Pirate
The pirate genre refers to stories set or focused on the exploits of seafaring pirates, corsairs, or privateers. Often set in the Renaissance or Golden Age of Piracy, these stories share elements with adventure stories, historical fiction, and romantic literature. Highlighting daring action, swordsmanship, high adventure, and even romance, piratical media is exciting and dangerous. Its heroes are charismatic, capable fighters, often with a crew at their back, relishing a freebooting lifestyle. Buried treasure, dastardly villains, corrupt officials, and climactic battles at sea are some highlights of pirate stories. The swashbuckler genre, including tales of merry bands like the Three Musketeers, Robin Hood, and The Princess Bride, has a great deal of overlap with pirate media, and might be considered its landlubbing counterpart. Pirate roleplaying games, centering on the larger-than-life personalities of a ship's crew sailing from adventure to adventure, are perfectly suited to the medium! You might play as privateers, taking semi-legal missions from a crown or other authority. You might be wanderers or nautical knights-errants, righting wrongs, seeking your fortune, or fleeing checkered pasts. You might simply be pirates, making your own way on the high seas, stealing cargo, evading capture, and carousing at port!
Popular Pirate RPGs
Pirate Borg
A scurvy-ridden, rules light, art heavy tabletop RPG. Inspired by history, fantasy, horror and rum. Your cutlass & flintlock won’t save you from the hordes of skeletons, the Kraken, or even your own crew. Find a ship. Recruit some crew. Raid, pillage, plunder, and otherwise pilfer your weasley black guts out. Get a bigger ship. Kill some things. Upgrade your ship. Sneak into a fort. Raid a port. Acquire treasure. Bury said treasure. Become infamous. Search for someone else’s treasure. Flee in terror from unfathomable creatures from the deep. Drink all of the rum. Die on the high seas. Roll a new character and do it all again.
Fabula Ultima
Fabula Ultima is a Tabletop Roleplaying Game inspired by Japanese-style console RPGs, or JRPGs. In Fabula Ultima, you and your friends will tell epic stories of would-be heroes and fearsome villains, set in fantasy worlds brimming with magic, wondrous locations, and uniquely bizarre monsters! This is a game about larger-than-life heroes and tragic antagonists. There is no predetermined plot, scenario, or "adventure", and the heroes' actions, motivations, and objectives will drive the story forward while the Game Master reacts to their choices and places obstacles on their path, often in the form of powerful villains with their own devious agendas, which will change time and time again as the protagonists manage (or fail) to thwart their plans.
Frequently asked questions about Pirate
Blog links about Pirate
8 Pirate TTRPGs For Swashbuckling, Nautical Combat, Looting Booty, And Playing The Villain
Become the most feared corsairs sailing the seven seas with these piratical games.
How to Create a Character for Pirate Borg
Want to make a scurvy scallywag and become scourge of the seven seas? This easy guide will show you how.
Pirate Reviews and Actual Plays
Pirate Borg: Buried in the Bahamas
The crew of Mystery Quest create scurvy scallywags in search of legendary treasure in Pirate Borg, a piratical roleplaying game.
7th Sea All Stars
Swashbuckling adventure RPG 7th Sea designer John Wick leads a cast of publisher Chaosium's all stars in this official actual play.
Dimension 20 Presents: Pirates of Leviathan
An all-star cast play a crew trying to save their floating pirate city.