Goto [ Index ]

Pirates of the Spanish Main is a game of romance and adventure on the high seas based on the WizKids collectable strategy game Pirates of the Spanish Main and Pirates of the Crimson Coast. The setting of the game is somewhere in the 18th century, pre-American Revolution, but it shouldn’t be confused with a strictly historical game as the authors admit to taking “certain liberties with history” in order to make Pirates a fun game. Pirates is a standalone game that uses Pinnacle’s fast, furious, and fun rules from their Savage Worlds role playing game. Anyone interested in playing 18th century buccaneers, privateers, or any other swashbuckling adventurer cruising around the Caribbean cannot go wrong with Pirates of the Spanish Main.

The book is well designed and even includes a helpful table of contents and, something more games should include, a useful index. For the most part the information you need is located in where you would logically expect them to be. There are some exceptions, the rules for character advancement probably should have been located closer to the section on character generation, but instead they aren’t found under the game rules section located 25 pages after the rules for character generation are presented. It isn’t really a serious problem because a quick check of the index or the table of contents will generally lead you to what you are looking for.

I really dig the art used throughout Pirates. It reminds me of the work of artist N.C. Wyeth who is perhaps best remembered for his illustrations of Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe, Robin Hood, and The Last of the Mohicans and is considered one of the great American illustrators. My favorite picture is located on the back cover and features three scalawags crawling across the deck, the one in the middle with a dagger in his teeth, and they all look like they’re ready for business. One of my least favorite is the picture of a woman on page 200 because it’s more suited to the cover of a cheesy romance novel then a game revolving on swashbuckling action. On the other hand, what better reason to go on swashbuckling adventures then to win the heart of such a lovely lass? I would have also liked some illustrations of the weapons available in the game. I know what a muskatoon, a blunderbuss, and a marlin spike look like, but a lot of other might not and they’re not illustrated in the equipment section. One last thing about the art, it is very nice to see that there are women and people of African descent represented in the illustrations of buccaneers.

Character Generation

If you are already familiar with the rules to Pinnacle’s Savage Worlds then by all means skip this part of the review because the rules in Pirates are pretty much the same. For those of you unfamiliar with the rules please continue. Character generation in Pirates is point based with each attribute starts at d4 and players have five points to spread among the five attributes of Agility, Smarts, Spirit, Strength, and Vigor. Agility measures a character’s dexterity and quickness, Smarts is how much general knowledge a character possesses as well as mental acuity, Spirit represents wisdom and willpower, Strength is self-explanatory, and Vigor measure physical toughness and the ability to fend off disease or poisons. Attributes can be ranked at d4, d6, d8, d10, and no higher than d12 at character generation.

Next, the player must select his character’s starting skills and they have 15 points to distribute among the 23 available skills in Pirates. Each skill is linked to an attribute, for example Shooting and Fighting are linked to Agility while Knowledge and Taunt are linked to Smarts, but that link is only used to determine how many character points it cost for the skill. For the most part skills are very broadly defined in Pirates. The Fighting skill covers everything from boxing and knife fighting to the use of a sword. The Shooting skill covers crossbows, musket rifles, pistols, and even the cannons used aboard ship. Lockpicking is a particularly useful skill that covers the picking of locks, pick pocketing, and even slight of hand tricks. Other skills, such as Climbing and Swimming, have fairly narrow applications. It’s by no means a fatal flaw, but players certainly get more bang for their buck out of certain skills, why spend 3 points on Swim to do one thing when they can spend the same on Lockpicking and do three different things? It would have made a little more sense to require a Strength or Agility roll when someone wanted to swim or climb.

Part of the philosophy behind the Savage Worlds rules that is used in Pirates is to keep things simple. If a skill does not get used all that often then the creators reasoned that maybe it should not be a skill in the first place. However, there is a need to cover what a character should reasonably know about the game world, so players are permitted to make common knowledge rolls based on their Smarts. This is reasonable, but many new Game Masters may have a hard time figuring out what should be common knowledge and what should be represented by the Knowledge skill. To further complicate things, the GM is encouraged to add or subtract modifiers to any common knowledge roll based on the background of the character in question. This might lead to a few headaches for GMs who are new to the system or role playing in general.

