After having owned a copy of Mörk Borg for over a year, I finally had a chance to run a game. We played most of Rotblack Sludge. Hopefully we can play again and finish the adventure.
First, a small diversion into how this game came to be. I bought a copy of Mörk Borg at PAX Unplugged last year. Since then, I've tried multiple times to get my online group to try it out during lulls in our weekly D&D games. For some reason, it never came to fruition.
This year, I went to PAX Unplugged with a few of my IRL friends, and they were intrigued by how every other indie-type RPG zine was either compatible with Mörk Borg or Mothership (and how many games were spinoffs of Mörk Borg - CY_BORG, Pirate Borg, etc.). It also helps that all the stuff looks cool. And Mörk Borg is fun to say. It stays with you.
After a month or so of talking about playing, interrupted by the holidays, we finally got together to try it out. I refreshed my memory as to the system and its introductory adventure, Rotblack Sludge, earlier that day. Simplicity is definitely one of the game's strengths.
Mörk Borg has reminded me of the power of a physical TTRPG product. I already said that Mörk Borg stuff looks cool, and that makes potential players interested in learning more about it. The look of Mörk Borg also helps to communicate its tone. I can say "This is a Swedish doom metal RPG. It's like a really simple version of D&D but the world is ending and everyone and everything sucks." Or, I can hold up the book, flip through the pages, and say, "This is the vibe." It works.
It also helps when the physical product is a little book I can hold in one hand. I've grown accustomed to running D&D using only a computer because I feel like I need a computer to run modern D&D. There are at least two - and arguably, three or more - books that I need to have at hand to play 5e, and they are big. They're also organized poorly, with multiple sections of multiple books needing to be referenced simultaneously. And the players all need to share the one, too. I'd much rather use an online tool, where the spells in the enemy wizard's statblock are linked to the spell descriptions, which are in turn linked to the descriptions of the conditions they impose.
So nowadays, if I want to play D&D in person, I'm probably bringing a laptop and a PHB for the players to share. That's the equivalent of two textbooks. Mörk Borg is one little book. I also brought along Mothership and Old School Essentials as options, and Mörk Borg occupied the least space in my backpack by far. That has value.
We started by randomly generating characters. I got a bit confused, and had the players start by rolling equipment, weapons, and armor, then asked them whether they wanted to play regular characters or characters with classes. This was a mistake, because characters with classes have different methods of determining starting equipment, weapons, and armor.
The way I presented the choice was that classes have special abilities and more specialized ability scores - some will be higher than a normal character's and some will be lower. Normal characters have more average stats but can roll for higher stats on two of them. The system could do a better job communicating what is the advantage of playing a classless character. My players all wanted to have a class because they wanted special abilities (which they all promptly forgot about).
The page describing the character creation process says that classed characters follow their own instructions for rolling equipment, but that's not really true. The Fanged Deserter starts with a unique item, as does the Wretched Royalty, and the Occult Herbmaster starts with two decoctions. Otherwise, the classes just get silver pieces and abilities. I had already made the mistake of having the players roll for equipment as normal, so I left it as is.
The character creation rules have the player roll for equipment first, then ability scores. I found this odd because quantities of certain items are determined by ability scores (i.e., "Presence + 4 torches", a "lantern with oil for Presence +6 hours", etc.). I don't see any reason why abilities can't be rolled first.
We ended up with the following characters:
- Daeru: A Gutterborn Scum in massive debt with a sneak attack ability (Coward's Job)
- Karg: An Esoteric Hermit with a drinking problem and an enchanting harp (Bard of the Undying)
- Urvarg: An Occult Herbmaster who had an illicit affair with a member of the nobility (with Fernor's Philtre and Hyphos' Enervating Snuff)
- Vresi: A Fanged Deserter nihilist with a loud mouth, a problem with authority, and a bag of Wizard Teeth
The players loved this character creation process. They were engaged from the moment they rolled for their characters' names, and were locked in once Urvarg started with four monkeys that love him but ignore him. The process took up a big chunk of our play time, but it might have been the most fun we had all night.
On to Rotblack Sludge. The characters were prisoners of the Shadow King, scheduled to be executed for their various flaws (debt, alcoholism, philandering, and sedition). Luckily for them, the Shadow King's heir was kidnapped and taken to the Accursed Den. They would be free if they found him and brought him back.
This adventure requires some massaging. For such a simple introductory scenario, I really wish the authors had done a bit more legwork to connect the disparate elements. Before play I took some mental notes as to how I'd fix some things. Some SPOILERS for Rotblack Sludge below.
