Cursed Captains of Cthulhu is a TTRPG system by Black Cats Gaming set in an alternate Caribbean in the 1700s, where occult horrors emerge from the depths.

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The Setting

As mentioned, the adventures (or “voyages”, in this system) take place in the Caribbean during the golden age of piracy – which is a very broad era roughly from the 1650s to 1730s. Specifically, however, it is suggested to focus around 1716 – with a bit of both time dilation and contraction, so to speak, to make various semi-historical figures active at the same time. The War of Spanish Succession is nearing its end (or already has ended), and piracy across the world has flourished; with the Caribbean being the prime hotspot, even having “pirate republics” being established – Nassau being a prominent example in the Bahamas.

This is more or less the normal history – however, in this world, there are significant changes. Magic exists and has existed, but weak and mostly as tricks; however, an unnatural arcane ritual taking place in the summer of 1692 went wrong, awakening many dormant powers and fully bringing magic into the world; along with sinking the city of Port Royal beneath the waves.

Ever since then, sinister entities have began making their mark on the world; the ever-dreaming Cthulhu stirs, emboldening his various cults; and their promise of power is quite appealing to the Spanish, who find themselves pressed from all sides by the French in the war of succession. Speaking of France, the court of King Louis XV has also attracted attention from others; a more involved god-entity, that of Nyarlathotep, has infiltrated it, masquerading as a noble advisor, instead looking to entertain himself (itself?) while gaining more power. Finally, the British Empire find their once-fearsome Royal Navy outmatched by new and unknown threats; and so, they seek to get ahead in this new arms race, entering into what they see as a business deal with Dagon, the Ruler of the Waves; though it seems to become more and more unprofitable for them in time.

In all this, the myriad pirate crews roaming the oceans have nominally banded together under the Brethren Court – mostly as a self-serving alliance of necessity to defend themselves against the imperial powers, but also with a secret purpose of opposing the otherworldly powers as well.

Overall, it’s an interesting setting with lots of opportunities for all kinds of weird adventures going on. You can focus more on the piracy aspect and have fun with a crew plundering treasures from trade ships, or you can lean into the supernatural for a more grisly and grim experience.

Mechanics

Cursed Captains of Cthulhu is a d6 game, but not in the sense of tallying up success/failures – instead each check uses the relevant characteristic, then you roll 4d6 and add them up. Each check has a Target Number, or TN; if your total reaches or exceeds it, the check succeeds. If you roll 4 6s, it’s a critical success; you automatically succeed and gain an extra action. But if you roll 4 1s, you automatically fail – and you probably have something horrible happen to you. As you can guess, these are quite rare due to the 4 different dice having to roll the same – though successes are a bit more common, due to 2 extra mechanics: rerolling and nudging. Reroll is, well, self-explanatory – you can reroll a d6. Nudge is also pretty simple – you increase the roll of a dice by 1 (though you can’t go past 6 – you have to physically change the dice!). There are some limitations to this – you can only nudge or reroll a die once, you can’t reroll a nudged dice, and you can only reroll or nudge 3 dice out of the 4 (for each; so 3 rerolls and 3 nudges).

As for characteristics, there are 8 of them:

• Melee, for melee combat
• Brawn, for strength and toughness
• Seafaring, for sailing and navigation
• Abjure, for protective spells and denying the eldritch
• Harness, for tapping into the magic powers
• Studies, for academic knowledge
• Savvy, for charm and charisma
• Accuracy, for ranged combat

There are no sub-divisions; every roll uses one of those characteristics. These start with a maximum of 2 (or 3 in certain cases), and can reach a total maximum of 5. You start with 10 points to distribute across them, and get an extra point almost every level.

As for the rest of character creation – there are no classes per se, but there are 8 Starting professions, each giving some bonus Characteristics Points as well as determining your starting equipment and a starting Skill. Some of these Starting Professions also let you start with up to 3 points in a specific skill – but stop you from putting points in another skill for the first level. For example, Brawler lets you put 3 points in Melee – but you can’t put points in Harness.

When you level up (the system gets up to level 20), you can choose a new Skill for your character, as long as you meet the prerequisites; usually having a certain number of points in one or more characteristics. At level 5, you get access to Intermediate Skills that are stronger, and again at level 12 you gain access to Expert Skills. Skills are things like Brewer, which makes you better at brewing alcohol, and Commander of the Seas, improving your ship.

Now, I mentioned Brewer specifically, because you might not think it’s that good of a skill compared to some others, but there’s a few things we haven’t gone over yet. The primary characteristics also determine the values of 4 secondary attributes; these being Health Points (HP), Courage Points (CP), Evasion Score (ES), and Initiative Score (IS). Health Points are pretty obvious so I’ll move past them. Courage Points are essentially your will – when facing the eldritch (and also some perfectly human messed up stuff) you’ll have to deal with it. When your Courage reaches 0, you are Terrified and can’t really do much. However, one way to recover Courage is… drinking! Yep, chug a bunch of whatever alcoholic is at hand, and you’ll be ready for more – though getting progressively more and more drunk can also be an issue. I like this mechanic; it’s pretty fun – and now you see why Brewer might be a worthwhile investment. As for Evasion Score, it’s essentially your defense or AC, and Initiative Score is… your initiative.

Finally, a few notes on spellcasting. It’s not an easy endeavor – casting spells drains your Courage, and also requires you to succeed – depending on the spell, it’s a Harness or Abjure check. So spellcasters should make sure to have several bottles of rum at hand; don’t worry, being drunk mostly affects your shooting and stabbing, you can still unleash the horrors of the occult no problem. There’s a good amount of spells for players to have fun with; and there are even “Rot Spells”, more powerful spells that incur a heavy toll on you as well; as you accumulate rot, you mutate and change, until eventually you die a gory, disgusting, horrible, horrible death. But what’s a little rot when it lets you cast “Sickening Vomit”?

Now, we saw plenty of curses and Cthulhu, but there’s still the “Captains” part of the title left. And thankfully, there’s also quite a bit of mechanics dedicated to ships. Different classes of ships and their equipment and crew, navigation and traveling, and of course ship-to-ship action; whether it’s firing broadsides or boarding actions. Or even Ramming, if you’re feeling particularly adventurous – though that’s not a safe maneuver at the best of times.

Besides the rules and setting, the Core Rulebook also contains NPCs and enemy statblocks – human, monster, or even ship – and more information on running the game and setting up a campaign. In terms of complexity, I’d say it’s lower-middle; it’s simpler and more straightforward than DnD, but there’s still a ton of stuff to play with – and lots I didn’t even go over here, but I have to leave something for you to discover as well.

Final Thoughts

Overall, Cursed Captains of Cthulhu is a fun, relatively simple, but very rich TTRPG; its weird, occult world is perfect for running a fun pirate campaign that goes beyond fighting and plundering.

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