Pirate Borg review: "Eldritch horror hits the high seas"

It's the Golden Age of Piracy in Pirate Borg, but it feels like the last days. That's the vibe in this genre-specific spin-off of hack'n'slash tabletop darling Mörk Borg, where players trawl a version of the Caribbean Sea that is haunted by a seemingly endless horde of undead.

Basically, there's no better tomorrow on the horizon. This is a dark and gritty world with little hope to speak of, and it's also unrelentingly brutal. Your character probably won't survive the voyage, for example. However, it's laden down with a galleon's worth of atmosphere and will do just the trick for fans who prefer the best tabletop RPGs to have a dash of old-school difficulty.

Pirate Borg - features & design

• Rules-lite setting
• Full of undead sailors, cursed riches, and eldritch dread
• Characters will probably die - it's expected

Pirate Borg's not too far off from the myth and magic of Pirates of the Caribbean or One Piece, but if Jack Sparrow was drenched in acid or if Monkey D Luffy was droning out to Thou. A darker-edged version of the classic concept of the 'pirate's life' of high adventure and swashbuckling, it's built around a brutal old-school design philosophy.

For starters, players roll up characters in the original D&D style - there's no point buy or standard array here, just straight up 3d6 for each ability score. They then choose a class that best compliments their attributes and concept.

From there, more rolls will determine each player's gear, resources, and place in the world of Pirate Borg, with characters able to occupy the role of Buccaneer, Swashbuckler, or Sorcerer (with some other extended options available, like allowing a player to be a talking animal). Here's where players who prefer the wide breadth of granular character options in games like D&D will feel slightly less at home with only a few choices to make on paper. 

But for those who are prepared for a different experience, where prepping for the game is more about lighting a few candles and playing some Alestorm records than laying out detailed maps on a grid, the limited options leave a more open road for the so-called 'theater of the mind.'

Pirate Borg - gameplay

• Bloodthirsty adventures
• High risk play balances combat with rules-lite ritual magic
• Few rewards, and a near-certain death
• Everything about it is grim

On the seas of Pirate Borg, adventurers face off against hordes of zombie sailors in search of the highly desired currency of Ash – the dusty remains of those very undead. There are also eldritch terrors lurking in the depths of the sea and in the dense jungles of the lands that surround the ship, so players find few ports in the storm of violence and forbidden magic on all sides.

Their only choice is to embrace it, or die resisting it. The latter is more likely; the high-risk play of Pirate Borg, which generally relies on a system of rolling d6s and d12s and adding modifiers to the results, often leaves player characters dead, or otherwise cursed out of the campaign. 

For some, the level of risk compared to the highly esoteric in-game rewards afforded players will be off-putting. However, if you're the kind of player who feels more at home with the grind of old-school hack'n'slash tabletop RPGs than modern Dungeons and Dragons books, Pirate Borg is a breath of fresh air.

And while the game does take most of its dice mechanics and overall atmosphere from its progenitor, the Black Plague-inspired fantasy game Mörk Borg, it does add an entirely new dimension in its ship combat mechanics - a must for a high-seas adventure game, even one that's often primarily concerned more with high strangeness.

On that note, the adventure included in the Pirate Borg manual, 'The Curse of Skeleton Point,' offers players a bit of everything, down to some memorable NPCs with cool and creepy portraits included (no need to harvest Google image search). Everything you need to get into the game, aside from a handful of dice, is right there. 

Should you buy Pirate Borg?

If you're looking for a creepy pirate adventure that doesn't skimp on the horror (or challenge), Pirate Borg is for you. It's a brutal RPG with an uncompromising, old-school mentality that'll really appeal to fans of OSR titles. Mork Borg players will feel right at home, too.

Alright, so this is a double-edged sword. The high mortality rate doesn't lend itself to long-term campaign play, and Pirate Borg may turn off less experienced pen-and-paper adventurers. But that grittiness is exactly what will appeal to the target audience – it's undoubtedly effective.  

Buy it if...

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