Since it is a point based game they simply could not do without Edges and Hindrances also known as Advantages and Disadvantages in other systems. For those of you familiar with the d20 system, Edges are a lot like Feats in that they give characters bonuses to skill rolls or allowing him to perform special combat maneuvers. Each player character automatically starts with a free Edge, and for the most part the Edges are well balanced, but I have some concern about the Ladies’ Fencing Academy. Male opponents of any woman who attended the Ladies’ Fencing Academy receive a -2 on their Fighting rolls. That might not sound like a lot but in Pirates it’s pretty darn good.

You cannot have advantages without disadvantages, well not in this game anyway, and this is where Hindrances come into play. There are mental of physical handicaps that give players a few extra points to spend on their characters for skills, attributes, or Edges. The big problem with some of the Hindrances is that they do not have any mechanical effect on the game. A character who is Delusional or Cautious does not suffer any penalty though they get points for it anyway. I suppose it’s up to the Game Master to determine how this affects game play but I prefer it if the penalties are made clear in the rules. One thing I found curious was that there was no Hindrance for having a hook for a hand. They include One Eye and even One Leg (it assumes you get a peg leg) but they forgot to include the hooked hand in the holy trinity of piratical accoutrements. Ah well, nobody’s perfect.

Basic Rules

There are two kinds of characters in Pirates. Wildcards are player characters or important NPCs while Extras are unimportant NPCs. Wildcards differ from Extras because they can suffer multiple wounds before incapacitation and they are permitted to roll a Wild Die when making a trait test. To make a trait test the Wild Card rolls either his attribute or his skill, rolls his Wild Die which is a d6, keeping whichever die roll is higher, and if he rolls a 4 or higher then whatever basic task he was attempting is successful. example. Fork Tongue Fannie is trying to ply some information out of a local bartender about the whereabouts of the Dread Pirate Roberts. The bartender is neutral towards Fannie and is unlikely to divulge the information to her because he’s afraid of the Dread Pirate Roberts. So Fannie decides to use her Persuasion skill in order to improve his disposition towards him. She rolls her Persuasion skill of d8 and her Wild Die of d6 and gets a 7 and a 3 respectively. She keeps the 7 and since all she needed was a 4 she successful increased the bartender’s goodwill towards her and he is now willing to share what information he has

Any time a Wild Card rolls the maximum number of any die type (ie. a 4 on a d4, a 6 on a d6, etc.) it is referred to as an Ace and may be re-rolled with the new number adding to what was already rolled. Any roll that exceeds the target number by 4 is a raise. A raise on a skill roll means that the skill was extra successful and there may be additional benefits. Let’s go back to our example of Fork Tongue Fannie and the bartender. example. Fannie rolls her Persuasion skill of d8 along with the Wild Die of d6 and rolls a 7 and a 6 respectively. Because she rolled an Ace she re-rolls the d6 and gets a 3 adding it to the 6 she already rolls for a grand total of 9. Fannie got a raise, so the bartender not only shares his information with Fannie but agrees to escort her directly to the Dread Pirate Robert’s hideout in town.

The basic rules for combat are handled in a similar manner. For melee combat, the difficulty to hit someone is based on the target’s Parry which is half his fighting plus 2. Someone with a d8 in Fighting would have a basic Parry of 6. When attacking in melee, a Wild Card would roll his Fighting skill plus his Wild Die and if his opponent has a Parry of 6 then he needs to roll a minimum of 6 to score a hit. When attacking with the Shooting or Throwing skill the difficulty to hit the target is a 4 but at medium range there is a -2 penalty to the skill and at long range it increases to -4.

Before the hitting and hurting begins it must be determined who goes in what order. In Pirates the players and the non-playing characters draw cards from a standard deck to determine initiate order. In the case of a tie the higher suit takes precedence. example. Fork Tongue Fannie has finally tracked down the Dread Pirate Roberts with the intent of making him pay for insulting her honor. Fannie draws the King of Spades from the initiative deck while poor Roberts gets the 2 of Clubs meaning Fannie gets to go first. Roberts has a Fighting of d10 so his Parry is 7. Fannie attacks with her cutlass rolling d8 + d6 for her Wild Die and rolls a 7 and a 4 so she manages to hit poor Roberts.

