Review & Commentary On Piracy and Privateering By Josh Peters Stellagama Publishing For OSR Space Opera, Classic Traveller rpg & The Cepheus Engine Rpg

" Pirates are the scourge of the space-lanes. Cutthroats, bandits, and scum, they are enemies to all humanity. Captured pirates can expect no mercy: only grim justice for their heinous crimes. Despite the risks, this book encourages science fiction roleplayers—Gamemasters and players alike—to embrace their inner space pirate, and set forth to the stars to carve a bloody swath across the galaxy!"

There are days when sometimes when looking  over at the absolute wall of Traveller rpg books that stare at me that it begins to hit me just how not intimated by this game hits me. Most of Traveller & Cepheus Engine rpg game campaigns that either have crossed the table top or the screen revolve around piracy or one kind or another. Traveller was the game that engineers & science geeks play. But once we got into it, this was the science fictional game to play hands down. So when Stellagama Publishing sent me a copy of Piracy and Privateering it took me a day or more to put it at the top of the pile of books to be reviewed. See what Piracy and Privateering does is to create an almost rpg system neutral book that leans heavily into the wind of  the Original 2d6 OGL Science Fiction rules, Cepheus Engine, Stars Without Number, and White Star. Now way back in the early half of 2019 we grabbed a copy of Piracy and Privateering This was with the intent of running a piracy themed game of  White Star or Stars Without Number. But then OSR game campaigns took over. And Piracy and Privateering will work with Cepheus  Lite Rpg rather easily.  Technically with these two books you could run an entire campaign for many years. 


  This is an updated & expanded sourcebook tha hammers on the detailed systems of piracy. And with Piracy and Privateering you can actually run an entire OSR or Cepheus Engine rpg campaign from the pirates perspective! Piracy and Privateering gives the players & the DM everything they need to get a steady hand on the setting of such a game from boarding actions to what to do with the booty afterwards. 

Josh Peters does an excellent job of fleshing out everything needed from: 

1. Pirate setting generation setting the scene for your piracy game 
2. Target aquistition & boarding of ships 
3. Randomly encountering the monsters of your pirate PC's & the hunters of such PC's. 
4. Traffic, back water worlds, & all of the little things that goes into such a campaign. 
5. Indepth world & setting info 
6. NPC handling, generation, & plug or play aspects of the pirate NPC. 

What Piracy and Privateering is a space opera & pirarcy tool box for not only generating entire adventures, NPC's, & more but giving the space campaign teeth & legs to continue for years to come. It does this with its random generation & steady ideas of growth through play & actual rolls. This is a marked improvement in some of the early products that I've seen. 
Right now we're in the middle of generating a whole cloth campaign dark space opera using Cepheus Engine rpg & classic Traveller resources. This means that Piracy and Privateering couldn't come at a better time for our group or me as dungeon master. This is a great buy so go & grab it here! Piracy and Privateering is a fine addition to the Cepheus Engine & OSR space opera gaming scene.