Ships & the Sea
Sooner or later you will want a ship, and then the game changes shape.
Ships have their own stats
A vessel has HP, a Hull (armor, as a die), Agility, Speed, crew Skill, Broadsides, Small Arms, a Ram, a crew range, and cargo slots. A sloop has 30 HP, -d2 hull, and d6 broadsides. A ship of the line has 95 HP and fires three of them.
Ship damage and your damage are not the same scale — the ratio is 1:5. Shooting a frigate with a musket is exactly as useful as it sounds.
The round
Roll d6 + Ship Agility for initiative, every round, rerolled each time. Then:
- The Captain spends their action moving the ship its speed in hexes.
- Every other PC takes one crew action.
- Ships with too few crew get one action total, no matter who is aboard.
Crew actions are the game: Fire Broadsides, Fire Small Arms, Full Sail, Come About, Repair, Boarding Party, Ram, or something else entirely. Most test the ship's crew skill or agility and let you add your ability on top — so a high-Presence Buccaneer is a gunnery officer whether they meant to be or not.
Broadsides only fire at 45 degrees from the ship's side. Position is everything.
The wind is a player
At the start of combat, roll for which direction the wind comes from. Then your speed depends on your point of sail: full speed with the wind, half close to the wind, and In Irons means speed 0 and one 60-degree turn while everyone shoots at you.
A sloop and a tartane can make full speed close to the wind. That is why pirates love them.
Sinking
At 0 HP a ship is derelict, not sunk — dead in the water and unable to act. Keep hitting it and roll a d8, where 5 is "sinks now" and 8 is "magazine explosion, instant death to all aboard".
Shanties
A crew can sing 1 + the captain's Spirit shanties a day. Test crew skill DR12; on a success the song does something real — repairs the hull, changes the wind, raises morale so the crew cannot mutiny today, or crashes dark waves into an enemy ship.
Keeping a crew
Crew skill drifts with conditions. Out of rum is -5. No prize in a week is -1. Ship below a quarter HP is -5. Shore leave recovers 2, taking a prize recovers 4, and dividing the plunder resets it entirely.
Pirates do not draw wages. They split the take. A crew that has not been paid, has run out of rum, and has not seen a prize in a month is a mutiny waiting for one bad roll — and mutiny is resolved by rolling reactions for every single one of them.