Frugal GM Review: Pirates of Hagrost

In honor of Talk Like a Pirate Day I had to review one of the few Pirate(y) RPG products in my library: The Pirates of Hagrost.

This old Judges Guild setting goes way back to 1982. It isn't a refreshed product restored for the modern gamer, but a scan of an original printed product.

This brings back some nostalgia, but also makes the supplement a bit difficult to read. The formatting is a bit of a bear and unless you are used to running the "Judges Guild Universal Roleplaying Adventure" system, you'll probably be a bit slack-jawed at the wall of abbreviations presented on most pages. There is a glossary of sorts about 3/4 of the way through this supplement and if you want to have some fun, try to wrap your head around the armor system. You'll need a pad of paper and maybe a calculator, as well as a few look-up charts to add up the piece-meal armor system.

Still, even with it's warts this supplement, like most of the Judge's Guild line, is a great source for inspiration. You'll need to clean up everything, but for a 30+ year old product I think there is still a lot of meat on them old salty bones.

For me this product is more of an interesting read and not something I'd get too much table-use out of. If you have a group of players who have read or played in "everything" from TSR, then this might be a good source of some truly old-school adventuring. As of the time of this review the PDF is going for $2.99, which is less than the 1982 cover price of $4.99 ($12.37 in 2014 dollars).