Pirate Sandbox – a free Pathfinder 2e pirate sandbox for the Shackles

The world is your oyster

A Whole Open World of Piracy and Heroism

A living sea, built on the official Pathfinder setting of the Shackles. Whether you want to run a headhunter adventure or a "brave-new-world campaign", stay adjacent to official layouts and lore for the easy opportunity to splice in official Paizo adventures, while running your own story, or following our published adventure paths.*

A sunken treasure chest that is really a mimic

We offer all the tools you need as a GM:

Weather, tides, cargo and ship tracking. Storms that push you off course, tides and moon, hold and hull in the log.
Optional foraging and hexcrawl. A hex grid on every island and real travel times for the landing party.
A detailed world map with player export. Fog of war hides what the crew hasn't seen; the players' view exports as a picture.
Hundreds of battle maps. 120+ maps in four lights, with and without grid, plus 20+ Atlas VTT scenes.
NPCs, item cards, handouts, art. 140+ NPCs, 30+ item cards, 10+ handouts, scene paintings and portraits.

All spread across a browser app, an Obsidian vault, PDFs, and Atlas VTT packages. Whatever format you need, whatever parts you want to use: we've got you covered.

Speak like a sailor

Every Nautical Term Explained

Leeward, heave to, weather gage, careen. Life at sea has its own language, and most tables don't speak it. You don't have to look anything up: every term comes with a short explanation and a line you can say out loud at the table.

Leeward

The side the wind blows towards.

“Spit to leeward, not to windward!”

Heave to!

Stop the ship. Also an order to another ship.

“Heave to, or we fire!”

Weather gage

Being upwind of the enemy, so you choose the fight.

“We have the weather gage, she has to come to us.”

Careen

Lay the ship on her side on a beach to clean and seal the hull.

“We careen her in the bay and scrape off the barnacles.”

560+ terms in ten chapters: the ship, rigging and sails, crew, sailing and navigation, sea and weather, naval combat, port and trade, landfall, commands and calls, and sayings. The app uses the same words everywhere.

Every league counts

True to Scale, Down to the Last Fathom

The beach is fifteen minutes away. Next session it's an hour. The island was a day's walk across, now it's three. Most maps are drawn to look good, not to be measured, so the GM invents distances on the spot and then has to remember them. The players notice, and the world stops feeling real.

We fixed this at the root. Every sea chart, island, aerial view and battle map in the Pirate Sandbox shares one coordinate system, true to the foot. Ask how far it is, and there is one answer, every session.

Scroll down and dive in: from the whole archipelago to a single 5 ft square, in one map and one browser tab.

Research, not guesswork

State of the Art Islands

Videogames, Hollywood and climate research – we have the technology. Why not use it? Every island is built the way nature builds islands, using methods from current geoscience and procedural-generation research, then path-traced like a film frame. That's why the islands look real, and why the sea chart, the aerial view, the 3D view and the battle map all show the same place.

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Erosion that carves real valleys

Rivers cut the land with the stream-power law (Braun & Willett, 2013), drainage is routed with Priority-Flood (Barnes, 2014), slopes slide to their angle of repose and soil creeps downhill. Valleys, ridges and deltas emerge on their own.

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Climate decides the green

The trade wind brings orographic rain to the windward slopes; vegetation follows moisture, slope, soil and salt spray. Lush forest on one side, dry scrub in the rain shadow.

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Reefs from real reef science

Fringing reefs and surf on the windward side, wide sand banks with tidal channels and blue holes in the lee, spur-and-groove coral fingers traced along the reef's flow field with line-integral convolution. Tuned against aerial photos of real atolls and cays.

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Towns that grow

Settlements grow along roads and coasts with the method of Emilien et al. (2012), down to 3 m street plans.

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Light like a camera sees it

Path-traced in Unreal Engine with physically based materials, caustics from a simulated ocean-wave spectrum, wet sand at the true waterline, and 270,000+ scanned plants and objects per island.

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One world, one scale

Everything is seed-stable and true to scale: the same island every time, a nautical mile of 1,852 m on every chart, aerial view and battle map.

Canon and contraband

Official Lore, Woven In. Yer Own Tales, Woven Through.

The sea is built on the official world: coastlines, ports and island chains from the PathfinderWiki mapping project, 900+ lore notes on gods, factions, people and places, and the official Adventure Path laid out volume by volume. Between the canon islands lie brand-new ones, generated to fit, each with its own secrets.

Sail in and out of the official adventure

Follow the Adventure Path straight through, or leave it at any port. Chase a rumour to an island no book has ever named, then sail back into the main story when ye're ready. The map, the log and the clock keep running either way.

Every canon place, one click from its lore

58 ports and cities and 53 island groups on the chart link to their notes and wiki pages. Official maps sit beside the GM and player versions, so ye can show the table only what the crew has seen.

Room for yer own ideas

New islands like the Isle of Lost Souls and the Lizard Cauldron come with their own terrain, story, foes, handouts and battle maps, and slot into the world as if they'd always been there.

The sea waits for no one

Real Time on the High Seas

How long's the crossing? When does the tide turn? Will it be dark when ye run the longboat ashore? The app does the reckoning, so ye can do the plundering.

