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Let's create a Treasure Map with Pirate Borg!

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In my Duet Pirate Borg game my wife's character recently found a treasure map, so I headed to the Pirate Borg rulebook, specifically to the Treasure Map generator, to work on it. 1. Let's start with the TYPE OF MAP  (d4): 3, Scavenger Hunt . Ok, so it'll be a multi-part hunt; I like it; 2. Next we roll for the MATERIAL  the map is made of (d12): 8, Whittled into a bone or skull . This sounds very cool, but the PC already has the map, so it's better to keep it for the second piece of this scavenger hunt; for the starting map I'll go with 1, Parchment; 3. Now we need to establish the GEOGRAPHY  of where our treasure is hidden (d8): 8, Inland . A land adventure, nice; 4. I'm not sure I'll actually use this part, but it was in the process, so I rolled it for fun: THE INVISIBLE INK IS REVEALED  (d10): 5, If soaked in alcohol . Good to know; 5. It's time to roll for the COMPLICATION  that will spice things up (d8): 8, There is so much treas...

Let's create a Cy_Borg character!

This week I'll continue my character creation series, marking the beginning (like I said in my year recap post ) of a series of Borg-like games characters made for a future project of mine. These will be alternating with other kinds of posts, like my solo campaigns recaps and some gameable content coming from my Duet Pirate Borg home game. For the first one, we'll start with Cy_Borg , the cyberpunk version of Mork Borg created by Christian SahlĂ©n and Johan Nohr of Stockholm Kartell. As any Borg game, character creation (and the game itself) is fast and dripping with style. As with other games before, I'll be using the Italian version of the game, so some tables might be translated slightly differently. Let's begin! 1. We start by rolling a d6 for our  CLASS : 6,  Forsaken Gang-goon , someone who used to be part of a gang but is not anymore. Why? The dice will tell us soon! We roll 3d6-2 for our Strength and get a reduced difficulty to all Presence and Agility tests. Not...

Minimalist setup for maximized fun

I recently started a Duet Pirate Borg campaign for my wife (it started as a one-shot, but then we decided to continue it), and during the Christmas holidays we found ourselves in a hotel for a few days, and I wanted to have a session while we were there. We were flying there, so we couldn't bring many things with us: a minimalist approach was needed. Once we were there, we found out we didn't even have a table in the room, so we adapted to play on the bed. My setup was just a set of dice, a printed character sheet + rules reference sheet, a pencil and eraser, and the Pirate Borg rulebook PDF on my phone (I was running the Curse of Skeleton Point sandbox from that book). That's it. Of course this setup would not necessarily work for  any  TTRPG, but Pirate Borg (or any of the Borg games, for that matter) work wonderfully in this scenario: the GM might roll dice for encounters or other things during the exploration or dungeon crawling phases, but not in combat, when it's ...

It's been a year!

When I started this blogging endeavor I was hoping I'd keep it up as much as possible, but knowing myself I was worried I'd stop after a while like it happens way too often with hobbies or things I get into...but here we are. On January 5th 2025 I published my very first post , an introduction, and since then I published 52 posts, one per week, every Sunday at 16.00 CET (the one you're reading right now is number 53). I thought I'd take this chance to do a little recap of what happened during this year (TTRPG-wise) and what my plans are for 2026, both for this blog and for TTRPGs in general. During this 2025 I did not manage, like I hoped, to find a new IRL group to play TTRPGs, and many things have happened (both good and...less good) preventing me from dedicating the time I'd have hoped to this hobby, be it playing, GMing or writing adventures or such. With that said, 2025 is also the year I started playing solo TTRPGs , I published my very first small adventure  ...

Caribbean Tales (solo Pirate Borg) - Episode 3

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The following is part 3 of my solo Pirate Borg campaign. It focuses mainly around the character I created in this post , which was so interesting to me that it prompted me to set up a whole solo campaign . You can start with episode 1 here . Let's dive right in!   One member of the crew, a woman with a patch over her right eye, erupted in a howl. That seemed to break the tension, and one moment later Sam, the Captain and the rest of the crew were laughing at the sudden outburst. Captain Ramirez turned to a short man with a hook instead of his left hand beside her:  I entrust you with the newbie, Brother Bilge. Make sure he knows how to behave and that he pulls his weight . Aye aye, Captain  replied the man, who then turned to Sam with a smile:  Walk with me, mister. I'll show you the ropes as we follow the captain . Where are we going?  asked Sam  And how ccan you trust me already? I wouldn't, if I were you . Brother Bilge chuckled.  Ah, don't ...

Caribbean Tales (solo Pirate Borg) - Episode 2

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The following is part 2 of my solo Pirate Borg campaign. It focuses mainly around the character I created in this post , which was so interesting to me that it prompted me to set up a whole solo campaign . You can find episode 1 here . Let's dive right in! He closed his eyes and started running, not caring where he was going or about any danger he could meet. Nothing could be worse than that. He ran and screamed, screamed and ran, trying to suppress any thought his brain might have; his thoughts seemed to have a different voice, but it didn't matter. Not in that moment. All of a sudden he ran into what felt like a massive stone wall, hitting it so hard he bounced and rolled backwards, ending face down on the ground. He tried to open his eyes, but everything was still black. He was definitevely alive, though; he was in too much pain to be dead. He was vaguely aware of voices around him, but it was hard to determine whether they were coming from outside or inside his ...

Shoulds we bring back Hit Locations?

A bit of context before getting into the meat of it: as I mentioned in other posts, I'm in the middle of running an online campaign of Dragon of Icespire Peak (D&D 5e's Essential Kit campaign) for a few friends, and eventually they'll end up fighting the titular dragon, and I want to make it a more interesting encounter than how it is presented, because as it is in the book it is...underwhelming. So I started planning what to add: legendary resistances and actions, lair actions, some minions, making it fly and change the environment (it's a white dragon, so ice patches for players to slip on or to use as cover), but what else could I add? That's when I went to my library for ideas and, while flipping my copy of  Fantastic Medieval Campaigns  by Marcia B., a faithful rewrite of the 1974 Dungeons & Dragons rules which includes a few snippets from the supplements in its appendices, I stumbled upon Hit Locations, originally published in Supplement II: Blackmoor....