Swashbuckling Tabletop RPGs For Fans Of Pirate Narratives

It’s a truism of storytelling that any narrative – book, movie, roleplaying game, or otherwise – can be improved with the addition of pirates (and, popularly, ninjas). The following tabletop RPG systems stand as proof of this “Pirate Principle” – filled with fantasy settings and rules uniquely suited to the telling of tales about swashbuckling, larceny, and high adventure in the vein of Pirates of the Caribbean and other corsair-centric fiction.

Ever since the early civilizations of humanity started transporting wealth and rare goods across the world’s seas, there have been pirates and privateers who’ve tried to steal those goods for themselves through violent means. The most popular image of pirates in games like Sea of Thieves hails from the 17th century Age of Sail, but there have been many other ages of Piracy in different parts of the world, each with their own iconic rogues and ruffians; the Japanese Hokou pirate raiders of the 15th century, the 19th century Chinese Pirate Queen Zheng Yi Sao and her fleet of 400 ships, etc.

The tabletop RPGs below invariably portray pirates in a romanticized fashion – focusing on their ethos of freedom and egalitarianism, flamboyant sense of fashion, and charismatic boldness, while downplaying their historical brutality and willingness to prey on the weak and defenseless. Each of these RPGs is also steeped in fantastical elements, letting player mix classic pirate tropes of sailing, plundering, and hoisting the skull and crossbones flag with magic, Krakens, and other kinds of supernatural phenomena.

The Pirate Fantasy of Rapscallion

Rapscallion, a Magpie Games RPG built around the “Powered By The Apocalypse” system, is currently for sale in the form of an “Ashcan Edition,” a slim volume with basic rules and setting details to be elaborated upon in future editions. The Rapscallion RPG setting, however, is already vividly drawn – a world of vast blue oceans, Royal Navies, and Pirate Kings, filled with magic, monsters, and a strange “alchemy” that shifts the outward appearance of characters to match their inner selves. The playbooks of Rapscallion center themselves around archetypes such as Chronicler, Navigator, or Mountebank, while still giving player leeway to customize their Pirate PCs in colorful ways.

Lady Blackbird Provides Sci-Fi Pirate Adventure

Lady Blackbird, a free-to-download RPG by John Harper, crams an impressive amount of story-beats, world-building details, and narrative storytelling mechanics into its 16 pages of content. The setting of the beginner-friendly Lady Blackbird, the “Wild Blue,” is a collection of planets and asteroids surrounded by a vast expanse of breathable air. Players take on the role of crew-mates from a smuggler Skyship, choosing from among pre-made characters such as the shapeshifting goblin Snargle, Captain Cyrus Vance, or the titular “Lady Blackbird,” a noblewoman and Storm-Blood sorceress running away from home to re-unite with the Pirate King Uriah Flint, her star-crossed lover.

Abney Park’s Airship Pirates Offers Steampunk Piracy

This somewhat niche tabletop RPG, available on the Drivethru RPG website, is explicitly modeled after the Seattle-based steampunk band Abney Park and their “time-traveling airship pirates” song narratives. The main draw of Abney Park’s Airship Pirates is its setting, a post-post-apocalyptic alternate history where sky-cities and pirate airships fly though the clouds, nomadic caravans wander vast stretches of wilderness, and industrial city-states are oppressed by both heavy pollution and the clockwork enforcers of a tyrannical Emperor. Pirate characters in this setting wear brass goggles, pilots time-hopping dirigibles, and plunder wealth from oppressive aristocrats who personify the inequities of the Victorian Age.

Set Course For A Magical Age Of Sail In 7th Sea’s Pirate Odyssey

7th Sea, a swashbuckling, seafaring fantasy roleplaying game published by Chaosium, is essentially set in a magical version of the Age of Sail, each player character hailing from a fictionalized version of a 17th century nation or empire (the Glamour Isles representing the British Isles, Castille representing Spain, etc). It’s possible to tell exclusively land-bound stories in a 7th Sea game a la The Three Musketeers; that said, the game’s elaborate rules for ship-sailing and duels, along with the large number of piratical factions and antagonistic trading companies in the setting, make 7th Sea a consistently good option for telling Pirates of the Carribean-style tales of magic and high adventure in a tabletop RPG medium.

Sources: Magpie Games, Drivethru RPG

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