Review: Mörk Borg Miscellany (Bloat, Devil's Tomb, the Hexed Gauntlet of Kagel-Secht, and Nurse the Rot)

What follows is a collection of reviews of four short adventures for Mörk Borg. Spoilers abound beyond this point.

Bloat

Bloat is a "A gluttonous dungeon for Mörk Borg". It is written by Greg Saunders, with an original map design by Dyson Logos and editing and art by Johan Nohr. It is a one-page dungeon and looks like this:

In print this takes up a two-page spread. It is quite easy to use at the table, and I was able to run it for my players in just one roughly two-hour session (albeit with a somewhat rushed anticlimax due to time constraints).

The premise is that a vagabond, Silas, stumbled upon a dungeon which was once the lair of a cult of bacchanalian priests dedicated to a goddess of fat and plenty. There he found a cursed set of cutlery which allows the wielder to eat anything and makes everything taste delicious, but also compels the wielder to eat. The dungeon is filled with fleshy ceramic automatons that kidnap villagers to feed to Silas.

The scenario suggests a few hooks:

• The PCs are recruited by the missing villagers' families or lord to find and rescue them
• The PCs seek shelter in the dungeon while hiding from something else
• The PCs are looking for Silas

Of these, the first appeals to me most. Have a lord post a reward for the problem to be dealt with and that should be sufficient motivation. The second option doesn't actually encourage exploration of the dungeon, and the third doesn't quite work unless you come up with a reason why Silas must be found (he is just a vagabond, after all). One possibility I toyed with was to instead make Silas an infamous highwayman, wayfarer, or the like, and to put a bounty on his head. However, this doesn't necessarily point in the direction of the dungeon, which is where the adventure is.

Since I ran this as a one-shot, I used option one. Villagers have gone missing, and a local lord has posted a reward to find them and resolve the problem. I added in that the lord's men had recently routed a band of brigands and that their leader, a killer named Silas, had escaped. Also, just outside the village there was an old temple once used by the Bacchanalists in certain dark rituals. Perhaps one or both are somehow responsible for the recent troubles? 

That seemed like enough set up for me - not that it mattered, because I had the players start at the dungeon anyway. If I were to instead run a sandbox and wanted to include this adventure therein, I think this framing would work well enough to get things moving.

The dungeon consists of six keyed rooms with a few notes about features in the areas between (discarded bones, a falling block trap, and a fountain of sweet water). The keyed rooms include a ratbadger's den, a larder where the automatons prepare feasts for Silas, a sewage pit where the automatons dump Silas's waste (and where it comes to life), a chapel where villagers are forced by the automatons to pray to a statue of the goddess of fat and plenty, an assembly area where automatons are created and stored, and the court of Silas, the Fattened King, whose corpulent form occupies the entire room, where he devours whatever the automatons bring him.

This is a neat little dungeon, if not a bit crowded. Every room has some sort of creature in it. Most are not explicitly hostile, so it need not be a combat-packed slog. Many of the dungeon's occupants are not given a suggested course of action, so the GM must use common sense or reaction rolls to determine how they respond to the PCs snooping around. Mörk Borg's core rules do include reaction rolls, so I view this as a design choice rather than an oversight.

When I ran it, most of the creatures were indifferent to the PCs. The ratbadger was asleep, so the PCs snuck past it (actually, one of the PCs had a scroll which allowed them to cast a sleep spell, which they used on the ratbadger to ensure it did not wake up when they passed it). I played the automatons as diligently focused on their assigned tasks so that they did not notice the PCs peeking around corners and into rooms. The animated waste in the sewage pit did menace them, but the players fed it scraps and then lured one of the automatons to the pit and threw it to the waste to be consumed. I played Silas as hostile only because I figured the cursed cutlery would compel him to eat the PCs.

There are a few interesting enemies here. The automatons have medium armor, do a medium amount of damage, and have quite a few hit points, but they are neutralized entirely when knocked down. The players were delighted once they realized that a good shove was an instant win (I made it an opposed Strength test, but the party's Fanged Deserter with +5 Strength had no issue with that). I added that the automatons were filled with congealed fat or grease and so were exceptionally flammable, which the players also took great advantage of. The animated waste is not particularly dangerous, but cannot be killed, only dissipated with water. 

