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Hello and welcome to The RPG Academy’s The Review series. Today Michael Waldschlager II ( @LoserMLW ) drops in for a quick review of Mörk Borg a dark fantasy role playing game created by Ockult Örtmästare Games and Stockholm Kartell, and published internationally by Free League Press.
Overview
Mörk Borg is a dark fantasy role playing game created by Ockult Örtmästare Games and Stockholm Kartell, and published internationally by Free League. You are stepping into the tattered boots of characters scraping to survive and eke out a living in a dying world prophesied to end very, very badly. Your characters may be attempting to stave off the impending destruction or embracing it, toiling for the very same beings that are driving the lands headlong into their demise.
The Dying World
As mentioned, the world of Mörk Borg is an extremely dismal and hopeless place. The sun has all but vanished, and darkness has lain heavy over the lands for hundreds of years. Ancient prophecies made by two ancient two-headed basilisks were uncovered during the construction of a Cathedral and as it turns out, every single foreseen event has come to pass. An enormous city came to grow around this Cathedral, and these prophecies have become the primary focus of worship by many of the world’s inhabitants.
There are a number of kingdoms and factions vying for the faith and coin of the people of these lands, and each of them is just as grim as the next. Will you side with the ageless Blood-Countess Anthelia in the kingdom of Kergüs? Do you seek servitude with The Shadow King in the forests of Sarkash? Your options are only as limited as your time as with each new dawn, the threat of armageddon hangs low on the horizon thanks to the Calendar of Nechrubel, which dictates with a roll of the dice if daybreak brings a new Misery to the world or not. If you happen to generate 7 Miseries in the course of your struggle to survive, the world and your characters die horribly and, predictably, the adventure ends.
Core Rulebook
One thing is certain when you open up this book, and that is that Mörk Borg is not your typical RPG rulebook. This is very much a product of its inspirations, and those inspirations are rooted in the haunting lyrics and gothic art of death, doom and black metal. From the stylized and chaotic skeleton and exaggerated logo on the cover to the included introductory dungeon crawl, this book screams slickly-designed and ordered chaos. Each page draws the eye, and while small sections may maintain a particular typeface, the layouts and fonts are constantly shifting to incorporate and contain the richly foreboding and inspiring graphic design work. Reading Mörk Borg, you can practically hear the frenzied thrumming of heavy guitar licks, the pounding beat of drums and primal scream of lead vocals in the background.
At a count of less than 100 pages, this short tome certainly falls under the category of a ‘rules-light’ system, with the first 17 pages dedicated to setting up the world and the vibe of the game, then diving right into character creation, equipment, combat, rest and some common dice checks. The Powers section, which covers the way magic works in Mörk Borg, starts on page 34, then there is also a section for Optional Rules, which offers a variety of tables for additional systems to add to your gameplay, as well as a number of default classes for your characters. The final two reference sections of the rulebook cover the enemies of Mörk Borg, Creatures and Outcasts, then the book dives into the short adventure, “Rotback Sludge” or “The Shadow King’s Lost Heir”. This offering is a dungeon crawl clearly inspired by the classics of early role playing game systems.
The final section of the rulebook contains a few more tables for filling out character details, such as “Where do you Wander” and “Who (or What) Contacts You?”, and a D100 Adventure Spark generator to assist Game Masters in coming up with grim quests to send your party on.
The last set of these tables is a well-designed dungeon generator, with which you can determine a name, dungeon status (active or inactive), the dungeon dwellers, dangers, distinctive features and sample rooms. I tested this and created one called ‘The Sin Tunnels’, an active dungeon inhabited by a heretical cult lead by a possessed 11-year old, with the danger of a terrible dormant curse about to be unleashed, and a distinctive feature where the rooms rotate around the dungeon’s center. Sounds like a place I’d love to go delving!
Finally, there’s a simple one page summary sheet for the game’s basic mechanics, and a one-page index as well, directing you to the various areas of the book for quick reference.
System Mechanics
Mörk Borg’s system is D20-based, with characters having 4 main abilities: Agility, Presence, Strength and Toughness. These abilities are rolled with 3d6 and the roll determines your ability bonus, from a range of -3 to +3. Any checks are made against a Difficulty Rating (referenced as DR) determined by the Game Master, with the player rolling a D20 +/- the applicable ability bonus. There are no defined skills, with any action the player wishes to take falling into one of the 4 primary ability categories and being checked against that bonus. Trying to swim? Roll a D20 and add or subtract your Agility bonus. Surviving a fall? Roll using your Toughness bonus. Need to charm a Seer? Better have a good Presence bonus.
There are a number of weapons, armors and pieces of equipment available for selection, with all of the above items suffering from possible wear and breakage. The system takes carrying capacity seriously, with a limitation of the number of items any character can carry, and penalties that cause increases to Difficulty Ratings as your character becomes overloaded.
