Ravaged by Storms – Mythic Sandbox Adventure for Pirate Borg

Oct 25: We've set sail towards The Dark Caribbean!
6 months ago – Wed, Oct 01, 2025 at 01:25:43 PM

The Golems Speak

Good evening, sailors,

This is the first of regular monthly updates, which from now on may not always appear on the first day of the month, but at least within the first week. 

We will use them to keep you informed about the big picture. Very specific updates may be posted in between if something special is coming up. For the time being, however, I will leave the previous update pinned, as it contains the overall schedule for our project.

The last three weeks and progress made

Now I know what post-crowdfunding-exhaustion after months of preparation and promotion feels like. Phew. I should have just taken two weeks off from the project and then started with full force, but instead we continued to crawl along.

In September, I mainly took care of some administrative tasks, such as obtaining ISBN numbers, some tax matters, financial planning, communication with partners and backers, etc., which are not interesting for you to hear about in full, but were all important. By the way, Kickstarter fundings always take a few weeks to reach the project founders. We received the money this week.

Important for you: As announced, agreements have been made with all backers of the Tempest Deluxe tier and Shiny Eight add-on, and we have received the first portraits. So everything is running according to schedule.

Sabrina was finally free to stop drawing promotional designs and return to the missing art for Ravaged by Storms, finalizing a few more spreads. Behold with terror the undead sea hag Peacatatl, who will definitely make your stories more exciting, and not just as a combat encounter.

What we will be working on in October

As stated in the last update, one of our most important next steps is to set up the Pledge Manager via BackerKit (including a Late Pledge option), which seems to be a lot of work for everything to work as it should. We certainly aim to get it done in October, so that the backer survey can also be set up and sent out as soon as possible.

As The Way of the Worm and its VTT assets are completely finished, you can expect their digital files to drop first. I'm also going to write some of the new stretch goal content for The Scarlet Coral Citadel Enhanced Edition. Sabrina, on the other hand, will finalize as much of the missing layout and art for Ravaged by Storms as possible.

Soundtrack Sample

Thomas Zitkevitz is working like with the speed of a cursed galleon's undead crew chasing the last human alive - not sure if that metaphor has worked well - on the original soundtrack of Ravaged by Storms. You can expect around three hours (!) of music (I'm baffled, as well)! Let me share with you one sample of it:

Play-by-Post campaign

Thank you, everyone, for you registration! We have closed the Google Forms and will reach out to everyone as soon as we can get to it. With BackerKit being a wilder beast than expected, I kindly ask for your patience. It will take a few more weeks before the announced play-by-post campaign can begin (sorry about that), but I think it is in everyone's best interest if we focus our attention on the important tasks of fulfillment.

Backer Question: What does "Art-Heavy, but no art-punk" mean?

One backer asked us what we meant by the statement "Art-heavy, but no art-punk." I thought that might be interesting to more people, so I am going to copy-paste my reply:

Graphic Design Approach

Fair question, thank you. Mörk Borg's graphic design, among other games, has been called art punk. The garish colors, the different fonts and font sizes, the apparent disorder.

Some people admire it as a stroke of genius. Some people criticize it as chaotic.

We think it's great and you can find blog posts on the web explaining why John Nohr's work is not chaotic but a display of very well applied design techniques, actually helping the reader. So, again, just for clarity, we think it's great!

BUT that's not true for all games or modules in Borg games. Some are great. But there are also some that are trying to emulate that style but fail. In the end, their design turns out messy, difficult to read, or even really chaotic. With that, I can understand that some people frown upon that kind of "art-punk". So, what I'm saying is that that Borg style actually needs skill to work. It is not easy to execute.

Pirate Borg leans a little bit into that but quickly developed its own style. The more recent products actually remind me more of OSE, greatly supporting clarity. We like that design approach, as we want our games and modules to be easy to read and accessible.

With our art and layout, we're clearly closer to Pirate Borg than to Mörk Borg. We don't even claim to be "art-punky". Still, we love art-heavy games and have created more than 40 pieces of original art for Ravaged by Storms. With the statement "Art heavy, but no art punk" we just want to show what to expect. Very art-heavy but hopefully as clear, easy to follow and use as some of the great examples from OSE or recent Pirate Borg.

