Welcome to the Dark Caribbean
Perhaps you were once a decent person. That was long ago, and in another place.
Now you are a lowlife. A scoundrel. A pyrate.
The islands were supposed to be paradise — deserted beaches and bountiful treasure, free for the taking. Then thousands of people left their crowded, blighted homelands and settled here, and on one particular solstice the sea gave back its dead. Screams came over the sand. Things crawled out of the black waves. Whole settlements were blotted out inside a season.
What survived is this: fortified ports, bled-dry empires, and a black market built on ASH — the dust left behind by destroyed undead, which turns out to be worth more than gold and to do remarkable things to a person who eats it. Nobody is seriously trying to stop the dead from rising. There is too much money in it.
What you actually do
You crew a ship. You take prizes, rob ports, dig up things that were buried for good reasons, and spend the proceeds in a single catastrophic night ashore. Then you do it again with whoever is still breathing.
What this game is like
It is fast, it is funny, and it will kill you. A character is made in about ten minutes, because you will be making more of them. There are no levels, no experience points, and no guarantee that you get better — advancement can lower your abilities as easily as raise them.
Three things to know before your first session:
- You roll for everything. You roll to hit, and you roll to not get hit. The GM never rolls a die against you in combat.
- Zero is Broken, below zero is dead. There is no dying-and-stabilising. There is a table, and one entry on it is "instant death".
- The Devil's Luck is your only mercy. Spend it. Hoarding it is how people die with two points left.
What this game is not about
Pirate Borg is about grog-swilling pirates, undead galleons, arcane treasure, and high seas adventure. It is not about slavery, sexual violence, or genocide. Those are real horrors of this history. Treat them with the respect they deserve or leave them out entirely, and go hunt some skeletons instead.