Pirate Borg Starter Set Review

This is a guest post review Written by Kevin Melka

We also did a complete unboxing video that you can watch HERE. 

 

What is Pirate Borg?

Pirate Borg is a gritty, grim dark tabletop RPG that gets its roots from the award winning game Mörk Borg, and drags you into a cursed pirate-themed world of rotting sails and salt-soaked graves. This is a world where undead pirates hang from a ship’s rigging, cursed islands hide lost treasure, dark magic is the only magic, black powder weapons are everywhere, and cannon blasts sound like the tolls of a funeral bell. It’s Pirates of the Caribbean where everyone hides a dark secret, the dead refuse to stay buried, and eventually everyone ends up in Davy Jones’ Locker.

The Starter Set opens with an introduction (reproduced below) that’s too good not to repeat. It’s an exceptional entry that captures not just the spirit of the game, but a philosophy for braving any modern RPG.

pirateborg is a game about grog-swilling pirates, undead galleons, arcane treasures found in ancient temples, and high seas adventure. It’s not a game about slavery, sexual violence, genocide, or any of the other abhorrent real parts of our history. Please treat these topics with the respect they deserve, or leave them out of the game altogether and go hunt some skeletons.

 

What is a “Mörk Borg”?

Mörk Borg is a harsh, OSR rules-light dark fantasy RPG first released by Free League Publishing in 2020. It’s a fast playing, hits hard RPG that is presented like a grunge metal album, mixing basic old-school RPG rules with a bleak, end-of-the-world atmosphere and some of the most unique art you’ll see in a game book. Pirate Borg shares the same rules-light, deadly setting, so they feel instantly familiar to anyone who’s played any Borg-inspired game. While Mörk Borg leans hard into a dark, end-of-the-world philosophy, Pirate Borg takes that same savagery and sets it in a world of cursed seas filled with undead pirates, haunted islands where the mantra is “every pirate for themselves” and “eventually, we’re all dead.”

What’s Included?

With a retail price of $49.99 US, you definitely get what you pay for in this Starter Set. Everything you need to get a group of 2 – 7 players is jammed into this high quality box set.

• Player’s Guidebook (a rules-lite introduction to the setting).
• Full-length adventure: Trapped in the Tropics.
• Maps, tokens, and reference cards for the included (and future) adventure(s).
• A set of custom, pirate themed dice.
• Character sheets and reusable worksheets.
• GM aids and quick-reference tools.
• Rules for hex-based navel combat.

 

 

The Starter Set is of a superior in construction, the same as other Free League published offerings. The box itself is a smaller form factor, an sturdy A5 format of 6.5 x 9.25 x 2.75 inches. Despite the smaller size, the author has used every “nook and cranny” of space to include all the above-mentioned components, in addition to printing reference rules inside the box itself that also contains a QR code to an online character generator.

Diving deeper, the Starter Set delivers a GM-ready toolkit for running the included adventure Trapped in the Tropics right out of the gate, while still offering plenty of value beyond the included material. Inside you’ll find three sturdy cardboard token sheets covering PCs, NPCs, and monsters, along with five double-sided maps scaled perfectly for said tokens. There’s also a well-designed old-school “pad of character sheets”, and a compact deck of player handout cards.

But the real standout for this box is the inclusion of six laminated character worksheets paired with two dry-erase markers, a different approach than the usual pre-generated character found in most starter sets. Instead of handing players something static, the game invites them to roll, choose, and scribble their way into a character in minutes. It’s fast, flexible, and perfectly suited to a system where characters can find themselves in the Locker rather quickly.

 

What is the Look, Feel, and Style?

Pirate Borg is written and illustrated by Luke Stratton, also known online as Limithron. The game is published by Free League Publishing under the Free League Workshop sub-label for independently designed games. While the credits page contains a large list of proofreaders and play testers (that includes several celebrities), the writing and art direction presented by Limithron is, in a word, outstanding. The consistency and presentation of the these two styles complement each other seamlessly, and give the game a perfect blend of text and imagery. Where Mörk Borg can feel like an art-heavy, doom-soaked experience best suited for short, intense sessions, Limithron’s presentation of Pirate Borg is a bit more organized and systematically presented, making it easier to run and supports campaign-style play.

