What happens when you mix The Old American West with Folkloric Horror? A First Look at Huckleberry

By JimmiWazEre

Opinionated tabletop gaming cowboy chap. Yeehaa.

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TL;DR:

Huckleberry: A Wyrd West RPG blends the grit of the Old West with creeping folkloric horror. Players take on the role of Mavericks; wandering bounty hunters chasing bounties through a world tainted by the supernatural Wyrd. Its poker-inspired Ante system, luck driven Wyrd Die, and flexible core mechanic make it quick to learn and richly thematic.

Disclaimer

Now then! You know the drill by now, so here’s the disclosure: I’m not calling this a review because I haven’t played Huckleberry yet. I’ve definitely not received any financial incentive to write about it, but I did receive a copy of the PDF to share my thoughts on without any actual obligation to do so.

Additionally, I will be including links to both the Backerkit crowdfunding page for the physical edition and affiliate links where you can pick up the PDF, which scores me a small kickback at no extra cost to you.

So saddle up partner, and let’s ride.

What Is Huckleberry?

Just the Facts

| Type | TTRPG |

| Theme | Western, Horror |

| Players | 2-6 |

| Ages | Teens and up |

| Dev | Steven Alexander |

| Pages | 161 |

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With the physical release launching on Backerkit on October 7th, 2025, Huckleberry: A Wyrd West RPG marks the debut tabletop release from Adventures in Lollygagging Publishing, written and designed by Steven Alexander with layout by Nathan D. Paoletta.

Originally conceived as a 1930s supernatural FBI investigation game inspired by Hellboy, Alexander’s design evolved after a session of Chris Spivey’s Haunted West revealed the perfect home for his mechanics - a dark frontier where the veil between worlds has thinned. Drawing influence from Powered by the Apocalypse’s 2d6 structure, Forbidden Lands’ approach to Traits and monsters, and the Blade Runner RPG’s step-die system, Huckleberry reimagines those ideas through a gritty Weird West lens.

The project was developed in collaboration with Adventures in Lollygagging, an indie Actual Play collective known for showcasing narrative-forward systems. According to Alexander, the partnership was a natural fit: “When it came time to be serious about self-publishing Huckleberry, it was an easy choice to publish under a label I already loved and wanted to contribute to.”

What’s it Trying to Do?

Here we come, reach for your gun and you better listen well my friend, you see; it's been slow, down below, aimed at you we're the cowboys from hell. Deed is done, again we've won, ain't talking no tall tales friend - 'cause; high noon, your doom, comin' for you - we're the: cowboys from hell.

--Pantera, Cowboys from Hell

I can’t help but have Pantera on as I write this all up. You see; Huckleberry is a weird west cowboy setting, where a corrupting maleficent force called “Wyrd” has been unleashed upon the “Fifth World”, introducing mutations to the local flora and fauna and everything between. In this setting, you play as “Mavericks”; bounty hunters, and the game play loop supports an episodic play style where each session is a new job as you and your team hunt for a new mark.

Alexander has clearly directed the game to be as player facing as possible; in a way that is reminiscent of Mork Borg, the players rolls for both attack and defence, and with a fixed target number of ten to aim for. Additionally, the GM (“Trailblazer“) is given tools to randomise events and situations in an effort to reduce GM cognitive load and keep the exciting decision making in the players hands.

Whilst the Mavericks certainly do not have the kind of longevity and power of a D&D 5e character, they aren’t going to typically be going down to one hit. Instead, the game encourages a cinematic play style, forgoing a lot of crunch in favour of fast play and building your legend as much as possible, before you inevitably hang your hat for the final time.

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What Stands Out to Me?

Here’s a selection of elements that really call out to me as being particularly cool features of the game:

The Core Mechanic

I know I always say this, but I chuffin’ love a well-done core mechanic. Elegance and versatility are essential in establishing a ‘rules language’ that can be broadly applied to the whole game, and there’s no prizes from me for complexity for the sake of it.

In the case of Huckleberry, I’m happy to report that the central mechanic is lush. To begin with, all your character attributes (quick, grit, reckon, and spirit) and skills (Education, Brawl, Wrangling etc etc) are represented by a single step dice each (that is, d6, d8, d10 or d12). To make a check, you roll two dice. One from the relevant attribute, and one from the relevant skill.

For example, to roll a check for fighting in a pistol duel the Trailblazer would call for “quick” and “hand guns”, they might be d10, and d8 respectively. You’d roll those dice together and add up the total. If it’s greater than ten (the TN is always ten) - you succeed.

The Wyrd Die

Every Maverick has a Wyrd Die, starting at a d10, representing their luck, grit, and connection to the supernatural. It’s rolled alongside an Attribute when you’re reacting to danger, such as a save against bullets, curses, or rocks falling. In this way, it echoes the core mechanic above.

The interesting thing though is that the die’s size shifts up or down as you burn through Wyrd. For instance, you can shrink it by one step to reroll a check (pushing your luck) or spend four Aces (the game’s meta currency) to raise it again. When it’s high, Not only does the Maverick become more likely to make their saves, but they’ve also essentially got re-rolls in the bank too. When it’s low however, you’re courting disaster.

It’s a clever little tension gauge that links narrative risk to mechanical pressure.

