Myself, @keefer and Eric (designer of JJP POTC) will be doing a live stream to discuss current state of rules, hardware, and some gameplay for our new POTC game on Feb 14th at 3pm ct for about an hour or so. We will be answering questions as well. Join us if you’d like to get a closer look at the current code and learn how to play it at a high level. This will be our first attempt and hope to do this more with POTC and the other JJP games.
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That you Joe? It’s Josh H. Hope to catch the stream–Pirates looks super cool!
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Looking towards the stream big time. Thanks for advance notice.
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This is great news! I’ll be watching.
This is game is going to be huge.
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We have archived our first stream on a new YouTube channel that will hold all future broadcasts.
Subscribe today if you want to watch them thru YouTube
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Subscribed!
A very high quality stream. Many thanks. Learned tons from watching and listening to the highly detailed commentary.
Has it been said or is it known when this game starts shipping? I haven’t bought a pin in over a year and think it’s time…if I can work out that one small detail of budget. Do we have to have a budget when it comes to pinball? 
Anyway, here’s a copy + paste of what I posted on pinside. Just a small general outline of the rules I gathered from watching the stream. I’m sure I missed a bunch and a couple unanswered questions I have which I’ll re-watch over the weekend to try and find out is…
- Does the display show your chapter multiplier anywhere both before and during a chapter?
- How do you increase the chapter scoring portion (not multiplier) before starting a chapter?
- They mentioned a hold chapter bonus shot; does that hold the chapter score to the next chapter solely for that movie or is it all movie chapters? And/or is it a multiplier hold?
Anyway, here’s my rules notes for those that havent seen yet. Enjoy:
- Display
5 movies from left to right on the display.
top portion of the display are the chapters for each movie.
Map portion of the display are the multiball mode progressions for each movie broken up in 5 sectors, also left to right.
Each movie seems to be color based both on the display and the skull inserts. Yellow = Movie 1, Green = Movie 2, Red = Movie 3, Blue = Movie 4, Purple = Movie 5
Bottom right corner shows gold and progression for Tortuga MB. 50 gold qualifies Tortuga MB, 100 gold needed for the 2nd time. The more gold you have, the more Tortuga JP’s are worth.
Bottom Right corner above gold will also show your combo count
Bottom Left corner will show active multiplier.
- Chapters
Hit one of the colored skull inserts to qualify a chapter for that movie. Colored skulls are color coded to the chapters, see above for color codes.
For each Movie’s chapter you qualify before starting the chapter, your scoring bonus is multiplied by X.5. For example, if you shoot the yellow skull and green skull you’ll have movie 1 & 2 chapters qualified, and whichever of the 2 chapters is started you will have a 1.5X bonus scoring for those chapter shots. To start a Chapter, shoot the Chapter start shot which is just to the right of the chest. If you have more than 1 chapter qualified, the ball will bounce around the targets and randomly select one of the qualified movie chapters.
In short, the reward for qualifying multiple chapters before starting a chapter is the scoring bonus; the drawback is that you don’t get to select which chapter which could hinder your progression towards a specific wizard mode.
Some characters make playing, qualifying, and completing chapters easier - but they have scoring penalties such as 1/2 scoring or .25X chapter scoring multipliers rather than .5X scoring multipliers
- Multiball Modes (Might need a little help in these areas)
Movie 1: Qualified by sinking the ship using the mini pf. Not sure what shot starts it - might be sinking another ship or just making the right ramp.
Movie 2: Qualified by Locking balls in chest > Started by shooting chest.
Movie 3: Qualified by collecting the nine piece of eight, which I believe is every major shot on the pf (I could be wrong on this). > start mb with left whirlpool
Movie 4: Qualified by making looped shots with upper flipper > started with upper flipper loop shot.
Movie 5: Not sure what qualifies this > start mb with left loop
- Wizard Modes:
Complete 5 chapters of one specific movie and play that movie’s multiball to qualify it’s Wizard mode.
There are 5 wizard modes. 1 for each movie.
Wizard mode scoring is based on how well you did during chapters and movie mb. So it can be quite risk/reward lucrative to qualify 3 or more chapters for higher scoring on your path to a wizard mode, but much riskier/harder.
