Play at the Table
Choose your rules without rebuilding the world. Your rules decide how uncertainty is resolved; the factions, physical constraints, and consequences stay the same.
Mar de Oro is system-neutral: it 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 present the published conversions for individual systems.
The published conversions are compatibility layers, not alternate versions of the setting. They change the mechanical language used at the table while preserving the same fictional pressures, factions, consequences, and setting assumptions. Read How Mar de Oro Plays for the play philosophy shared across every conversion.
These conversions are alternative ways to run the system-neutral setting. Mar de Oro also has its own complete first-party rules engine, the Native Rules, and the ultralight 2d6 Resolution Bridge below; none of them is mandatory. Fifth Edition is where the original campaign began, Pathfinder First Edition brings native firearms, vehicles, and mass combat, Pathfinder Second Edition Remastered offers a tactical rules toolbox, and Forged in the Dark suits crew-driven, faction-pressured play.
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.
First-Party Rules
The complete first-party game written for this setting, covering Capability, Risk and Effect, Callings, Strengths, Techniques, Fortera, ships, battlefield scale, and threats. It is not a conversion and it is not required: the setting stays system-neutral, and the 2d6 Resolution Bridge below remains the ultralight standalone option.
Open the Native Rules →Define role, capability, scale, pressure, consequences, and mechanical expression before translating Mar de Oro into a named ruleset. Also called system-neutral. Read this before choosing or adapting a system.
Read the framework →Explore mechanical starting points. Preserve the world. Decide what works at your table.
An experimental aid for adapting Mar de Oro material to different rulesets. It provides editable starting points for Characters and NPCs or Creatures, with Markdown, PDF, and DOCX exports.
Open the Companion →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.
Pathfinder First Edition brings native firearms, siege engines, vehicles, and mass combat, so Mar de Oro battles, batteries, and airships can run on rules the system already provides.
Forged 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.
Mar de Oro includes complete free conversion packs for Fifth Edition, Pathfinder 2e Remastered, Pathfinder First Edition, and Forged in the Dark. Each keeps the same setting canon while expressing characters, firearms, ships, Fortera, conflict, and consequences through that rules engine. For the wider explanation of how canon stays separate from resolution mechanics, read Mar de Oro as a system-neutral TTRPG setting.
The Fifth Edition conversion is also split into focused rules pages for the four questions tables ask most often.
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.
When you are ready to turn this guidance into editable mechanical starting points, use the interactive tool.
Open the Conversion Companion