Pirate Borg RPG Review by Andrew Delacruz

PIRATE BORG is a scurvy ridden, rules light, art heavy RPG based on Mörk Borg. Inspired by history, fantasy, horror, and rum. Your cutlass & flintlock won’t save you from hordes of skeletons and ghost ships…

It’s also a GM tool kit. Most of the tables can be hacked and used with any tabletop RPG, and you can add-on the 5e Bestiary Zine* to get 5e stats for all the monsters and NPCs in the book.

The Dark Caribbean is a unique setting based in the real world Caribbean. Historical factions such as the British, French and Spanish are represented. Familiar cities like Tortuga, Port Royal, and Barbados are represented. But these locations are now swarming not only with pirates, but with monsters and undead. A thriving trade market has popped up taking advantage of “ash” which is a byproduct of undead remains and has physiological and psychedelic effects. So those brave enough to face the horrors of the sea can be greatly rewarded. The book does a great job of expressing the ‘vibe” of the setting. Its art direction and style captures the spooky undead pirate feeling well. The monsters are cool looking and the pages of different boats available make me want to start stealing bigger and bigger vessels.

The Game Mechanics:

For being rules-lite Pirate Borg actually has a lot of game mechanics that support the setting and style of play. Rules for Sailing and Naval combat let players feel like they are sailing a ship and do a good job of letting each crew member feel like they are involved. The Captain of the ship will control movement of the ship with other players contributing with actions including firing the cannons, repairing the ship, or boarding enemy vessels. The rules, although they are simple, do provide what you expect from a naval combat encounter. There is also a mechanism for carousing! When pirates go out on the town there are consequences for their actions. A 4d20 table allows for a huge variety of outcomes for your poor pirate, everything from losing money while gambling to losing an eye to a barmaid. 

The game is highly lethal, with players having generally low HP. The quick character creation though means that dying is not too impactful. Classes feature 6 unique class features with one feature being added per level. I think one of the most thematic mechanics in the game is “Ash”. Ash is a powder made from the remains of destroyed undead and it is known to have physiological and psychedelic effects. Basically your players can choose to snort ash and roll on a table of dramatic effects. These effects can be very beneficial or very bad so naturally when I played all the players were constantly doing it. 

These mechanics come together well to support the theme and really help the players feel like they are pirates out to conquer the Dark Caribbean. 

Overall thoughts :

Overall I think Limithron has put together a great product. The art and layout make the book fun to read. The gameplay is simple and very thematic. If you are looking to run an OSR style Pirate game this is a great system to use. It is definitely rules-lite though, if you are looking for a complex system with a lot of player abilities and combos this is not for you. Combat is fairly simple and straightforward. There is a huge emphasis on the narrative and the storytelling and it does put a lot on the GM. I personally like this style of play, but it isn’t for everyone. Pirate Borg excels at capturing the theme of spooky pirates, it provides simple and streamlined rules for both individual combat and naval combat, it includes a small collection of unique relics with magical effects that will make great treasure for your crew to discover and give you the tools to make interesting and unique characters to fit in this dark pirate world. Also you can snort magical drugs which players loved. I enjoyed playing it and I think that it is a great addition to any RPG library.