Ravaged by Storms – Mythic Sandbox Adventure for Pirate Borg

Short update: Interview with Dave Thaumavore
7 months ago – Thu, Aug 28, 2025 at 03:04:22 PM

The Golems Speak

Hey there, salt rats!

This is a very short update. Yesterday, we had the great pleasure to see a special interview published by Dave Thaumavore on his blog Thaumavoria. We sat down with Dave to talkabout all things Ravaged by Storms. 

Inside, you will find many new details about our upcoming adventure like ...

• our design approach, 
• what "art-heavy, but no art-punk" means, 
• the mechanics behind dynamic Coatl and faction activities,
• or the Storm Generator,
• and more.

Check it out: https://thaumavore.substack.com/p/breaking-the-hack-and-slash-habit 

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

Alexander from Golem Productions

Solo Storm Unlocked, new Soundtrack announced!
7 months ago – Mon, Aug 25, 2025 at 07:25:15 AM

The Golems Speak

Good Morning America, Good Afternoon Europe, Good Evening Australia and New Zealand,

Whenever you read this update: good day! I hope you had a wonderful weekend. Ours was wonderful, even though we were plagued by colds, because at some point during the last few days we passed the €16,000 mark and unlocked Solo Storm! We are almost halfway through the campaign and have already made progress in areas that we had previously considered to be hypothetical end goals at best. Terrific!

So let's take a closer look at that. In this update, I would also like to tell you about a new partnership we have entered into. 

Solo Storm - Play Ravaged by Storms solo!

As discussed in our previous update, Solo Storm will build on M. Allen Hall's excellent PIRATE BORG solo system Captain & Crew. The latter is a free supplement that introduces the OAR core gameplay loop for playing PIRATE BORG solo. It also includes some straightforward rule additions for solo play, as well as flavorful sparks and tables. With the author's friendly permission, Solo Storm will reprint the core rule sets of Captain & Crew to ensure that you will find everything you need in one document.

Solo Storm will be a free digital expansion that offers you everything you need to play Ravaged by Storms solo spoiler-free. It includes step-by-step instructions on which part of the book you should read as a solo player and when, as well as when to use which tables. It will enable you to enjoy the adventure as a player without any prior knowledge of its content. This will allow you to write your own solo legends and have hours of fun.

Just like with the previously unlocked Pieces of Eight expansion, we will only start working on Solo Storm in earnest once we have sent our main products to the printer in order to meet their fulfillment timeline. Therefore, we expect both expansions to be fulfilled in the first half of 2026, most likely in Q2. However, to ensure that solo players do not have to keep waiting after receiving their books, between the two we will prioritize the development of Solo Storm. By doing so, we aim to release it as close as possible to the physical distribution date of Ravaged by Storms.

New Stretch Goal: Original Soundtrack by Thomas Zitkevitz

Rock ‘n’ roll, ladies and gentlemen! I am very proud and excited to announce that an original soundtrack for Ravaged by Storms is just around the corner!

Stretch Goal 14: Ravaged by Storms Soundtrack (19,500 €)
The talented Thomas Zitkevitz, creator or BËNTHIC, a deep-sea delving hack of Mörk Borg, as well as a few PIRATE BORG supplements, will create instrumental electronic background music for Ravaged by Storms free for all backers. This is a digital stretch goal. Fulfillment is expected by the end of 2025.

If you want to listen to Thomas' work, check out the soundtrack he composed for his upcoming PIRATE BORG adventure The Scattered Seafloor. You can listen to it in this update for his ongoing Kickstarter campaign.

The Emaciated Reef, a tie-in stretch goal to The Scarlet Coral Citadel

If you have followed the link that I've just posted to the Thomas' campaign, you might have already noticed what new partnership I was teasing at the beginning of this update. To make it easy, I'll just post you a screenshot:

So, yeah, as this stretch goal of Thomas' campaign was already unlocked, I'll be adding a location to The Scattered Seafloor that's designed which is designed to represent the seabed around the scarlet coral citadel. While in all fairness, it should be said that both adventures will still work well as stand-alone pieces and can hold their own. This fantastic collaboration will obviously make it possible to combine the two adventures into one even bigger experience. 