Hope that makes sense. We even blogged about our approach a few weeks ago: https://golemproductions.substack.com/p/great-games-need-great-layout

OSR Adventure Design

The same goes, by the way, for adventure design. I adore The Curse of Skeleton Point (Pirate Borg Core Book) by Luke Stratton. It's a complex, divers sandbox dripping with OSR game design philosophy, which I very much prefer over somewhat linear hack'n'slash introductory adventures found in some other (not all!) Borg games. 

I think his adventure design is closer to the best practices we know from OSE or Mothership, for example. And that's the direction we're designing in as well.

Projects We Love

It Comes From the Deep!

Steve Gibbs is inviting us to this double feature horror show. Two terrifying tales, one Kickstarter, endless ways to die. It Comes From the Deep — An island on the edge of the Devil's Triangle with a cult summoning a terror from the abyss! Curse of the Rumrunners — A forgotten rumrunners isle full of rum tainted with ASH. Check it out!

“From pebble to monolith—your journey matters. The Golems have spoken.”

Alexander from Golem Productions

632 Strong: Course Set for Adventure (and How You Can Play Now)
6 months ago – Fri, Sep 12, 2025 at 07:34:24 AM

The Golems Speak

Ahoy, you storm-tossed, wonderful sea dogs!

We did it! You did it! Thank you so much everyone for all your various contributions. Sabrina and me have celebrated together, and just look at this beautiful custom-made cake:

It was amazing, sweet, and tasty! Almost took my breath away. Unfortunately, though, my dear crewmates, it cost us around € 25,000, so goodbye everyone, thank you, and see you next tiiiiimeeee.... :)

Where we're heading

No, sorry, bad pirate jokes. Of course not! We wouldn't dare. We're stoked to bring all the adventures to you that you have pledged for. We are very grateful that 632 people have decided to support our project! I know you've probably read this many times before, but it really meant a lot to us. Thank you!

Do you wanna play Ravaged by Storms now!?

Well, maybe you can. We've got a little surprise for you. As a little preview of what's to come, I (Alexander) plan to run Ravaged by Storms as a play-by-post campaign on the official Pirate Borg Discord server.

The campaign will certainly unfold over a few months, but if you want to experience it as a player or read along before you run it yourself, now is your chance! In terms of capacity, we can't offer a project nearly as large as the ongoing West Marches campaign on the server, but can only allow a crew of perhaps two handfuls of players.

If you would like to participate, please register via this Google Forms link. If there is a lot of interest, participants will be selected at random. Please only register if you are interested and able to participate on a long-term basis, several times a week, in the form of a post. Further details will be announced at a later date.

Progress and Communication

From now on, we will switch to monthly updates here on Kickstarter. You should all get notified by e-mail, when we release one. If something really urgent comes in between, we'll let you know. So, maybe let's start with a recap of where we're at:

• In my last update, I have summarized what we have unlocked and what rewards (including stretch goals) you will receive. If you want to remind yourself, please take a look there.
• If you want to directly get in touch with us, you'll find plenty of options on our Linktree. Especially, you might want to check out our blog and newsletter OSR Rocks!.
• Progress: The visual from the Kickstarter page is still quite true, as last month was mostly about promoting the Kickstarter, networking, and stuff like that. Overall, the project is far advanced:

As described in former updates, the stretch goal supplements Solo Storm, Pieces of Eight, and Don't Speak! are still in very early stages of development and will only be fully realized once we have sent our main products to the printers.

Tempest Deluxe and Shiny Eight

If you belong to the six people who backed our exclusive rewards, this paragraph is for you: As explained in our FAQ, we need you to sign an agreement that will allow us to use your portraits to draw NPCs in our products. After payment has been processed, we'll reach out to you via Kickstarter and/or e-mail with that agreement, instructions on exactly what kind of photos we need, etc. 

Please note that there will be a binding deadline by which you must send us your images so that printing is not delayed. But don't worry, we will do everything we can to ensure that everything runs smoothly.

Timeline

The information on the Kickstarter page is still accurate. Nevertheless, here is a more detailed list of everything that is going on. Please bear in mind that we are doing all this as a passion in out spare time after jobs, family, kids, etc. We have carefully set up a timeline that we strongly believe we can adhere to but sometimes things change. Still, here it is:

• As of today, the crowdfunding is finished and we expect Kickstarter to process payments within the next two weeks (can take up to 4 weeks in extreme cases).
   
