Pirates and Plunder

Pirates and Plunder is a role-playing game published by Yaquinto Publications in 1982 that is set in the 17th century Spanish Main. It was designed to introduce the concept of role-playing to new players.

Description
Pirates and Plunder is set in the age of piracy in the Caribbean; all players take on the role of pirates. The game is aimed at new role-players, both players and referees; the rulebooks are designed as a series of adventures.

In the first adventure, the players are pirates who have been captured by Spanish authorities. The rules then show the players and the referee how to generate pirate characters.

In the next adventure, the imprisoned pirates must fight other prisoners for food, leading to a demonstration of the basic combat rules. Subsequent chapters have the pirates escape their captors, find a ship, and so on, leading to rules about more advanced combat, experience points, etc.

The first book (44 pages) covers character creation and combat; the second (52 pages) covers advanced rules for use by the gamemaster in running the game; the third (40 pages) contains an introductory scenario, encounters, and a map. The game also includes a pad of character record sheets.

Despite being about pirates on the Spanish Main, the entire game takes place on land, not on ships.

Publication history
Pirates and Plunder was designed by Michael S. Matheny, and was published by Yaquinto Publications as a boxed set including three books, a pad, reference sheets, and dice.

Reception
In Issue 56 of The Space Gamer, W.G. Armintrout commented "I supposed [the theme of piracy] makes it a game players will enjoy, if they can convince some soul to GM it for them."

In White Dwarf #36, Murray Writtle was impressed, writing, "This is a good game, because it is full of atmosphere and the rules can be as simple or complex as you want." Writtle concluded by giving the game a top overall rating of 10 out of 10.

In his 1990 book The Complete Guide to Role-Playing Games, game critic Rick Swan liked the graduated adventures that gradually introduced rules for new players. But he found the character generation system "uninspired" and the combat rules "straightforward but nothing special." Swan also had concerns for new referees, pointing out that "many rules are inadequately explained, and the entire game suffers from sloppy editing." Swan was also incredulous that none of the game was set at sea, calling it "a stunning oversight for a game presumably about piracy." Swan concluded by giving this game a poor rating of only 1.5 out of 4, saying, "Pirates and Plunder is more memorable for its presentation than for its value as a game."

In his 1991 book Heroic Worlds, Lawrence Schick was unimpressed, describing the Pirates and Plunder game system as "Second-rate".

John ONeill of Black Gate commented: "Pirates and Plunder had a few things going for it. For one thing, the designer chose his genre well. While many titles in that new flood of RPGs were greeted with skepticism, or sometimes open laughter [...] most gamers saw the potential of a pirate RPG immediately." He believed the game failed because there "was no hint of anything like the supernatural in the rules" which "just wasn't enough for players raised on Dungeons and Dragons. While the designers may have seen it as a noble effort to capture the pure swashbuckling fun of classic pirate novels and movies like Captain Blood, what we saw instead was a lack of imagination. There just wasn't enough to keep our attention."

Other reviews and commentary

 * Different Worlds #32 (Jan./Feb., 1984)