Designing for Pirate Borg (Part 1/3)

#020 - Lessons from Ravaged by Storms (Part I: Visual Design & Layout)

When Ravaged by Storms finally shipped (digitally at least), we took the time to step back. With a little distance from decisions we had to make under pressure, from things we thought were obvious at the time, we were able to discuss and understand what actually worked, what didn’t, and why so some things turned out to be harder than expected.

This article is written from that distance. It’s the first part of two. This first part focuses on what is visible on the page: visual design, layout, and art direction. On how Pirate Borg’s strong identity shaped our decisions and on where it quietly left responsibility in the designer’s hands. We’re writing this not as a design manifesto, but as a practical case study drawn directly from working on our first crowdfunded module.

That said, this is not only about Pirate Borg. We treat it as a case study precisely because it is such a strongly opinionated game. Many of the lessons we learned while working on Ravaged by Storms apply just as much to other OSR and NSR games with a distinct visual identity.

If you have subscribed to this newsletter and really don’t know: This is the game by Limithron we are talking about. And here I have described a few reasons why I think it’s cool (there are more). Image Source: Golem Productions.

Pirate Borg as a Design Constraint

One of the first things SabrinaSeNina (art director of Golem Productions) pointed out when we started working seriously on Ravaged by Storms was that Pirate Borg does not leave designers without guidance, but it also does not give you a finished rulebook for visual judgment. There is an official, free design primer by Limithron (and you should get it, because it contains a wealth of practical advice and you will learn a lot about designing OSR modules in general). It defines typefaces, typographic conventions, and offers concrete visual techniques.

What it largely does not do is tell you how to weigh those elements against each other once they collide on the page. It does not tell you how to prioritize readability when a spread starts getting loud. It still leaves many of the most important decisions to the designer, especially when it comes to balancing atmosphere, readability, and usability at the table (of course, it is not a university class in graphic design, after all).

For our work on Ravaged by Storms, Sabrina deliberately chose to treat the Pirate Borg core book as the primary reference point - not later third-party releases, and not even Limithron’s newer work. The core book is the shared visual memory most players and GMs carry with them. It is the baseline people unconsciously measure compatibility against.

Visually, Pirate Borg makes a very deliberate move away from the loud, neon-heavy aesthetic associated with many other Borg games. Instead of aggressive color saturation, it relies on muted, desaturated tones. Instead of flat color fields, it uses parchment, stone, and paper textures. This restraint isn’t accidental: it reinforces the historical fantasy of the pirate age and creates visual calm in a system that is mechanically and thematically anything but calm.

In other words: Pirate Borg does not try to look modern. And that is precisely why designing “something cool” without understanding these constraints is one of the fastest ways to design against the game.

Designing for Pirate Borg (or any game you want to be compatible with) starts with constraints, not freedom.

Image Source: Limithron.

“Compatible with Pirate Borg” ≠ Copying Limithron

One of the clearest decisions we made early - driven directly by Sabrina’s perspective - was to consciously distinguish our visuals from Limithron’s (= Luke Stratton’s) art style. And the reason is simple: she can’t (and doesn’t want to) reproduce it.

Limithron’s art is defined by strong, striking linework paired with a coloration style that reads like watercolor and ink. His figures sit in a specific balance: they feel realistic and comic-stylized at the same time. For Sabrina, that combination is unmistakable and basically impossible to imitate convincingly. So rather than trying to draw “like Limithron,” she decided from the start to draw like herself.

Her own style is heavily shaped by realism and by the visual language of high-production visual novels and DC Comics from the 2010s. It stays close enough to reality that you can sink into the image, but far enough away that you don’t drown in it. That distance matters: it supports immersion without turning the page into a static illustration showcase.

Full page art by Sabrina Jatscha from Ravaged by Storms. Image Source: Golem Productions.

Our Deliberate Decision: Same Rules, Different Voice

So “compatible” didn’t mean cloning Pirate Borg’s art. It meant staying close where it mattered - especially in typography and structure - while allowing illustration to become the place where Golem Productions speaks in its own voice.

Sabrina also framed this as a craft question, not an art question. In her words: graphic design is a highly complex trade, not “making something pretty.” The job is to build something that functions. A spread has to catch atmosphere, pursue a purpose, and still remain functional and readable at the table.

That principle shaped how she approached Pirate Borg’s brutality and grime without letting the page collapse into noise. She explicitly calls out a recurring danger in many Borg-adjacent products: overlaying spreads with splatter effects, loud colors, and similar intensity layers until readability suffers.