• Next month, in October, we'll open up our BackerKit Pledge Manager, allow Late Pledges, and send out the survey to you backers. Everyone who wants to receive their rewards will need to answer that survey, so that we learn where to send your reward to.
  I've heard quite a few times that people had issues with opening up their BackerKit Pledge Managers. So, hopefully, everything will go smoothly. 
   
• During September and October, it's our aim to finalize our physical products. Specifically, this means that Sabrina will finalize the layout and artwork for Ravaged by Storms. The text is already completely finished, including editing, but a final proofreading is still needed. 
  
  At the same time, I will write the new content for The Scarlet Coral Citadel Enhanced Edition, as we have more than doubled the number of pages in the zine thanks to stretch goals.
  
  We'll also make the donation that we've promised and show you the receipt as soon as possible.
   
• Q4 / 2025: We will start digital fulfillment to those who have answered the survey. Don't expect everything to come at once. We will probably work through the adventures one by one and distribute the PDFs together with the corresponding VTT assets. 
  
  The digital version of Ravaged by Storms, its digital poster map, and the adventure's original soundtrack should become available by the end of the year at the latest.
  
  We hope to complete all three adventures this year, and send them to the printers, but it's not guaranteed. The Scarlet Coral Citadel Enhanced may slip into next year, as the large enhancement means there is still some work to be done on the art, layout, and editing.
   
• In Q1/2026, all shipments of our printed products should arrive at Flying Cloud, our fulfillment company partner. Then it will be time to assign the items to all orders, lock the orders in BackerKit, close the Late Pledge phase, charge shipping fees as well as VAT, and carry out physical fulfillment. 
  
  Of the digital supplements unlocked via stretch goals, we plan to release Solo Storm during this period so that solo players don't have to wait any longer once they get their hands on the printed Ravaged by Storms.
   
• Later in 2026 (Q2/Q3) we will be releasing Pieces of Eight as well as Don't Speak!. 

Projects We Love

Three from the Loker

A lot is going on in the world of Pirate Borg! I've been chatting with Ed Bourelle for quite a while now, who has launched his project Three from the Locker just a few days ago. I love his art - you can acquire some original pieces by him - and the creativity of his project. I also know for certain that he has some yet unannounced stretch goals up his sleeve that I really want to see come to life. Please check and support his project!

Rustborn Bastards

A game promoted as compatible with CY_BORG and Wasteland Degenerates, but its seems to use and develop Pirate Borg's naval combat rules. It has almost funded, so maybe take a look. Imagine: You run a campaign of Pirate Borg till TPK. After that your experience the first party adventure Lost to the Locker from Limithron's book Down Among the Dead. Your undead pirates spend centuries dare only to emerge to the world of Rustborn Bastards. Could be fun!

Take care!

“From pebble to monolith—your journey matters. The Golems have spoken.”

Alexander from Golem Productions

The FINAL DAYS are upon us - Here is what you can get!
7 months ago – Tue, Sep 09, 2025 at 07:52:54 AM

The Golems Speak 

Ahoy Mateys,

this is it. We're close to entering the last 48 Hours of our crowdfunding campaign. Give it you are all and please help spread the word one last time. With almost 15 stretch goals unlocked, the same bundle will never be available again. This is what you can get:

Three Adventures, Two/Three Digital Supplements, and more

• Ravaged by Storms, a 72-page Mythic Sandbox Adventure for Pirate Borg and its first full campaign module. It'll come as a sturdy offset-printed hardcover book with a blue ribbon marker, printed endpapers (Death Wind Island map + some useful tables), and a cover embellished with UV spot coating.
• Folded and inserted into the book you will find a double-sided poster showing the map of the Death Wind Islands on one side and the Coatl on the other. This is a First Printing exclusive!
• Solo Storm, a digital supplement free to all backers and integrating the procedures of Captain & Crew, will give you all the advise, rules, and step-by-step guidelines to experience Ravaged by Storms as an epic solo adventure!
• Postcards of the Death Wind Islands, 3 of them free to all Early Bird Backers, but also available as an addon. Use them to invite your players to play! This is a Kickstarter exclusive!
• An original soundtrack will bring the various characters, locations, and events of Ravaged by Storms to life!
• The Scarlet Coral Citadel Enhanced Edition: Updated from 11 to 24 pages, our pointcrawl dungeon will be available in print for the first time as a full color staple bound zine. You will find it restructured for clarity and enhanced with new illustrations and content, like new tables for the exploration of the citadel or the new Red Coral Addict class. 
• The Way of the Worm: The adventure that started it all! A 16-page zine that won "Best Adventure" of Limithron's official CABIN FEVER jam, also as a full color staple bound zine.
• Pieces of Eight: A digital supplement of around 10-12 pages which will feature eight unique NPCs ready to bring to the table. They will share some background story and can be combined with our adventures or brought in whenever you need them. 
• Become a NPC: Exclusive rewards for up to 6 people whose portraits we'll turn into named NPCs of Ravaged by Storms, The Scarlet Coral Citadel, or Pieces of Eight. 
• VTT Assets (portraits, tokens, maps, landscapes) and high-quality PDFs for all our products.
• TO BE UNLOCKED Don't Speak! A new adventure location about a horror that silences a town at night.

