The Goblin Grinder is a scenario for Mörk Borg. It is written by Ripley Caldwell, with graphic design and art by Johan Nohr, and editing by the Moonrat Conspiracy (Fiona Maeve Geist and Jarrett Crader).
Johan's cover art is a delightful collage of weapons and body parts splattered with neon pink gore and viscera:
This segues nicely into the scenario's introduction, where we're told that the streets of Galgenbeck (Mörk Borg's "greatest city that ever was") are littered with the "twisted, inhuman" corpses of goblins: "Their mottled, ropy flesh rots but never decomposes; even the oldest skins in the darkest alleys hold their shape to warn passersby of their swiftly approaching end."
Why are there so many goblin corpses in the streets? Well, there is also an infestation of live goblins. It sounds less like they are killing people and more like they are causing Gremlins-esque mischief. They are also afflicting the Galgenbeckians with the dreaded Goblin Curse.
What's the Goblin Curse? To find out, we'll have to check out the selection of creatures in Mörk Borg's core rulebook:
Maybe that's too hard to read (I just love the way monsters are presented in the Mörk Borg rulebook). Try the barebones edition:
If a goblin is standing atop a 600-foot cliff and shoots at you with an arrow and runs away, you're cursed now. There is no way you're ever finding that goblin. In one to six days you become a goblin, and nothing can save you. Tear up that character sheet.
I would probably never use this in my game. At most, I'd say the curse is transmitted by a successful bite attack or something. If the goblin gets close enough to bite you and then slips away, at least you have a reasonable chance of chasing it down before you turn.
Anyway, all that is just to say that this scenario, in which Mörk Borg's "greatest city that ever was" is infested with comically-easily-transmitted curse-carrying goblins seems more like an outright apocalyptic event rather than anything the PCs can actually hope to resolve. I've seen Gremlins. I know how hard it was to deal with the gremlins - and the gremlins weren't turning everyone else into gremlins simply by looking at them. The scenario strains credibility immediately. If I'm a player, knowing what there is to know about goblins, I'm not going near that place.
But wait, there's hope! The local alchemist, Nagel Krat, is selling a cure for 40 silver. He's increasing the price each day as demand grows...
SPOILERS for the Goblin Grinder!
The next page after the hook describes "What's Really Going On?" and gives a list of reasons "Why Do the PCs Care About Any of This?"
It turns out that the alchemist Nagel Krat recently inherited both a Medickal Shoppe and a Derelict Mill from his father, Urvan Krat, who recently died of poison from an unidentified assassin. In the mill, Nagel found alchemical supplies and a machine called The Goblin Grinder.
Nagel came up with a scheme to make goblins out of human corpses using the Goblin Grinder (it is implied but not explicitly stated that the Goblin Grinder turns human corpses into goblins - there is no indication as to what the machine actually is, how it achieves this, or why Urvan had it to begin with). To procure corpses, Nagel hired a gravedigger named Qarg. The corpses are fed into the Goblin Grinder to create corpses. The goblins infest Galgenbeck and curse people. Meanwhile, Nagel uses his alchemical supplies to produce a "cure" which does not actually cure the curse, but delays the transformation. He sells it to everyone and raises the prices every day. Infinite profit!
To rub it in my face a bit, this page has a reminder: "Anyone attacked by a goblin irrevocably transforms into one in d6 days, unless the attacking goblin is killed before then. Any attack is sufficient - it doesn't even need to be a successful hit. Goblins suck."
Yes, they do.
So, why do the PCs care? There are four options: they're afflicted with the curse and can't keep up with rising prices, Nagel hires them as Medickal Shoppe guards, they're hired by a noble to investigate, or they're hired by a worried peasant.
If you run goblins by the book, the PCs are certain to be cursed (not to beat a dead horse, but it's trivially easy to become cursed, and the city is infested with goblins), but there's no cure for the curse except to kill the offending goblin. What if a goblin jumps out at them first thing, then runs off into the city streets and eludes them? What are the chances that they find that goblin again? There is no conclusion to this scenario that ends with all the goblins dropping dead at once. It simply doesn't seem fair to me!
If Nagel hires the PCs as guards...what do they do? They just guard the shop against rowdy Galgenbeckians until what exactly happens? There's no actual hook to get the PCs into the meat of the scenario.
