by Tom Verreault
Pirates have been a part of the Star Frontiers setting since the beginning. The Red Devil pirate and his band was a prominent feature of the first Star Frontiers campaign. Later, Hatzk Naar made his appearance as the most significant pirate in the setting’s history – being the catalyst for the First Common Muster. One of the most famous individuals, though possibly not really a pirate himself, was the Malthar. An important crime lord and supporter of pirates, the Malthar was the antagonist of the Dramune Run module.
Just as they have been there from the beginning, pirates will no doubt remain a fixture in the Frontier sector for as long as the game is played. To facilitate referees using pirates in their games the following lists are provided for inspiration and reference. Included is a list of the names of pirates in the Frontier, a list of real world pirates and their ships, a d100 list of random pirate ship names, and finally a d100 list of names for individual pirates. Now a referee has no excuse for using, “pirate number 5” as a non-player character name in his game.
While up to now we have been focused on Star Frontiers, most of the resources provided below are not limited to that setting. The ship names contain no references to the Star Frontiers setting and could be used anywhere. In fact, after rolling on the tables, you could customize the names further by changing place names from the table for names of places in your setting. Thus you might use the "Bloody Gold of the South" name but change "the South" to the name of one of your worlds (or cities if playing on a smaller scale). The same can be done with the pirate names. In this way the tables actually provide more than just a hundred possible names. All it takes is a little more customization.
We hope that these tables will help to provide you with additional inspiration and flavor for your campaign setting.
