A pirate game where the crew is the real ship
The Caribbean, 1692. An old captain is dead, and his will leaves you a worn ship, a handful of hands who stayed on, and thirty pieces of gold.Every port offers honest work: haul sugar, carry a passenger, land a cargo on time. Every horizon offers the other thing: a fat merchantman, low in the water, alone. Pirate Privateer never tells you which to take. It only makes both cost something.
And below decks, the men are watching what kind of captain you turn out to be. They have names, trades, moods and opinions. They put their marks to your Articles, they draw a share of everything you bring aboard, and they can vote you out.
Run the ship
- A crew of individuals. Every hand has a name, a byname, skills, traits and a thought in his own words. Watch them work their stations, eat, sleep and grumble across the day and night watches.
- Fit her out your way. Buy fittings at the shipyard and place them on her decks yourself: a kitchen, a carpenter's bench, a sick bay, a lookout post, hammocks. Nothing is impossible without one, only harder.
- Give the orders. Set job priorities, call all hands to the pumps, drill the guns or clear for action.
- Make her yours. Paint her hull, lay her decks in eight woods, sew your own flag, furnish her with decor from English, Spanish, Dutch and pirate ports, and take ship's animals aboard.
Sail the Caribbean
- A chart that grows. Start out knowing only the great ports. Clear the fog with your own wake, with tavern gossip, and with jobs that lead somewhere new.
- Living job boards. Deliveries, passages, smuggling runs and rescues, from easy to hard, pinned for a week or two and taken by other ships if you wait.
- Ports worth walking. Market, tavern, shipyard, animal shop and, some weeks, a fortune teller's tent with a 22-card tarot to collect.
- Weather you can see. Rain, fog, storms and flat calms change through the day and the season, and leave their mark on deck.
- Ships at sea. Sail ho! Choose your colours, close with her, then let her pass, run, or fight. Battles are turn-based, with broadsides, chain shot, grenadoes, fire barrels and boarding.