Overview

Welcome to our first deep dive into the mechanics of the Port Royal! Campaigns are one of the most engaging and exciting elements of Port Royal’s gameplay. For the uninitiated, campaigns link multiple games together that creates a narrative of the events that your company will undertake. 
Unlike typical games where your models are simply game pieces with little value other than as pawns to execute your will, campaign play makes each model valuable. Models that are removed as casualties may be killed and removed from your roster or struck with permanent injuries that will affect them for the next few games or even the rest of the campaign. These long term consequences to your choices may cause you to think twice before moving a miniature out into the open, at the mercy of enemy musketeers or archers, to grab some loot. 

Starting a Campaign

There are many ways to play campaigns in Port Royal. They always start with all the players involved building a company from one of the 7 factions available. Starting factions are usually between 4 and 6 characters. When selecting from the different characters available, they will be split between officers and crew. Each company must have at least 1 officer and as much crew as they desire, but no less than 4 models. Each character can be equipped as the player sees fit. You can even buy starting experience for your characters if you’d like to give them some starting edge in advancement.
Once you have a force, there are several ways to play out a campaign. You can simply play among a group of friends and choose from one of the campaign victory options and play until you have a winner, or you can play a more story driven campaign with one player playing the opposing forces and guiding the rest of the players through their narrative from game to game. You can of course play solo or coop against AI opponents as well. 

The Campaign Experience 

Check for Injuries, Gain Income and Explore

As you play games, your characters will collect plunder, experience, and injuries. Or be killed outright and lost for the reminder of the campaign! After each game, all characters that were removed from the game as casualties will roll on an injury table to determine their fate. Once the fate of each one is determined, the next step is to see how much plunder you collected in the last game. Even if you didn’t grab any of the plunder tokens during the game, it is assumed your company was able to pilfer through the ruins and find some meager scraps, so you will always get something, but the more plunder tokens you collected in the previous game, the more Pieces of Eight, the currency of the game, you will earn. After each game you will also have the option to explore the ruins and see if you are able to find additional pieces or perhaps some rare artifacts, unique crew members, or if you aren’t the lucky sort, suffer attack from other roving gangs of pirates, wild animals, and a few other not-so-great things. 

Spend Your Pieces, but Beware of Mutiny! 

Pieces can be used to recruit new members, buy new equipment, or be saved for later use, or for scoring toward the end of the campaign. You also must save some of your loot to divide the plunder between the members of your company. But beware! If you end up short in their shares and can’t pay them, they just might mutiny! 

Level Up!

After your income and exploration steps, you can apply experience to your company. Your characters will gain experience in a variety of ways. Once they earn enough experience, they will be able to roll on the advancement table to improve their stats, gain new skills, or even become promoted. 

High Adventure! 

Port Royal campaigns always lead to endless fun and epic tales you will tell for a lifetime. We look forward to hearing your stories of adventure in the ruined city with your own companies. Thanks again for all of the support and allowing us to bring this exciting adventure game to life on your tabletops! 

We have included some example roster sheets to help illustrate the important aspects of the campaign. Enjoy!

CHECK OUT THE PDFS HERE!

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