I am really looking forward to this collaboration – a first for Golem Productions – and would like to thank Thomas very much for this opportunity, his supportive remarks, and the exciting content he brings to PIRATE BORG.

Until next time, sea dogs! Remember to share our campaign. Let's try together to get as far as we can.

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

Alexander from Golem Productions

Solo Adventure Mode, media outreach, and more!
7 months ago – Mon, Aug 18, 2025 at 03:02:58 PM

The Golems Speak

Good evening, ship rats!

Thank you very much for your patience and continued support. Before we get to the big news, let's start with a small request on our own behalf.

Do you run a YouTube channel, blog, or podcast? Interested in showcasing Ravaged by Storms, asking me questions, or even hosting an actual play?

If that's the case, please get in touch! We are very happy with how things have gone so far, but would love to spread the word about our work and our campaign to even more people. Let's talk, and we can figure something out. Good chance you will be able to showcase some exclusive material on your channel, if not a preview version of the whole adventure Ravaged by Storms.

Contact as here directly on Kickstarter or via e-mail to golemproductions[at]posteo.com . 

And if you don't have a channel of your own but still want to support the campaign further, we'd be grateful if you shared it via your social media channels or with your friends and family.

Let's Tackle Solo Mode!

Stretch Goal 12: Solo Storm (€ 16,000)
So far, Ravaged by Storms is an adventure designed for classic play with a GM and multiple players. But we know very well that the number of enthusiastic solo players and high-quality solo supplements is increasing dramatically!

So, let's do it! 

If we reach this goal, we will create a digital-only solo expansion that allows Ravaged by Storms to be played as a solo adventure! With his kind permission, it will build on Allen Hall's excellent PIRATE BORG solo system Captain & Crew. Solo Storm will guide solo players on how to play our Ravaged by Storms, which section to read when, which table to consult, etc. And best of all: all backers will receive the PDF for free! 

Since we will only begin working on this supplement after we have submitted our main products to the printer, fulfillment is expected in Q2 2026. This is a digital stretch goal!

Deeper Into the Red Flesh

Stretch Goal 13: The Scarlet Coral Citadel Enhanced ++ (€ 18,500)
Can't get enough of creative, cool tables? We feel the same way! We'll put our heads together again and enrich The Scarlet Coral Citadel with more tables that make the adventure exciting, fun, and varied. The number of pages will increase from 20 to 24. The final retail price—after the Kickstarter campaign has ended—will reflect this expansion. Therefore, the adventure will never be as low-priced as it is now. This is a digital and physical stretch goal!

More details about the new stretch goals will follow when we unlock them.
bon voyage!

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

Alexander from Golem Productions

Deep Sea Wonders and how the campaign will continue
7 months ago – Fri, Aug 15, 2025 at 06:42:11 AM

The Golems Speak

Today things have calmed down, as expected. After hundreds of hours spent on texts, graphics, videos, and concepts leading to this Kickstarter, it’s surreal to finally see the reactions. Sabrina and I spent months awaiting the big launch day, pushing ourselves hard in the final stretch—only for Day 1 to fly by in a blur.

With all the preparation, promotion, updates, and conversations, I only perceived so much of it. And now we're right in the middle of the campaign, conquering one goal after another. Many thanks again, to all the very supportive people and encouraging messages that we've received. 

Well, we still have a lot of work ahead of us and a lot of fun with the many things we have in the pipeline. So let's get going!

The Scarlet Coral Citadel Enhanced Edition

How it came to be

It must have been around a year ago—August 2024—that we released The Scarlet Coral Citadel in its original 11-page digital-only version. I remember vividly how overwhelmed we were by the “Best Adventure” award we received for The Way of the Worm at CABIN FEVER jam, and how we jumped into the next adventure with joyful anticipation. At the time, the community had come up with the idea of a one-page adventure project, which was what the adventure was originally conceived for.

