Die Young - A MÖRK BORG Review

 

Free League

 MÖRK BORG

Designed by Pelle Nilsson

Art by Johan Nohr

Published by Free League  

It can hardly get any worse for characters in Old School Renaissance darling MÖRK BORG. Humanity cowers in fear of the apocalyptic prophecies of two godly, twin-headed basilisks. The ever worsening state of this lightless, monster infested world makes it clear that doomsday really is just around the corner. Amid this unfolding nightmare, adventurers set out in the hopes of averting the end. Or just to plunder whatever's left to take. 

After all, the only kind of heroes in this world are the tragic, doomed kind.

MÖRK BORG, billed as a "pitch-black apocalyptic fantasy RPG," reads like the quintessential OSR game. Light on rules, heavy on the presentation, and reveling in the disgusting, it lays the genre's formula bare and picks through its guts. Luckily, MÖRK BORG takes all the best parts of the OSR movement and avoids its follies, for something truly one of a kind.

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The book itself falls somewhere between an art zine and traditional RPG rulebook. Scratchy, depraved pieces and gloomy photos are paired with historical art. The latter is applied inventively, building both atmosphere and a grim sense of humor. The book uses both black and white spreads and splashes of color to equally good use. Despite what you'd expect, a large chunk of the book employs garish yellow and neon pink. 

I haven't had the pleasure to look through a physical copy but even through the unflattering medium of a PDF copy, MÖRK BORG is possibly the most visually impressive RPG book I've seen. If nothing else, it's certainly the most memorable, as it takes the grimdark staples of skulls, gothic castles, and satanic imagery to do something viscerally different.

My only criticism for the visual direction is that the PDF copy can prove difficult to read. The color palette and white text on black backgrounds might be important for the artistic vision but the readability suffers. The overall presentation might be the strongest part of the book, gothic and menacing, but it also poses some accessibility issues (sensory issues, screen readers, etc.) I acknowledge MÖRK BORG's current state is an important part of its overall feel but I think at the very least a more accessible, plain text version is necessary. I'd say that's a feasible ask in the age of PDFs.

Remember you are going to die

Beyond the artistic side of things, MÖRK BORG's thrives on its central dichotomy. The rules are clean and welcoming. The setting... isn't. It's a genius combination, one that prevents the game from becoming the mother of all "heartbreakers." MÖRK BORG jumps into the setting before anything else, though it favors short, evocative text over endless exposition. The game's doomed world quickly takes shape, alongside the gods, monsters, and royals presiding over the end. But much of MÖRK BORG is left shrouded in darkness, full of horrors just waiting to be concocted by game masters and confronted by the players.

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The game is transparent about its influences: Berserk protagonist Guts' grisly origins and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay's iconic "Small but Vicious Dog" make appearances. Even its fatalism feels familiar in some way. Perhaps it's because the lack of a true "general audience" to placate, but tabletop games have a storied history of utterly hopeless worlds. Even with such apparent inspirations, I've never seen anything quite like MÖRK BORG. Focusing on building such a strong atmosphere over setting minutiae contributes to that. You get a strong sense of the world from passages that often barely makes sense, really selling the idea you've found the last holy text of a doomed culture.

MÖRK BORG goes completely over the top, to the point of satire. It's a resoundingly bleak setting in a way every newly minted edgelord player can only dream of. Surprisingly, it's said there is a way to save the world. They just decline to say how. With horror at every turn, it's not clear where players are supposed to look for salvation. 

The game certainly pushes the boundaries of taste with the gratuitous violence. Adventuring "rewards" often come in the form of severed body parts and miscasts include lethal magical STDs. The almost cartoonish heavy metal nature loops back around to one of the best dark comedies ever to grace the medium.

It helps that MÖRK BORG avoids anything truly discriminatory, even if it delights in being grotesque. White Wolf and even my beloved Warhammer have decades of genuinely offensive blunders. The worst I'd accuse this game of being is overly crass and perhaps juvenile.