Silas has a ton of hit points but no armor, but when damaged, he farts, which can cause the PCs to wretch and gag for several rounds. He can also grab the PCs and shove them into his mouth for extra damage. They covered him with grease and set him on fire, then had to run out with the villagers as fast as they could before he exploded in a blast of flaming farts. The newest character with just 1 hit point had to use all of their omens to survive that one damage roll.

It's a gross dungeon with plenty of room for crude, juvenile humor, which is some of my favorite gaming material. Definitely give this one a try! 

Bloat is available in print by way of Mörk Borg Cult: Heretic. It is also free on the Mörk Borg website (direct link). If you're into Mörk Borg, I highly recommend Heretic. It includes Sepulchre of the Swamp Witch, which I reviewed previously, as well as two of the other dungeons I review later in this post. It and Mörk Borg Cult: Feretory provide lots of gameable content which have together sustained multiple Mörk Borg games of mine for several months now.

Devil's Tomb

Devil's Tomb is a dungeon by Johan Nohr, made using the Mörk Borg digital dungeon generator, DNGNGEN, and it shows. I don't care for this dungeon generator at all, and feel that the GM is better served by simply making a dungeon in the B/X fashion or something similar (admittedly, I haven't yet made a Mörk Borg dungeon of my own and probably never will because the system doesn't offer much support for doing so).

That being said, this dungeon is alright. When I say that the use of the dungeon generator shows, I mean that there are a good deal of disparate elements jammed together in a way that only sometimes makes sense. There's a giant plant that has filled the place with psychoactive spores, a room with three goblins bickering over a sword, a lair of fish people, and a pit to Hell, most of which don't interact with each other in any meaningful way.

Anyway, here's what the dungeon looks like:

I ran this in my more sandbox-y Mörk Borg campaign, so I was able to let the dungeon breathe a little and didn't feel the need to jam it into a single session, which was nice because the players ended up in a very messy situation in the depths. It took us about two and a half three-hour sessions to get through it.

The dungeon overview says that the Eyes of the Icon of St Largoth have been stolen and brought to Devil's Tomb. They are magical eyes that grant the power of true sight, and the PCs are here to retrieve them. That's a decent enough hook. To make it a bit more tantalizing, I had the Church of the Twin-Headed Basilisk post a reward for the Eyes' return. My group had quite a few heretical priests among them, so they decided instead to retrieve the Eyes so that they could be destroyed or else used to lure representatives from the Church into a trap, which I thought was a fun idea and exactly the kind of thing that sandbox-style play is good for.

The main attraction here is the Plant of Life, a giant plant which has filled the dungeon with its spores and cherub-faced flowering vines. There are a few areas filled with spores, which require a Toughness test when inhaled to resist a number of effects. The effects are "weird" in a way that is not actually very gameable. They make the PCs see visions of death, or become dizzy, or hear voices. The effects are at worst inconvenient and at best something to handwave. (I instead gave them a charm/rapport spores effect, which I felt was easier to use. If the players weren't careful, it could escalate to total domination by the Plant.)

The Plant of Life is inside a hidden room partway down the Pit to Hell. The entrance can be seen through the Eyes of St Largoth which are, in turn, hidden in the Drowned's treasure hoard. I'm not sure how the PCs are meant to reach the entrance to the Plant's lair, which is on the opposite side of the Pit from the goblins' cave. Perhaps the gap is jumpable? Perhaps it is not so far down that it can't be climbed down via rope from the bridge above? Some rough approximations of distance would help!

I changed the Pit to Hell to a regular bottomless pit (which could still lead to Hell - the PCs didn't find out because none of them jumped in, even though I kept suggesting that there was only one way to know for sure how deep it went). I had the Plant's vines growing up and down the pit so that the PCs could climb up and down them as another means of vertically exploring the dungeon (all three levels connect to the Pit somewhere).

The Plant of Life is worshipped by the Drowned, amphibious humanoids who dwell in the dungeon's flooded lower levels (don't worry - the flooded area empties out into the Pit to Hell, so it's not flooded in any meaningful or interesting way, although the Drowned do freeze the water around them when they die, which causes some damage to those nearby). Belpheduk, a traitor to the Drowned, is locked in a cave at the top of the dungeon as punishment for killing another Drowned (it is not clear why she did this, but she wants to destroy the Plant of Life, and can provide information about its location).

