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In ENnie 2020 Mörk Borg got awarded in all four categories it was nominated in: the top gold prize for Product of the Year, Best Writing and Best Layout & Design, as well as with silver in Best Game.
Rules light. Art heavy. All doom. MÖRK BORG is a roleplaying game/art book that takes you to the darker corners of a soon-dead world.
A DOOM METAL ALBUM OF A GAME. Rules light. Art heavy. MÖRK BORG is blackened artpunk/osr about ill-fated bastards seeking redemption, forgiveness or just the last remaining riches of a world that is plunging ever faster to its inevitable ruin. An art book you can play. A spiked flail to the face.
This game is made by two nerds: Pelle Nilsson of Ockult Örtmästare games (writing it all), and Johan Nohr of Stockholm Kartell (making it look not bad).
While MÖRK BORG is certainly a product of the OSR genre and share the same roots and foundations as many of the retro-clones, we try not to care too much about tradition or nostalgia. Emulating gaming in the 70's or being compatible with other OSR modules is not a design choice, but MÖRK BORG can do both regardless. Aesthetics are more important than being truthful to some Gygaxian heritage, this time. As for the blackened part of our hefty epithet, well... The world of MÖRK BORG has seen its brighter days. And soon, there will be neither day or night ever again.
MÖRK BORG is a complete game and can be played as-is, or you can pick what you want from it and place into your own game. Or hey, you can skip the text completely and just focus on the images for either inspiration or to cut them out and pin them to your fridge, it’s up to you. But regardless of your approach, we hope that you will find the book inspiring, exciting and terribly depressing.
MÖRK BORG'S RULES are all about minimalistic simplicity. We've designed them so that they will never interfere with your game, and so that you can easily adapt and change them to better suit your needs. In short: whenever you try to accomplish something in the world, be it climbing a ruin or bashing a skeleton's head in, you roll a d20, apply a modifier and try to beat a set number. That's it. And you either let your equipment define your character, or you pick one of the six optional classes that each has their specific quirks and strengths. The system is player-facing, and they will roll most of the dice, to really put the destiny of their characters in their hands. No fudging allowed. The few times the GM will roll the dice are when NPC's morale or reaction is rolled, things like that.
ONE DAY ALL WILL BLACKEN AND BURN. Just as the two-headed basilisks predicted. Lies, Truth, Denial and Envy embodied. Their riddling yet oddly accurate prophecies were put in ink by Anuk Schleger the monk, in the scrolls that now hold many names - The Nameless Scriptures, The Unwritten, The Dirt Pages. And so far, every promise therein has been realized, hence why both kings and beggars now cry and wail. Everything will blacken and burn. The stormy, Endless Sea will boil and flood. The Valley of the Unfortunate Undead crumble and turn to dust. Every city: Galgenbeck and Schleswig, Alliáns and Grift will perish in flames. The trees of Sarkash rise as black smoke and the sprawling tunnels beneath the mountains of Bergen Chrypt will collapse in chaos and blood. And still there are those who seek riches. Those who seek redemption, and those who try to stop the apocalypse. They too will die, but they will die tired.
To set the proper tone and get in the right mood, have a look at this Spotify playlist which is currently playing in our speakers when writing and designing this.
A beast of a book. 88 pages printed with 6 colors (CMYK+2), hardback A5 size with a soft-touch laminated cover with embossed and reliefed details, two different paper stocks, and (if we meet the stretchgoals) glow-in-the-dark ink on the spine. We’re even considering gold foiling some details in the book, but we’ll see where we end up economically. We love print, and would like to show the RPG community what you can do with a couple of dead trees and some ink.
Our goal here is to make every spread visually unique and hopefully interesting and inspiring to browse through. We're breaking a lot of traditional graphic design "rules" here. There are no design templates, no grid, we use around 100 typefaces, things are rough, crooked and punk. We use both Papyrus and Comic Sans. Why not?
* A brief look at this dying world. From The Two-Headed Basilisks’ gothic cathedral in Galgenbeck and Blood-countess Anthelia’s limestone palace, to the fields of death in Graven-Tosk and the barren wastes of Kergüs.
* The Calendar of Nechrubel, that decides the speed of the world’s demise.
* 20 occult Powers that let you bend reality, and just as many magical catastrophes for when you disastrously fail.
* Optional rules which brings more depth to the game. Omens let you turn bad luck into a slightly better one. Classes with unique traits and quirks, and tables that will bring life into your character.
* 12 creatures to be murdered by.
* Game master tools such as tables for corpse plundering, occult treasure, adventure sparks, dungeon generating and other devilry.
* The introductory dungeon crawl scenario Rotblack Sludge, where you investigate a forgotten part of the Shadow King’s enormous ruin palace. Cannibal warlocks, poison peddlers from beyond the void and hungry gutworms await.
