Enthusiastic Pirate Bois: An OSR Wavecrawl rpg

Illustration from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

My players wanted to play a pirate campaign based off my GLOG-Hack, and quarantine has been doing wonders for my writing productivity.

I give you:

Enthusiastic Pirate Bois v1.1

ESP Player Reference + Character Sheet v1.1


EDIT (updated changes): 

Enthusiastic Pirate Bois v1.6

Enthusiastic Pirate Bois v1.6 (Core Rules for Players)

ESB Character Creation v1.6

The main source of inspiration was the excellent Counter-Colonial Heistcrawl, and the bones of the rules and classes are taken from Coins and Scrolls' Pirate GLOG. The sailing system is my own.

I've made edits and hacks along the way, including:

Expedition resources from The Scones Alone blog
Carousing rules from Jeff Rients
Usage Dice from The Black Hack 2E
Fast combat resolution and Company rules from Into the Odd

Haggling for sales price from The Ultraviolent Grasslands

The design principles were to make something:

- Quick to pick up

- Roll under

- No fiddly bonuses 

- Fast combat resolution

- Less math (with the exception of getting/spending loot because pirates love to count loot)

- NOT a generic Caribbean pirate-crawl

It includes

- Decadent slug-people

- Weirdly bureaucratic mole-men

- Systems for individual, crew and ship combat

- Loot tables

- Encounter tables for safe -> dangerous -> uncharted sea lanes

- A carousing table where you can drink so hard you forget your identity like the protagonist from Disco Elysium

- A retirement table where you can become Jay Gatsby

- Opium, colonialism, anti-colonialism (if you like)

Also I read The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and why has nobody ever made a game from that yet?

Races and islands were collaboratively written by the table. There's wizards in there because one of my players really wants to be a wizard but feel free to drop them if you don't want them.

I am inordinately proud of the random tables. I'll probably make an additional table in the future for random sea-ports/villages and rumours, but the rule-set is playable as is.

Yet Another GLOG Hack

Here's yet another hack based off Skerples' GLOG rules and The Black Hack 2E.

I made it to solve specific issues at my table (see below)

There's two version: v0.2 is really just the GLOG and the Black Hack mashed up, while v0.5 incorporates all sorts of other, weirder changes: fast combat from Into the Odd, thoughts on inventory systems from DIY & Dragons, Arnold K's popcorn-treasure, and other tinkering.

v 0.2 (GLOG+Black Hack)

v 0.5 (All sorts of stuff, like a stir-fry)


ISSUES IT'S TRYING TO SOLVE:

- As little math as possible.
Everything is either Advantage/Disadvantage or stepping die sizes up or down

- Inventory systems count as math. Buying supplies takes FOREVER. Players are bored by book-keeping.
This is the least OSR thing, maybe. All adventuring gear is simplified down to 1 of 4 generic packages: Supplies, Camp Gear, Tools, and Torches. If 1 player has a package, there's enough for everyone. Packages either can be tested for special bonuses, or are there for the GM to impose location/time pressure. The party starts with all 4 packages and can dive right in. 

- Players don't really care about inventory slots in short sessions.
Limited inventory systems. Armour takes up a lot of slots. Treasure is always Bulky. 

- High-level players are hitpoint sinks
GLOG tops out at Level 4 for class templates. HP is low across the board. The Black Hack's armour system is there to give players an 'out', but extended adventuring is a risky choice. No heal-bot clerics: you get a weird priest type instead, who's like a very religious bard.

- Magic is a bit boring in TBH
I just used the GLOG's magic system. 

- Low investment in XP / What kind of tone are we going for here?
This could just be my table: my players don't really care about the Black Hack's XP systems, so I created 3 so they could choose a tone they wanted.

- No retirement tables
I made a retirement table. 

- I quite like mutation tables. The Black Hack one is a bit gonzo, isn't it?
I made a less gonzo mutation table.


HEY U FORGOT MONSTER STATS

For monsters, all you need is a Level (i.e. a hit die), an armour value from 1 to 3 (which functions as straight damage resistance), a damage die, and a list of special abilities.

As so:

Ogre (Level 5), Armour 2, d10.
(Seize and fling. Test Dex or be grabbed and thrown at another PC. d8 to 2 PCs)

----

Salt and pepper with your favourite subsystems as you wish.

One-Shot Adventure: The Day of Fools

Credit: Mariusz Sawiński

I made a one-page system-neutral starter adventure:

The Day of Fools v2.0

These days, I normally run short sessions for new players (around 2.5 hours or so), so I wanted to make something that could be run in that time.

I'd probably run this with Into the Odd.

The adventure's really designed to teach problem-solving. All the ogres are probably too tough to fight on their own, but you could trick them, flatter them, distract them etc. PCs have to figure out how to negotiate with Mellifax and Muddrick without upsetting them as much as possible.

Also I really wanted to have frog-priests.