Welcome to the Golden Age of Piracy, marked by letters of marque, and blazed in both cannon fire and trails to treasure. Explore a pirate republic filled with scallywags and ne’er-do-wells. Sail the high seas in search for even higher adventure. … However, your days as a pirate come with a dire warning; be prepared to stare directly into the fathomless and incomprehensible abyss, and pray it does not stare back… for your precious sanity.
Its Pirates of the Carribean meets Cthulhu Mythos today with Chaotican Writer as we explore the new tabletop RPG by Black Cats Gaming, “Cursed Captains of Cthulhu”, where the thrill of the privateer life clashes with cosmic horrors,
Black Cats Gaming provided me a fantastic opportunity to review the core rulebook of its successful Kickstarter, and give my honest deep dive into its tempestuous waves to see if is game can truly brave the storm. Today, I break into this rulebook and provide my opinion, both thrills and critiques. We’ll take a look into its mechanics, while others will provide summary on what to expect when skimming its pages on the trek to running the game and building your very own pirate mythos!
All Hands on Deck!
Cursed Captains of Cthulhu is a game by Black Cats Gaming in association/distribution with Modiphius Entertainment. Built on the 4d6 Follower system, players get to build and manage their own pirate crew comprised of various cultural and professional backgrounds, along with managing their own ship.
On their journey towards fortune, they navigate the inner workings of a pirate republic, plunder for treasure, sail across the seas, and uncover untold mysteries of both the Carribean and the cosmic horrors that surround them.
Originally funded through Kickstarter, this project saw ample success with rewards that expanded the content with a total of 16 starting professions, a DMs screen, special game dice, a new voyage (quest) booklet, and more monsters for your crew to battle.
First Glance at the Book: The Design and Introduction
First, the cover art. You gotta love the snapshot of a group of battle-ready pirates in the throes of exhilarating terror with people moving, firing, and someone screaming in your face because your ears of ringing, and are too stunned by the scene of abject horror before you. Now grab your flintlock, and shoot, you dumbfounded scallywag!
The interior design of the book is attractive to looks at, employing a great choice of a vellum-based backdrop. The dual type facing does a fantastic job of being both clean to read in the body, and evocative and gritty in the headings, with sections casually separated by lines of red and textured strokes of blue.
The introduction of the book what one expects from a good tabletop RPG, describing roleplaying game functions, a quick shot of the base mechanics, the roles of the players and GM, and safety tools for the table. One huge kudos is that t=he writers were smart to tackle some of the big rocks about the setting and the experience of a TTRPG from the get go. The Golden Age of Piracy is a historical era rife with themes which require careful navigation, and the writers do a fantastic job addressing them upfront.
Building Your Pirate for Life on the High Seas
With 16 starting professions and over 150+ skills and traits to choose from, there are abundant ways to build your very own swashbuckling pirate. First, there are NO classes. Instead, the professions serve as a characters starting point before meeting destiny on the high seas.
The game uses a navigational compass as a clever visual aid to arrange its starting professions, with each pole correlating to a certain aspect.
North is combat, south is magic, east is toughness and sailing, and west is social and knowledge.
Each profession is well-characterized, and each lends to a stat increase, and a special trait that provides characters a unique feel.
Furthermore, the game has eight characteristics and four secondary characteristics that determine a characters base build. From the primary, you have… Melee, Brawn, Seafaring, Abjure, Harness, Studies, Savvy, and Accuracy. … Secondary characteristics are calculated from the primaries, and include: Health Points (HP), Courage Points (CP), Evasion Score (ES) and Initiative Score (IS) … Players are provided a number of points they can spend after factoring in their profession. If they distribution feels too controlled, players are provided a couple unique method for allocating these at random for a bit of fortune.
Clearly we begin the journey on a solid foundation of options. All rolls begin at the base stats, and this composition feels neither complex, or lacking of robust potential. However, we have many more ways to spruce up our scurvy dog.
Customizing Your Scallywag: Skills and Traits
In a nutshell, skills and traits come into play at different phases of the game.
Skills are chosen aspects of your character, acting as talents and specializations, representing training, atunement to magic, areas of study. All famous topics, such as how to make friends and influence people, sail mastering, artsy hobbies, nature attunement, and how to more easily slay foes with certain weapons.
Traits can be acquired by in-game events, either positive or negative. You can think traits as akin to the state of a characters mind, body, or spirit, based on experiences they’ve endured, their genetics, or encounters with the darkness.