For Ravaged by Storms, this translated into a small set of very concrete rules:

• Use punk energy sparingly.
  Borg games want to convey a feeling, and they often do that with punk energy. Used too much, it eats the information.

• Default to muted, realistic colors.
  Most spreads in Ravaged by Storms are deliberately restrained. The double-spread of the Blight Revenant is a conscious exception, not the norm.

• Splatter and texture are accents, not foundations.
  They appear throughout the book, but never at the expense of the text.

• Readability is non-negotiable.
  If text becomes hard to read, it’s a design problem with solutions: adjust text color, add brighteners or shadows underneath, or rework contrast.

• Never force physical discomfort on the reader.
  Text is never angled so far that readers have to twist their heads to read it. The opening map is the single, deliberate exception.

A spread from Ravaged by Storms, pre-orders are open! Image Source: Golem Productions.

Layout Is Not Decoration: Designing Spreads for Sandbox Use

For Ravaged by Storms, layout decisions were guided by practical rules that emerged directly from working on the book and from fixing things that didn’t work the first time. What actually mattered in practice:

• Start with structure, not visuals.
  Every spread was first built around hierarchy: what information belongs on the page, what needs to be found quickly during play, and what can stay secondary. Only once that structure was stable did Sabrina add textures, splatter, or visual noise.

• Treat text as a first-class design element.
  Text is not filler between illustrations. Formatting, spacing, and contrast are part of usability. If text started getting swallowed by backgrounds or effects, the spread was considered broken, regardless of how atmospheric it looked.

• Accept that some spreads are hard by nature.
  The Word Cloud page (below, part of our free Storm Generator) is a good example. It went through several iterations until it looked right and remained readable. The lesson wasn’t “avoid ambitious spreads,” but “expect them to cost time and plan accordingly.”

• Reuse and refine internal layout conventions.
  Many structural decisions, like how locations are numbered, how recurring elements are presented, or how different content types are visually separated, were not invented from scratch. They were adapted from either the Design Primer or earlier projects (such as The Way of the Worm) and then tightened to work consistently across the sandbox.

The word cloud is part of Ravaged by Storm’s storm generator. Image Source: Golem Productions.

Art Direction: Atmosphere Without Noise

How Sabrina decided when art should lead and when it should step back:

• Start with information density per spread.
  If a spread needs to carry a lot of text on a double page, text takes priority over illustration. The Storm Generator is a clear example: the information had to be readable at a glance, so illustration steps back.

• Give art space only when it benefits play at the table.
  If an illustration actively helps the GM - and ideally the entire table - during play, it deserves room. In some cases, that meant deliberately spreading content across more pages as originally intended to let the image breathe.

• Atmosphere is not opposed to usefulness.
  Illustrations should be both atmospheric and useful. Atmosphere helps immersion by communicating the intended mood of a person, place, or scene. Anything that helps the table sink deeper into the adventure counts as useful.

• Use illustration to replace description when visuals are clearer than words.
  Seeing the illustration of the Coatl Tzoketupacatl (above) immediately communicates scale and presence: a massive green, feathered serpent with a violet crest and eyes. The sense of size works better visually than any number or textual description could.

• Use text to replace illustration when motion or abstraction matters.
  Storms don’t stand still. They are hard to capture in a single image. For the storms of the Death Wind Islands, a Word Cloud became the better tool: it gives the GM language to describe violence, motion, and intensity dynamically at the table.

After the Spreads Were “Done”

Designing Ravaged by Storms for Pirate Borg taught us a lot about restraint, hierarchy, and when to let atmosphere lead or step back. But many of the hardest problems we ran into didn’t show up on the page at first. They showed up in planning, in coordination, and in decisions made long before a spread ever reached layout. Some of the most time-consuming fixes had nothing to do with art direction at all, but with when we locked content, how late playtests happened, or how often we had to rework already “finished” pages.

In the continuation of this article (about process, time, and tools), we’ll move away from spreads and illustration and talk openly about process: what cost us weeks, what we would do differently next time, and which mistakes you can avoid if you’re planning your own Pirate Borg (or whatever) project. But first, we will turn our attention to the heart of the creative Pirate Borg community as we approach our blog’s first birthday in early February. Stay tuned!

Which design issues drove you crazy? What lessons did you learn from your projects?

“From pebble to monolith - your journey matters. The Golems have spoken.”

Alexander and Sabrina from Golem Productions