If a random peasant who "isn't able to pay, per se" tries to hire the PCs, they're probably going to tell him to buzz off. He does offer to trade a family heirloom in exchange for the PCs' service - it's a "magic" pearl which is hilariously and uselessly cursed. Even if all the PCs know is that it's a pearl, I hardly see this as sufficient motivation.
Mörk Borg is a bleak world inhabited by nasty people. It's not heroic fantasy! If you use the optional tables in the rulebook for generating character traits, you end up with a bunch of PCs who are aggravated, cruel, egocentric, nihilistic, vindictive, cowardly, lazy, bitter, deceitful, and arrogant (to name a few). The world is ending. Why do anything? For money! Even that is a tenuous motivation, considering there isn't that much to buy, but you can at least justify it as flawed people wanting to indulge themselves before the end of the world comes to pass.
For that reason, I'm using the noble patron every time, and I don't see any reason why this scenario needs a d4 table of mostly useless hooks.
The next page introduces the notable characters:
The Bastard is the goblin leader, and somewhat explains why the goblins don't just attack Nagel Krat. He seems pretty nasty, as he makes the goblins fighting around him tougher and harder to shake. (For context, defense in Mörk Borg is normally DR 12, but is DR 14 against goblins specifically. The Bastard raises it again to DR 16. PCs can get up to +6 to their abilities, but the average character will have +0 unless they've survived a few scenarios already.)
Nagel Krat's description makes explicit the obvious: he killed his father. I'm not sure why the scenario tries to conceal that fact in the "What's Really Going On?" section, which reveals all of Nagel's other secrets. The fact that Nagel runs back to the mill at any sign of trouble suggests a path forward for the "PCs are hired guards" scenario - perhaps some Galgenbeckians attempt to loot the Medickal Shoppe, Nagel flees to the mill, and the PCs have to follow him there. If that is the intention, it'd be great if the hook on the previous page made that apparent.
Qarg is something of a nonentity. The PCs can bribe her to leave her post at the shop (I can imagine a few reasons the PCs might think to do so) or miss a delivery (why? Nagel doesn't really need to keep making goblins, since the nature of the curse perpetuates them anyway). I would simply say the PCs can bribe her to cooperate more generally.
Next, the Medickal Shoppe is detailed. Here Nagel sells the goblin cure (we're told that the price increases by 5 silver each day - props for making that explicit rather than leaving it to GM fiat), flash powder, "healing" tincture, invigorating elixir (basically speed), and apple juice.
Nagel also keeps a crate of goblins behind the counter, which he releases in case of emergency. If the PCs aren't already suspicious of Nagel, his keeping a crate of goblins in his shop might lead them to consider him a suspect.
But, I honestly don't see why they would be investigating the shop unless explicitly pointed in this direction by their patron - as far as anyone knows the goblin cure is real, and it wouldn't be surprising to see some ruthless capitalist taking advantage of the situation to their benefit. That doesn't clearly signpost that Nagel is responsible for everything. Maybe the PCs are there for another reason - the "guarding the shop" hook, or to steal as much cure as they can carry - and the goblins are revealed somehow and the adventure propels itself from there.
Still, I'm concerned over how tenuous the whole thing is. Nagel is obviously an unsavory character, but as I mentioned, so is everyone in the Mörk Borg world. Unsavoriness does not warrant suspicion in this setting. The only reason to be suspicious of Nagel in the first place is because he's like, the only character in the scenario. Isn't Galgenbeck "the greatest city that ever was"? Couldn't there be like, an investigation with different characters and locations?
The description of the goblin cure on this page also states: "Not actually a cure, but nobody knows that yet." Oh? So if the PCs only goal is to get a cure (as with one of the four suggested scenario hooks), they could just go and buy the cure, drink it, assume it worked, then turn into goblins in d6 days anyway? So their characters are essentially dead through no fault of their own?
It feels like the only reliable way to run this scenario is to say, "There's a goblin infestation in Galgenbeck. A noble has hired you to investigate and eliminate the source of the goblins. A local alchemist has been selling phony goblin cures, so she recommends you start there." And that's honestly fine with me. It just isn't how the scenario is presented.
Lastly, the scenario describes the Derelict Mill where Nagel keeps the Goblin Grinder. This is a neat little linear dungeon with a bit of time pressure - whenever the PCs linger, Nagel makes a goblin. I would qualify that statement with "If Nagel is here", since he spends a lot of time at the shop as well - although as written there's not much to point the PCs in this direction unless they're chasing Nagel.