First Fanart coming in!

Thank you to Piskomil, one of our playtest players, who delighted us with the first real fanart of Ravaged by Storms, all showing characters, monsters, and locations from the campaign! We love what she did there:

“From pebble to monolith—your journey matters. The Golems have spoken.”

Alexander from Golem Productions

One Week Left, Final Stretch Goal, and one Exclusive Item still available!
7 months ago – Thu, Sep 04, 2025 at 05:10:39 AM

The Golems Speak

Dear crew,

still much is happening and initially I wasn't planning on releasing another update so soon, but here we go!

Become a NPC!

You might remember our exclusive Tempest Deluxe pledge tier that prompts us to transform a portrait of three backers into a NPC of either Ravaged by Storms or the The Scarlet Coral Citadel.

Later, through stretch goals, we unlocked the digital supplement Pieces of Eight together with another exclusive add-on called Shiny Eight, that essentially does the same (described in this previous update). You can become a NPC of said supplement! It's also limited to three people! And due to a cancelation, one is still left! So, if you want to see your face in one of our publications, there's still a chance to grab this!

Soundtrack Unlocked

Havin surpassed 19,500 €, we have unlocked the original Soundtrack for Ravaged by Storms by Thomas Zitkevitz! I'm quite excited by this, as it only came up during the campaign and I never imagined we would have a soundtrack for our module in the first place. I know not all people play with curated background music but for those who do: I so hope you'll like it!

Final Stretch Goal: New Adventure Location

By day the harbor laughs; by night the signs flip: DON’T SPEAK.
Something winged and wordless owns the dark—a man once, now leathered hunger, skimming eaves where lanterns die. It doesn’t hunt by sight; it drinks breath. A whisper is a beacon, a name is a scream, and the first sound you make is the last thing you hear.

You know, your commitment takes our breath away! That's why we are proud to present you with one last stretch goal, which we will dare at a funding of astounding 22,000 €, a completely new adventure location as a digital expansion that will take your breath away—literally: Don't Speak!

This is a standalone adventure that you can explore independently of Ravaged by Storms or our other stories. And it's a little preview of what we envision for the future once we've fulfilled this Kickstarter. As a big thank you to everyone who committed to the higher pledges of this campaign, we'll make the PDF and VTT assets of Don't Speak! available for free for everyone who backed this campaign on the Print Hurricane or Tempest Deluxe pledge levels.

To ensure that our main products ship on time, we will only begin to work in earnest on this adventure location, when all other items and stretch goals of this campaign have been fulfilled. Thus, we estimate digital fulfillment of this stretch goal will take place in Q3/2026.

Just One Week Left!

After three awesome weeks, we have around one week left to push this campaign further. Maybe you want to tell a friend or post about it on social media? Adrian of TTRPG channel Dungeons and Dyslexia has released a video guiding people through our Kickstarter project.

It's easy to share around if you want to help spread the word about Ravaged by Storms. Also, subscribe to his channel, there is great stuff. Just last week, I was watching his review of The Shrike.

Three Pamphlets will rise from the Deep

No, not another stretch goal or anything like that. SkeletonKey Games, who among other things published the Mörk Borg campaign The Masticator Gate, are going to launch a new Pirate Borg Kickstarter Three from the Locker next week (or so). So, of course I wanted to let you know about it:

As far as I can see it, the campaign will bring us three new pamphlets with scenarios, an adventure locations, asset cards, new expansions for naval combat, and more. I'm stoked to see what else is going to be inside.