- GOLD
Collect Gold to progress towards Tortuga mb.
50 gold qualifies Tortuga mb the first time. 100 gold the 2nd time.
Amount of gold effects Tortuga jackpots.
Treasure (little unsure of this rule): Make combos and/or loop shots with the upper flipper then hit the gold targets to spawn larger treasure which is worth more than 1 piece of gold.
When gold spawns on the display, press action button to collect it. There are lots of call outs and lighting effects to indicate there’s gold to be taken.
Bonus: All 6 multiball modes can be stacked on top of each other!
+Tortuga Mystery:
Not sure what progresses the mystery level, I think its pop bumpers.
Shoot tortuga for mystery.
Each of the displayed mystery awards are completely random so each of the 5 awards have an equal chance of being chosen.
- Pirate Lanes & Action Button (im probably way off on some of this, but here it goes):
Complete Pirate lanes for rewards.
Collect reward at the target just to the left of the left arrow next to the Chest. Indicated by blue circle insert.
Select your Pirate lane award using the action button. The rewards are displayed on the apron.
Example - use action button to highlight Super X; then complete all PIRATE Lanes, the cash in insert by chest will light for Super X, hit it to start Super X.
PIRATE lane inserts are color coded depending on what award is selected or available.
ARRRR Frenzy: Complete PIRATE lanes 3 times to qualify ARRRR Frenzy. Not sure what shot starts it unless it starts automatically. Takes 10 PIRATE lane progressions the 2nd time through.
- Shot Multiplier
Not sure what qualifies this yet but when its active it’ll stack with any other multipliers that are valid and will be displayed on the bottom left corner of the display.
- Playfield multiplier
Not exactly sure on this rule yet, I think has to do with the stand up targets. There’s probably inserts on the pf that I couldn’t see either. But you can build up for a total of 5X pf multiplier.
Im sure I missed a bunch, but like I said…this was a ‘small’ overview of the rules from what I gathered. Game looks bitchin guys, nice work. Cant wait to play it in arcade expo CA in a few weeks.
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So I rewatched part of the stream tonight and I think I answered my own questions.
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The display shows both your chapter point value per character + bonus X just below the characters for the chapter you are playing. Additionally, each character during the mode has text that shows which shot to shoot in case you cannot find them on the insert matrix of the pf.
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You increase chapter scoring before starting a chapter by hitting additional skull insert shots corresponding to that chapters color, or the shot behind the upper flipper; and during a chapter by making character shots during the chapter. Then, Once the chapter mode is over, you get additional points added to your chapter score (for next played chapter of that movie) for each character you collected in the chapter and a bonus for additional time remaining which I believe is based on the # of characters that had to be collected in that chapter.
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You can hold the chapter score value by shooting the far left scoop (the depths). As of now, making that shot will randomly award one of the chapters your hold score value. But Keith said they’ll probably change that in a code update to make it weighted so it’ll hold the highest chapter value first.
This game really is looking bitchin’. If I could suggest one thing to Keith & Joe; maybe during attract mode allow a player to hold down the action button and use flipper buttons to toggle through each character portfolio to show them more stats than what is shown during the character select screen - like all of their pro’s and cons.
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I have watched boths live streams and the SDTM show with Eric and Keefer.
In the interview Eric says that his favorite award from the spindiscs is: "plunder oponents ball"
I hope that there will be a setting in the software to disable the “plunder oponents …” for in a tournament.
Given the JJP’s crew experience as tourney players, and specifically @keefer’s experience at coding pins’ competition settings, you don’t need to lose any sleep over this.
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One concern for me is that this game makes the Game of Thrones ruleset look simple, by comparison.
I’m interested in what people think. Considering the success of TNA, with a ruleset that anyone gets in about ten minutes flat, is the level of depth offered by Pirates really the way to go?
I’d say that to be really successful on location, a game should have enough stuff happening to be immediately fun to shoot for casual players, but must also offer something deep/challenging to keep the resident regulars interested. So far JJP POTC seems to me to be on track to achieve this balance.
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I don’t think this is an either/or question. TNA and Game Of Thrones and Metallica and Addams Family are al successful, and they all have wildly different approaches to their rulesets. There’s a lot of room in this market for different styles.
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