I suppose it was only a matter of time before we got to aquatic thieves. Thieves Guild VI (1982) has all your pirate needs covered with a set of rules for all things nautical. I’m of two minds about this. On one hand, pirates are cool. On the other, I dunno if I want to run this. It feels like a heavy mechanical lift to move from stealthy heists to ship-to-ship combat to start with, but then the rules also seem pretty chonky on top of that.

Past the rules is a brief description of some oceans to sail (and ports to call at), followed by far more than two dozen ships to encounter. Each ship is accompanied by statistics and a description that includes profiles of its officers, its business and what it might do if it is attacked. There are some unusual ships too, including one that is adrift with no crew (they were all claimed by a nearby siren). The zesty descriptions of all these ships are almost, but not quite, enough to get me to reconsider the fact that I don’t want to ever run in depth ship combat.