A brief introduction…
O thou, my little Guybby (or Jim or Esteban or whatever you'll want !) the blue and ondulating line of the horizon beckons you ! Give way to this equally merry and melancolic call and get to sea ! Fit out your ship or follow the sea on some galleon - one does its best - and set sail ! Seek the greatest treasures, in captain Lamarck's wake or Rei and Hitomi Hinokibayashi's, uncover the wildest legends : The Great Eastern Maelstrom, Antimagnetese Islands and Bream's Land, penetrate this world's darkest mysteries with the study of Hattean Voodoo's dreadful arcanes and finally face Zebra and the Great Gardener's Islands' impossible Lwa… But before that, will you do me a favor ? Clean the hold and hunt down those damned rats !
This is a Pirate's Role-Playing Game!
However, before getting the hoard - well onboard I meant - just a few precisions that may come in handy. Zebra Island RPG is not a « plain » book which begins with the first page and ends with the last, it is not the contrary either : it is a never-ending story ! (and hardly making sense). In other words, what you're considering right now is a role playing game : YOU write the story, WE DON'T ! And there's more ! It is a custom you'll have to share his grand and nice story, with a few game mates using at least the following material : a special die, pen and paper. Well, it may be useful to get more than one of those aforesaid dice and some extra pens and a rubber may also come in handy… The rest is made of imagination, a few notes and a lot of merry chitchat !
Another key point before we continue : someone will have to assume the role of Game Master, which means that he'll be the voluntary scenarist and director, the one who knows or designs the framework of a story related to the other players with with his own scenery, events and characters ; Each player will incarnate a character who'll be starring this story and who'll be called "Playing character", in contrast with all the other characters whose actions will be directed by the Game Master, those ones will be the "Non Playing Characters" - seems logical, doesn't it ? On this basis, it is not merely one but hundreds of stories that can be told and experienced, the only limit will be your combined imagination… Which means, sky's the limit !
I can sense someone starts to worry : the newly chosen Game Master ! What does he have to do and how ?! Is he unjustly condemned to keep on being the Master for ever, banned from Playing character's garden of delights ? As a matter of fact, he is not, and nothing stops from turning the role over. However, the known world has its own secrets and legends : part of the game's incentive stems from the fact that the Players (in appropriateness to their characters) ignore them.
Anything is at any time possible…
This could be the game's motto but, dearest reader, you must be aware that before yout eyes lie all the Game's rules and a tome of extensive knowledge regarding the known world surpassing what the most sharp local scholars may have gathered for themselves (there's a complete story also) : to put it in a nutshell, this is THE kit to start leading a Zebra Island RPG game. If your design IS NOT to become Game Master but instead to assume the role of a Curry-Bean Islands' or Shellfish Sea's PIRATE, then find yourself a sucker, give him this book and have him lead a game you're in… You'll have to choose an appropriate sucker !
If you intend to be this sucker – Oups… Game Master ! – As we mostly have been for many wild years, then go on, turn immediately the page and explore the following chapters, following your mood and in any order you may like ! Come on! Seize, dear Reader, the opportunity to dive into Zebra Island's adventurous, dreamlike, daring and delirious world, in other words : « You became a Pirate ? What poor result of the education we tried to give you!? »… And to begin with, who's the gloomy guy who entitled it Zebra Island RPG ?! One of John Rambo's secret admirer ? Or most likely a fan of a famous precursor on computer, which we shall not name here…
And that's about it !
We now are in the year 92 of the universal calendar and the Known World - a name given by its own inhabitants - is a merry mess of entangled lands and islands where Pirates - in their very soul, craving much more for freedom and adventure than for booty… Enter the violins… All right, all right, don't overplay it ! Well Pirates almost everywhere enjoy themselves to the full !