This is where the life of pirating, and the mythos really come out to play, shaping characters and their quirks and flaws. One of my biggest attractors (and critiques) to things like… acquired traits, madnesses, diseases, blessings, or any other incidentals… say that to put any limit on the number of possibilities is a sin against long campaigns. Fortunately, amount of options provided in the core rulebook are sufficient and varied to get plenty of replayability on its own.
Flaunt your Personal Style
Whats so fun about being a pirate if you can’t strut your stuff? It’s both a gritty, yet stylish lifestyle after all.
Two of the core ideals of pirate society are that of freedom and diversity. One is free to express themselves according to their personal style; who they are, how they carry themselves, what experiences they’ve had, and how those influences shape their presentation. In character creation, establishing personal style goes further than what clothes you wear, but what your origins are, what languages you speak, what cultural background you bring with you, and how it informs your style.
Languages are a key part of this section. Here we get a super-brief education on the list of likely languages that were found amongst the polyglot society of piracy, and encourages a bit of multi-linguistics, either as a tool for full immersion, a context for a characters cultural identity, some flair for play, or simply a canvas of options to present NPCs in social encounters. Even if languages don’t play a role in your games, this section is a lovely add-on.
Digging into Treasure: Items and Weapons
What can I say? I’m a fantastic munchkin, but a poor quartermaster. However, while I can’t possibly cover every stick, pipe, and trinket, the rulebook does grace us with a veritable bazaar of items to take with us on our voyages,
- WEAPONS to fend off foes on the high sea
- ARMOR to protect ones body and support their willpower.
- CLOTHING to provide a sense of style and social grace
- TALISMANS to boost ones abilities and protections
- CURIOS to enhance ones finesse with magic
- VINCTUALS to provide everything from delicious food to suspicious potions
We also get a series of basic sailing items, and breakdown of the currency and conversions, from dubloons, pieces of eight, and gold bars.
Highlights of the Armory
I know how important this section can be for some TTRPG players, so allow me to do a quick rundown of things that jumped out to me rading through The Armory.
For weaponry, the pages contain a whole armory of blades, polearms, heavy sticks with budgeons on them, hand cannons, explosives, and magic runes, in addition to weapon qualities, attachments, and upgrades.
What I do enjoy is that clothes have stat increases depending on the kind of wear and what its tailored for, some real, others narrative. Its far better than simply paying for a set of clothes and relying on the GM to incorporate mechanics adhoc.
The vinctuals are a fun read; like detailed and sensory evocative restaurant menu items. Potions, elixirs, food, and the like. Its all the stuff you need to describe the sensation of possessing and consuming the goods.
Then we have talismans and curios of various peculiarities and occult influences. Reading through it is like browsing an 1700s-influenced witchy gothic crafts market in an eccentric art shop some weekend in late autumn. I spent a half hour just reading through the descriptions with a delightful interest! Seriously, its worth spending some ooo’s and ahhh’s.
Lastly, we’re granted a wide arrange of standard (and non-standard) sailing and adventuring equipment. The challenge with misc equipment is often leaving it up to players and game master to determine uses and how to apply. This is where creativity can play a role, but how often does a player sit scratching their head in a situation while digging through their pack to see if anything might help them out of a jam? In my experience, their usefulness is always ever at the discretion of the game master, but its never a bad idea to provide a supply rooms worth of the stuff!
The Carribeans Lost Treasures
If you thought the armory is a fun gander, Lost Treasures take the allure of Talismans and Curios section and dials it up. Frankly, I can’t get enough magic items and artifacts in TTRPGs. The peak of acquiring a cool thing should always be met with a mixture of mystery and fun, and many of the items here have an enigmatic history.
As such, the game provides a solid selection for its core rulebook, and plenty of items worth buying and digging out of a loot chest. This is a pirate TTRPG, after all. Its all about the booty! The equipment and magic/special item potential is extremely high in this setting, as much as a classic fantasy sword and sorcery game. Everything under the sun, (or under the waves)!
The Magic of the Mythos
I’ve always been bad at consuming and memorizing magic in any TTRPG game. Magic itself is all based on “these conditions must be met, and then you can do the thing, and here is what the thing does, how much, where, and technically it does this but not this, but what if this situation… etc.” …
Fortunately, there are some great things to enjoy about this magic system, and it does not look to be very difficult at all to get ones head around!
