Through Monday, October 5 we present the Pirate Borg Bundle featuring Pirate Borg, the standalone FRPG about greedy scoundrels from Limithron. Mixing history, fantasy, horror, and rum, Luke Stratton’s Pirate Borg is a scurvy-ridden rules-light hack of the doom-metal apocalypse-artpunk FRPG Mörk Borg from Free League Publishing.
Perhaps you were a decent person once, long ago in another place – an apothecary, blacksmith, cartographer, monk, nurse, philosopher, “rumored sorcerer,” or any of D100 other backgrounds – but now you and your crew are lowlifes, raiding and plundering the Dark Caribbean. Buccaneers, Brutes, Swashbucklers, Rapscallions, Zealots – you all find ready work from the British Empire, Viceroyalty of New Spain, or the black-hearted Republic of Pirates. You’ll sail from Tortuga or Hispaniola or Port Royal to countless haunted islands in search of the ultimate treasure: Ash, the crumbled remains of destroyed undead, now sold as a powerful psychedelic.
A heady grog for salty sea dogs and landlubbers alike, Pirate Borg supports spirited chases and duels a la The Princess Bride, grimdark horror like Elden Ring, and don’t be surprised when your players invoke One Piece, Our Flag Means Death, and Muppet Treasure Island.
- Tour scenic Death’s Head Swamp, Carcass Beach, derelict ships, nameless temples, and a live volcano.
- Use relics, rituals, and sea shanties (not to mention bombs) to raise magical secrets from the vasty deep.
- Find treasure, and bury it.
- Plunder graveyards to construct sentient undead Marrow Cannons, your best weapon against hordes of zombies, Deep Ones, Coral Shoggoths, Sea Wraiths, Gorilla Crabs, Undead Megalodons, the Kraken, and the legendary monster turtle, Davy Jones.
- Use your Devil’s Luck to evade many gruesome deaths.
- If you die on the high seas, roll a new character in minutes – or ask the GM to let you return as a Haunted Soul. Dead men tell no tales, but when you’re undead, all bets are off.
Pirate Borg plants its Jolly Roger in the same Earth as ours, except even worse: the golden age of piracy, roughly 1650 to 1750, with the Spanish, English, and French in constant war across the New World. Undead rise from the depths to ravage cities; cultists spread black magic; krakens, fishmen, sirens, and mutants claim the seas, and nothing stays dead for long. Hidden temples in the jungles of the Yucatán hold older mysteries. Somewhere out there is the Necronomicon. The Inquisition is on the march; so is Blackbeard; and an entire city might need “the Scourge” – purging. It’s a full-on apocalypse in progress – and true to its Mörk Borg roots, the game itself asks you, when the End finally comes, to cast the book into the sea.
Pirate Borg keeps its rules light: Roll a d20 plus a modifier against a Difficulty Rating. Choose from classes like the Brute, Rapscallion, Swashbuckler, Zealot, and Sorcerer, or take either of two special paths: the undead Haunted Soul or the Tall Tale (where you play as a Merfolk, an Aquatic Mutant, or a Sentient Animal). Devil’s Luck lets you reroll a bad result, shrug off damage, or land a killing blow when you need it most. Spend it wisely, because you don’t get much. Ship-to-ship battles are a full-crew effort, not a spectator sport, because Pirate Borg gives every player a job: Someone pilots, someone commands, and others man the guns.
Of course, no pirate’s life is complete without carousing. Pirate Borg features tables of random debauchery for when your crew makes port and blows its loot on rum and Ash. Snorted, smoked, or injected, Ash can boost your stats, grant magical power, make your bones glow, or maybe kill you on the spot. And [SPOILER ALERT] when the world’s true End Times finally arrive, every soul who’s ever touched the stuff rises again as one of the undead – a fact your character, blissfully, does not know.
This new Pirate Borg Bundle gives you the complete corebook and Starter Set plus many supplements and scenarios from Limithron, Snapback Game Studios, and SkeletonKey Games, all for less than the price of a dose of Ash at the rotting French palace on Guadeloupe. Pay just US$9.95 to get DRM-free .PDF ebooks of both titles in our Piratical Starter (retail value $40): the complete Pirate Borg core rulebook and the Pirate Borg Starter Set.
And if you pay more than the threshold (average) price, which is set at $24.95 to start, you’ll level up and also get our entire Piratical Bonus Collection with ten more titles worth an additional $53, including Luke Stratton’s 24-page introductory adventure Buried in the Bahamas; three mini-scenarios from Limithron – The Battle of Dead Man’s Cove, Cavern of Cursed Tears, and The Sinking of C’Thagn; three titles from Snapback Game Studios – Faction Relics, The Repentant, and Tangled in Shrouds; and three pamphlet mini-adventures from SkeletonKey Games – Blood in the Water, Raise the Black, and Sweet Tusk.
Get this Pirate Borg offer before it sinks down to Davy Jones’ Locker Monday, October 5.
