Pirate Borg Starter Set, Down Among the Dead, & GM Screen reviews

Pirate Borg launched as maybe the best implementation of the Mork Borg engine; I stand by my abject praise of the game, which took Borg and added some well-needed meat to its bones, filling out the mechanics with extra depth and a horrific, varied setting to explore. With shades of a certain Pirates franchise, this game's presentation of the Dark Carribean brought plenty of new ideas to the fore, like the fluctuating economy of its magical undead Ash, and the encroachment of eldritch things. A few years on, Limithron builds on its success with some welcome releases. The Starter Set comes with everything you need to play the game, while Down Among the Dead explodes the game with new content, a full setting, and plenty of player resources. With these dual releases, now is the perfect time to get started with Pirate Borg, or reinvigorate your ongoing games.

I can't say it enough: this is the right way to design and present information. It's so consistently refreshing how this game manages to be usable, thematic, artistic, and just fun without demanding much of the reader. You really can have it all without compromising, if you remember to look in the right place (that isn't owned by Hasbro.)

Starter Set

This is an instant buy, honestly. The price point for the quality and amount of materials quite seriously sets the standard for what starter sets should contain. The box itself features embossed characters, oozing with personality and a few other fluids. Its stark color palette of black, white, red, and grey has very little that's explicitly gory or violent, but uses stylized designs to deliver its tone of fantastical horror.

The interior of the box has reference materials for important rules and a QR code with a random PC generator. This amount of thoughtfulness, usefulness, and style are simply unmatched for $50. Many RPG core books cost more than that. All of this praise I've found without even looking at the materials inside the box. I'll deal with each of the contents in turn, but start with the overview.

• A 60 page Player's Guidebook, containing all of the player-facing rules.
• Trapped in the Tropics, a 60 page adventure.
• 58 tokens for players, monsters, ships, wind direction, and time tracking.
• 12 resin polyhedral dice
• 10 large maps for ships, the world, and locations
• 25 double-sided character sheets
• 6 laminated character creation worksheets
• 2 dry erase markers

This is a more than generous amount of material, for something that serves as a great introduction or supplement for existing fans. It contains everything you need to get in the game and keep playing for a long time. If you already have the core book, the tokens, maps, and other materials will instantly improve the quality of your game, without forcing you to have uselessly superfluous information. The only content that overlaps with the core book is the soft-cover Player's Guide, which is mostly a chunk of the core book. This is not a weakness, does not detract from the quality of the book, and in fact increases its usefulness. This way, you have two references (core and player's books) that have the same information, but one of them has GM facing information and the other can be passed around to the players. It makes for a seamless transition into the main game if you want to, but also works out fine as a standalone product. The one point of difference is some slightly refurbished reference pages to make an easier entry for the players, which comes across as a very thoughtful move.

The non-adventure material speaks for itself. I don't have a ton to say about this that isn't captured in how useful they are, without sacrificing style. The box has playing sized cards,  with stats for ships and NPCs, and a reference card for ship combat rules. If I had any quibble, it's that there are relatively few of each of these. However, it's enough to serve the adventure contained in this box, and the game's statblocks are concise enough that you don't need the Pathfinder-style reference at hand under most conditions. 

The double-sided, laminated player worksheet is a dream. A new player needs that sheet and nothing else to make their character. (And keep in mind the QR code will make a character for them if they don't want to read the sheet.) With these resources, the barrier to entry is essentially nothing. Give a new player that sheet, and they're ready to go. Adding the reusability helps make them an ongoing tool. If you want something more traditional, the stack of non-laminated character sheets are a little busy, but still thematic and a nice inclusion.

I don't need to dig too deeply into the maps and tokens except to say they're beautiful, useful, and once again show a ton of care was put into their creation. The character tokens match the artwork of each class, and the maps add a ton of utility to your game.

