Had a feeling that Angus McBride must have made some cool pirate illustrations back in the day. So I looked it up, and sure enough

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Quote from: David Johansen;905904ICE's RMSS compatible stand alone Run Out The Guns.  Naturally!

I actually have this!  To my regret I haven't had a chance to do much with it.  I like that it's not full-on Rolemaster spreadsheet char-gen, you add up two templates (nationality and profession I think) and are ready to go.  And as I recall it had something neat going on around carousing, but it's been a while since I looked.

But Savage Worlds is more the go-to in my local gaming scene.  There's actually a local SW pirates game just starting up right now.  In fairness I like SW for swashbuckling more than for any other style of game, so I can see the attraction.

You may or not like Rolemaster attack and critical tables but at the very least the poster map is lovely and the material on the various careers is neat.  The carousing attack table might get you in trouble but, " the night is young and so is this farmer's daughter.  Hope she doesn't scream."

Quote from: David Johansen;905948You may or not like Rolemaster attack and critical tables but at the very least the poster map is lovely and the material on the various careers is neat.  The carousing attack table might get you in trouble but, " the night is young and so is this farmer's daughter.  Hope she doesn't scream."

I am actually pretty good at making Rolemaster work for the group. Simplify here, and post-it notes there

Just curious: does Run Out the Guns have good internal art?

Quote from: Matt;905848The correct answer is Flashing Blades with the High Seas supplement, both of which are great and inexpensive and still in print at FGU's web site.

I have all the FB stuff and I would not say that you are wrong.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;905862Flashing Blades has good points, but there's too much table-referencing in its combat system for my tastes.

It does use several tables...but based on my experience with Runequest (where you also have a few tables) such things speed up with time and practice. I quickly memorized the D20 hit location table and I'm sure the same would be true for FB. The additonal tables for maiming are in the combat section, but they aren't used until after combat is over so they are not a problem in play.

What I suspect would actually add the most time would be me waiting for my players to guess which move they believe their opponent is going to make that turn and ensuring that I make a fair guess for the NPCs. It does reward actual player skill and does simulate some of the tactical options and opportunities of actual fencing.

Quote from: Trond;905897So what's the Flashing Blades system like?

It is like what you would get if En Garde (with its try to  guess what your opponent is going to do ahead of time and then choose your move to take advantage) and D20 (with its roll 1D20 to figure out if you succeed in doing stuff) had an out of wedlock baby with Runequest 2 (with its hit location table, hit points per location, armor pts per location, and fumbles).

If you like Runequest, there is always the MRQ2/Legend Pirates supplement.

Quote from: Trond;905952I am actually pretty good at making Rolemaster work for the group. Simplify here, and post-it notes there

Just curious: does Run Out the Guns have good internal art?

There was internal art?

Actually, what there is isn't bad, there's pictures of ships and of the character types.

I always wonder about people who couldn't make Rolemaster work.  I think they never give it enough of a chance and make some mistakes like dropping the declaration of intent phase.

Quote from: David Johansen;905904ICE's RMSS compatible stand alone Run Out The Guns.  Naturally!

Seconded.

Quote from: Spinachcat;905918The answer is Crimson Cutlass.

The bigger question is hunting down a copy!

The PDF is on Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Crimson-Cutlass-Fundamentals-Book-One-ebook/dp/B00V0B88GQ#navbar

Wow. The covers are deceptively simple-looking, but you were not kidding. Someone put a lot of work into this. Your linked book is actually only one third of the material.

Wow, great thread. I've been looking at Pirate games for inspiration for a little while, specifically Ship-related rules.

Do any of the games mentioned do something really unique or interesting with how ships and characters interact with each other?

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;905935You mean you can remember the hundreds of varying pluses and minuses in the combat section without looking at the tables!?

It's Matt, he's probably played it so long that he remembers the charts by heart, but assumes everyone else has as well.  Despite never playing it.  Ever.

I like 50 Fathoms in Savage Worlds the best. It maintains the era feel you are looking for as many famous pirates have been sucked into Caribdus from Earth such as Blackbeard. Humans are outsiders that have been taken from Earth and washed up in Caribdus. The world is dying because of the curse of the Sea Hags which is flooding the world and will eventually drown even the last few islands above the current water line at the start of the game. Caribdus has many native races including the human-like masaquani (different due to a much higher variation of hair and eye colors, usually with striking style), kraken (a dying race of warriors and elementalists), doreen (dolphin men also dying as they are being hunted to extinction by the kehana, a race of predatory fish men),  scurrillions (crabby crab men good at mathematics and calculations), red men (the children of humans and savage ape men who are powerful but not so smart), grael (giant whale men who hunt in the frigid lands using their blubber to protect them from the cold), and the atani (a race of tree people good at gliding, doomed to extinction when the last forests are drowned). The machinations of the Sea Hags will flood and destroy the land, leaving nothing unless the PCs can break the curse. Lots of different races and archetypes that can be played, a great mix of fantasy and blackpowder weapons, all you need for play is the Savage Worlds Core + 50 Fathoms book with a huge PPC and excellent GM guide area by area. Ship battles work well with the chase combat or large scale mass combat systems of Savage Worlds. We found that even with Savage Worlds fast combat battles were a bit too slow when it came down to individual ship on ship crew battles, so we used the more abstract toolkits in Savage Worlds available to speed up gameplay as our fleet grew beyond just one ship and as the game went on shied away from boarding actions.  

If you want just pirates and no magic, Pirates of the Spanish Main is excellent for pirate play in the Age of Sail in Savage Worlds as well.

Cakebread & Walton also did a really good job with Pirates & Dragons as well. Dragons hoard gold and pirates want to steal it, its an easy mesh.

Quote from: Krimson;905837So many systems to choose for Freeport and you pick Pathfinder?

Got to admit, I also thought it an odd choice:).

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;905935You mean you can remember the hundreds of varying pluses and minuses in the combat section without looking at the tables!?

There's like 3 tables I needed for a whole duel in the combat system and 1 or 2 of them might not come up. When I ran my Flashing Blades campaign, I copied them to fit on a single A6 page, and everything else was indeed on the character sheet;).

Quote from: AsenRG;906147Got to admit, I also thought it an odd choice:).

Why? Neither PFRPG is a stranger to maritime stories, nor its Freeport edition is relatively bad.