool characters at the table.
The game comes with character creation cheat sheets that walk you through the four steps to creating your character. Everything can be chosen at random through dice rolls, which is very cool.
1. Gear – Everything your pirate carries. Could be a bag, a shovel, some rum, or even a pet monkey!
2. Ability Scores – How good is your pirate at things like swashbuckling, swinging on ropes or shooting (be prepared, low scores are very common).
3. Class – Is your character a Buccaneer, a Scoundrel, or one of the other basic classes… Maybe even some deep-sea monstrosity?
4. Background – Were you lost at sea? The lone survivor of a shipwreck? Do you gamble on everything? Or constantly tell tall tales?
The best part of this process is that it gives you really great grounding in your character from the start, so you don’t have to do the heavy narrative lifting. It’s really easy to say: You’re a scoundrel, you trust your friends, but you don’t trust people since you were marooned. You learned to survive on an island on your own, and sometimes you think about setting sail into the horizon to find a quiet island to retire on.
There are hundreds of combinations of colourful backstories like this in the book, and they really get your head buzzing with piratical ideas. And if you don’t like what you’ve got, roll up another one!
Meet the Crew
All up, character creation took about 25 minutes, with a crew of players who had never played before. That’s record time in my book.
Our crew was assembled: Captain Zappy Jim was a Zealot, but also a half-jellyfish who could zap bad guys with his tentacles. Arelius was a Brute, and the Captain’s go-getter when things needed moving or hitting. Old Ben Scrags was a Buccaneer who loved guns more than life itself — he carried a rifle and pistol, and searched every enemy for more ammo. Lastly, Rodger was a Merfolk Sorcerer, armed with a wooden knife, who loved getting foes into the water to drown them.
It was an eclectic crew, but what group of rapscallions isn’t?
Battle on the Beach
Pirate Borg is all about action. It throws out many of the slower portions of dice rolling that you’d find in games like Dungeons & Dragons, and pushes you to roleplay and create the story with the players.
Our adventure began like a scene out of a Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Our crew of pirates were running full pelt out of the jungle and across the sand towards a bay where the boat was supposed to be waiting. Of course, the Bosun double-crossed them, leaving them stranded on the island with enemies right on their tails. Captain Zappy Jim lived up to his namesake and zapped the Bosun with a Curse as he rowed away from shore. Then, a band of British Redcoats stepped from the trees, their leader shouting, “Pirates! Ready! Aim! Fire”.
While the crew ducked for cover amongst the rocks, our gun-loving buccaneer, Old Ben Scrags drew his rifle and shot the leader of the Redcoats across the beach. The Brute Arelias tossed more soldiers over her shoulder and into the water, where they were promptly drowned by Rodger the Merfolk. Captain Jim shouted another curse, killing the enemy leader with a bolt of lightning, before a group of Zombies unexpectedly shuffled out from the tree line and into the fray.
Combat is fast in Pirate Borg, and as the DM, you need to be up on your descriptions and swashbuckling action. In combat, the players do all the dice rolls, they roll to attack enemies, and roll to defend when they are attacked. As the DM, you don’t roll when different groups of enemies attack each other, but instead balance the combat and make sure everyone is having fun.
Suffice to say, our crew sent the Redcoats running for their lives and sprayed zombie bits all over the Caribbean beach. They also levelled up – Yay!
A Dangling Dilemma
The crew headed for high ground, fighting a few zombies along the way and clambering to the peak of the island. From their high vantage point, they spotted the fleeing Redcoats rowing a dinghy out to a larger ship. They also sighted a small settlement to the north and deeper in the jungle, the stern of a ship jutting up from amongst the trees!
They set out to the ship, hoping to salvage their mission and just maybe find a means of getting off the island. But when they arrived, they found the ship mysteriously suspended above the jungle floor, pointed straight down towards the earth. Our Captain Zappy Jim and Arelius wanted to explore. But Rodger, the Merfolk climbed first, uncovering numerous traps as they went.
This puzzle encounter was one of the adventure’s highlights, with various clues about what happened to the ship and who was currently there, setting traps. As the players moved throughout the ship, they constantly had to make rolls to see how their shifting weight affected the dangling derelict.
This was a perfect point to cue the pirate music and ratchet up the tension, as the crew found loot near the top of the ship… And deadly traps protecting the cargo hold. Over the next few rolls, the ship became more precarious. Captain Jim and the Brute Arelius found their way to the Captain’s Cabin, while Old Ben Scrags found yet more guns. The previous Captain of this ship was clearly dead, having a piece of the ship where his eye should be… But he held one half of a treasure map. Surprising no-one, he was a Zombie, and Arelius punted his zombie head through the window, before the group precariously scrambled down the ship.
One half of the map in-hand, they set sights on the rest of the island, in search of hidden treasure.
Should you play Pirate Borg?
This first adventure into Pirate Borg was really great. We came with a crew of experienced tabletop gamers, which meant the kickstart into roleplaying was super easy.
If you’re looking for a game that’s simple for your crew to jump into, Pirate Borg is an easy recommend. It’s fast, cinematic, and easy to GM. It leans on your players as much as the GM to tell the story, but that results in constant descriptions of awesome swashbuckling moves and gunshots across churning waters.
Pirate Borg is one dark fantasy that I’ll be happy to sail further into.
Find out more about Pirate Borg at Limithron’s website, and check out their three new upcoming Kickstarter projects, just announced!
A copy of the Pirate Borg Starter Set was supplied by the publisher.
