Merchants & Marauders

Merchants & Marauders allows you to live the life of a prominent merchant or a fearsome pirate in the Caribbean during the Golden Age of Piracy. Seek your fortune through trade, the pursuit of fame, missions, and of course plunder. Modify your ship, buy impressive vessels, load deadly special ammunition and hire specialist crew members. Will your captain earn eternal glory and untold wealth – or will he find his watery grave beneath the troubled surface of the Caribbean Sea?

In Merchants and Marauders, players take on the role of the captain of a small ship in the Caribbean. The goal is to be the first to reach 10 “glory” points, by performing bold deeds (by completing missions or gaining fame), crushing your enemies (defeating opponents and NPCs in battle), accumulating gold, pulling off an epic raid, or making the trade of your life and buying a large ship. While some points earned from completing various tasks are permanent, players earn points for accumulated gold, which can be stolen or lost (or at least reduced) if their captain is killed. Points from gold are hidden, so there is some uncertainty about when the game will end.

A major element of the game is whether (or when) one will turn into “pirate” or remain a merchant or a neutral party. Both careers are full of dangers: pirates are hunted by NPCs (and other players) for their bounty and are barred from certain ports, while merchants are hunted by non-player pirates as well as by their rivals and generally must sacrifice combat capability for cargo-carrying capability. Although players can kill each other, there is no player elimination, as players can draw a new captain (with a penalty), so recovery from defeat is possible.