Combat is also very straightforward, as only players roll dice. Initiative is determined by a D6, and there are Melee, Ranged and Defense checks. For those lucky or unfortunate die rolls, there are both Crit and Fumble tables. On the Crit side, you have double damage, armor reduction and a free attack as possible outcomes. Rolling a 1 on the D20 gets you the Fumble table which has consequences for fumbling your Attack or Defense roll. If you drop to zero Hit Points you are considered Broken, but go below zero HP and you join the ranks of the deceased.
In the world of Mörk Borg, magic is referred to as Powers, and they are conferred solely by the use of Scrolls. Characters that use Powers are limited in their daily use, and if you fail the Powers usage roll…well, guess what? There’s a table in the Optional Rules for “Arcane Catastrophes” that has some very interesting and gruesome results, such as these examples from the text:
“You and a random nearby creature pass out. When you wake up, your souls have switched. Welcome to your new flesh.”
“Your skin tatters like paper, your flesh melts like wax and your intestines bloat like balloons, bursting and falling out until all that is left is a walking, talking skeleton.”
The game is very clearly rooted in Old School Renaissance or OSR-style gameplay, with a heavy reliance on reference tables, random effects and the dice determining almost every outcome to be had in the game. This may provide a challenge to gamers who are much more used to modern systems which put more focus on the role playing and storytelling aspects of tabletop RPGs and less on the more mechanical or crunchy nature of decision making via dice rolling.
Creating a Character
Being a rules-light system, the character generation system is designed for rolling almost every aspect of your potential character against tables. Creating a character can be very simple, and a basic character can be whipped up in minutes by following the tables and taking the results as written. A player could also pick and choose, but using the tables makes it extremely easy for someone to jump in.
The system also allows for advanced character generation using the handful of Classes in the Optional Rules section. The classes include the Fanged Deserter, Wretched Royalty and four other interesting options with pre-set Specialties that add some variation to each class.
The Optional Rules also introduce a few other items to help make more interesting and three-dimensional characters, like Omens which are limited use abilities that recharge and even reset after 6 hours of in-game rest. More tables for fleshing out a character include “Terrible Traits” for personality quirks, “Broken Bodies” which give your character some physical distinctions. Also included is “Bad Habits” which is pretty self explanatory, and finally “Troubling Tales” to provide your group or individual character with some disturbing and compelling backstory beats.
I was able to roll up a character in minutes and using the Optional Rules, build them out with some Terrible Traits and Bad Habits. Once I added a name, I was ready to go! The process took 15 minutes at best, and the tables made things very simple.
Opinion
Disclaimer: In the time I was working on this review, I was unable to take the game for a test-drive with a group. However, without having gotten to play the game, I can speak to what I’ve read and rely on my past experiences with new systems to make what I feel is a sound judgment.
I believe that Mörk Borg has the bones (no pun intended) of a very stylized and simple game to run a limited campaign or series of one shots in an extremely heavy horror-based atmosphere. I say limited campaigns or one-shots because mechanically, the system is designed to be very brutal and unforgiving. The nature of the game may have driven the design decisions behind why generating a character is so simple, as there’s a very good chance your initial character will not survive. I would relate this to a game like Dungeon Crawl Classics, where players are encouraged to generate four separate characters at once to minimize downtime when one inevitably dies.
Mörk Borg is a game designed for players and game masters who are fans of the brooding, pessimistic and often epic style of death, black and doom metal, and while I find the setting intriguing, I can see how that would also turn off potential players who long to portray heroes in a setting that feels hopeful or light. Mörk Borg is not that setting, and that is not its world.
The other potential negative that stands out to me is that for all of the imaginative design choices made in the production of the book, I feel like this book is more object d’art than a reference rulebook. While there are some really standout art pieces and layout decisions, I think that the disjointed nature of so many of the pages makes it difficult to go back and quickly find the information I might be looking for. This wouldn’t stop me from playing it, mind you, but the fact that the book is less than 100 pages can make that small issue even more frustrating.
Mörk Borg is no doubt a standout in the field for its innovative system, look and graphic design choices. For players used to core rulebooks that are easily referenced, and a world where they can rise to be heroes, however, it may be a hard sell. But for those folks looking for a gruesome change of pace, a metal-infused grimdark world and a system with some crunch, Mörk Borg is certainly worth your time!
Rating: A
Game materials were provided to The RPG Academy by Free League Publishing for review consideration.
Bonus Content!
Want to give it a go? There’s a free, plain text version available at https://morkborg.com/content/ along with blank character sheets and quick reference materials and a mobile character generator!
Buy a copy of the game from the Free League store
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