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Pirates Role Playing
I'm preparing to run a Pirates role playing game in 2017 using the High Seas Hack rules that I've written. They're available in the Shop if you'd like a set, they're very good. I'll be using miniatures and scenery for the battles so there'll be some painting and building to do and I'm writing my own adventures which I'll publish here once the players have completed them. All maps and documents I create will also appear here in case you fancy running the adventures yourself. The tone of the campaign will be historically based fiction, I'm not planning on a Pirates of the Caribbean style romp, but there will be the occasional curse and supernatural event since many people of the time believed in these things. Miniatures and scenery Because this is a role playing game and not a skirmish game I am keeping the miniatures and scenery to a minimum (well, sort of a minimum). It's very easy to buy miniatures for every eventuality or encounter and end up only using them once so I've tried to place some restrictions on myself. To begin with I decided to buy my pirates from Black Scorpion Miniatures because they don't mix very well with other ranges. I hoped this would dissuade me from buying loads of miniatures from all over the place. As it happens the Black Scorpion miniatures mix quite well with a lot of other manufacturers' figures but, even so, they have a distinctive look and are very lovely miniatures so I don't feel like watering down the set with too many lesser offerings. On the whole going with Black Scorpion was a success. I spent some time deciding on a small set of 39 figures that covered most of my immediate needs. The whole lot came to £92.00 and the kind folk at Black Scorpion added in a freebie. The freebie was the cabin boy which, coincidentally, I really wanted but came with a pack of other miniatures I didn't want so I reluctantly left it off my initial order. They must be psychic! II ordered a mix of male and female pirates (my daughter will be playing) to be important NPCs and Player Characters, a Naval officer and a pack of Marines to defend the Governor and his daughter and a selection of lesser types to be towns folk, crew etc. as the need arises. I also added a pack of undead pirates because they looked so good. For scenery I have the Spanish buildings from my Napoleonic skirmish set and my jungle. I have some palm trees that I'm going to base up that have been waiting in a box for a long time an, of course, plenty of rocks, scrub and other scatter terrain. The main thing that will be new for this project will be the boats and ships. I have a couple of small boats but I bought some more anyway. I got these two jolly boats from Games of War. They're only £5.00 each including postage and they're lovely little models. No benches so you can place miniatures. For the larger ships I plan to make some 'deck line' models, essentially 3D floorplans of the deck of a ship but with steps, raised areas and guns etc fully modelled.. This will allow me to make them oversize so there's plenty of gaming room and let me ignore the bulk of the ship's hull and the rigging. Versatile, simple but still visually appealing (hopefully). I have lots of ship building stuff left over from a pirate project I did in about 1996 and I bought some more bits and pieces including some real brass cannon. Finally, for this introduction, what pirate game would be complete without a mysterious monkey shrine? 
Building the world
Some of the first, and most recurring characters, the players will meet are the local Carib Indians. Now real Carib Indians are quite boring to look at. They're mostly naked chaps with bowl cuts. I decided I wanted my natives to be more interesting so I chose some Congo cannibal miniatures from Northstar who were wearing exciting masks. Much better. I can now differentiate my tribes by having them wear different masks in the game, they're all going to be represented by the same five miniatures though. The joy of role playing, imagination rules! For my native village (every native village in the game) I went with my existing Zulu stockade with some Hovels Sudanese huts. Again, the Sudanese huts bear no resemblance to actual native dwellings, but I've always wanted an excuse to paint some so... Most of the natives will be cannibals (profiling) so I built a cooking pit with an old plaster crater, a Black Cat Bases cauldron and some match sticks. Finally, a pair of Frontline Wargaming dugout canoes completed the set. This is a TT Combat mdf coach. It's basic but very cheap and now I can have coach chases when the players are on land. The horses are from Warbases.
This is a gallows that I printed on my 3D printer. It was a free download from Bruno Galice on Thingiverse.
Total cost: £1.36. 
More 3D printed stuff, two boats. The large one is over 20cm long. I added some PVC tube instead of the original mast mounting so I could add magnets to the masts and have them removable. The sails are 3D printed too.
The boats are available free from OpenForge. 
The Games of War jolly boats with a lick of paint and a Black Cat Bases ship's cat for added flavour.
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The High Seas Hack and its supplements are available in print from Amazon.
The High Seas Hack and its supplements are available as PDFs from my shop.
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Finally, some characters from Andediluvian Miniatures.
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My own painting efforts now.
Firstly some Chinese pirates from West Wind Productions. 
Master Gau, the leader of the Chinese pirates and his two spectral foo dogs formed from opium smoke and suggestion.
The sorcerer and foo dog on the left are from Reaper. The bigger foo dog is a cheap resin ornament. 
Civilians and NPCs. Two Black Cat Bases women, one a captive and the other more dangerous than she seems and two Reaper miniatures, a Spanish Don and a crazy woman.
Some Reaper NPCs and a treasure marker.
My scratch built mysterious monkey shrine (the pot is from Fenris Games) along with some Olmec heads from Scotia Grendel. The monkeys themselves are wooden African ones I bought at a car boot sale many years ago for this very purpose.
Alice and the ship's cat are from Westwind Productions. 
The mysterious fountain is also from Fenris Games.
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I finally caved in and bought the Deep Cut Studio 6ft x 4ft beach mat that I'd been umming and ahhing about for a year.
Voodoo practitioners.
Black Cat Bases civilians.
More Black Cat Bases civilians and NPCs. Two cooks, two matronly women, a navigator, a surgeon and a ship's carpenter.
Galloping Major Naval officers and a Midshipman.
The first, and smallest, of my three Games of War ships.
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This drunken Reaper Miniatures pirate with a monkey will be used as a crew status marker. It was excellently painted for me by McYellowbelly.
The ships' guns were 3D printed. They cost a couple of pence each in PLA and came out very well.
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I found painting the two bigger ships quite a challenge. They're heavy to hold after a while which makes painting straight line quite taxing. However, they're done now, and they look impressive on the tabletop.
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To the right is a Reaper miniature to represent my daughter's character Celina when she's in disguise.
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Some new huts for my natives. These are resin from Telfer Model Design. The goats are Connoisseur Miniatures available these days from Elite.
Some 3D printed floating barrels. These were done with my very first printer and are a bit rough but they're acceptable for what they are so I didn't bother re-printing them.
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Some civilians. Originally I wasn't going to bother with many civilian miniatures, resorting to miniatures in play only for combats. But the game has proven photogenic and the reports are popular so I decided to splash out on some non-combative extras.
Apart from the artist (first on the left) who is from Black Cat Bases these are all from Blue Moon Miniatures.
Apart from the artist (first on the left) who is from Black Cat Bases these are all from Blue Moon Miniatures.
Some more Black Scorpion female pirates.
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I was kindly sent these miniatures from Rasmus of Dread Streets Miniatures. They're an interesting mix of fantasy and Pirate.
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