Table-Tested Review of Pirate Borg’s “Down Among the Dead”
Pirate Borg’s newest book “Down Among the Dead” is currently arriving at Kickstarter backers’ doorsteps so I’ve decided to bring it to my table as soon as I could! The book is filled with three adventures and additional content and was released alongside other shiny new things like a Starter Set or “Cabin Fever”, a book full of community content. I’ve run each of the larger adventures in “Down Among the Dead” and am here to report my experiences.
But first some quick facts about the book!
- Game Designers: Luke Stratton | Limithron
- Publication Year: 2025
- Page Count: 148
- System: Pirate Borg (based on Mörk Borg)
Before the Adventures
As with most Borg games, the book starts with some random tables (and many maps) on the inside of the book. The rumours and maps are specific to the adventures (and are also repeated there), so these probably won’t find use beyond the adventures themselves.
Following this is a collection of additional content:
- Three new classes (Antiquarian, Deep One, Unlocked Soul)
- D66 Skills for extended character progression
- D66 character motivations
- A list of possible house rule suggestions
- Random generators (jolly roger, islands, coral reefs, coins)
- A two-page adventure
We tried out the new classes and had a lot of fun! The Antiquarian seems a bit niche, but can be made to work easily enough. The Deep One was very well received, even though it only gets really interesting upon levelling up (the initial skill is just a stat increase). The Unlocked Soul has been really fun and the only downside I could see was that it can’t really be played in “lost to the Locker”, one of the adventures. But it’s perfect as a secondary class after the adventure!
The d66 skills are a great addition to normal character progression and super flavourful (like stunning enemies with clever quips, being addicted to ASH or entrancing people with your song). Many of them are for ship combat or upkeep or specific backstories, so beyond character creation I see this being picked from instead of rolled on.
The different house rules are a colourful mix. The first ones are rules that interact with real life, like making it a drinking game or rewarding costumes. Following are some mechanical variations like nightmare or heroic mode that can be used to fit your table.
The various random generators are super fun, also as inspiration.
The two-page adventure “Anchor Drop Falls” is perfect as a one-shot. It looks well made with three different sides of the conflict and great combat design, although there could have been one more conflict between the factions to spice things up.
Lost to the Locker
Content Warnings: torture, harm to animals
Page Count: 36
For one reason or another, the PCs find themselves dead - lost to the locker. In order to escape they need three things: a vessel, an obol per person and an exit.
I ran it as a one-shot for two players, which worked extremely well. We didn’t do a lot of combat, so if you do a few combat encounters and have around four players this will probably run for 2-3 sessions, unless you streamline it (which you totally can).
Generally, this is done exceptionally well. It’s a lot of content for a single adventure while still being easy to navigate. It’s a sandbox, but most pathways lead to a resolution - and it will be different every time you run it. I didn’t need to prep anything, I just showed up with a basic knowledge of the adventure and let them do their thing - and they succeeded. It can be a little intimidating for players at first, but we soon got the ball rolling.
There are many great details. Charon is an insanely cool NPC, there are real world timers for things like respawning PCs or NPCs which worked really well and there are many insanely cool locations. An obelisk in a shallow pool that turns into a waterfall-portal?! How awesome is that?!
It’s also one of the better implementations of an ever-changing underworld that I've seen, has a time table (travel takes from minus 20 seconds to an eon) and a connection table (connections are random and differently flavoured depending where they lead). The time table is used relatively often and was a highlight in our session (they spent 10 years practicing the flute and 40 years writing a cook book, while walking from A to B).
I didn’t expect this to become my favourite adventure, but it did! It’s definitely a strong start into the adventure part of the book.
Venom in the Veins
Content Warnings: snakes, harm to animals
Page Count: 16
The shortest of the three adventures, this is a straightforward dungeon. The PCs find themselves looking for this shrine for treasure, knowledge, answers, as a rescue mission or yet another reason. Inside they’ll find puzzles, cute (and not so cute) animals, other factions and an ethereal necromancer as a guardian (and lots of loot!).
The book layout is fantastic and locations are easy to reference to the map while reading and running the adventure.
Overall, this is a quality one-shot adventure from someone who knows what they’re doing. It’s as classic as a dungeon crawl can get. Sadly I was also missing a little special something to make it truly memorable.
Into the Maelstrom
Content Warnings: spiders, blood, gore, witch hunts, needles, torture
Page Count: 60
“Into the Maelstrom” is Dracula meets Innsmouth, with heavy influences from Curse of Strahd (and the older implementations of the module).
I actually ran this as part of the book’s playtest and was delighted to see the new version fleshed out so much. This is an ambitious adventure, clearly inspired by Curse of Strahd, but with eldritch vampire pirates. Count me in! It can be run as a one-shot - and I did just that - but is probably suited best to be played in roughly 2-4 sessions or even longer, unless your group is up for a big dungeon crawl on a timer (or the typical “Strahd Must Die Tonight” experience, but on a boat). It’s somewhat different to the usual Pirate Borg experience, as there is actually some semblance of balancing and advice how to make characters survive the adventure.
The first thing here is rules for “Three Eyed Parrot”, a poker-adjacent game. The rules assume I know poker hands, which I don’t really. But that’s just one internet search away. The card deck is also used for a card reading that randomized some parts of the adventure, which will be familiar to those who have played Curse of Strahd.
The adventure is also extremely adjustable, not only on length but also on tone - it can be anything from scary to campy to tropey (although some parts of the adventure do veer deeply into goofy territory, with some quality jokes in there) and difficulty can also easily be adjusted to taste. It can be played on the ship alone or on the whole range of islands and other locations. I wished that some of the other locations were a little more connected to the main story, but in a (small) campaign there will be enough time for the GM to flesh it out to taste.
From a vampire game perspective it's a good mix of classics and subverted tropes, as to feel original but also offering some familiarity. I really enjoyed the twist on the vampire genre and the “gothic eldritch pirate horror” genre that was made here. The lore and history bit is, apart from the addition of eldritch/cthulu-esque horror, nothing new in fiction: captain seeks eternal life, makes a vampire-deal, finds a woman, loses said woman, wants to resurrect said woman. Considering that the adventure can be run anywhere between 4 hours and dozens of sessions, the complexity works for most modes.
“Into the Maelstrom” is a fantastic adventure for groups that are into large and complex dungeon crawls with many moving parts and moral ambiguity. There is room for combat as well as social encounters, with dozens of NPCs in there. It’s not an easy adventure to run, especially as a one-shot, but it can be amazing for the right group.
Conclusion
Having run all three adventures, I can really say that none of them disappoint. “Lost to the Locker” and “Into the Maelstrom” have a lot of special mechanics and content, which means they can run considerably longer or have a lot going on when being run as a one-shot. This is great for experienced GMs or those who are looking to invest the time for a small campaign. “Venom in the Veins” I can espacially recommend to newer GMs, as it is especially easy to run.
“Down Among the Dead” is a quality addition to the Pirate Borg series and if you’re looking for some ready-made adventure modules, I can heartily recommend it.