There are 10 Drowned at the bottom of the dungeon, with 4 more arriving "soon" (when?), which is a lot of potential enemies for Mörk Borg, in my experience. Again, the dungeon does not describe their behavior, so I imagine that reaction rolls are meant to be used. My Drowned ended up being indifferent, so I split them up between the altar and lair chambers - those in the altar chamber were in silent prayer over their dead comrade, and those in the lair were sleeping in their "fleshy cocoons". This allowed the players to run around the dungeon scoping out the situation before deciding what to do. They could have easily snuck into the treasure room, stolen the Eyes, and snuck out again without fighting anyone.

Unfortunately for them, they still took an agonizingly long time making their choices, and ended up caught in the Drowned lair when the hunting party returned. They decided to ambush the hunting party (who were in the way of their escape), but ended up alerting all the rest of the Drowned in the process. They got caught between all three groups, with the hunting party in front, the Drowned from the altar at their flank, and those from the lair at their rear. A very long combat ensued, in which the players used all their omens, many of the Drowned fled, the rest died, and just one character was slain in the final round of combat due to consecutive critical failures.

The summary makes it sound thrilling, but it was quite a slog. Mörk Borg's combat simply isn't interesting enough to sustain a prolonged skirmish, so 10 to 14 enemies in a single area seems to me like bad design. That being said, my players definitely should not have started a fight here, so perhaps they are more to blame. Again, there is nothing to indicate that the Drowned are hostile to the PCs.

The PCs already had the Eyes, so they hurried out of there. They deliberated for a while about finding the Plant and destroying it, but decided to count themselves lucky instead. The Plant has a lot of hit points (but is too big to miss with an attack), and only has one interesting mechanic which is a tendril attack that must be escaped or else the target is restrained inside the Plant's mouth while being digested. The Plant can attack everyone nearby at once, so it has the potential to be very deadly. It's nice that the scenario does not require that the players defeat it.

Overall, this dungeon is fine, but it requires the GM to put in some work to tie the disparate elements together. The GM should also exercise some caution to prevent the adventure from grinding to a halt due to a combat slog in the lower levels, though there's no accounting for players doing player things.

You can download Devil's Tomb for free on the Mörk Borg website (direct link). It is not available in print.

The Hexed Gauntlet of Kagel-Secht

The Hexed Gauntlet of Kagel-Secht is a Mörk Borg "obituary dungeon" with art and story by Lukasz Kowalczuk, graphic design and text by Johan Nohr, and proofreading by Walton Wood. What is an "obituary dungeon"? I don't really know. It looks like this:

Basically, it's a comic strip/poster equivalent to roughly four letter-sized pages. It depicts a trio of characters going through a dungeon and dying to its various hazards. (Maybe that's what makes it an "obituary dungeon"?) The margins contain game information on monsters and traps, plus a mini map of the dungeon which clarifies how all of the areas connect. In other words, this is poster, comic strip, and dungeon all in one.

I love this thing! You just know there are people who hate this, who think it's everything wrong with Mörk Borg or art punk or indie RPGs or whatever sort of axe it is they have to grind. Admittedly, it's difficult to determine what exactly you're seeing at first, but once you figure out what it is and how the information is meant to flow, it's really cool. I for one can't wait to unfold this thing at the table and run it for my players.

The format leaves a few things to be desired. The mechanical marginalia does not address everything that happens in the comic. Is the giant statue that grabs the one character's head supposed to be an instant death trap? A monster? Can it be defeated without the power of the gauntlet? How am I meant to use the table of subterranean monsters? Why does the character who falls into the subterranean area transform into a raving mutant? What is the nature of Kagel-Secht the lich?

It's certainly not the greatest dungeon I've ever seen, but the unique presentation is enough for it to really sing to me.

The Hexed Gauntlet of Kagel-Secht is available in print by way of Mörk Borg Cult: Heretic. From what I can tell, no digital version is available (it is not included in the PDF version of Heretic). And really, this one is worth having a physical copy of.

Nurse the Rot

Nurse the Rot is a dungeon offered in the final pages of Mörk Borg Cult: Heretic. It is meant to showcase the two new monsters described in the preceding pages: the Borg Bitor (a giant centipede which lays its single black egg inside of a human infant, the infant in turn eventually transforms into an adult Bitor to perpetuate the grotesque cycle) and the Rotten Nurse (an invincible undead nurse guilty of horrendous crimes who traps her victims inside a "mental torture prison" until they either die or break free).

