Yes, I know I ranted about the beta of Pirate Borg previously. And that stuff pretty still applies. But just last week I got the final PDF in hands. It’s much better than I thought.

So for a quick recap, it’s basically Mork Borg but with pirates. There is a new attribute, Spirit, that used for magic. But other than the core system is Mork Borg. And yes it’s art punky but not as bad as Mork Borg. And chances are if you’re already a Mork Borg fan either you backed the Kickstarter or have this one your wish list already. So this post is more about using Pirate Borg if you happen prefer some other set of old school rules.

So what could you use it for? Let’s start with big picture. The default setting is the “Dark Caribbean”. It’s pseudo-historical with plenty weird magical and supernatural elements added in. Like Mork Borg, it doesn’t go into nauseating detail but has enough to guide and inspire the GM. The setting information is pretty much system agnostic. Just the slew of random tables. You’ve got character backgrounds and flaws. Then you’ve adventure generators, map and island generators, NPC generators and even pirate names. There’s a little system information here but nothing that can’t be easily handled. All of this can be handled with little or no conversion.

But wait there’s more. There’s plenty of stuff that would just a little bit on conversion but not so much that you’ll claw your face off. Most importantly, there’s a good naval combat system which could easily be applied to rules of your choice. Plus there’s plenty of interesting monsters. This would be a little more difficult just because of system differences but it’s easy to take inspiration from them and build away! And if you go that far you could get inspired by the classes as well. There’s also an adventure/mini-campaign in the book, The Curse of Skeleton Point. And, like the monsters, it’s good inspiration.

Reading through the book, I couldn’t help but think about what other system I would adapt it to. Well, my first thought is Lamentations of the Flame Princess. There’s plenty of overlap here on tone (at least from perspective). And it make an LotFP campaign something a bit different than most of the currently published stuff. In case some wonders, this isn’t meant that the current stuff is bad but that this idea hits on my tastes better.

If you haven’t looked at and have any interest then you can still pre-order via the Kickstarter. If you don’t play it then at least there’s some cool and inspirational tools in there.