Furry Pirates Swashbuckling Adventure in the Furry Age of Piracy

Read through review of a roleplaying game

I am going to be running this at Grand Tribunal, because it is published by Atlas games and GT is an Atlas games role playing convention.

After I've run it I might post a play test review.

The physical product

Available from Atlas games, either in PDF or a softcover. I have a softcover to review, loaned to me by C.J. Romer. A quick google search failed to track down a UK based shop with it in stock, but it is still in print at Atlas games.

The book itself is well laid out, plenty of furry themed pirate illustrations throughout, some maps, illustrations of various ships that can be used for and against pirates, and various tables for things like combat and ship to ship combat. If I was running this game regularly I would have a bookmarked PDF for the game mechanics stuff and give the copy of the rule book to the players.

The game

Furries

 There are no humans, only Furry Sapiens. The species that can become Furry Sapiens need to have backbones, also no species that spends most of its life in water can be a Furry. Furry Sapiens are also between 3 and 8 feet tall. The animals that Furry Sapiens are based on (evolved from in game) still exist. In the game world carnivores tend to have higher social status than omnivores, and ominvores higher social status than herbivores. In 'Furry Outlaws' a game by the same authors but set in the 12th Century these class divisions were rigid, but seen as less so in Furry Pirates, also the players are pirates and so might not care too much about social class. In game mechanical terms larger furries are stronger but less agile, and smaller furries are weaker but more agile.

Furries can only have children with others of their own species, although they can fall in love and have sex with any Furry Sapiens.

Game System

The game uses the "Halogen System" which was apparently also used in Furry Outlaws. The system does not seem to have had any traction outside of Furry Pirates.

Characters have nine abilities with a normal range of 3-30. Three of these are called attack abilities (Strength, Dexterity and Ego), three are called defense abilities (Agility, Reason and Constitution) and three are called descriptive (Appearance, Luck, Social). The can be randomly rolled; or a point spend system can be used.

There are a bunch of skills that can be given at character generation, and developed through an experience point system, with a lot of focus on combat skills, some focus on ship handling, a magick system, and the lots of other fairly generic skills. This is what one might expect for a game about being a pirate in a slightly supernatural setting.

A first level character begins with 10 skill points to spend (with the option to start characters at a higher level so at least they are competent).

There are no skills for such things as tactics, seduction, persuasion,  instead these are to be role played.

In combat there will be a combat ability, which is skill level taken away from 50 pitted against a defensive skill by adding the two numbers together. The player has to roll against this number, trying to get higher than the result. It follows that low attack scores and high defense scores are good.

Outside of combat there is skill level taken away from 50 pitted against a difficulty set by the person running the game (GM), again the player has to roll over this number.

There is no system for a player to claim an automatic success or otherwise affect the GMs story.

Characters fumble on a very low roll (01-05 for a first level character, 01-02 at 10th level).

So this reads like a fairly old fashioned system, even for 1999 when it was first printed.

How it plays is of course unknown until I play it.

There is a detailed set of rules for ship to ship combat, which might work best as a game using miniature figures.

Setting

The game takes place in 1690, which despite the existence of Furry Sapiens rather than humans, and the fact that magick is real has had a history identical to Earth. There is a lot of detail in the book about what is happening in the world now which has been furrified. Another review (written in 2003) claims "Furry Pirates provides the most historically accurate and abundant background information" I have no reason to disbelieve the claim. 

Overall

If you're looking for a game about pirates, and want a little bit of magic and the ability to play Furry Sapiens this seems like a good starting point. I would not run this, or play this as a long term game because I think the game mechanics would annoy me and I don't have the space to adequately run the ship to ship combat mini-game.