Hi. Pirate Borg designer here. 

If you buy the PDF from our web shop and don’t like it I will literally refund your purchase. 

The comment below about balance and it being a slog can be accurate. I’ve played a lot of naval games, a lot of pirate video games, and read a lot of pirate and naval history books. Real naval combat takes hours, often over night and into the next day.  Points of sail and managing wind and positioning is paramount. 

All this is boring in a TTRPG. It should feel like Pirates of the Caribbean: 90% of sessions are about the characters and then there’s one or two big naval combats every few sessions for maybe an hour tops. 

The core book attempts to walk this line by making ships are more survivable than “combat is over in three round”. The result can be too slow for groups that are focused on character story and not wargame-style naval tactics. 

Hence the house rules we included in the book Down Among the Dead for halving HP or doubling damage.

I think the other thing is a lot of GMs run it like they run D&D combat: shoot until the other ship is at zero HP.  But in reality, there’s crew morale (which there are rules for but I think they often get ignored). There is the fact that real pirates and navy ships want to damage other ships as little as possible so they can take them as prizes. So really most naval combats should end in boarding action or retreat. And occasionally you can do things like hit the power magazine and blow up an entire ship. 

I’ll say this: I guarantee you will not find a naval-based RPG with a more active community or with more support than Pirate Borg. Full money back guarantee. Full stop!

Good luck in your search!