The Ante System

Instead of rolling dice for enemies or hazards, the Trailblazer flips cards from a poker deck. The suit tells the Maverick which Attribute they must save with (Spades = Quick, Clubs = Grit, Diamonds = Reckon, Hearts = Spirit).

Number cards mean ordinary danger, and the monster’s ‘stat block’ gives you examples of how to describe this, but face cards twist the knife by dropping a Maverick’s Wyrd Die or escalating the threat. On the plus side, Aces and Jokers throw boons upon the Mavericks in the form of meta currency and Wyrd die promotions.

Now, because every monster in the game includes bespoke face card effects, the same deck produces wildly different encounters: a King of Hearts from a Brute might mean their attack becomes an AoE assault, while the same card from an Outlaw Thug unleashes a hail of bullets and a major injury.

I’m particularly fond of this idea, having written about GM conflict of interest and cognitive load before; any game system that takes some decisions out of the GMs hands when they need a rest are a welcome inclusion as far as I’m concerned.

Three Tiers of Environment Description

I’ve written about this idea before - that all environments should have three tiers of information. In this way GMs learn that environmental descriptions should be concise, and players should learn to engage with their surroundings in order to get the juiciest information.

I’m very happy to see that Huckleberry shares my views on this with it’s explicit inclusion of Open, Hidden, and Locked clues. The first layer is freely available information upon entering an area. The second tier is free also, but requires the player to specifically ask about a given tier one element. The final tier contains the most valuable information about, or within a known element and is consequently locked behind a dice roll of some kind.

Not only does this make for good game play, but it also results in a much easier and more concise experience for the GM taking pre-game notes for preparation.

Clint Eastwood would be proud of this, someone should tell him.

Potential Friction Points

Look, I really don’t want to be critical of this game as I think it’s pretty nifty and my mates have already added it to the ever growing list of games that I absolutely 100% have to run for them, but I’d not be doing you any favours if I wasn’t up front with you about some of the things I would have done differently, or that you should be very clear on before you buy. So I just gotta bite the bullet and crack on:

Rulebook Organisation

The rulebook references keywords and denotes them with a leading capital letter as if a proper noun. Unfortunately it then often doesn’t define these keywords until much later. Being a monotropic thinker, I find that quite a frustrating experience to sort of have to stick a pin in the thread I was currently following, and to then have to go blindly searching through the book to grab a definition, before returning to my original position and trying to carry on with the original chain of thought.

Two simple fixes here would do more than pull their weight - bolded keywords, and then page references immediately afterwards. I recently reviewed Ravaged by Storms, a Pirate Borg supplement by Golem Games, and it’s a great example of this philosophy.

Character Sheets

The PDF doesn’t include a character sheet. Obviously, it’s available for free online, but I find an annotated character sheet is a useful thing to have in a book as it tends to tell you a lot about a game system and the elements that are important. It would have been nice to include one for the sake of taking up an extra page at the back.

Built For Episodic Play

The Injury slot health system, limited advancement, and slow healing make Mavericks short lived by design. It’s brilliant for one shots and serial tales, but less so for your traditional epic D&D style sagas taking years.

This absolutely works for me, as I believe that the episodic style of running games is the best way to go anyway. It keeps the adventures action focused, helps fight against GM burnout, and prevents the players from meandering into one of those off sessions where they take two hours to go shopping for new swords.

Do You Want to Know More?

Hey what’s this, other people have thoughts about Huckleberry too? What sorcery is this?! Checkout these videos if you fancy going deeper down the rabbit hole:

Conclusion

So, I’m definitely adding Huckleberry to my shelf and I’m already thinking about ways to mine the Dark Tower books by Stephen King for adventure inspiration!

So you know - Huckleberry has just launched their crowdfunding Backerkit for the physical edition of the game (7th Oct 2025), and if you’ve been tempted by the devilish succubus of this first-look, might I suggest that sir/madam takes a sniff over at the Backerkit page and make any pledges within the first 48 hours of launch in order to receive an exclusive neoprene Huckleberry dice tray?

Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed this, it’d be great if you could share it on your socials - it really helps me out and costs you nothing! If you’re super into it and want to make sure you catch more of my content, subscribe to my free monthly Mailer of Many Things newsletter - it really makes a huge difference, and helps me keep this thing running! Hey, Hey also! Check out some of the other great posts I’ve written recently on the carousel below:

Catch you laters, alligators.

Yo-Ho-Ho-Ho and a Collection of Off-Brand Pirates

By JimmiWazEre

Opinionated tabletop gaming chap who’s been exceptionally busy this month.

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TL;DR:

LEGO sets are pricey and out of print, but LEGO-compatible pirate ships from AliExpress scratched my itch for Pirate Borg minis at a fraction of the cost. The legality’s murky, the quality’s decent, and they’re undeniably cool.

Disclaimer:

This post discusses unlicensed, third-party brick sets purchased on AliExpress. LEGO® is a trademark of the LEGO Group, which does not sponsor, authorise, or endorse this product.

Consequently, no affiliate links or monitisation is present on this post as it just don't feel right.

Who’s a Pretty Boy Then?

Alrighty then, apologies for not keeping up with my usual output, I've been burning the candle at both ends this month by dedicating all my free time to helping out a mate.

I'm so tired that it's not exactly left me with enough beans to be creative, and I know that my commitment to the blog this month has suffered because of it.

