Play at the Table
Mar de Oro is designed to work with different tabletop roleplaying systems. Begin with the System-Neutral Adaptation chapter to define fictional role, capability, scale, pressure, and consequences. The pages below preserve and organise the published conversion notes for individual systems.
No single rules engine is the official Mar de Oro system. D&D Fifth Edition is currently the most extensively tested implementation because it was the ruleset familiar to the original group. Pathfinder 2e and Blades in the Dark material should be treated as published adaptation notes rather than an equally playtested implementation.
Choose the ruleset your group already knows, or the one whose structure best fits the campaign you want to run. Then use the System-Neutral Adaptation chapter to define what each character, faction, vessel, or scene needs to do at the table, and consult the matching system page for practical translation notes.
Define the fictional role, capability, scale, pressure, consequences, and mechanical expression before translating Mar de Oro into a named ruleset. This shared foundation is used before choosing or adapting a specific system.
Read the System-Neutral Framework →The original Mar de Oro campaign was developed and played using Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition because it was the ruleset familiar to the group at the time.
Pathfinder Second Edition provides detailed tactical combat, structured character options, proficiency ranks, hazards, and useful subsystems.
Blades in the Dark is a strong thematic fit for Mar de Oro campaigns centred on crews, privateers, smugglers, deniable agents, faction pressure, difficult bargains, long-term projects, and accumulating consequences.
System-neutral table procedures (Hard Calls at the Table and Running the Powered Arts) live in the System-Neutral Adaptation chapter because they apply across multiple rulesets.