The two monsters and accompanying dungeon are written by Pelle Nilsson. The art and graphic design are by Johan Nohr. Nohr's art is, as always, evocative, simultaneous dark yet splashed with tactical neon color in his signature style:

The dungeon itself folds out from the description of the Rotten Nurse into a two-page spread:

This does not translate well to the PDF version of the book, but looks very cool in physical form.

The adventure takes place in Chapel Olundan, in which the PCs must find the Staff of Awful Light, or else the village of Tünstal will forever fall into darkness. Why do the cynical, nihilistic, rat bastard PCs typical created by Mörk Borg's random character creation care? Well, it was one of the PC's aunt's dying wish.

Yeah...it's not a great hook. Well the Staff of Awful Light is probably pretty cool. Maybe the PCs want to retrieve it for their own nefarious ends? Well, maybe. But for some reason, the scenario doesn't describe what the Staff actually is or does. You'll have to come up with your own hook for this one. Either figure out a compelling use for the Staff and send the PCs after it or tie a monetary reward to clearing out the place. 

The scenario details roughly six areas as well as a handful of corridors connecting them. Each room's description points to the room it describes. The descriptions of the north, east, and south corridors are fittingly at the top, right hand side, and bottom of the spread, respectively. 

It's a bit daunting to try to read the descriptions in any sort of "order" like one might a more traditional layout, but it seems it would be easy to follow along as the PCs move from one area to the next in an actual game. One issue is that connections between rooms are only detailed in one of the two rooms' descriptions, so to find out that a particular door is locked, you will need to read the description of the "correct" room. Otherwise that information is easily missed.

As the stars of the show here are the Borg Bitor and the Rotten Nurse, I'll focus on their roles in the scenario. 

The Borg Bitor is in its nest in area 6. For some reason, the PCs get better (Mörk Borg's version of leveling up) when they enter the room, which is not something I've seen in any other Mörk Borg scenario to date. It's not like the Bitor is particularly deadly - it has a medium amount of hit points, medium armor, a sticky glue which is DR 18 ("should not be possible", according to the core rulebook) to escape, and a save or die venom which is just DR 6 ("so simple people laugh at you for failing") to resist. It seems like an odd choice, is all.

Inside the Bitor's nest is the Staff of Awful Light, so the PCs will need to get past the Bitor to complete their objective. There should be three ways to access this area, but one way is through an "impossible to pass" blazing bone fire (unclear if the bones can be passed if the fire is extinguished) and the other is through an "impenetrable" sheet of skin. That leaves just the third path, which is a locked door. The key is in a murky canal guarded by a "starving Sludger" (whatever that is - the scenario isn't specific, but it has a lot of hit points, medium armor, and can destroy armor with its attacks). Why one would create a room with three means of ingress and make two of them impassible is beyond me. I would change that.

The Rotten Nurses are hidden in a secret room, which is undetectable unless the Nurses leave it. There are a few conditions which will cause the Nurses to leave the room, one of which is if the PCs touch the stairs leading to the locked door behind which is the Borg Bitor's nest. As I mentioned, as written, this is the only way to get to the Bitor, which guards the Staff, so the PCs will have to alert the Nurses if they hope to complete their objective.

If alerted, the Nurses move to a random room to investigate. Every 10 minutes, they move to another random room, presumably until they locate the PCs or the PCs escape. I like this dynamic element of the Nurses' behavior. What I don't like is that the scenario doesn't specify how many of them there are (the description of the room they hide in only says "a group of Rotten Nurses"). The description of the Rotten Nurses on the prior page says that there were originally two dozen of them, so maybe that's how many. That seems like a lot. You could maybe roll 6d4, 4d6, 3d8, or 2d12 to determine it.

Overall, this is an okay dungeon. It needs a good hook. I wish the Borg Bitor was a bit more fearsome (as is, it is overshadowed in its own spotlight scenario by the Sludger, which is much scarier), and I wish the "mental torture prison" power of the Rotten Nurse was a bit more interesting from a gameplay perspective than simply "roll ability tests until you succeed on one or die". Overall I think this would make a decent one-shot, although not as good of one as Bloat or the Hexed Gauntlet.

Nurse the Rot is available in print or PDF by way of Mörk Borg Cult: Heretic.