So, bearing that in mind, today's post is gonna be a quick one, but hopefully you'll agree it's cool and worthwhile.

As you know, I like pirates, pirates are cool - and I have a Pirate Borg game that I'm building up to running. Well, it occurred to me a few weeks ago that it might be fun to grab some pirate LEGO sets, and maybe even find a use for them in game?

Well, three problems there straight away. LEGO don't do their pirate line currently, even if they did it'd be crazy expensive, and consequently the 2nd hand market is more expensive than many of these sets were new.

Take this one for example - the Renegade Runner is close to my heart because I had it as a kid. Sure, it was easily the worst ship available at the time but at about £30 (approx £65 adjusting for inflation - wowzers!) in 1993 it's probably less than what my mum could afford for a Christmas present, so I'm grateful.

Well today that same ship is going secondhand without a box for over £100 on eBay. Madness! Boxed and sealed, you're looking at north of £600. Not a cats chance in hell that I'm paying that, no way.

So what's a boy to do? Well, a boy could dip his toe in the murky shark infested waters of AliExpress, and this boy is glad he did, because this boy picked up several not-lego pirate ships for a fraction of the cost. Check these little badgers out:

Shiver me timbers, indeed.

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You see, LEGO lost their brick patent a few years back, meaning that anyone could make LEGO compatible bricks and sell them to the public. So they did. The end? Not quite. LEGO didn't lose their trademark, and they retain control of copyrighted builds and things like their mini figures.

So now there's a murky bit, some of these kits look very much like their LEGO counterparts, and I suspect they're either just different enough to not infringe copyright, or that where they appear very similar to older LEGO sets, they fall into grey areas of copyright law depending on jurisdiction. Hence manufacturers selling on AliExpress which is based in China. That's something to consider before you get too excited anyway.

And whilst we're at it, here's another thing to think about: Are there quality defects? The answer is 'Yes', but from the sets I have, I've only experienced very minor ones such as the occasional very tight fitting brick, miss-print in the instructions, or brick bags labelled with the wrong number... Nothing someone with two or more braincells can't work around, and certainly nothing that isn't compensated for by the exceptionally low price.

So, all that said and done, I now have some cool pirate sets, and I reckon that if I 3d print some of these LEGO compatible round bases, I can effectively have LEGO compatible pirate minis ready for Pirate Borg.

And yes, I'm aware I usually advocate against using minis in TTRPGs... But COME ON, they're so cool!!!

Conclusion

Thanks for sticking with me on this one, what do you think about using LEGO or similar in TTRPGs? Crazy idea or genius?

Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed this, it’d be great if you could share it on your socials - it really helps me out and costs you nothing! If you’re super into it and want to make sure you catch more of my content, subscribe to my free monthly Mailer of Many Things newsletter - it really makes a huge difference, and helps me keep this thing running!

Catch you laters, alligators.

Silksong & Monkey Island Meet Aliens: My Own Kooky Appendix N

By JimmiWazEre

Opinionated Tabletop Gaming Chap

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TL;DR:

My own “Appendix N” blends Stephen King, Terry Pratchett, Alien, Robocop, Monkey Island, and Hollow Knight into a stew of survival, satire, exploration, and corporate dystopia. These influences shape how I run games: players face real risks, moral greys, teamwork challenges, and a world that keeps unfolding the more you explore.

What Is Appendix N?

Back when, a million years ago when D&D first came out, one Gary Gygax included in the rules something called ‘Appendix N’. This was meant to represent something akin to his reading list to help nascent DM’s (who’d never seen D&D or any other RPG before) to understand the themes and vibes required to run D&D according to the intended vision of the authors.

Fast forward to today and it’s a neat little historical artefact for nerds to pour over and count off how many items they’ve personally consumed.

This week, I thought it’d be cool to share my own personal Appendix N (or perhaps ‘Appendix DMT’) for no better reason than to share a little bit about myself. This covers not on thematic things I like, but how these cultural artefacts guide my person GM style.

Let’s get crackin’!

Appendix DMT

The Gunslinger By Stephen King

The first book in King’s Dark Tower series is a favourite of mine, it tells the story of Roland Deschain, the last of the Arthurian Gunslingers, (essentially cowboy paladins) and his pursuit of the nefarious ‘man in black’ as he flees across the desert.

The book explores Roland in his anti-hero phase, where he continually has to struggle with the consequences of the sacrifices he makes (namely in other people) in order to achieve his ends.

I like the moral greyness here. The fact that there’s no easy ‘good’ option is something that I like to carry forwards into my games, making sure that my players don’t always get easy black and white choices in front of them.

IT By Stephen King

I read a lot of King, OK? Anyway, IT was the first King book I read, and I’ve always loved it. I love how Pennywise is presented as this mocking force of nature, but that his weakness (the unwillingness of his victims to be intimidated) is apparent from the start, and telegraphed in how he goes out of his way to ensure that his victims are always properly terrified before who goes in for the kill.

This is a great lesson for GMs, as it keeps games fair because it avoids designing arcs where players are spoon-fed the monster’s weakness at a pre-planned point, and instead leave it entirely up to them to connect the dots in their own time.

The other inspiration IT has upon me is the idea of the plucky underdog. At its core, this is an OSR principle, that an underpowered character can win the day not through raw toe to toe power, but through cunning and guile.

