The pandemic hit all of us in different ways. We all had our lockdown hobbies, obsessions, or escapes. Some people started baking bread. Other people read and reread Harry Potter. Me? I fell into the wonderful, adventure-filled rabbit hole that is the Golden Age of Piracy. Also, I got pretty good at recreating an In-N-Out double double in my own kitchen, but that doesn’t lend itself very well to a card game.
Now, I didn’t start out my pirate obsession with any intention of making a card game. It started the way any hobby starts: Realizing that the happiest you’ll ever be was when you were a child walking out of the movie theater after seeing Pirates of the Caribbean for the first time, and that the only thing you can do to fight the constant onslaught of existential dread and taxes is to feverishly try to capture that pure and innocent childhood joy. My therapist says this isn’t a healthy outlook, which means he clearly didn’t see the scene where Commodore Norrington almost caught Jack Sparrow.
So, I dove headfirst into the world of real-life pirates. I wanted to know what actual history lived under the white bedsheet of the modern day pirate myth. Turns out, not a whole lot. Nobody ever walked the plank, pirates didn’t have their own (very cool) accent, and the only powers you get from eating a Gum Gum fruit is IBS. Not cool, right? Wrong! Still very cool! Despite the fact that modern conceptions of what a pirate is are almost entirely based on the fictional works of Robert Louis Stevenson (creator of Treasure Island), the Golden Age of Piracy still contains a multitude of fascinating characters and stories.
I won’t get into all of them here, though I might in the future. I just want to emphasize how much of my life and energy went into consuming books, podcasts, and video essays about real-life pirates. I don’t think I’d call it an actual obsession, but I did almost get into a fight with the employees of a pirate-themed mini golf course a few weeks ago over some laughably wrong information about Calico Jack. For another amusing anecdote, during a first date, I spent about an hour educating my bonny lass about the ins and outs of the history of piracy. About a year later, on a trip to Jamaica, I forced her to visit the real life Port Royal with me. It was awesome.
Point is, I love pirates. Whether they’re capturing the Ganj-I-Sawai (look it up), fighting Peter Pan, or founding the dubiously fictional pirate utopia of Libertatia, they’re awesome. This is why I died and went to heaven in early 2021 when Carson approached me with something along the lines of, “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if there was a pirate card game?” Yes, Carson. That would be awesome, and we need to do the world a favor and get this thing going. Because I’m not a maniac who goes around shouting pirate facts at people (other than that one date, I swear), Carson had no idea that I was any more fanatical about pirates than the average Joe.
Thanks to a lot of blood, sweat, and Apple Keynote wizardry, our wonderfully wacky world of pirates is starting to come to life. We definitely keep our safe distance from real world piracy - you won’t find Cannon Floof or Mr. Manty doing any of the particularly unsavory things that real life pirates were wont to do. That said, one of our foundational pillars has always been a sense of freedom, and that does ring true to the scallywags of yore. Although many were forced into piracy by things like poverty or gunpoint (usually at the hands of another pirate), many were drawn to the open ocean in search of freedom. The life of a pirate usually wasn’t terribly long, but it was nothing if not exciting.
I’d like to think that my knowledge of people like Black Bart, Anne Bonny, and Francois L’Olonnais helped us with some of the world building for Here Be Monsters. I’d like to think that, but I’m pretty sure it didn’t. That said, if someone wants to reach out to me and make some kind of grand connection between Coconaut and Sir Francis Drake’s attack on Panama, please do so.
“But Phil,” you might be asking out loud to your computer screen, “why did you bother to write up this love letter to piracy if you don’t think that your understanding of the sociopolitical climate that led to Jamaica’s piracy-fueled economic boom in the 1600s somehow translates to designing a game in which an anthropomorphized radish can square off against an angry punchy cannon ball?” Well, my loyal fans, I just think pirates are neat. Okay? Stop haranguing me.
I guess what I’m really trying to get at here is that I’m so stoked to be making a game all about pirates. I’m so stoked that Carson came to me with the idea all those many years ago. I’m so stoked for every single person who is a part of this adventure with us. I’m so stoked to, in my own weird way, etch my name into the great ledger of pirate history among names such as Robert Louis Stevenson, Henry Morgan, Eiichiro Oda, Zheng Yi Sao, Gore Verbinsky, William Kidd, Howard Pyle, Taika Waititi, and so many others. The world of pirates is as vast as the ocean itself, and I’m elated to be on my happy little island with Platypirate and Navigator Nuts by my side. Carson can come, too.
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