Review: The Goblin Grinder (Mörk Borg)

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:

When Mörk Borg's goblins attack you, you become cursed. Doesn't matter if the attack hits. The curse turns you into a goblin unless you kill the goblin that attacked you. I love this, because it makes Mörk Borg's goblins unique. I also hate it once I think about it for more than a second.

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!

Review: The Death Ziggurat (Mörk Borg)

The Death Ziggurat is "a cosmic necrocrawl" scenario for Mörk Borg. It is written by Carl Niblaeus with editing, graphic design, and art by Johan Nohr.

As always, the art of Johan Nohr is evocative, pulpy, and generally great. The illustrations include a small hex map, an illustrated border around a page of random tables, the death ziggurat itself, and the scenario's primary BBEG - Big Bad Evil (Demon) Girl, in this case. 

The whole scenario has a light blue and yellow aesthetic theme which looks great. If Sepulchre of the Swamp Witch's green and black palette evoked the swamp, then The Death Ziggurat's evokes the frozen wastes.

SPOILERS for the Death Ziggurat!

The scenario takes place within Sarkash, the great northern forest of the Mörk Borg setting. Inside the forest is an unnaturally cold depression. Inside the depression is the ziggurat, where the demon child Akünh was imprisoned long ago. The magic imprisoning Akünh has weakened, and she has escaped to raise an army of undead and, along with her fanatical rot priest followers, ravage the world before its end.

An order of Cretun monks hires the party to investigate and, presumably, thwart Akünh. They tell the party that the ziggurat is "hidden in another realm" and that "the [rot] priests carry keys". 

Apparently the monks are paying the party generously for their services, though the scenario doesn't specify what qualifies as generous pay. Mörk Borg itself never gives any indication as to how much silver is considered a little or a lot, so it's entirely up to GM discretion. Not my favorite, but not terrible either. I went with 200 silver for my game, which in retrospect may have been too much.

The presentation of information is not as elegant as in other Mörk Borg scenarios like Rotblack Sludge and Sepulchre of the Swamp Witch. Information is not organized into bullet points with bolded keywords. Instead, all information is presented as prose, broken up by bolded headings. Names of NPCs and monsters are bolded, as well as the occasional important location or item, but it's rather inconsistent. 

I'm not always crazy about the bullet points and bolded keywords approach, particularly because it favors terseness and at-the-table utility over clarity or thoroughness, however I do wish the writing here was a bit more utilitarian.

The Depression Crawl

The scenario includes an illustrated hex map of the depression. There are two locations outside of the depression: a camp of death-obsessed cultists (not to be confused with the camp of demon cultists that shows up later) and a bloody, rotting mouth which conceals a tunnel leading into the depression. You need to feed it blood for it to open.

The walls of the depression are 150 to 300 feet high, so as far as I can tell the only way to get down is to climb (which seems highly unlikely) or pass through the mouth. I started the players traveling through the forest, with only the smoke from the death cultist camp in sight. The cultists told them about the rotting mouth. The players went there, had a fun social interaction scene with the mouth, and figured out how to open it.

The cultists are kind of a weird inclusion. They are different from the rot priests who worship Akünh. The death cultists and the rot priests both have camps. Perhaps the players are meant to expect that the rot priest camp is another death cultist camp? I don't mind the inclusion of both, but it seems that the players could easily get confused by the two camps of religious people fixated on death.

Inside the depression, there's a cave connecting to the rotting mouth, a frozen lake, a rot priest camp, the Spiral Chapel, and the necropolis and ziggurat, both of which are hidden in the Death Realm.

The hexes in between locations are also filled with ruins. I think all of the hexes that aren't otherwise keyed are supposed to contain ruins, but it's not entirely clear. Some of the hexes obviously contain ruins, but a few look empty, and others may only contain trees. The map isn't super clear.

Random Rules

Once per hex, the GM rolls a random event, which range from nothing happening to an important NPC showing up. Five of the twelve possible results are of the "nothing happens" variety, but the "nothing" is described evocatively: clouds gather and thunder rumbles, everything gets cold and freezes over, or a spiraling galaxy opens up above. I could take or leave these. They're the sort of things that the players will either fruitlessly fixate on or go "Oh, okay. So...we keep walking..."