First, there's no reason why the players can't just lamb it as soon as they're released from the Shadow King's dungeon. I said that the masked Seer had put a geas spell on them that would melt their brains if they neglected their duties. Simple enough. Classic plot device.
The bearded man in the Dining Hall is a fun encounter but doesn't really do anything for me. I decided that he was one of the necromancers that had taken in Fletcher as a child. He was still catatonic, but had moments of lucidity during which he could give some exposition about the dungeon, Fletcher's plans, the Gutworm, etc. I wanted to preserve the encounter's function as a trick/trap while making it feel like less of a time-waster.
The skeletons on the pillar in the Rotblack Sludge are pointless. It's interesting I guess, but it's also so odd that I knew my players would fixate on it. So, I decided that Fletcher does not yet have control of the Gutworm, and the skeletons' music is what keeps it relatively subdued. The players could, for example, attempt to tamper with the skeletons, but this would unleash the worm.
Lastly, Lesdy. She "is trying to turn the Gutworm against Fletcher". Great! How is she trying to do that? How is the worm controlled? "She seeks the tunnels and caves deep beneath Rotblack Sludge". What tunnels and caves? How does Lesdy plan to get there? The sludge burns anyone who is in it! Also, Fletcher hates her but "can't fit through the tunnel" to the Greenhouse. What? Can't he send in the guards to kill her? Well no, you see - the crooked guards in the Guard Room "follow Fletcher's every word" but "don't care about Lesdy". That's convenient! Inconvenient for Fletcher, I guess.
Also, Fletcher is using the kidnapped heir as leverage to "pressure the Shadow King into getting rid of Lesdy for good." So Fletcher and Lesdy are like, colleagues? They're agents of the Shadow King or something? And Fletcher would rather kidnap the Shadow King's son than just like, order his guards to go kill Lesdy? Like, what is meant to be going on here?
I hate to be a plot-brained idiot who can't understand anything unless its explained to me but like, I can easily come up with a disjointed scenario with a bunch of incoherent ideas myself. When I run modules it's because I don't want to have the cognitive load of figuring out how the disparate ideas of a scenario fit together. I want the author to have figured that out for me so I can focus on running the game with minimal prep!
So, here's how I made sense of all of it. Fletcher and Lesdy are villainous colleagues. They have no real affiliation with the Shadow King. They both want to control the Gutworm because if there was a giant worm and you could potentially control it, you probably would want to. Lesdy and her acolytes spend their time in the Greenhouse brewing concoctions which grant some measure of power over the worm, but the worm will only truly obey someone of noble blood. So, they kidnapped the Shadow King's heir. Both Lesdy and Fletcher are grooming the heir to obey them so that they can be the worm's true master, while secretly plotting to cut each other out.
There. That took a paragraph and could easily be inserted at the beginning of the adventure in a "what's going on?" blurb.
Without going into the nitty-gritty details of the session: the characters fought some skeletons, smooth-talked past some guards, fought some dogs, stole some gems, fled from the Gutworm, and had a tense negotiation with Lesdy.
We wrapped up the session there and "leveled up" ("Getting Better" in Mörk Borg). Normally I'd wait until after they finished the scenario, but I'm not sure if we will. They seem interested in playing again, but I wanted to finish the session by showing off the progression system. I know level-less systems are all the rage now, but I appreciate that Mörk Borg has a very simple system for character improvement.
Combat was fast and easy. I made liberal use of reaction rolls in pretty much every encounter. Karg's harp (which adds d4 to reaction rolls) felt particularly overpowered, but I probably allowed him to use it too often (or I was using reaction rolls too often).
If I were to do it again, I'd start new players off with classless characters. The classes have just one randomly determined ability each. In Karg's case, it was a character-defining ability, but everyone else forgot their ability even existed. It just added needless complexity to the character creation process with very little payoff in-game.
The system really "gets out of the way" and allows the referee freedom to riff on what's there (and what's not). Of course, I have a decade plus of DMing experience at this point so I know how to take those simple rules and apply them in a versatile way.
It's a fantastic game for players new to RPGs. My players said they really appreciated that the random character creation "took the guesswork out of making a character" and that it was cool that the rules were simple enough to learn as we went along. Which like...yes! It is so nice to just be able to make a character without having to know the rules first, then learn the rules by actually playing.
I'm optimistic that we'll be coming back to this one. Here's to möre Borg in 2025!
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