Mountain Survival By Edward Packard

I think this was my older brother’s - kicking about my childhood home in the late 80s. It’s a ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ book about: “You and your pilot; Jake Mckay [iirc] are flying over the Canadian Rockies, when all of a sudden the engine begins to splutter.” What follows is an interactive story about the survival choices you make as you attempt to navigate the wilderness on foot and find rescue for yourself and the injured Jake.

Invariably, many decisions lead to your untimely death. I distinctly remember a brutal choice about climbing up either the left, right, or middle of a crevasse and one of the choices leads to a boulder falling and wiping you out mid climb!

Mostly though, the choices you make are logical and well telegraphed allowing you to make an informed decision, and this is a principle that I like to carry through to my game. The risks are real, often fatal - but never a gotcha, never (ironically) ‘rocks fall, you die’.

Moving Pictures By Terry Pratchett

Compared to the others in this list so far, this ones going to come out of left field a bit I suspect :) Thing is, I like comedy and satire done well. Now, I’m far from a comic master, barely a comic novice, but what I take from Pratchett’s work here is the sparing introduction of silly and tension busting NPCs.

Mr. “cut me own throat“ Dibbler, the sausage in a bun salesman is brilliant, introduced carefully and not over used - making him easily one of my favourite characters in the book and a golden inspiration for a handful of similar characters of my own. Such as Bombastic Barry, and his brilliant bazaar of bodacious baubles and bewitching bric-a-brac, a joy to play and reintroduce at least once per campaign as part of my ongoing ‘Barry-verse’.

Alien

OK, leaving books behind now and moving onto films - Alien is a massive influence on me, I find corporo-dystopias to be a really terrifying and interesting sandbox to explore, and the idea that the real monsters aren’t the creatures crawling around in the vents, but rather your fellow humans, screwing you over for a payday.

It’s bleak as hell, but I always like to hold onto this whole ‘the good guys are actually the bad guys’ trick in my back pocket for deployment from time to time.

Robocop (1987)

More corporate dystopia and now with a healthy dose of satire. Robocop is a masterclass of combining the two to great effect without compromising the integrity of the film. In fact, the satire only serves to underline the absurdity of the fascist corporate oligarchy that the American system has descended into.

Thank goodness that’s just a work of fiction though. Right guys? Right? FFS.

The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)

That whole Mines of Moria scene, dude… it’s easily the most tense element of the entire franchise for me and it reduces our hard as nails heroes to mere mortals, running for their lives as they face the consequences of their mistakes.

Hell, even Gandalf ‘dies’, underlining the whole new ethos that I bring to the table every time - my players aren’t invincible and sometimes running is not only necessary, but also tense and great fun.

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The Secret of Monkey Island

Did you ever play this? Gem of an adventure game back in the 90s, I had it on my brother's Amiga. Easily one of my favourite games of all time - a classic that just keeps giving the more I go back to it!

But what do I take away from it for my GM style? Certainly not the linearity of the problem and solution loop, that goes against most of my GMing ideals, so I guess the key thing is its sheer irreverence, and parody.

Everything is a joke, normally grounded in pop culture. I think it's fine to take some of that and bring it into a game, so long as you don't over use it.

The other thing of course is Pirates! Definitely my favourite swashbuckling subject matter, and something that set me on a life long path for appreciating all things 1715 Caribbean!

World of Warcraft

I was deep down the WoW rabbit hole back when it first came out, up until the Cataclysm expansion where despite some cool new features, like instanced story telling, the game definitely started being dumbed down for the masses.

Which should tell you what I take from it; difficulty and the reliance on roles and teamwork to overcome threats. That's so much more interesting to me than modern games and TTRPG design which instead focus on these ‘one man army’ character builds.

If the problem you dish out as a GM can be solved by one PC’s character sheet in an instant, then the problem has failed to be interesting.

Faster than Light

I've lost so many hours to this one, it's a rogue-like where the idea is that the game is difficult and you're going to lose often, and each time you'll start again and have a blast. Learning, and getting better with each iteration.

For me, the key point to take away is that losing shouldn't be unfun. When players die, and have to roll up something new then it should feel like an opportunity and not a punishment.

How do I think you achieve that? Don't rely on deep character stories and arcs, let that stuff come naturally over the game. If there's no preplanned character arc to lose then players willingness to accept a new character is hugely improved.

Hollow Knight: Silksong

If you've not played Silksong or it's forebear; Hollow Knight then I pity you my friend! It's such a great example of a modern day metroid-vania.

But what is that and why's it relevent? Well, a metroid-vania game has a focus on exploration, hitting dead ends, exploring again, unlocking new solutions, backtracking and then using those solutions to progress at a previous dead end.

This is a framework we can carry carefully into TTRPGs. Not necessarily in the sense of locking progress away behind a predefined solution, but rather in keeping locations fresh and interesting for the players to visit many times and find something new each time - like a dungeon where the players return later with new knowledge/items, revealing paths that weren’t options before.

Conclusion

So that's it - my appendix N. What's yours? Answers below the line, folks. I look forward to reading them.

Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed this, it’d be great if you could share it on your socials - it really helps me out and costs you nothing! If you’re super into it and want to make sure you catch more of my content, subscribe to my free monthly Mailer of Many Things newsletter - it really makes a huge difference, and helps me keep this thing running!

