Festive one-shot

Celebrate

It’s almost that time of year again, everyone’s favourite holiday where we all dress up as our favourite characters and talk funny. That’s right! Talk Like a Pirate Day is fast approaching! It falls on September 19th, as I am sure you all know. As is traditional, we’ll all be renting a parrot, donning an eyepatch, practicing our “yaaaar” and contracting scurvy to commemorate the joy and wonder brought to the world by that most under-rated of historical figures, the lowly pirate.

As well as that, this year, I thought it would be fun to run a pirate themed one-shot. Since an RPG named Pirate Borg exists, it seemed like the notions of a landlubber to choose any other game to use for the occasion.

There has been an unsettling number of Borgs released over the past number of years, certainly more than enough to make Jean-Luc Picard lose his temper. It can be hard to see the hacks as anything other than cashing in, however, and I will confess to thinking that way myself. But I hear very good things about Cy-Borg and Pirate Borg has been a pleasant surprise as I read through it. It is genuinely more fun and more entertaining than I was expecting. The art, design and layout are good and the vibe is perfect if you are looking for a horror pirate game.

I have really only just gotten into the character creation section so I thought I would do another character creation post! Everybody loves those, right?

Random pirate

I’m gonna roll for everything as is traditional around here. Luckily, this game is well set up to allow for that.

Here’s the step by step guide provided on page 27 of the core book:

Random tables

So, when it says to roll on the tables on this page, this is what it means:

• Container table (d6) I rolled a 6! That means I get a friggin’ dinghy! Good start.
• Cheap gear table (d12) Got a 4. That’s a shovel. Should be useful for digging up buried treasure or my own grave.
• Fancy gear table (d12) 9 on a d12 = a worn out book. I imagine it to be the well-thumbed guide to the manners of the gentry in Paris and London 50 years ago.

Random scores

A pirate has 5 abilities, Strength, Agility, Presence, Toughness, Spirit. You roll 3d6 for each one and consult another table to determine what your score is. Here we go!

• Strength: I rolled an 8 so that gives me a -1 (it could be worse)
• Agility: That’s a 7, which is also a -1 (a pattern is forming)
• Presence: 12! Phew! That makes the score an incredible 0!
• Toughness: 6. Shit. That’s -2. This pirate is not an olympic athlete
• Spirit: 10. OK, OK. That’s also a score of 0.
  Things might start to look up as I move on to a

Random class

You can choose to be a landlubber if you don’t want to take one of the 6 standard or two optional classes. But half the fun of this exercise is rolling everything up, I’m going to roll a d8 and take whatever class it gives me. In this case, I am including the optional classes.

Here are a list of the classes:

1. Brute
2. Rapscallion
3. Buccaneer
4. Swashbuckler
5. Zealot
6. Sorcerer
7. Haunted Soul – there is another d6 roll here to decide the type of supernatural entity you might be. Includes vampire, zombie, skeleton. All the classics
8. Tall Tale – if you get this one, you roll another d6 to determine what sort of tall tale your character is
   1-2. Merfolk
   3-4. Aquatic Mutant – this gets broken down even further. Lots of potential mutants out there, folks. If I roll this up, I’ll have to roll another d8 to find out which type of mutant I’ll be. Suffice it to state, Anglerfish is an option
   5-6. Sentient Animal – this one will involve another d6 roll to decide what animal my pirate is going to be…

Well, I rolled a 3. That means my character is going to be a Buccaneer.

Skilled trackers and survivalists. Expert sharpshooters, especially with muskets and rifles

Buccaneers get a +2 to Presence, a -1 to Agility and a -1 to Spirit.
So that makes my Ability Scores:

• Strength: -1
• Agility: -2
• Presence: +2
• Toughness: -2
• Spirit: -1

For a Buccaneer, reloading a black powder weapon only takes one round instead of the usual two. I guess the hope is that you are far enough away from the bad guys that you have a round before they kill you or that they don’t have ranged weapons themselves.
I also start with a Musket and 10 + Presence rounds of shot. So that would be 12, then!

Random feature

I am going to now roll a d6 for my class feature. You do this when you first begin and then again each time you gain experience. Each feature can be taken twice, or so it says here in this book.

I rolled a 2! That is the feature, Crack Shot. That reduces the Difficulty Rating (DR) of all ranged attacks by 2. That’s pretty great actually. If taken again, the feature reduces that DR by another 2 points.

Random hit points

A Buccaneer gets to roll a d8 for hit points and add (or, in my case, subtract) my Toughness. Looks like d8 is the most common die for HP across the classes. I rolled a 7 so that leaves me with 5 HP. I am pleasantly surprised!

Random clothing and hat!

Now we’re on to the really important shit.
Buccaneers get to roll a d10 on the clothing table. The options range from Tier 0 rags to Tier 3 conquistador plate!

I rolled a frigging 10!! That’s the conquistador plate! -d6 damage. But it does add 4 to the DR for all agility tests and 2 to all defence test DRs. Also, the text goes out of its way to tell you you’re going to drown if you end up in the water…

Now for Hat! Have to roll a d12 for this.
You can get anything from “none” to “morion” on a d12.
I got a 6, bandanna, which I find acceptably piratical.