One result is an undead attack (personally, I'd have them burst out of the snow). Two results are encounters with rot priests (which aren't explicitly combat encounters). Two results are encounters with Sarku, Akünh's former closest advisor who is now a blood-sucking ghost, and who knows that to defeat her, her heart (hidden in the ziggurat) must be destroyed. Best of all, two results are encounters with Akünh herself.

Sarku, unfortunately, doesn't show up anywhere else in the scenario, so there is a chance that the players will miss him entirely. I just decided that he could be found in the Spiral Chapel if the players didn't encounter him elsewhere. I think he's an important NPC to include, and he ended up being quite important when I ran the scenario myself.

The only other random encounter I rolled was with a small group of cautious rot priests, which presented a unique opportunity for the players to obtain the priests' medallions. So that was fun.

There's a table for generating ruin types (short descriptions like "Unholy chapel" or "Basalt mausoleum", not a procedure for running a short dungeoncrawl on the fly, which might have been cool). The party can also take 15 minutes to search the ruins for treasure, but might trigger a trap or another random event in so doing. 

I rolled "overgrown ziggurat" something like three times, which was really funny considering that the party knew only that they were looking for a ziggurat. I explained to them the meta mechanics of searching the ruins (i.e., you can take a bit of extra time and maybe find some treasure at the risk of triggering an encounter), but they weren't interested at all.

The frozen lake is covered in black flowers that have strange effects when crushed, which are tied to a table of hourly, weekly, and permanent effects. The effects are fine. One of them turns the character into a ghoul and the other causes them to age in reverse. The implications of both are left entirely to the GM. The players didn't engage with this location at all.

The rot priests are nothing to write home about. They're fascinated by the metaphysical. They have mouths in their abdomens. They carry medallions that allow them to find the necropolis and ziggurat in the Death Realm. They don't really seem to be doing anything besides two that are summoning horn beasts from a bottomless pit in the necropolis, and a few guarding the ziggurat. I wish the others were a bit more active. My players just snuck by most of them.

The Spiral Chapel houses a little puzzle which, when solved, yields the Spiral Crown. The Crown turns its wearer into a cosmic vessel. The wearer gets three DR 12 Presence tests to remove it, otherwise they are "irrevocably lost to the Cosmos", whatever that means. It sounds like a "Your character is now an NPC, through no fault of your own" situation. I had Sarku allude to the awesome power of the crown, and the players had a nice long discussion about who should wear it. 

Wearing the Crown also reverses Akünh's channeling of the demonic world's power, which she needs to raise her undead army. Reversing the channeling also drains Akünh's health each round, causing her to appear and battle the Crown-bearer. My understanding is that, even if she dies here, one still needs to destroy her heart at the ziggurat to destroy her permanently. That makes the Crown a very useful but dangerous and not necessary tool, which I like. 

I did change it so that passing the Presence test allowed the character to wield the Crown without being lost to the Cosmos, rather than to simply remove the Crown. The character could instead attempt a Strength test at any time during the "attunement" process to remove the Crown. This way, there are three outcomes: wear the Crown but be lost to the Cosmos, remove the Crown before becoming lost to the Cosmos, or master the Crown and retain your personality.

One of the player characters wore the Crown and mastered it. Akünh showed up and tried to kill them. That character had 1 hit point. Fortunately, the party's Fanged Deserter scored a critical hit with their Croaking Trident from Sepulchre of the Swamp Witch, slaying Akünh (temporarily) instantly. Cool! Now, all that was left was to go find the ziggurat and destroy Akünh's heart.

The Death Realm

To find the necropolis and ziggurat in the Death Realm, the party needs a rot priest medallion. Otherwise, they find only a barren waste, concealed by fog or mist, swarming with undead. If the party doesn't have a medallion, they see a funnel of clouds being sucked down into a sinkhole where the ziggurat would be.

At the necropolis, there are some rot priests summoning horn beasts from a bottomless pit. They are seemingly the only proactive rot priests in the whole area. It's unclear if their summoning is tied to Akünh's channeling and whether disrupting the channeling stops the summoning. My players saw the horn beasts crawling out of the pit and asked "Can we sneak around them?" I didn't see why not.

Finally, inside the Death Ziggurat are some rot priests and their horn beasts, guarding a rotten mouth sucking in the cloud funnel. If the party crawls down the wet throat, they'll find Akünh's heart. Destroying it banishes her to the void and instantly triggers a Misery from Mörk Borg's Calendar of Nechrubel.