Catch you laters, alligators.

The Seven Elements of West Marches Play

By JimmiWazEre

Opinionated tabletop gaming chap

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TL;DR:

West Marches campaigns hand more responsibility to the players: no scripted plot, no encounter balance, and strict timekeeping. The GM builds a world of rumours, dangers, and discoveries, while the players organise sessions, keep records, and decide where to explore.

Introduction

Ahoy there. Apologies if I’m a little late with this post, and if the writing’s a little more concise than normal. I’ve got the dreaded COVID lurgy and thinking straight is a bit of a mission right now :D

Today’s post is inspired by two things. Firstly, Critical Role season 4, and the perhaps clumsy(?) mention that it will be in West Marches style, and secondly, that maybe the West Marches style will suit my upcoming Pirate Borg campaign. We’ll see, but these are my thoughts so far.

Why Do A West March Style Game?

The West Marches is a style of TTRPG gameplay designed by Ben Robbins, and written up in 2007 on his Ars Ludi blog. The idea was that Robbins was burnt out as a GM, and bored of that mid campaign settlement where the players have lost some degree of enthusiasm for the ‘plot’ and are pretty much just going through the motions of turning up and rolling dice, then going home again. Rinsing and repeating each week.

Robbins wanted more, so based on his interpretation of the original 1970s playstyle, he coined/rediscovered/invented/reimagined a new/old style of play; the West Marches. The goals were threefold:

1. More player engagement, players who actually cared about the game world and wanted to discover it.

2. Less GM burnout from things like manufacturing and forcing complicated arching plots, or weaving in player backstories all while having to constantly juggle the pressure of not accidentally killing the players and cutting their stories short.

3. Fairer distribution of meta game responsibilities so that things like arranging dates and times of play, and sharing things like after session reports and maps was a responsibility for the players rather than the GM.

4. Robbins had more players than table space, and he wanted to find a way to allow them all to share the same instance of the game world.

The Key Principles of West Marches

1) No Predefined Macro Level Plot

West Marches games are unapologetically sandbox in style. That means that the GM has absolutely zero responsibility for attempting to craft a narrative story with character arcs.

Instead, the story of the game is told in retrospect and is crafted by the player’s choices, and the judgements of the dice.

None of this is to say that that the GM’s world shouldn’t have a history though - craft a world to your heart’s content - just don’t craft a series of future events designed to happen at designated points in the upcoming campaign. For example, you may have a big bad evil guy, but you must not have plans to bring him out on the final session. If and when he arrives in the game will be driven by the players actions.

2) Exploration and Discovery Focus

There is a huge emphasis upon the exploration pillar - that is; the means by which exploration is handled, and the player’s desire to discover the secrets of the world and plunder its loot. How you handle the mechanics of travel is up to you, but the key is moving the players into the wilderness.

In order to motivate players to the leave their home base, Robbins suggested making it a safe haven for rest and shopping, but not a place where adventure can be had or knowledge can be attained. In fact, the world is often built so that the further you travel from base, the greater the dangers and the greater the reward.

Taking a slightly different route, I’m going to experiment with having all of the home base elements of the game happen away from the game table to be managed entirely between games, so that the actual sessions start and end with leaving and arriving back at home base.

3) No Encounter Balance

The GM should pay no heed towards trying to keep the player characters alive in the face of their poor choices. It is this perceived deadliness which drives the players to advance in the game and find ways to meet their own goals. When a band of player characters return back to base in failure, they return with a greater understanding of the challenges that lie ahead so that they might try again, better prepared next time.

Besides, I find that as with most things in life, all the juice is in the journey rather than the destination. That is, the striving toward success, not the actual succeeding.

To be blunt - this means, yes, player characters will die. Probably frequently. When they do, roll up a new one. This means that in turn, that adventuring groups will contain characters of different levels, and that’s OK too. When games are engineered this way, the focus of game play becomes less about your stats and abilities on a character sheet, and more about your abilities as a player to effectively and creatively solve problems. That’s a feature, not a bug.

4) Players Are Incentivised to Write Up Session Reports

Players should be encouraged to keep up all the between-game book keeping as much as possible, and make it publicly available on some kind of digital sharing and communication platform. Discord seems like a solid choice. This is meant to simulate the natural flow of stories and rumours that would happen when an adventuring party got back and hit the local tavern, and it’s a crucial shared resource for everyone. It plays a huge part in helping the players decide what they want to do next, especially when some players miss a couple of sessions and might not otherwise know what’s going on.

Be warned though, the GM should never be tempted to correct the player’s imperfect interpretation of the world, be that maps they have created and updated, or reflections upon a session’s activity. Nor should you correct your world to match their version - let the players discover for themselves where mistakes were made and correct them as the course of the adventure unfolds.

All that said, I think it’s very likely that players will need to be highly incentivised to do this, as most are used to being passive consumers of content - and now we’re effectively saying that we expect them to complete homework. I’ll experiment with using meta currency, or even XP as incentives until I find something that works.

5) Activity Driven by Rumours and Clues

As GM, you’re predesigning the world with care. Each location in the game’s world should be keyed and intentionally formed, and each should contain clues pointing to another location that ensures the players are never without tantalising options for future adventures.