Trapped in the Tropics, the soft-cover introductory adventure, is where you should look if you want to learn how to organize and layout an RPG adventure. I won't spoil the story itself, but I can tell you that new GMs will have no problem getting up and running. Information is concise, only taking up a 1 or 2 page spread, with a spectacular introduction to running the game. It opens with the general information you as the GM will need to know about overall events, breaking itself down well into character resources, important information, and the flow of the rest of the adventure.

My one note of detraction is that the low price-point does bring some drawbacks in terms of material survivability. The books are soft-cover and the maps are not laminated. If you fold and unfold them over time to store in this box, they will degrade. The box also doesn't work as the ideal storage for these materials once you've punched everything out, but it will have enough space for everything. I don't count this as a travesty. The starter set grants you enough material for a well-sized adventure; you could stop there, leaving the game unharmed, while those invested in using it long-term can protect or store their materials using whatever their preferred method happens to be.

Down Among the Dead

This book is a lot of things at once. Beyond useful tables, like for coral reefs or islands, it comes with a new setting, a set of adventures, and character resources. The table for magical, potentially cursed, coins, fills out immense value to the game while taking up a scant two pages.

My one point of contention comes in the way these materials lack some context. The table of contents is great, and can easily direct you where you need to go. However, it's kind of awkward the way you open the book and find resources thrown together without much introduction. Map, classes, coins, setting, adventure, right after one another, with not much to set the stage and tell you what you're actually looking at. That flaw has a short haflife once you get your head around the major conceits and find out what you want to seek in this book.

The book has three new classes. The Antiquarian is a researcher, skilled in languages and exploration. The Deep One is exactly as it sounds, an amphibious dweller of the dark ocean. The Unlocked Soul is an undead, bound to keep adventuring by the strange energies of Davy Jones' Locker. Maybe most useful are the d66 skills, analogous to feats, that you can add to characters to fill out their capabilities if you found the base game a step too simplistic.

I won't go into exhaustive detail about the other resources, but suffice it to say they match the quality of the rest of the game: useful, well laid out, and easy to find within the book. These optional rules, like a drinking game, genuinely expand the scope of possibilities for you to personalize your experience without adding frustrating complexity.

What remains are the setting and adventures therein. Again I won't spoil details of their plots, but I will discuss some generalities. Everything takes place in Davy Jones' Locker, a mysterious bardo where lost souls sail, seeking a refuge they may never find. You could use this as a brief stopping point in a main adventure or as the location of its own grand quest. Escaping the Locker is no easy feat, and the inky green depths belie tons of potential.

Lost in the Locker lets you explore and attempt to escape, hounded all the while by Charon the ferryman. Venom in the Veins is a relatively brief dungeon crawl. The one shot adventure maintains Pirate Borg's characteristically great presentation, and could serve as a good entry point if you don't want to use the Starter Set. Into the Maelstrom is a more full-throated adventure, with deep-sea vampires that will challenge you socially, physically, and mentally. The Three Eyed Parrot addition serves as a game and fortune-telling tool both. 

These tools are great, but not quite essential. This is well worth it for Pirate Borg fans or those wanting a good seafaring sandbox, and works well within its self-made niche.

GM Screen

As with my recent coverage of Peter Pauper Press' GM screen materials, I'm not going to give this a formal review score. I just feel the nuance is too little and the information too overwhelmingly obvious about whether or not you will be interested in this. That said, this is still a great buy. $25 is hefty compared to the price of the starter set, but that's not to say the quality doesn't more than justify it.

The art on the outside is thematic without being distractingly so. It's a grand, sweeping adventure, but without the kind of focus on individual characters that I find distracting. It's distant from the action, letting its sweeping landscape (seascape?) tell the story. Its 5 panels set a great tone with focused colors and designs, and a GLOW IN THE DARK GHOST-PIRATE SHIP emblazoned in center frame.

It is shorter than general GM screens need to be, putting it right in line with the books themselves.

The GM facing material is comprehensive and exceptionally well organized. It's broken up by the panels themselves, along with different colors and headers. You're never getting lost here, and will almost never have to reference the book during gameplay.