Fortunately, there are some great things to enjoy about this magic system, and it does not look to be very difficult at all to get ones head around!
In a nutshell, you use Courage as your “spell cost”, which is a nice theme that balances between the bold personality of a pirate, and the ability to withstand the terror of the Cthulhu mythos. However, some spells cause “Rot”, as they are caustic to the body and soul. A “Rot” table which tracks traits, mutations, and long term, debuffs, with horrific and deadly consequences at their max.
The spells themselves are themed on both pirate and Cthulhu mythos, with names like the Black Spot, Elder Sign, Tentancle Whip, Siren Song, Call Storm, Shipwreck Summoning, and Banished to the Locker.
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Sailing the High Seas In Your Own Ship!
Prepare yourself for a saga of sailing, ship mastering, and crew management.
Here is where the experience transcends from just a game about a scrappy group of adventurers going from quest to quest, and puts you at the helm of a vessel of your pride and joy. … For better, and worse. Granting you the tools, tables, and statistics to run your ship and crew, it covers everything, including vessels, costs, properties, crew quality, sailing, wind speeds, dangers, chases, ship actions, , ship sizes, ramming and boarding, firing cannons, winning combat, cargo and spoils, ship upgrades, gun upgrades, special ammo and accessories, and crew upgrades.
There’s a bunch here to gnaw on, and its detailed in a way that makes the experience quite immersive! … That’s a plus, or a minus, depending on who you are as a table. It’s true that a clever game master could determine ways to simplify or automate this. I imagine most tables may find this to be a fun and deeply involved series of mechanics to delve into as a group.
So, are there any leaks in the hull?
Nope! This is a full package TTRPG! … Cursed Captains of Cthulhu with everything you need to run a fantastic and suspenseful pirate mythos. This chocolate and peanut butter fusion of piracy and cosmic horror fails to really disappoint!
That being said, here’s a distillation of things I felt were opportunities. Perhaps these are detractors, are items worthy of a supplement or expansion, or maybe the community surrounding the game may have its own suggestions and opinions.
- More “Backstory” resources would be fantastic!
- While starting professions are a fantastic compass for a character archetype, and the style section is a fashionable addition, the notion of backstory is represented in one very short paragraph. There’s a lot that could be done with this; an entire manuals worth, reciting the real stories of how the pirates of ages past sailed into the life. This dwells in the uncomfortable border between requiring a lot more advice and resources, and omitting the section since it isn’t super valuable in its current state.
- Abridged Rules for Ship and Crew Management would be nice.
- A framework for streamlining the experience or “grounding” it with more casual tables seems like a bit of a puzzle. Not impossible to solve, but requiring more problem solving on the GMs end.
- Granted, our article does not dig into the initial voyage(s) presented for the game, which may serve as a proper introduction to all of the mechanics, including ship and crew managements.
- Monsters, Monsters, Monsters!
- We have a delightful selection of things that go bump in the night, but there is a ton of potential yet to tap into. Granted, there’s only so much to put into the core rulebook, and I’m hoping for a tome of unspeakable terrors to drop at some point in the future.
Final Takeaway: Thrill on the High Seas!
Cursed Captains of Cthulhu smuggles some the best cargo for a game of its ambition. Its easy to learn, deeply engaging, quite charismatic, and it’s a welcome addition to any TTRPG digital game bookshelf. Personally, this game already has me devising fun ways to create a gaming experience for a future table.
There’s enough here to run as-is in the way the creators planned, but it also reads as homebrew friendly for those seeking to create their own pirate mythos, Caribbean alternate-history, or second world cutthroat experience.
Also, if you’re looking for more reviews, more coverage of Cursed Captains, or want to recommend any products, feed free to Contact Us!
Psst. … Hey. Landlubber. … We’re lookin’ to fence some goods while we’re at port, and there’s plenty o’ gold in it fer ya! First, be sure to SUBSCRIBE to the weekly newsletter for regular updates. … Then, take a gander at these fancy gems!
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Lead Writer/Editor at ChaoticanWriter
Avid geek, amateur historian, long time tabletop game master, content creator, and storytelling enthusiast. Matthew is a Augsburg University grad with a focused passion on fantastical storyworlds. He is also a musician, improv actor, live streamer, and proud favorite uncle. If you would like to know more, contact him, OR follow him on social media!
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