Equally, I’ll also be using the between-session time to post rumours to the campaign discord which reflect what the players might have heard in the local tavern. There’s no pressure on the players to pursue these rumours and not all of them will even be true, but they will serve to stop the players from ever being short of options.

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6) Player Responsibility To Arrange Sessions

This is a big one. Based off all the information players have received both in game, from rumours and from write ups, the players arrange between themselves where they want to go to next. If you’re operating with more than ones table’s worth of players then some will miss out on a particular adventure, and if they’re eager, they’ll set up a rival party to maybe head out to the same location to try to get the loot first.

Either way, when a group of players have come together to agree what they want to do next, and when and where they want to do it (they need to make sure the GM is also available and has enough notice to prepare) then they simply book the time in on the Discord server, or wherever you’re tracking your campaign, and provide details of the in-game date that the expedition is going to set off.

7) Strict Timekeeping Must be Kept

Firstly, before I get into it, your GM life will be made so much easier if you enforce an in-game rule that all adventuring parties must end their session at home base. If this involves having to come up with suitably punishing rules about ‘rolling to return home’ then so be it - it’s worth it for the headaches it saves. Let me explain why:

This is probably the biggest complication with running West Marches style games. As GM, you have to manage the passage of in-game time really carefully and accurately. If you do have multiple groups then the main headache will be in keeping track of branching timelines when a group departs, and then folding those timelines back into the main branch when the adventurers return back to base. All this has to be done in way that avoids creating any in-game ‘crossing of the streams‘.

For example; lets say you have two groups. If group A departs on the 1st day of your in-game calendar for location Z, and then they return on day 4, that represents a branch. The implication of this; is that later on in real time, group B cannot arrange a session where they depart on day 2 for location Z also. Why not? Because it would create a conflict - group A did not meet group B at location Z during the period of days 1-4, therefore group B cannot have gone there.

It would however be fine for group B to set off to location Y on day 2 and return on day 5. This doesn’t cause a conflict. They could also set off for location Z on day 5, but they’d be arriving at a place that’s already been visited.

At some point, your play groups should intermingle and form new groups. In these cases it is important to resolve any calendar differences between the different characters. Following our examples, for some PCs it is day 5, and for others it’s day 4. In these situations, we use downtime for the players on day 4 to fast travel them forwards to day 5. Alternatively, we fast travel everyone to whatever agreed day the next expedition happens on.

For me, this ‘downtime’ is the opportunity for players to shop, train, heal, carouse, careen their ships - whatever seems reasonable.

You’re gonna need a digital calendar to track this so that everyone knows what’s going on.

Additional Considerations

Consider Giving the Players A Basic Map

Not essential, but you might want to consider giving the players a starting map. Not a hex map, mind - nothing gamefied. Just a basic outline of the land, something that they can fill in as they go.

Multiple Groups or One Group

You can do this with only one table’s worth of players, that certainly simplifies the timekeeping, but it does mean that you’d be missing out on a key component of West Marches play - inter-player competition, and a sense of urgency to be the first to discover somewhere and get the loot.

That’s a big deal and one of this methods key draws.

Emergent Gameplay Vs Prep One Session at a Time

This isn’t an either/or situation. You should prep what you can for a given session once you’ve been informed of the players intent, but as with any style of TTRPG GMing, you should also have all the tools you need to hand to help you improvise emergent play when things take a turn for the unexpected.

Tools of the Trade

Just a quick list of some essential tools… Well, I think think they’re gonna be essential:

• A private discord server, fully set up with different chat rooms for different purposes such as arranging sessions or sharing reports.

• Maybe something like Obsidian Portal so that players can share their understanding of the world in a structured way.

• Both an in-game calendar for planned expeditions, and a real world one for plotting game session on!

It’s all gone wrong!

There are a few pitfalls to watch out for I reckon, the key things to watch out for are:

• Players forming cliques and never mixing with other players. You should make rules to force players to mix it up every once in a while.

• Social barriers - such as players being bold enough to put themselves forward to actually arrange a session, rather than hoping someone else will do it, or players being too passive to bother with the after session write ups.

• As GM, if you do need to break the rule about returning to base in the same session, you need to be really careful about how you handle it and the implications that this has on the timeline for everyone else.

Conclusion

My next move is gonna be to put this article in front of my play group and see if they’re interested. Maybe you can use it in the same way? If you’re interested in running West Marches style games, feel free to direct your players over this way to test the waters.

Also, I’ve never done West Marches before - if you have any advice or comments, please chuck it down below the line, I’ll be grateful of anything you can share!

Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed this, it’d be great if you could share it on your socials - it really helps me out and costs you nothing! If you’re super into it and want to make sure you catch more of my content, subscribe to my free monthly Mailer of Many Things newsletter - it really makes a huge difference, and helps me keep this thing running!

Catch you laters, alligators.

What Makes ‘Ravaged by Storms’ a Standout Pirate Borg Sandbox?

By JimmiWazEre

Opinionated tabletop gaming chap

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TL:DR:

A storm-wracked sandbox, a furious feathered serpent, and a doomsday clock. Ravaged by Storms is Golem Productions’ newest Pirate Borg adventure — a 72-page mini-campaign where factions clash, hurricanes brew, and the Blight Revenant stirs. I really like it, it’s packed with GM tools like a Storm Generator and Ruin tables, but my first look also spotted a couple of quirks. Here’s what stood out to me.

