Pieces of Eight, RPG Review

The high seas are a dangerous place to make a living. But, the wind at your back and the salt spray in the air is the life that suits you best. You’re on deck next to the helmsman. It’s just past four bells on dog watch when a yell comes down from the crow’s nest. The man is pointing to the East. You raise the spy glass to look at across the waves. You give the order, “Call the Captain, we have Letters on those colors.” You’ll be able to attack out of the setting sun.

Pieces of Eight is a pirate role-playing game (RPG) written by Alan Bahr and published by Gallant Knight Games (website and Facebook). I was given a copy of the rulebook by Gallant Knight Games for review purposes.

The Game

Pieces of Eight is an RPG focused more on the narrative aspects of role-playing. Each player creates and plays a member of a pirate crew. The Narrator prepares the adventures and manages the game. The players can also take on the task of having the rest of the crew to manage when sea battles are engaged with ship-to-ship combat. Although, the characters they create could be a major part of sailing the ship for those situations.

The focus isn’t the strategic aspects of combat, it is more about how the characters play out and create the story based around the encounters the Narrator presents. And, the emphasis is on creating a story worthy of the characters. Think of Pirate movies like Pirates of the Caribbean, The Sea Hawk, and Cutthroat Island.

The Characters

Each player creates a character based on what they want to develop, or they can use a system of random determination presented in the rulebook. Each character has one major trait to define their character, cunning, dashing, noble, or stalwart. Each trait in turn has a set of skills to choose or determine randomly from. Each character has three skills from the set of their trait, and one from another trait’s skill set.

Traits and skills provide a basic framework for the player to develop a personality for their character. Characters of different abilities will look at tasks from a different angle on how to address the issue, giving the players, as a group, interactions when they have to determine how to overcome problems and address the tasks they are confronted with. The character’s trait also influences how the character fights.

Each trait has a particular advantage to be used in combat. Again, this means a cunning character approaches a fight differently than the character who’s dashing. This becomes important in a pirate setting because it would be a poor pirate story without swordplay.

Everyone has the Fencing skill. It is not just having the ability to fight with a sword, but includes a particular fencing style. Bahr has done a nice summary of five major fencing styles and how each provides a different “advantage” when the character is in a fight. These advantages combine with how the character’s trait influences their approach to combat, which provides another level of individuality between the pirates of your crew.

Game Mechanics

Pieces of Eight is designed using eight-sided dice. The number of dice used when determining success of a task is a comparison of a character’s trait and skill against the difficulty of the task. A small pool of dice (no more than eight) are rolled to determine if the needed number of successes has been rolled. This method is applied for all tasks.

Because Pieces of Eight is focused on narrative there is no need for rules for character level advancement. Characters advance through game play, as the story unfolds. This means there is no need to track a bunch of statistics. The Narrator has more flexibility and can allow a player to have their character gain a new skill if the pirate puts forth the effort to learn it.

Pieces of Eightalso contains information for basic ship sizes to allow the ship-to-ship battles to occur. This information fits in well with the rest of the setting. It is just as easy to determine the success of maneuvering a ship as it is to find if you were able to climb into the rigging.

The mechanics are straight forward and easy to learn. They give an outline for the event, determining success or failure. But, Pieces of Eight is about the story. Players, or the Narrator, use the outcome of the dice to help in the narration of events.

The adventures the Narrator can be based in other stories or from their own creation. How the players add to the story will make it uniquely theirs.

The Rulebook

Pieces of Eight is eighteen half pages, or PDF. I reviewed the printed copy. It includes character and ship sheets. The rulebook can be quickly read so you can have a game started within minutes of introducing this to your gaming group.

Art

Pieces of Eight is illustrated by Chris Yarbrough. His work focuses on providing the feel of a cinematic pirate adventure.

Overall

Pieces of Eight is a quick to learn RPG that has the ability to provide multiple gaming sessions. If you are looking for a historically accurate setting, there are a lot of details you could add. But, for a fun evening of creative storytelling Pieces of Eight provides the needed components to get a group to dive in.

I have enjoyed Pieces of Eight and expect to see future adventures at our gaming table themed with pirates.

You’ve watched as the ships steadily made their way closer to each other. You were spotted. But they haven’t tried to make a run for it. Instead, the ships have been riding the winds working for a strategic advantage. You are almost in range of the ship’s guns when Captain Leeson give the order to strike colors. A clamor runs through the crew on the deck as everyone sees the other ship does the same. Another privatneer. This looks to be a serious endeavor.

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