Random… Luck

Devil’s Luck is a resource that your character can use in Pirate Borg for the purposes of dealing max damage with an attack, lowering the damage done to you by d6, rerolling any die, neutralising a crit/fumble or lowering a test’s DR by 4. So it works like Omens in Mõrk Borg, basically.

Your class determines what you roll for your starting Devil’s Luck. The Buccaneer gets d2. For my purposes, I plucked the first die out of my dice bag and it turned out to be a glittery, turquoise d6. I rolled a 6! So that means I get 2 Devil’s Luck. Not too shabby, but not too great really, eh?

Random background

The next thing the step by step guide says to do is roll on the tables on pages 55 to 61. The first of those is a d100 table of backgrounds. These are more than just back story. They also determine your starting money and provide you with something significant like items, important NPCs and motivations.

I rolled a 97! That gives my pirate the “victim” background. That’s broad but might give me a spark for my actual backstory. It also gives me 2d6 x10 silver pieces and a haunted past (obvs.)

I rolled a 7 on my 2d6 so that’s 70 silver to begin. Along with the 200 I am likely to get for the conquistador armour, this buccaneer will be laughing all the way to the X.

Random flaw

Page 56 has the Distinctive Flaws table. It’s a d20 table of generally one-word personality traits. Some of these are only subjectively to be considered flaws in my opinion. I rolled a 9 and got “aggressive.” I would imagine that that is considered a good trait for a pirate in many situations. I’ll take it!

Equally, “2. Stubborn,” “6. Coward,” and “17. Paranoid” might all be considered beneficial to people in the pirating business at least some of the time.

Random trademark

I am rolling here for a Physical Trademark, rather than some sort of copyright or patent type deal. That would be a weird thing to include in the character creation section of a pirate game.

Another d20, here we go!
I rolled a 5… shit, I’m missing a hand; hook or claw instead. I’m thinking claw? Might be easier to handle my gun that way. Importantly, there is nothing in here about this causing any sort of mechanical drawback to your character, which I like.

Random idiosyncrasy

The full title of the table on page 58 is:

Idiosyncrasies one might have developed and will certainly never be rid of…Yet that certainly won’t stop you from trying.

It’s another d20 table. I have been using a different die for every single roll and I don’t see a reason to stop that now. It has been serving me semi-well thus far after all.
That’s a 12. Now this result might very well feed into the victim background I rolled up earlier:

You wronged and infamous pirate lord

I am beginning to think that the two are connected. My Buccaneer’s cat, Milly, tore out the throat of Captain Tall John Copper’s parrot, Butch. Milly jumped from the gunwale and swiped the emaciated bird off the shoulder of the famously bad-tempered pirate captain who had had men flayed alive and keel-hauled for less. As some sort of poetic justice, he made my pirate cook and eat poor Milly while the whole crew looked on, and then he chopped my hand off.

Random incidents

This one has an incredibly long full title as well:

Unfortunate incidents & conditions having occurred or developed with or without one’s express consent, desire knowledge or general understanding

Guess what! It’s another d20 table. I rolled a 9 on this table. The result is unfortunate:

Your last crew was killed by undead. They left you alive on purpose

Shit. I hope my new crew doesn’t learn of this…
I am thinking that I made a deal with a necromancer to send his vitality-challenged minions to do in Captain Tall John Copper but they got a bit enthusiastic and did the whole ship instead, leaving me to take a dinghy (call back to the first roll of the character creation process!) to the nearest port and find some new gainful employment.

Random things

The last table in the list stretches right across from page 60 to page 61. It is entitled “Thing of Importance.” It is another d100 table.

I rolled a 79:

A long scar on your face

I think it is only fair that Milly gave me that just before I popped her in the stock pot.

Random name

There is only one thing left to do as part of this process, and that is the all important name. Now there is a table for names on the inside cover of the book so I think I will use that. It is a d12 table with three columns. I shall roll a d12 3 times and combine the names as I see fit:

Roll the first: 7 – Sam(uel) or Butch(er) or Philip
Roll the second: 3 – Robert(s) or Jack or Fernando
Roll the third: 11 – Genny or Isabel(la) or Jean

I imagine the name Butcher came from the Milly incident. It should go in the middle. So, it’s Isabella “Butcher” Fernando. That’s a bloody good pirate name if I do say so myself.

Random conclusion

Not really.
I thoroughly enjoyed the process of making his character. I am used, in more recent games of Mõrk Borg, to using their Skum Birther site to come up with a random character and that can be fun too, although I do think, when you are that far-removed from the process, you don’t have that strong an attachment to them. So, spending the time rolling up this pirate with you, dear reader, has been rewarding and has taught me quite a bit about the game as well. And that, after all, was the whole point of the exercise.

Have you played Pirate Borg, dear reader? Will you be celebrating Talk Like a Pirate Day this year? If so, what will you be doing for it?