Disclaimer

Similar to last week’s initial exploration of Emergent, I can’t call this a review. I’ve not played it yet you see, coupled with the fact that I’ve only been sent a WIP copy with some missing images etc and haven’t seen the final version.

As ever, I’ve not received a financial incentive to write nice things, but I am a backer of the Ravaged by Storms Kickstarter. When Golem Productions reached out to invite me to showcase their adventure, I was happy to answer the call. As part of this, I fed back a few suggested improvements to Golem Productions, and as such you’ll find me credited in the book :)

The upshot is that despite that very minor minor conflict of interest, you’re gonna be reading my honest first thoughts on an adventure which is mostly finished, and that I quite clearly can’t wait to get my hands on the finished product!

Oh, and whilst I’m disclaiming, this post contains minor spoilers covering the opening setup of the adventure. Cool? Swinging, lets get started.

What is Ravaged By Storms?

OK so, off the back of successful releases ‘The Way of the Worm’ and ‘The Scarlet Coral Kingdom’, brother - sister duo Alexander Jatscha-Zelt and Sabrina Jatscha (Golem Productions) have got yet another Pirate Borg adventure on the stove. ‘Ravaged by Storms’ (RbS), is currently in a live Kickstarter (well, live until 11th September 2025 anyway) and the campaign has already hit a fantastic 426 backers with over £15,000 pledged so far.

Jatscha-Zelt describes RbS as a “72-page mythic sandbox adventure module designed for Pirate Borg… rules-light, art-heavy, and fiercely OSR.“ and he’s pretty much nailed it.

For those unfamiliar with the idea; since it’s a sandbox adventure there’s no middle or end plotted out for you to awkwardly steer your players towards. What happens is totally in their hands. Player. Agency. My dudes.

There is however, a beginning:

In The Beginning, There Was A… (Minor Spoiler Alert, players skip to the next section!)

A millennia or so ago Mesoans settled in an archipelago in the Bahamas of the Dark Caribbean called the Death Wind Islands. With the help of their Coatl allies (serpentine demigods of wind and storm) they go on to build a glorious city housing all their wealth and knowledge.

Hundreds of years later, those Mesoan chaps are long gone - but their crumbling kingdom remains guarded by the last Coatl; Tzoketuapacatl (bless you!). It’s lucky he does too, because during a siege on the city an undead warrior was touched by a local Great Old One’s juicy venom and transformed into (our BBEG) the Blight Revenant, and this chap is hell bent on claiming the Whisperwind Conch.

If the Revenant ever manages to nab it from the city, the result could be extinction-level toxic hurricanes:

Fortunately, Tzoketuapacatl intervenes. Sealing the city, Revenant, and the Conch behind layers of impenetrable magical raging storm prisons. This is seemingly a cunning, nay, foolproof plan with but. One. Small. Flaw…

You see, it all slowly unravels if anyone gets into the city through the back door and yoinks a second magical McGuffin; the Wind Bone Key.

And, well, ‘sugarpuffs!’ Wouldn’t you just know it!? Flash forward to the Golden Age of Piracy and some swashbuckling scurvy dog has only gone and unwittingly done exactly that! Now there’s a six day timer ticking until the Blight Revenant gets his boney hands on the Conch, and to really stick the boot in - Tzoketuapacatl (who is understandably pretty dischuffed with this turn of events!) is going on a bit of a rampage against all the local factions trying to find the Wind Bone key and is tearing everything up in his path.

Unto this scene, enter stage left; our heroes.

Come on, that sounds pretty Saturday morning swashbuckling, right? I’m in.

What’s it trying to Do?

Be A Complete Mini Campaign

RbS is built to run as a 5-10 session adventure. Whilst you could probably run it straight out of the book, I would always recommend familiarising yourself with the content that you need to run an expected session, and making some notes prior to sitting down at the table.

It has a defined opening, a ticking doomsday clock, and enough locations, NPCs, and encounters to sustain a whole arc without having to do much more work than flesh out some of the things given to you should the players actions necessitate it.

Encourage Sandbox Play

There’s no fixed middle or end.

Instead, the module gives you procedures for faction activity, travel, and naval encounters so the world keeps moving around the PCs. The story isn’t pre-written and can only be understood as something that happened at your table in the past-tense, rather than something that the GM dictates will happen.

That’s really key to understanding how to use RbS: The players choose what to pursue, who to side with, and how to spend their six days before everything goes all Sharknado. The module does have a handful of potential ways the campaign might play out listed at the end, but the purpose here isn’t to say ‘pick one’, rather ‘this is just an inspirational small range of the limitless possible outcomes’.

Be Modular

After all that though, if a Sandbox campaign really isn’t your thing, well the module is also pretty damn modular to be honest. You could easily reach inside and tear out the stuff you like, such as the Lifeless City, or Drownmaids Rest to use as one shot adventures, and then adjust the player agency to taste.

What Stands Out To Me?

The Timer

The six day timer is doing two things, firstly, it’s setting expectations that this isn’t going to be a terribly long campaign arc (5-10 sessions), in fact this campaign is going to be perfect for my Pirate Borg campaign as a keyed location to drop in, and that’s how I’d suggest you use it too.

