[Disclaimer: I have only read the book and have not played it yet.]
Poison'd by Vincent Baker is sub-titled "A Pirate RPG" and that's exactly what it is. It's a tight and elegant design that encapsulates a rules system, a setting and an entire campaign in its 28 pages. The premise is that the PCs are members of a pirate crew whose captain has just been murdered by the cook, under the King's orders. The game is labelled as "for adults, please" and it portrays the world of piracy as brutal and nasty to the extreme. Character generation and the rules drive the players and their ship to violent physical conflict and, most likely, unpleasant death.
Premise and Theme
The game starts with the murdering cook being dragged to the bridge, surrounded by the other pirates. From there, the PCs' actions and external threats will drive the game forward. All the choices the players make in the game for character generation and the ones the GM makes for external threats are based on pre-defined lists. The content of these lists enforce the premise and tone of the game, which is going to be about fighting with other ships, raiding towns and struggling to survive against the elements, internal conflict and the general chaos of life on a pirate ship. These lists are harsh! You choose what sins you've committed (from adultery to murder to sodomy), how you've suffered (from accursing to branding to torture) and what your ambitions are (to be captain, to spit in the eye of god, to f*** someone else's character!). At first read, I found some of the items on the lists shocking, but appropriate to the genre. Some of them will definitely cross some players' boundaries of taste or playstyle. After a second read and a better understanding of the mechanics, the list items seem less harsh and more and more like excellent levers to give your character direction. Though they are pre-defined, these choices are broad and open leaving a lot of room in Poison'd for free roleplay and campaign development. But you will always be moving towards some kind of nasty fight.
Structure and Layout
The structure of the book is creative and engaging. You open it up and are immediately faced with the initial situation of the dead captain and the guilty cook surrounded by the crew. From there, it goes right into character generation, which leads to ship generation, NPC generation, the conflict rules and finally rules for advancement and campaign development. The last 3 pages is setting material, a broad, "possibly true" essay on life as a pirate in the 18th century. It's a quick and entertaining read that gives you enough information to run the campaign. The structure and flow of the book allow you to start playing immediately, learning each new set of rules as your play develops. Physically, it is tall and narrow, beautifully laid out on off-white parchment-like paper. There are no illustrations beyond a stark black and white close-up of the skull and crossbones on the Jolly Roger. The design of the book is a testament to how good typography and rich text can evoke the same powerful imagination reaction as a good illustration. I was fortunate enough to be able to get a professionally printed hardcopy, so I don't know if the PDF is as effective if printed at home.
Rules and Play
I am only going to touch lightly on the rules, hoping to give a sense of how they impact play rather than getting into the crunchy details. The text itself does an excellent job of presenting the rules, so if you find them intriguing, you can buy the game yourself (the pdf is only $7.00) and let the designer do the job better than I can.
Character generation uses a series of questions whose answers come from pre-set lists to generate a small collection of statistics with numbers in the single digits as well as descriptive phrases that bring life and meaning to the character. The statistics are broad, addressing how nasty and nice you are, how tough you are and how tough you look. They are based on the sins, suffering, ambitions and gear you have chosen. After the character is generated, you also choose outstanding bargains between the characters, which, along with your ambitions almost guarantee that the players will start the game with clear and probably conflicting motivations. The game takes off from there.
The base mechanic uses a number of six-sided dice equal to the appropriate stat. Results of 4,5 or 6 are considered a success. You add up your successes and compare them to your opponents. Combat gives you the option to escalate if you fail, thus increasing the potential consequences for the loser (and the winner, to some degree). These escalations and their consequences are pre-defined and categorized. There are 4 types of conflicts between individuals (fist, knife, sword and gun) as well as conflicts for ships (pursuit, ranged guns and boarding) and groups of people. While the conflict mechanic is fairly abstract, it still feels immersive. For me, these rules seem to hit a sweet spot of impactful mechanics and open-ended roleplaying.
The campaign rules are particularly interesting. Your pirate will change throughout the course of the campaign. Consequences from conflicts or fulfillment of ambitions (or failure thereof) will change your stats. You can also die, at which point you will be judged (by a die roll) and either go to hell, heaven or come back as a ghost. Ghosts have a small mechanical impact on the ship and the crew. There are specific instances that allow a pirate to leave play (death being one of them). There are also instances that determine the end of the campaign, one of them being if any player has a second pirate leave the game. Thus, you have the potential for a situation where one player's actions can decide if the campaign should end or continue. I find this concept quite appealing and interesting. The game is designed so that the campaign will end.
The GM also has a strong tool to keep the game moving called Cruel Fortune, a series of states or situations that the PCs or their ship must react to or face the consequences. From the beginning of the game, the ship is suffering from "Urgency", "Want" and "Wear & breakage", all of which must be addressed if it is to survive. Later in the game, the GM can bring others into play at any time, though I suspect that given the nature of the characters this often may not always even be necessary to keep the game moving forward.
Finally there are Opportunities, including Elections, Prizes, Leisure, Betrayal and Urgent Considerations. These are basically situations where stuff can happen, with mechanical and personal consequences to the PCs. The Opportunities section establishes an abstract economy, based on the plunder gained. My only critique with this section is that it appears to have an implicit chronological order built into it (the ship elects a new captain, you go to see, get a prize, spend it on leisure, someone betrays you), which may encourage a repetition in campaign structure. I suspect that in play this is not the case, given the dynamic outcomes of conflicts.
Thoughts and conclusion
Reviewing Poison'd a year after it has come out (and, surprisingly, for the first time on rpg.net) brings along with it some baggage. The childish controversy surrounding its adult content and its association with the "indie" games movement make it difficult to approach the text objectively. To my surprise, after reading it a second time, I started to see that despite its focused introductory premise and pre-defined choices, Poison'd is very traditional in its overall structure. You have character generation, combat rules, XP rules, adventure seeds and setting info, in that order. The beauty of Poison'd is that all of this is wrapped up in a small, elegant package, easily absorbed by a group in a single play session.
All of that is sitting on an engine which pushes the characters to conflict based on their personalities. This element is definitely less open-ended than more traditional physical simulation mechanics. The themes are similarly restricted and will consistently bring brutal violence into the game, at the individual, ship or mob level. Nevertheless, there is enough room in the spaces between the rules here to create a rich and varied pirates campaign which could go in many various directions.
I bought Poison'd on a whim because Vincent Baker made the effort to come to our local con. After actually reading it, I have to admit that I am quite impressed. Poison'd makes me want to play it, despite my initial misgivings at some of the dark violence inherent in the language of the text (both in the PC options and in the play example). There is a potential for both intensity and immersion that calls to me in the design. It also requires no preparation and yet seems capable of delivering a complete campaign in the most classic sense of the word.
Recommendation
If you want something that has detailed, tactical rules for ship-to-ship combat or a game that treats the genre with a light tone, then I would not recommend Poison'd. The design is going to dictate the nature of the game and if your group is more comfortable with a system they can bend and houserule, it probably won't go over well either. If you are a fan of pirates and are looking for a game, driven by character motivations, that focuses on the violence and brutality inherent in the genre, with light yet elegantly intricate mechanics, then I would strongly recommend Poison'd. I would also recommend the game for anyone who is interested in tight and creative game design, as it is an enlightening and enjoyable read for that alone. It is a very impressive work at all levels, fully deserving a 5 in both style and substance.
In consulting DriveThruRPG we've come up with a number of products which we think might be related, but some might be inaccurate because the name, Poison'd, is so short. Nonetheless, take a look, as purchasing through the RPGnet Store helps to support RPGnet.