Another FAQ?

I said I would be reposting backer questions and my replies to them in future upadates. Yes, I will, but I think this update has been long enough. So, next time!

This is the final week. Please spread the word, share the project, and let's push this to the final stretch goal and beyond!

“From pebble to monolith—your journey matters. The Golems have spoken.”

Alexander from Golem Productions

News Roundup, Soundtrack within reach, and the very first Review!
7 months ago – Mon, Sep 01, 2025 at 03:49:12 PM

The Golems Speak

Good evening wonderful people,

You continue to excite us with your continued support. I've already written this a few times, but thanks to all of you! 

As I write this, we are at about 970% funding and have entered the final third of the campaign period. If you would like to put in a good word for us on social media, your blog, or anywhere else, we would be very grateful. Following the interview with Dave Thaumavore linked to in the last update, two other channels have also featured Ravaged by Storms, which I would like to share with you:

New Media Coverage

First preview / review of our campaign module

On his awesome blog DOMAIN OF MANY THINGS, Jimmi Taylor (JimmiWazEre) has published a detailed preview of our adventure. I was delighted to read that the reviewer liked the core concepts of dynamic factions, the Coatl moving around and changing the map, the timer, etc. Check it out (but beware of spoilers)! 

As Jimmi is among the first to be able to take a look at the full adventure, you might want to hear what he has to say about the thing you are backing. :)
I certainly hope we will see a play report by him next year after he's played through the full campaign. 

Video Interview about all things Golem Productions

Sebastián (Begginer) from the YouTube channel Looking for Mom sat down with me to talk about who Golem Productions is, the current Kickstarter project, what's special about the adventure, and what we're planning to do next. If you enjoy listening to a spoken interview, this one's for you:

Soundtrack and Stretch Goal Business

Stretch Goal 14 close to being unlocked: Original Soundtrack

At the time of writing, we are only 127,- € (~US$149) away from smashing through our 14th stretch goal at 19,500 € (~US$22,834), which would unlock an original soundtrack by Thomas Zitkevitz for Ravaged by Storms. Technically speaking, we haven't unlocked it yet, but we have high hopes. As Thomas does. 

I am thrilled and moved by Thomas' enthusiastic attitude towards the project, and was already privileged to hear some atmospheric samples earlier today. He has even bought himself a rain stick as a new instrument for doing this project.

Stretch Goal 13 conquered quietly: The Scarlet Coral Citadel ++

With that, the previous stretch goal has of course been unlocked, which will allow us to extend our zine to 24 pages. In one of the previous updates, I already summarized what the “Enhanced Edition” of the adventure will include. Now, we're adding a few additional cool tables that will make it easier for GMs to bring the setting to life.

What does the future hold?

Have we reached the end? Will there be further stretch goals? I think we've already gone further than we hoped, but we might still have a nice little treat in store :)

What are we actually doing besides posting updates?

Lots of things like finalizing the art for Ravaged by Storms (Sabrina) and writing the new content for The Scarlet Coral Citadel (Alexander). However, I think we will inform you in more detail about the progress and the next steps once the campaign is over.

However, I am collecting questions that backers and interested parties are asking us on various channels, as well as answers to them. For many things we have already put up a comprehensive FAQ. So check it out, if you haven't seen it yet. Gradually, I will post my collection of questions not covered there in these updates, possibly in abbreviated form, as they will likely be of interest to several people. Let's start with this one:

Will the US tariffs adversely affect you?

Gladly, no. At least at the moment. Crowdfunding projects have repeatedly encountered difficulties recently due to deteriorating trade relations. In the last few days, there has been some concern about the fact that many European postal and parcel service providers have suspended deliveries to the United States. However, this does not affect us.

Why's that? Our setup involves printing some physical items for this campaign directly in the US, and others in Poland. The goods will then be sent from both our printers to our fulfillment company in the US. There, the various printed items will be assigned to individual orders and then fulfilled. Therefore, there will be no individual deliveries from Europe to the US, which would not be possible at present, but rather a single freight transport. On that we will of course have to pay 15% tariff, but this has been factored into our cost planning and we will cover it.

More will follow in one the next updates. If you have other questions, too, ask me anything! Anyway, have a great week and share the word!

“From pebble to monolith—your journey matters. The Golems have spoken.”

Alexander from Golem Productions