What’s The Story, Muthur?
To the point, tabletop gaming
The Seven Elements of West Marches Play
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.
By JimmiWazEre
Opinionated tabletop gaming chap
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:
More player engagement, players who actually cared about the game world and wanted to discover it.
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.
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.
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.
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?
When Golem Productions reached out to invite me to showcase their adventure, I was happy to answer the call.
By JimmiWazEre
Opinionated tabletop gaming chap
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.
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.
How I’m Laying The Foundations Of A Great Pirate Borg Campaign
I’ve just finished running the Lost Mines of Phandelver (my thoughts on that will be up soon) and one of my players, Chris, is going to be taking up the GM mantle again in November to run us through Curse of Strahd. This gives us just a couple of months of palette cleansing time.
By JimmiWazEre
Closeted Pirate. With many opinions on tabletop games.
TL/DR:
Pirate Borg grabbed me like a sea curse and hasn’t let go. Here’s a look at how I’m preparing my first campaign
Why Pirate Borg?
I picked up Pirate Borg (PB) on a whim after seeing a few favourable reviews on YouTube, I was out of town and in a LGS and there it was. It’d have been rude not to. Scanning through it on the train journey home I was really pulled in with it’s evocative vibes and rules-lite grounding. I was reminded of the old Monkey Island games I used to play on the Amiga.
It’s consumed me! I’ve gone in deep down the special interest hole, consuming every piece of quality pirate content I can find:
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (the rest are varying degrees of beautiful garbage - fight me!)
Black Sails on Netflix
The Lost Pirate Kingdom (a short docu-drama series on Netflix)
The Pirate History Podcast on Spotify
Real Pirates Podcast on Spotify
The Republic of Pirates by Colin Woodard
On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers
Countless YouTube videos on the differences between Sloops, Brigs, and Frigates - fore and aft sails vs square rigged sails, how they work. What a “Jib” is. Blackbeard, Benjamin Hornigold, Black Sam Bellamy, Charles Vane. The list goes on, and I love it all!
I especially love the idea of taking all that and then smushing it with other cool things like: the legend of Atlantis, El Dorado, Voodou, Necromancy, Cultists & Cosmic Horror, the Bermuda Triangle & mother trucking big assed beefy sharks! Anachronisms be damned!
Awesome. I have a very good feeling about this!
Structure & World Building
I’ve just finished running the Lost Mines of Phandelver (my thoughts on that will be up soon) and one of my players, Chris, is going to be taking up the GM mantle again in November to run us through Curse of Strahd. This gives us just a couple of months of palette cleansing time, so I’m thinking that sandbox style campaign is the way to go. Fortunately, PB seems to have been built with that in mind.
The developer, Limithron has provided a free campaign hex map of the “Dark Caribbean” and alongside the multitude of official and third party modules, this means that you can just feed the players rumours for one of these modules, and then drop it in as an adventure site in one of the hexes. That’s exactly how I’m doing it anyway.
The Dark Caribbean Campaign Map
Here’s one of the official maps that I’ve relabelled to be player facing, and drawn shipping lanes all over it so that players can make informed decisions about where the best pirating might be found. The GM version of this contains spoilers so I won’t be posting it here, but it’s basically this with a load of adventure sites keyed in.
Campaign Setting
PB comes with a framework of fictional history for you to work with. For my campaign, I’ve taken this and built upon it, whislt still keeping it fairly abridged. There’s a version that’s GM facing, containing facts for the players to maybe find out if they’re interested, and there’s also a common knowledge version (below) that the players will have access to from the start.
Known Facts
It is end of the beginning of the 18th Century. The so called ‘Golden Age of Piracy’ is almost over.
As foretold by the Voodou shamans - the dead have risen. Sailors and settlers vanish. Graves are empty. Ships return crewed by corpses.
A strange white powder called ASH is the most valuable substance in the region. Some use it as a drug, others for occult rituals. It's the main reason anyone still braves the Caribbean, and it’s harvested from the burnt remains of the undead.
The sea has opened up a yawning abyss South West of Cuba, darkening the sky above and inspiring terror throughout the region.
The pirate republic of Nassau still holds out, but barely. It’s one of the last ports free from colonial authority.
Familiar Rumours
An Old Stone Church in Havana is ruled by fanatics. They chant to a “Deep God” and claim death is not the end.
The mythical city of Atlantis has risen in shattered pieces from the Bermuda Triangle. Relics from its ruins fetch a fortune, and many who seek them go mad.
Additionally, strange golden artefacts have found their way to market, which the antiquarians have traced to the lost city of El Dorado.
Blackbeard; the legendary pirate of Nassau was thought dead - killed by the British Navy. But somehow, he’s returned. He is changed; undead, terrible, and now commands a fleet of the dead laying waste to everyone in their way.
Sailors whisper of a lone tribal figure, seen in jungles or cliffside ruins, never speaking, never ageing. His arrival always precedes catastrophe.
Conclusion
So there we go. If you’re one of my prospective players - I hope this tickles your pickle. If you’ve just stumbled upon this, I hope you can find inspiration in some of this.
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.
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.