Power To Your Players! Like … really!
#005 - Give ‘em all the guns, ships, relics, and strongholds they desire!
I’ve been rolling dice and running games for over 20 years now. Across all those campaigns—long and short, weird and wild—I’ve learned one thing that’s made my tables more fun than ever, especially since I've been immersed in OSR / NSR:
Trying to keep your players “in check” often kills the fun.
Stop fearing powerful player characters. Let them break the game. They'll make it better.
Instead, give them the big stuff. Let them shape the world. Trust them with power—and watch what happens. You'll all be having more fun in the end.
🐍🌪️ Unleashing Power in Ravaged by Storms
That’s exactly the spirit behind our upcoming sandbox adventure, Ravaged by Storms, launching on Kickstarter this summer. Players won’t just explore a new region. They might be able to shift the balance of power in the Dark Carribean. Whatever they do—it will leave a mark.
Set in the wind-wracked Death Wind Islands, this 64+ page module for Pirate Borg drops players into a raging sea. The serpent wakes. Hidden in the Eastern Bahamas lies a lost city built from white stone. None reach it—storms rise, and a serpent stirs.
🐍 Explore a storm-wracked archipelago.
⚔️ Face a feathered sea serpent and warring factions.
💀 Claim lost relics—or drown trying.
🗺️ Explore. Ally. Conquer. Or drown in the storm.
👉 Check out the Kickstarter Preview Page: Ravaged by Storms (Coming Summer 2025). Follow the page to stay up to date.
Shackled Players will Lose Interest
In the early days of my hobby, I was still rather insecure as a game master. Back in the day, I used to worry a lot:
What if my players one-shot the boss?
What if they bypass the challenges I carefully planned?
Would powerful relics or too much gold "break" the game?
Honestly, I just didn’t have the experience to trust the flow or leave premade adventure paths. Worse—I saw myself as being on the opposite team from the players. I thought my job was to make things hard for them. I limited resources, padded encounters with extra obstacles, kept powerful items just out of reach.
Why? Because I thought that’s how you kept things “balanced.”
What I didn’t understand was this: players don’t want to break your story—they want to make it their own. And the more you clamp down, the less fun everyone has. Fortunately, that’s long behind me.
Challenges Are Great—But Let Cool Ideas Work
Now, don’t get me wrong. It’s not about playing out limitless power fantasies. Risk and tension are key ingredients. OSR-style resource crunch—counting torches, managing injuries, making tough calls when supplies ran low— is an important part of many OSR games, fostering clever thinking and tough decisions if done right. Think of light sources in Shadowdark or scifi horror game DEATH IN SPACE that even puts scarce resources into the middle of its setting’s conflicts.
But the trick is balance. If you clamp down too hard, there is a risk that:
Creativity dies.
Players stop trying.
The game becomes a grind.
I’ve been in games where every clever idea was shut down by a GM who thought blocking actions made things “tense.” Spoiler: it just made things boring. But challenge isn’t the same as obstruction. If your players are trying smart solutions, using the world creatively, or making bold narrative choices, those actions should matter.
Let them succeed sometimes. Let their power shine. Let the setting bend.
The fun comes when players realize they can change things—that clever thinking, bold risks, or character-driven decisions actually do something.
That’s where the magic is.
Let Them Play With Big Toys
One moment that really shifted my thinking came from Mothership creator Sean McCoy, in an article or interview I saw back when A Pound of Flesh released. Unfortunately, I was unable to find the source from back then when researching this article. Maybe it was even just a conversation on social media - alas, my memory is vague.
He said something along the lines of:
“Don’t be afraid of players earning lots of money and buying the coolest cyberware implants or ship modules. Let them get the best gear, trick out their ship, and go wild. That’s the fun part.”
He nailed it. Accordingly, Mothership’s fantastic Warden’s Operational Manual (pg. 51, one of the best “GM books” ever) offers this solution for PCs betting rich:
Big money attracts big predators.
Allies need help.
Old money hates new money.
It’s okay to retire. For Now.
The high-powered gear isn’t a problem—it’s a reward. And more importantly, OSR gaming is a sandbox. It gives players new tools to make their mark on the world.
Let them buy cyberware and become half-machine.
Let them conquer and manage their own stronghold.
Let them take control of a ship so powerful it becomes a mobile plot hook.
They’ll come up with more interesting, more chaotic, and more memorable stories than anything you planned.
And no, they won’t become untouchable superheroes overnight. They’ll still make bad calls, fail rolls, and attract bigger enemies. But they’ll love every second of it.
Power Isn’t the End—It’s the Start of Something Bigger
That’s what we’re tapping into with Ravaged by Storms. We’re giving players the chance to become key figures in a crumbling, storm-ravaged archipelago—a place where forgotten magic, ancient relics, and shifting alliances collide. And they will have the chance to carry these powers back into their own homebrew pirate campaign.
Give them power. Let them run with it. Then see what kind of legends they carve into the world.
“From pebble to monolith—your journey matters. The Golems have spoken.”
Alexander from Golem Productions
Hey congrats on the upcoming kickstarter. You've got a Backer here already, looking for to seeing what you guys cook up this time.