Guest Post: Piracy in Classic Traveller and Other Sci Fi RPGs

12 Feb, 2026

I was having a conversation with my friend Liquid Video the other day about how piracy acts in the Far Future. He wrote a great response and I wanted to share it.

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Well, hey! I’m Liquid Video, a hobby write-man and long time TTRPG player and friend of Hawkeyes who runs this here Hovel. This is an excerpt of a conversation the two of us had in preparation-slash-anticipation of him running a game of classic Traveller sometime soonish. Particularly, this is a bit of my musing on the nature of piracy in the space-future that Hawk asked if he could toss up as a guest piece. I haven’t done any true ‘public’ writing and don’t have a platform to link readers to, but nonetheless I hope you enjoy!! This dork’s perspective will always be free to a good home, maybe I’ll see you again here <3

Naval-style Piracy is an interesting type of crime, be it at void or sea, because it is both opportunistic and simultaneously so logistically cerebral.

The short answer is then both: opportunistic and planned. 

But I expect it’s going to vary by location, organization, type of vessel operated and targeted, local patrol and enforcement capacity, and plenty of other factors.

Some pirates are just straight criminals with little professional background, but with the skill to operate a vessel or the kind of machinery/transport/tools needed to board and knock over a hauler by some means. From there it’s just an armored car robbery meets a home invasion. 

This is probably an act of opportunity based on tips or just right place, right time (for the pirates). It demands some planning or at least just enough experience that everyone involved knows what to do. It’s a heist and there’s a heist crew.

Moving down the spectrum would be groups with some actual organization who aren’t necessarily just out for plunder. Groups like Privateers or completely Free Peoples or true-blue Pirate Kings. 

Privateers would be directed—or given some direction—by proper Naval intelligence. They wouldn’t be part of a state’s naval hierarchy as such, but privateers have a specific enemy. They have objectives and broader strategies that their commerce raiding is being fitted into. Perhaps they are paid by a state or perhaps they are simply paid with plunder or both, but in order to be of notice enough to bear a nation’s Letter of Marque they have presumably a reasonably sized and formidable vessel at their disposal if not an entire squadron or flotilla to worry about maintaining—along with the hierarchy of people and personalities which give life to the whole operation and must be motivated always. So while Privateers probably don’t follow some Rear Admiral’s direct orders, they probably get intelligence and have a specific objective which they attain more through planning than capitalizing on whatever trade lanes they are closest to. Of note is that their basic needs are easy to meet. They can go to port and buy provisions and services like anyone else in the right places. So the opportunities they seek are more tactical in nature than just jumping any freighter is sight that you hope is carrying what can be your future retirement fund. Privateers aren’t doing “one last job,” they’re career officers.

Different kinds of Free Peoples are in a similar box. While it’s conceivable that they are really just communities or stateless ‘tribes’/organizations doing what they must to survive, to capital powers I’m sure they are often no different from pirates. I’d imagine with the proliferation of vessels over hundreds of years of a relative technological status quo that entirely shipborne communities would not be uncommon, but it’s probably more likely they are remote planets or asteroid/man-made orbital habitats housing forgotten or freely associated peoples that possess some kind of naval capacity which defends them and perhaps are driven to desperate acts to prop up their homes. Like Privateers, this would probably lean somewhat opportunistic but with true planned goals. If a community is desperate for food, for example, then expect nearby shipping lanes to have agri-haulers boarded and plundered or entirely hijacked likely leaving the crew safely behind in escape rafts. Same goes for medicine or materiel, etc… They also might levy tolls or taxes in areas they can control to drum up cash for the fleet or for their governments or families back home.

Now proper Pirate Kings are a fun one that operate similarly to the previous categories, I think. Pirate Kings can be a lot of things but always notorious. They can be disgraced/dispossessed aristocracy with some great naval means like some of the great pirates of real history, they could be proper Navy deserters with some Colonel Kurtz-esque figure at the helm. The possibilities for these cults of personality are endless and their reputations could be paper tigers or entirely earned in cold blood and karat gold. These kinds of Pirates could have just one legendary ship at their command or they could be the sovereign of an entire (and entirely unrecognized) star nation of their own. Not to be neglected is also the possible bleedover with Free Peoples. A Pirate King could simply be the most accomplished captain of a Free People’s navy, always working towards their home’s goals, as brutal or honorable as those they come from. As such, I think this category lies at all places on the spectrum. A proper legendary pirate could indeed be just a criminal with a lot of luck on their side just taking the opportunities which present themselves to enjoy a life of ill-gotten gains, but they also could be just the media understanding of a more complicated and cunning mind with long term goals, intricately planning every next move as they carve out an independent despotate of their own design.

Ultimately piracy is not a crime of passion no matter how you slice it. Space Pirates have to account for a lot of factors in the commission of the act, like their real high-seas counterparts, they are always managing resources against the lack of access that their lifestyle is packaged with. So, to my mind, serious Piracy is probably not committed by opportunity alone. No, the Mad Max goons with vac-suits and crowbars riding jet bikes are the ones who get blasted and apprehended or starved and betrayed. Serious pirates make hay while the engines shine, but not if they need a different crop or the engines won’t turn over again without getting gas.