Dog Eat Dog

In the vein of most OSR games, MÖRK BORG saves the heavy stuff for the setting. Built (perhaps literally) from classic Dungeons & Dragons' bones, most dice rolls are made with D20s. Tests are determined by trying to roll at or above the Difficulty Rating, with positive or negative modifiers from the relevant Ability. There's only four to keep track of: Agility, Presence, Strength, and Toughness.

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This game uses a lot of different dice, ranging from the ubiquitous D6 to the rare D2. Between calculating damage, armor defenses, and the more unique mechanics, you end up rolling a lot more than just D20s. Even so, the core mechanics are dead simple, though the players end up doing almost all the dice rolling. In combat, they roll their character's attacks and then against Agility to see if they dodge their adversaries' blows. 

Combat is as messy and quick as you'd expect. The only defenses come from largely brittle armor and Omens, a small, replenishing pool of points spent to negate enemy damage or maximize your own. Hit zero wounds and you roll on the unforgiving Broken chart. Blow past that and it's all over.

As a "perma-GM" I'm hugely in support of it, though perhaps a little biased.Though it's far from demanding, having players do the little work combat requires lets the GM focus entirely on writing the scenario and building up the setting's mood. 

The Hand of Fate

Rather appropriately for MÖRK BORG's emphasis on "cruel fate," there are random charts galore. This ranges from core game mechanics, like the perfidious scroll based magic system, to the purely cosmetic, like the weather chart. There's a chart for just about everything, and even if many of them are optional it adds a strong vein of spontaneity to the game. Even character creation is almost entirely random, including how you pick from the six optional classes. The game's website even sports a random character generator, SCVMBIRTHER, which is immensely useful for one shots. 

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 The adventures seeds and dungeons themselves can be randomly generated too. And luckily, there's scarcely an uninteresting result. 

On the less random side is the short but memorable bestiary. It's mostly common fantasy staples, though with a strong Swedish mythology and heavy metal bent to it. There's a strong emphasis on increasingly vile kinds of undead, with some very novel takes and mechanics on classic creatures. Curse based goblins visually modeled off of goblin sharks took the cake for me.

Here Comes Doomsday

Even amid a sea of random charts, MÖRK BORG's most unique and crucial rule still has an overwhelming presence. At the start of each in game day the game master rolls a die, the specific one depending on how long they want the world to last. On a 1, you roll a D66 and consult the Calendar of Nechrubel, a set of 36 Miseries divided into Psalms. Each one is a short "Revelations" style tale of the apocalypse.

When the Seventh Misery is rolled, the game and its world come to a crashing halt, as it finally ends.

An unthinkable mechanic in just about any other game and perfect for MÖRK BORG. Plenty of RPG settings have a looming apocalypse but I can't think of any where that impacts the actual gameplay in such a material way. Here, the world deteriorates around the players at the whim of the dice, until the bough breaks.

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Like the rest of MÖRK BORG, the specifics of each misery are left open to interpretation. Each of the six psalms have a clear storyline and progression but it's statistically improbable for every Misery to come from the same Psalm. It's even less likely to roll them in the "correct" order.

What you're left with is an apocalypse out of sequence, lacking even the comfort of a coherent timeline. With each Misery being a short cryptic sentence, GMs are given considerable leeway in interpreting them. It's an evocative system that makes the end of the world a tangible part of every MÖRK BORG game, without reducing it to a dull, purely mechanical affair.

Go Forth

MÖRK BORG is the sort of game that can get away with offering what's essentially the bare minimum. The game might not be a 400 page tome but there's more than enough to bring out whatever life remains in the final days. And the tradeoff of quality over quantity hardly means its unsupported. The games' official website has a huge offering of free material, including adventures, dungeons, classes, and a bestiary.

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As for MÖRK BORG itself, it's a game I strongly recommend to just about anyone into RPGs. But not as your first game.
MÖRK BORG doesn't just expect you to handle its more graphic content, as there's a clear assumption that you know your way around a game system. The broad rules and setting might offer a lot of agency but by the same merit it doesn't offer much guidance. 

Overall, it's a harsh world GMs and players are left to navigate but one that's worth every painful step of the way. Even if their journey is cut abruptly short...