I’m in a bit of a Pirate Borg binge these days. This time, we’re taking a look at Cabin Fever, a huge collection of all sorts of content, compiled from participants in the Cabin Fever jam by Limithron.

There’s a ton of stuff to look at here. First of all, the PDF for Cabin Fever is free – but you can also order a physical book as well through Limithron’s website. As I mentioned, this is a collection of entries from a jam they organised, published through their Known Conspirators sub-label for third-party creators.

At just over 170 pages long, this is a pretty chunky collection: there are several new classes, new monsters, several adventures, and an assortment of other mechanics to explore. I’m not going to be as detailed for everything as I was for Down Among the Dead, but let’s take a look at each category.

Player Classes

We’ve got 12 new classes to play around with. Pirate Borg is already a bit more… chaotic with its classes than usual – the core rules started pretty standard (excluding the pirate chickens), Down Among the Dead got a bit weirder, and this one gets just a little bit further. We’ve got:

• The Angler, fishing for fun and profit. You can also eat raw fish. Yummy.
• The Ash Dealer, snorting, smoking, and otherwise partaking in the psychoactive dust of dessicated undead remains. Also yummy.
• The Barnacle, looting and pilfering and stealing.
• The Coagulant, an alchemical monstrosity that can fuse (willingly or not) with other creatures.
• The Griot, a storyteller with a spirit pact.
• The Mess, a cook with a signature recipy who hopefully isn’t too messy.
• The Powder Keg, a mad bomber that’s young, reckless, and most importantly, expendable.
• The Privateer, in the employ of one of the major powers – with your very own letter of marque and generous funding.
• The Reaper, hunting down the Scourge and putting them to rest for good.
• The Shipwright, doing your best to keep your vessel seaworthy.
• The Sulphur, a munitions expert with more luck than sense.
• The Tattooed, using your mystical ink for magical effects.

Quite an eclectic mix, as you can see. The Coagulant in particular looks very interesting, and the Barnacle is sure to be a favorite of loot goblins and thieving rogues.

Bestiary & GM Tools

There are 4 sets of monsters included in Cabin Fever:

• The Children of Yurata, 4 underwater humanoid monsters.
• A guide to building your own bone construct.
• Forlorn Encounters, a set of 6 curious and strange encounters, including the Rope Golem, and the Outcast – a sentient jellyfish whose greatest desire is the complete works of Rene Descartes
• Pirate gangs, 4 unique groups of pirates that you’ll want to avoid.

Besides those, there are lots of extra ways to spice up your play a little bit:

• Deadliest Catch: Rules for fishing, with random tables and possible encounters with your catch included.
• Red Bart’s Navalry: 5 supernatural ships and their crews, as documented in Red Bart’s journal.
• Toms Dicks, and Harrys: Roll tables for creating NPCs.
• Die in Six Directions: An island map generator, using hexes, which I really, really loved.
• Captain & Crew: rules for playing Pirate Borg solo.
• So Many Ways to Die: A Pirate Borg sea shanty, complete with sheet music. Yes, really.

Adventures

Finally, we have 6 entirely new adventures to run:

• The Way of the Worm, a parasite-infested nightmare. Big worms, little worms, you’ll go inside them, and they’ll go inside you.
• Unmoored: A miserable speck of land in the middle of the ocean, locked in an eternal struggle between a lich’s undead horde and a water-breathing cult.
• The Dark Column, where a mysterious obsidian obelisk rises from the sea. Legend says that whoever reaches it will get untold riches, but of course, it’s not that simple to get there.
• Shrine of the Slithering Slumber: Deep in the jungles of the Dark Yucatan is the temple of the nightmare serpent – dare you enter the darkness and plunder its treasure?
• The Repentant, a ship with a brilliant business plan: Make a pact with demons and raid the cities for victims. The demons get their souls, the crew gets the bodies to grind down for Ash; a classic win-win.
• Shanties of the Sargasso, where devils spew from the mouth of a recently awakened volcano to bring chaos.

Some are one-shots, some are dungeon crawls, and some are more open-ended, but they all look pretty good. Personally, The Dark Column looks very interesting, giving me some S.T.A.L.K.E.R vibes, but Shrine of the Slithering Slumber takes priority; I recently ran Venom in the Veins from the Down Among the Dead supplement, which is another temple full of serpents – so this is a pretty easy connection to the next adventure of the poor, doomed souls of Chris and the Crafty Macaron.

Final Thoughts

Cabin Fever is a great collection of stuff. If you liked the base Pirate Borg, this is going to give you lots of inspiration; you probably won’t like everything, and since this was an aggregation of participants in a jam, it’s quite the mishmash, but there are some very good entries. Also, it’s free! What are you waiting for?

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