 

What are Player Characters like?

Pirate Borg classes included in the Starter Set are quick and basic, giving players a good range of options that best mimic their play style.

 

• Brute: A heavy-hitting brawler prone to extreme fits of rage.
• Buccaneer: A balanced pirate archetype, capable in a bit of everything and skilled in survival.
• Rapscallion: A scalawag, throat-slitting backstabber that frequents the dark corners of the world.
• Sorcerer: A frail occultist spellcaster wielding dangerous, necromantic magics.
• Swashbuckler: A brash, bravado fighter-type skilled in pirate-type weapons and inspiring others.
• Zealot: A fanatical clergy member, cultist, shaman, believer granted strange powers questionable devotion

 

Characters are also presented with the option of a random Background to help flush out their history. The most common is that of a simple sailor, but there are another 80 background possibilities you can roll randomly. Your background also gives you starting money and equipment not presented in character generation.

 

Pirate Borg adds even more character building points with random tables for Distinctive Flaws, Physical Trademarks, Idiosyncrasies, Unfortunate Incidents & Conditions, Things of Importance, and Ancient Relics that further improve (or shackle) a character’s playability. These tables help insure no two characters are alike, which is a refreshing change from other RPG offerings.

 

What is “Devil’s Luck”

Like many modern RPG, Pirate Borg uses a dice “meta-currency” called Devil’s Luck to allow players to re-roll poor die rolls to help offset the perilous nature of the game. This mechanic can be used to:

 

• Re-roll Any Die: Redo a failed roll, including tests.
• Maximize Damage: Deal max damage on a successful attack.
• Lower Difficulty: Reduce a test’s Difficulty Rating (DR) by 4.
• Reduce Damage: Lowers incoming damage to your character by d6.
• Negate Critical Fumbles: Neutralize a 1 or 20 to avoid catastrophic results.

 

Devil’s Luck is regained after a a minimum of six-hours of rest, but only if a character’s luck pool is empty.

 

What’s Beyond the Starter Set?

If this all sounds like something you’d like, there is much more to be had in the world of Pirate Borg.

 

Pirate Borg Core Book

If you like the Starter Set, you’ll love the Core Book. Originally a Kickstarter in 2022, the Core Book is the familiar A5 format, 166 pages with eight character classes, easy-to-learn naval combat rules, stats for 18 vessels, 80+ NPCs & monsters, 90+ system agnostic tables, and The Curse of Skeleton Point sandbox style adventure.

 

Gamemaster Screen

This accessory is a 5-panel screen featuring original artwork with glow-in-the-dark features on the front. The screen is of the same smaller height as the books with a collection of tables for the Gamemaster. The GM-facing side contains NPC and vessel name generators, pirate and ship stat blocks, ritual and relic rules, a ship diagram, naval combat stats, other assorted core rules references. The screen folds down to the A5 size, and also fit inside the Starter Set – if you remove the dice.

 

 

 

Down Among the Dead

This recent expansion for Pirate Borg contains three new adventures, new classes, skills, and house rules reflecting four years of development. Like all physical PB products it is an A5 hardcover, 148 pages, printed endpapers, thick uncoated Munken 115g paper,two book ribbons, and a glow-in-the-dark 5-color Pantone spot ink cover.

 

 

 

What about a PDF?

As with all physical products sold via Free League Publishing, if you purchase any Pirate Borg product through their web store, you get a digital copy of the PDF for free. This is also the true of any purchase at a Free League sponsored booth at your local RPG convention.

 

What’s the Final Verdict?

Pirate Borg is, without question, the premier ‘Borg‘ title on the market. With the most fully realized setting in the genre to date, and delivers a consistent, enjoyable experience that is a must-have for any RPG repertoire. If your more traditional RPG game is running a bit stale, and you like saying ARRR! at the game table, the Pirate Borg Starter Set offers a great alternative for the gaming group looking for either a fresh start or temporary distraction that perfectly captures the grit and dark magic of a high-seas adventure.

 

 

Disclaimer

The review copy of Pirate Borg Starter Set was provided by Free League Publishing and Limithron for the purpose of this review. This had no bearing on the honesty or final outcome of this review.