The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

Shiver my timbers, shiver my soul. There’s a fleet that sails for Hell below. An Armada bound for the infernal depths, crewed by sirens and carrying treasure and souls to damnation. You’re going to rob it.

The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea is a tabletop roleplaying game for 2–6 players and 1 gamemaster about Freebooters raiding the Armada of the Damned. It is a 10 page booklet containing a complete RPG, brought to you by ZineQuest Kickstarter backers as a piratical re-skin of The Great Soul Train Robbery.

Spin an allegorical high seas yarn as your duelists, smugglers, scullery wenches, and other Freebooters attempt a Hellish nautical raid. Will you claim your prize from the fleet, or be overcome, damned, or broken by the attempt?

This game uses a simple system based on Rowan, Rook, & Decard's Honey Heist. Your Freebooters are a motley crew with mixed motives, so they all have two stats: Lover and Sinner. Use one to make human connections and perform selfless acts, and the other to do dirty deeds and brutal acts. 

You and your fellow Freebooters have heard rumors of a fabulous prize aboard this fleet's flagship, and you've crept up on the fleet in a leaky rowboat in hopes of stealing it. To claim your prize, you’ll make your way from ship to ship, using your wits, cutlass, or heart to navigate obstacles—like damned souls challenging you to dice games, or cyclopean sailors press ganging you into working the ship's oars.

The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea is perfect for low-prep or no-prep oneshot gameplay. The booklet includes several pages of tables stuffed with inspiration for GMs.

When that sulfurous sea breeze blows, will you have the grit and the gristle to knock over this fleet? Will you lose your own soul in the process?

In short, this booklet will give you a game that:

• Works for 2–6 players, plus one gamemaster
• Offers a compact experience perfect for a oneshot
• Uses the quick-to-learn Honey Heist system ("Sweetened by Honey Heist")
• Provides all the materials and inspiration you need to pick up and play
• Tells memorable stories of damnation or redemption among hell-bent Freebooters

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By purchasing this game, you get access to three PDFs. All PDFs contain the same content, but presented in different formats: one PDF of the game displayed as pages, one PDF of the game displayed as spreads, and one PDF of the game in booklet format—this last one should print up as a nice booklet for you if you tell your printer to print double-sided and short-edge-binding.

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Are you looking for more information about the original game that this is a reskin of? Find that here.

Want a playlist of piratical tunes to get you in the mood for this game? We've got you covered.

How about an online character keeper for running the game virtually? Copy this Google Sheet over to your own Drive and use it. (It won't be editable until you copy it to your Drive.)