For melee damage a player rolls his Strength die plus the Weapon Die and adds the results while weapons using the Shooting skill always have a fixed number and type of dice to use. Fannie has a d6 Strength and is armed with a cutlass so she would roll 2d6 for her damage. Damage rolls can Ace, so if Fannie rolls a 6 she can re-roll the die and add all the scores together. To do damage to a target, the damage rolled must equal or exceed the target’s Toughness rating. The Toughness of an Extra or a Wildcard is half of the target’s Vigor plus 2 but armor can modify that to make it even higher. If the damage dealt equals or exceeds the Toughness of the target by 3 then the target is Shaken. While Shaken, the target can only move at half speed and cannot take any other action. A Spirit roll is required to snap out of being Shaken (with a target number of 4 of course). If the damage roll exceeds the Toughness of the target by 4 then that character suffers a Wound. At this point, Extras are incapacitated because they can only suffer one wound, but Wild Cards can take up to three. For every 4 above the Toughness rating a player will inflict a Wound so with raises it is possible to inflict multiple wounds on an opponent in one round. example. Fannie strikes Roberts with her cutlass. She has a d6 Strength and the cutlass does d6 damage so she rolls 2d6 getting a 5 and a 6. She re-rolls the Ace and comes up with a 4 for a grand total damage of 15. Roberts has a Toughness of 8 so Fannie has successfully inflicted 1 wound on him.

At the start of every game each player starts with 3 bennies. Bennies can be used to re-roll the dice, to automatically recover from being Shaken, and they can be used to make a Soak roll. If a player suffers a 1 or more wounds in an attack he may spend a benny to make a Vigor roll and for a success he eliminates one of those wounds plus another for each raise. It only works on wounds inflicted on that one attack and not for wounds previously suffered. At the end of the game session, bennies have a chance of being converted into extra experience points.

Ship Combat

No self respecting game would dare call itself Pirates of the Spanish Main without having some rules for ship to ship combat. Fortunately, ship to ship combat pretty much works the same way as regular combat works. Initiative is dealt, the ship moves whenever it is the Captain’s turn to move, and Shooting rolls are made to fire the cannons at the other ship. One of the biggest differences is that when a wound is inflicted on a ship a roll is made on the critical hit table to see what kind of damage is done to the ship. Critical damage can include damaging the rudder, taking out the sails, or hitting the magazine which blows the whole ship to kingdom come.

The ship templates are based off of the WizKids collectible strategy game instead of being based on historical ships. Ships have Edges and Hindrances just like characters do. A ship might have more guns than normal, a disciplined crew, or they might have problems like rats or the ship might be slower than other ships of similar build. The ships in Pirates have much smaller crews and far fewer cannons then they did in real life. The example sloop has a minimum crew of 3, can accommodate 6 passengers, and carries 4 guns. Historically, a pirate sloop might have between 8-12 guns and a much larger crew. Blackbeard’s sloop had a crew of 25, including Blackbeard, at the time he was defeated by Lt. Maynard. I imagine they did this to not only keep the game simple but to make it somewhat compatible with the WizKids game. It wouldn’t be that much work to adapt more realistic ships into the game if one were so inclined.

Setting

Now we can leave the rules behind and talk about the setting. Hallelujah! The author’s have “taken three centuries of history and mixed them up with the world of the Pirates CSG to create an alternative view of the Caribbean.” So it’s the Caribbean we all know and love, for the most part, but it’s not really set to any specific time period. Some parts of the world don’t make much sense to me. France, Spain, and England have agreed to treat slavers the same way they treat pirates, but slavery still exist in the world of Pirates. They go on to say that most of the Caribbean slaves have been freed but many of them still work as unpaid laborers. That doesn’t make much sense to me but I guess some people can be a little squeamish about the whole slave issue. Magic exist in Pirates but don’t expect to be seeing fools wearing robes and pointy hats tossing around lightning bolts or fireballs. There are ghost ships crewed by the dead, mermaids, and sea serpents though. All in all it isn’t the historical Caribbean it’s a place of romantic adventure designed to be fun. Anyone who wants to adapt the game for a slightly more historical perspective won’t have a problem doing so.

The GM section includes snippets giving some minor details about the locations throughout the Caribbean, including important people, a random island generator, a treasure generator, and a random adventure generator that is actually a lot of fun to use. The GM section discusses how to put together an adventure and how to run a game. Veteran gamers might not find this section all that useful but new players probably will.

Conclusion

To sum things up, Pirates of the Spanish Main is an excellent game of swashbuckling adventure on the high seas. The rules are relatively easy, the book is well produced, and it’s a lot of fun to play. If Pirates of the Caribbean and Treasure Island are the kinds of entertainment you enjoy then this might be the game for you.

Please help support RPGnet by purchasing the following (probably) related items through DriveThruRPG.