The tower's ground floor features an encounter with three goblins and a cannon. They shoot the cannon at anyone walking in. Cool! (Kind of weird considering that Nagel and Qarg both also come through this door, but the goblins are "Given a chance to fire a cannon and are going to take it no matter what.") The cannon kills anyone it hits.
The cannon firing also alerts all of the other goblins in the mill. In the room above are three goblin arches on top of bookshelves. One of them douses the PCs in oil as they climb the stairs. The others shoot flaming arrows at them. Cool!
The next room is a laboratory filled with unstable reagents. Every round, there's a 2-in-6 chance of something bubbling over and causing a reaction. There's also an ooze monster lying in wait. Weapons stick to it and eventually melt. Cool!
Finally, at the top of the tower is Nagel Krat (again, assuming he's here), the Bastard, two goblins plus however many Nagel had time to create while the PCs climbed the tower, and the Goblin Grinder. This has the potential to be a pretty nasty fight, and Nagel can use his smoke bombs to escape at any time.
We still learn nothing about what the Goblin Grinder is or how it came to be here. We learn that it requires a key, fuel, and a human corpse to work. We don't know how it works or how to destroy it. It's also worth noting that even if Nagel and the Bastard are killed and the Goblin Grinder destroyed somehow, none of this solves the goblin infestation in Galgenbeck. The curse is self-perpetuating. There is no cure. The scenario has no resolution.
Ultimately, I was pretty disappointed by this one. The Goblin Grinder is one of the most frequently recommended Mörk Borg scenarios. I'm sure there's fun to be had, but it also feels like there's work to do. Here's what I'd change/make more explicit:
- Goblins transmit their curse via bite. This reduces the infestation to a smaller scale which feels more believable.
- The PCs are hired by a noble to investigate. I would point them towards a specific district in the city which has been quarantined to contain the outbreak.
- The PCs can ask around and learn about Nagel's shop and the mill. The mill makes a lot of noise at night (the Goblin Grinder is loud), but people assume that's just Nagel making cures late into the night, struggling to meet demand. Some people claim to have seen goblins in and around the mill. Others claim that Nagel's cures are phony.
- The PCs can investigate the shop or mill in whatever order. Nagel is at the shop during the day and the mill at night. If the PCs go to the mill during the day, maybe the Bastard is there making goblins? He doesn't do anything else, so I don't see why not.
- If confronted at the store, Nagel releases his goblins and flees to the mill. The PCs can chase him or question Qarg to find out what's going on.
- The PCs can stake out the mill and see Qarg delivering bodies in the dead of night, and see goblins emerging from within.
- The Bastard is keeping all the goblins together. If he's killed, they all run off into Galgenbeck's surrounding lands and eventually into the wilderness.
I feel like those are some pretty big changes from the material as written, but this set up gives PCs a clear motivation and suggests a direction in which to start their investigation, while allowing them freedom to explore and conduct the investigation in the order they like. It doesn't rely on the PCs having a specific encounter at a specific location to point them towards the next location. It has a resolution.
All that being said, I would be remiss not to conclude by praising the art and layout of this one. Johan Nohr's art is, as usual, evocative, stylish, whimsical, and hideous all at once. The layout is as easy to use as many of Mörk Borg's other official scenarios (which is to say, very useable). There are some pieces of information I'd move around or signpost earlier in the text, but it's not a big problem.
I love a scenario that sticks to one striking color, and the neon pink here looks fantastic. I can't help but compare it to Mothership's A Pound of Flesh, which for some reason uses like, 8 point white font on a similar neon pink background, which is totally unreadable to me in most environments (I sincerely don't understand why Mörk Borg gets so much backlash for its stylistic choices while Mothership is constantly praised for the same, but this is neither the time nor place).
Anyway, that's the Goblin Grinder. I don't love it, but I'll try running it anyway. It's salvageable. It looks fantastic.
You can download the Goblin Grinder for free on the Mörk Borg website (direct link here).
If you want a physical copy, you have to purchase Mörk Borg Cult: Feretory. I highly recommend it! In addition to the Goblin Grinder, you get rules for traveling between the locations of the Mörk Borg world and hunting its creatures (including a bunch of new monsters), the Death Ziggurat scenario (which I previously reviewed and liked a lot), a d66 table of magic items, four new classes, Dark Fort (the solo game upon which Mörk Borg developed), and more. Get it!
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