Secondly though, the timer is infusing the adventure with a sense of urgency which is something I find to be critical in keeping the players moving forwards and not getting bogged down trying to fulfil that ‘videogamey’ habit of exploring all paths and getting every achievement… and then consequently robbing the experience of all it’s tension.

The Roaming Coatl

Tzoketuapacatl is a cool monster, no doubt about it. But he serves a meta-function as a chaos generator and a GM safeguard.

I was thinking about this, we’re all human, and even in sandboxes GMs sometimes drift into predicting how things might play out. Once you start imagining outcomes, you risk steering players toward them. The Coatl prevents that.

By rolling for his actions and storms, and including information on how all the keyed locations change in his aftermath, the board state constantly shifts in unpredictable ways. It keeps the GM honest, preserves agency, and if you make the players feel it; I can imagine it injecting fresh tension each new game day.

The fact that Golem Productions has included this meta layer of thinking about how their module should be ran, and how they can make it easy for you to stick to sandbox principles really impressed me.

Sandbox Toolkit

OK, so yeah - the Coatl is very specific to RbS. But there are other gameplay tools that you can add to your broader Pirate Borg arsenal, and that makes it extra valuable:

• There’s a Storm Generator that provides you with both descriptive prompts, but also translates these into specific player challenges, and suggests potential consequences for failure. Really useful for making weather more than simple flavour.

• A Ruins Generator that lets you roll up some convincing locations for crawling, in case players take a left turn and find themselves somewhere that looks like it could use a dungeon.

• Six new rituals from the ‘Squallbinding’ school to give extra magical options for PCs, all focused around the movement of air; wind, speaking, breathing etc.

Faction Play

Every group on the islands has its own agenda: there’s the pirate group; the Phantoms fracturing under Marceau, the West India Company scheming for control, the Bright Maiden’s mercurial ghost crew, the Coatl’s wrath, Peacatatl, and the Blight Revenant.

They’re all written to act and react alongside the PCs, with different motivations which creates shifting alliances and betrayals, again adding to the richness and variety of the campaign’s path at your table.

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Nostalgia

It would simply be remiss of me not to mention that the art and descriptions are fantastic throughout. I really appreciated that elements of it grabbed me right in the childhood and transported me directly back to Monkey Island, meeting “Herman Toothrot” and tinkering about with monkeys and suspicious statues. Great stuff!

Potential Friction Points

Terminology Consistency

I especially like how the module uses a similar concise framework to my preferred method when it comes to giving area descriptions, however one of the things I fed back on relates to the consistency of the terminology in these areas. I should stress, mine was a preview copy with final changes yet to be made, but I noticed instances where I was uncertain if more than one distinct noun or proper name for a given element was simply artistic flair, or an indication that there were multiple similar elements.

For example, are “Maritime Beast,” “bone cage,” and “skeletal remains.” all referring to the same giant desiccated animal corpse on the beach, or are there three?

It’s fine to do this for many people, but for me personally it made reading comprehension just that little bit more of a challenge. Having to reread lines, over analysing, self doubt, that question - ‘have I missed something from elsewhere that explains this?’.

I’ll be happy to see this resolved in the final product, with the addition of the last few area maps which will clear this up nicely :)

Intentional Vagueness

Since this is a concise OSR adventure, there’s not pages and pages of lore a la WOTC. That’s not to say lore is absent, but rather that RbS is concise and gives you the minimum to make sure the GM is in control of the important facts. This means you’ll have to improvise if more detail is required.

This is going to work absolutely fine for me as all the main details have been covered and I just need to add some flesh to the bones here and there, but if you’re not comfortable with improvisation then it could be a sticking point for you, and it’s worth knowing, going in.

Navigation

There’s quite a lot of page flipping to be had in RbS, mainly in relation to how one of the broad cast of NPS relates to another regarding factional interplay. The nice thing is that you are specifically told where to flip to though, and you’re not just left to vaguely cast about looking for the relevant section.

I think I would have preferred to see some kind of nodal diagram showing all the different cast members, who they are connected to and how. That could have been up front on a single page and would have meant that I’m not regularly having to flip to elsewhere to get the full picture explained to me.

As it currently stands, this is probably the main reason why I said earlier that the module does still require you to read through and make notes, to make sure that you’re in total command of all the relevant information.

Do You Want To Know More?

Looks like Ravaged by Storms has made a bit of a splash, which is really nice to see.

Over at Thaumavoria, Dave has a nice interview up with Golem Productions, discussing RbS and various design choices.

And Rascal News even has a guest piece up discussing the Kickstarter!

There’s also an interview up on Youtube with Mom’s Open Table and the Kickstarter trailer offers a nice tease:

Conclusion

Obviously, it’s clear that I really like the look of Ravaged By Storms. I think it’s going to be an excellent option for inserting into my wider PB campaign. On top of that, you know I’m going to be lifting those GM tools straight out and putting them to use more broadly.

How about you though? Do you think it looks interesting? What would you like to see form a module like this? Answers in the comments below as always :)

Oh, before I forget - If you want to get in on the kickstarter, head over to the campaign in time for the final push before September 11th and grab yourself a slice of the action.

Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed this, it’d be great if you could share it on your socials - it really helps me out and costs you nothing! If you’re super into it and want to make sure you catch more of my content, subscribe to my free monthly Mailer of Many Things newsletter - it really makes a huge difference, and helps me keep this thing running!

Catch you laters, alligators.