But we just couldn't get the idea to work on a single spread alongside the illustration of the citadel. So we turned it into a double sheet, four pages. Then we added some more content, and then some more, until we ended up with 11 pages, which we improved significantly after the public playtest.

We just wanted to keep the momentum going and release something new soon. In the end, the dopamine may have gotten the better of us. Yes, we are proud of the adventure and I am excited about the core concept, but to be completely honest, I think we released it too early.

It was good, but with a little more time and polishing we could have implemented the concept even better. That's why we're creating an Enhanced Edition as part of this Kickstarter, available in print for the first time.

What we'll enhance

While I love the overall concept, I think there are still a few ways to make it easier for GMs to run this adventure. Since we'll need to expand the adventure from 11 to 16 pages in order to print it as a zine anyway, we want to capitalize on this opportunity. And thanks to the stretch goal we've reached, we can even work with 20 pages. The conceptual work is still ongoing, but basically we want to:

• Improve or clarify the descriptions of some specific locations within the citadel.
• Add some new illustrations, again originally drawn by Sabrina Jatscha, especially of NPCs and monsters.
• Introduce a new high-risk, high-reward PC class, the Red Coral Addict.
• Add game aids and tables to make it easier to run the Scarlet Coral Citadel as a pointcrawl dungeon.

What would you like to see enhanced? How did you run the adventure, if you already have it? Please share your experiences and expectations with us!

BËNTHIC: The Scattered Seafloor 

I can't talk about our Scarlet Coral Citadel without mentioning another interesting adventure by Thomas Zitkevitz made both for the deep-sea MÖRK BORG hack BËNTHIC and PIRATE BORG, which will launch on Kickstarter next week, Tuesday, August 19th!

The Scattered Seafloor is a 44-page Hexcrawl adventure, designed as an open-ended hexcrawl with plenty of different possible uses, the players in this adventure will journey under the waves to explore the strange wastelands surrounding the Antediluvian Trench, a mysterious, corrupted wound in the ocean within which an ancient evil dwells, and the main setting of BËNTHIC (or the Abyss of the Dark Caribbean). 

This Scattered Seafloor, which the PCs will cross on their way to the trench is made up of four distinct regions: The Mired Sands, hazy sand dunes filled with ruins and scattered treasures, The Schooling Grounds, a colossal school of fish doomed to starve together, The Pyroclastic Barrens, a flowing river of magma with an ancient city upon its shores, and Melville’s Folly, unsightly crags corrupted by the region’s namesake, a gigantic, mutant crab abomination.

I imagine this adventure to be a perfect complement to The Scarlet Coral Citadel. Perhaps, The Scattered Seafloor covers the deep sea region around the coral citadel. While the original hack BËNTHIC thematically fits in perfectly with its Dagon shrines, Deep Ones, and underwater ruins, it assumes a different technology level than found in The Dark Caribbean. This adventure, though, is designed specifically for use with PIRATE BORG and its setting.

Check it out and share the word!

Could you finally reveal new stretch goals?

Woah, yes! I mean, no ... 

All right, where are we now? In the first 60 hours of this 30-day campaign, we have unlocked no fewer than 11 stretch goals. That wasn't planned ... We are really thrilled by how quickly we have received so much support. It seems we misjudged our own project in this regard. When planning the stretch goals, it was paramount that our main products' timeline wouldn't be jeopardized and that we didn't take on too much. 

At the same time, we planned very cost-efficiently so that we could offer a relatively large amount of content for the amount of money already raised. However, I assumed that we would need 2-3 weeks of the campaign to achieve this... That's why we need to take a few days to reflect, although we have already hit the last disclosed stretch goal. We hope for your understanding. 

The good news is: YES, we have more stretch goals planned and ideas for them. But we need to prioritize carefully now so that we don't get carried away and fill the campaign with new things that will cause problems in the end. Till then, enjoy your time!

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

Alexander from Golem Productions