☀ Forenoon watch

Voyages: tap a destination, see the duration and arrival, cast off. The app plans the nights: drop anchor, heave to, or sail on through the dark.
Tides & moon: high and low water, spring tides, moon phases.
Weather: storms roll across the map, with gale warnings and wind that drives ye off course.
Calendar & clock: day by day, hour by hour, all in the ship's log.
Landfall: march yer landing party across an island with real travel times, and mind the dusk.
Battle maps in several lights: forenoon, sunset, rain and grey skies.

Every league logged

Tracking in Action

One tap to set sail, one tap to land. The app keeps the clock, the course and the crew's footsteps.

Under sail: pick a port, watch the ship work her way there with wind, drift and the night's anchorage, hour by hour.

Landfall: the landing party marches across the island with real travel times, every site and every step logged.

From rowboat to man-o'-war

20+ Ship Types

Sloops, schooners, junks, galleons, ironclads and even a ship-sinking crab, each with stats, price, cargo and draught. Plus 24 named vessels with their own dark histories. The app tracks yer hull, damage, refits and shipyard.

Tales worth their weight in gold

The Story Lives in Books

The sea is open, but it ain't empty. Wherever there's a tale to tell, it gets its own book: scenes, checks, foes, treasure and secrets. Play 'em in any order ye like, or let 'em sink.

Book 1, Chapter 1: A Stormy Beginning

A storm. A wreck. A strange island. The heroes wash ashore, explore, dive to the sunken hull, fight beneath the waves and fight to get their ship afloat, while every night the grindylows come creeping up the beach.

Two-column layout like a printed adventure
Read-aloud text, DCs, encounters with difficulty and XP
PF2e stat blocks straight from the bestiary
Maps and art right where ye need 'em

Cutlasses out!

100+ Battle Maps

120 battle maps and 25 ready-made VTT scenes, each one a real spot in the world, with and without grid. Beaches, wrecks, jungles, crater rims, nests full o' teeth.

Show, don't tell

Art for the Table

Scene paintings to slap on the table, portraits for every rogue, island views, ships in storm and calm.

The Code is more what ye'd call guidelines

Optional Rules

Take what ye like, toss the rest overboard.

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Naval Combat

Broadsides, crew roles and ship actions, boarding, fleet battles, chases, ship upgrades.

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The Pirate's Life

Plunder and infamy, the pirate council, the Free Captains' regatta, a day aboard, NPC dispositions.

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Land Ho!

Landfall and island exploration, crew as troops, travel by sea and land.

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For the Heroes

Campaign backgrounds, peg legs and eye patches, pirate weapons.

Join the crew

Support the Voyage

Everything here is free, for everyone: the app, the maps, the books, the vault. No paywall, nothing locked away. If you like what we build and want to see more of it, you can help keep the ship afloat.

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Patreon

Shape where the sandbox sails next. Patrons vote on how it looks and what gets built first.

Vote on style and looks: art direction, map style, how the islands are rendered
Vote on new content and its order: more ships, jungle expeditions, rules for hiring and managing your crew
Workshop reports and renders from behind the scenes
Your name in the credits

☕

Ko-fi

A one-time tip, whenever a map or a session saved your evening.

No subscription
Any amount

Tip on Ko-fi

All hands on deck

Join Us on Discord

Meet other GMs and players, share your sessions and homebrew, report bugs, ask questions and see new islands first.

X marks the spot

The Ship's Log

What's built today, and what's still ahead.

Our journey so far

7 of 10 waypoints reached

DoneChart and appThe world chart at true scale, voyages, weather, tides and the ship in the browser.
DoneIslands and battle mapsProcedural islands, path-traced aerial views and battle maps from the same terrain.
UnderwayAdventuresChapter 1 is finished, the next chapters are being written.
NextNew island generatorIslands grown from our own coastlines.
LaterOur own worldA whole archipelago of our own, built on the new generator.

The world chart. 1,800+ islands at true scale, 58 ports, depths and shelves.

The app. Voyages, weather, tides, ship, hold and log, in any browser.

Procedural islands. Erosion, rivers, reefs and settlements, the same island every time.

Aerial views. Path-traced, down to 10 inches per pixel.

Battle maps. 120+ maps in four lights, plus 20+ Atlas VTT scenes.

Characters, creatures and art. 140+ NPCs, 27,000+ creatures, handouts and paintings.

Book 1, Chapter 1. Typeset like a printed adventure.

More chapters and companion books.

Every island as an aerial view.

Our own world on the new generator.

How she sails

Setting Sail

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At the Table

The GM opens the app on a laptop or tablet. The players see the sea chart under the fog o' war; the GM sees everything.

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Online

Battle maps come as ready scenes for Atlas VTT, and as plain images for any other virtual tabletop.

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Prep

Adventure books as PDF; every place, character and creature in the Obsidian vault, all cross-linked.

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Rigging

A small server on yer own network, at home or anywhere via Tailscale. All it takes is a browser; the sea chart even runs on yer phone.

Questions from the Crow's Nest

What rules does it use?

Pathfinder 2e (Remaster). The seafaring rules are optional extensions.

What language?

The app and the books are in German for now, with English rule terms. This page sails in both tongues.

What does it cost?

Nothing. The Pirate Sandbox is a free fan project. If you want to help, you can support us on Patreon or Ko-fi.

Do I need a beefy graphics card?

Not for the map or the books. The 3D view runs best on a laptop with a proper graphics chip.