My players encountered the maximum number of rot priests here. Not good! A battle ensued (one of the characters was still wearing the Crown, so the rot priests instantly recognized them as enemies). As the party's Shedding Vicar summoned a gang of zombies to tilt the numbers in the party's favor, the Forlorn Philosopher slipped past the priests and down into the mouth (they slipped and fell in, actually, barely surviving the fall), where they found Akünh regenerating around her still-beating heart.

Before they could destroy the heart, a horn beast tore the Crown-bearer apart. Akünh's power was restored! Her eyes snapped open. The Forlorn Philosopher stabbed her heart. She screamed in pain and fury and pursued the Philosopher. The Philosopher barely managed to climb back up out of the throat. The party's Gutterborn Scum rushed to put on the Crown, struggling to master it while the rest of the party held off Akünh and her priests and beasts.

Akünh drew the Crown-bearer towards her with her scream, grabbed them, and bit them in half, killing them instantly. But not before the Fanged Deserter once more delivered the killing blow. I described Akünh falling backwards into the mouth-pit, Crown and upper half of Crown-bearer chewed up by her abdomen-mouth. Through the hole in the top of the ziggurat, the Cosmos swirled. A bolt of prismatic lightning shot down from the heavens and smote Akünh in her pit. The priests' morale broke and they fled. The day was won, but not without great cost!

Monsters and NPCs

The scenario's final spread provides details about monsters and NPCs, plus a great illustration of Akünh. There's a lot to like here.

The rot priests have mouths in their abdomens. They try to grab you and stuff you inside. Any damage they cause does not heal except by magic or after resting one night at least a day's travel from the ziggurat (which means characters are unlikely to heal mid-scenario).

Horn beasts are moderately armored masses of horns and bones with lots of teeth that attack twice per round (which is pretty rare in Mörk Borg). They are pretty nasty and, as I mentioned earlier, managed to score the (surprisingly) first player character kill since we've been playing.

Undead are slow. You can always outrun them, unless they grapple you (which is the first thing they try to do). They are weak, but only stay "dead" for one round before rising with 1 hit point. I like them a lot. Unfortunately my players did not encounter any.

The death cultists are not too exciting. The "most high ranking cultists" (the scenario does not say how many such cultists are in the present group of 25) can deafen you for d10 minutes, which doesn't seem like it would be that big of a deal.

Sarku is awesome. He's a ghost that sucks people's blood with his long, sharp tongue (which also stretches the victim's tongue for some reason). He hangs their desiccated husks from trees. He has combat statistics, even though he's immune to physical harm, and I can't see why he would fight the player characters anyway. His goal is to be freed from his earthly prison. The scenario does not suggest how this is to be accomplished, but I imagine that slaying Akünh would do the trick.

Akünh is also awesome. She can scream to magically pull you within arm's reach. She can attack twice with her claws, and if both hit, the target must test Strength or be devoured by her abdomen mouth and die instantly (this is what killed the party's Gutterborn Scum, who's been with us since the beginning). She can shoot lasers out of her eyes, affecting d6 targets. She can also teleport to anywhere inside of the depression, climbing from a rotting mouth eating out of the ground. The scenario is not clear as to how much of this stuff she can do in a single round. When she reaches 0 HP, she resurrects at her heart beneath the ziggurat, though it isn't clear if this is at full health or if she needs time to heal.

Conclusion

All in all, this is a solid scenario. While the information presentation isn't the most utilitarian, and there are some holes to fill and things I changed, this is the most ready-to-run-as-is Mörk Borg scenario I've reviewed yet. It's not setting the world on fire, but it also isn't trying to do too much, which makes the GM's load significantly lighter. 

I managed to run it in just one 3-hour session, which is the quickest we've gotten through any Mörk Borg scenario so far. It was exciting and deadly. I can imagine that multiple playthroughs would be sufficiently distinct to keep me coming back to this one. My favorite Mörk Borg scenario yet. Run it!

Where to Buy/Download

You can get the Death Ziggurat for free on the Mörk Borg website. Here is a direct link to where you can download it from Google Drive.

If you want a physical copy, you will have to purchase Mörk Borg Cult: Feretory, which includes Death Ziggurat and many other adventures and Mörk Borg content (travel and hunting rules, random tables, magic items, new classes, etc.). I can't really recommend it enough.

Review: Sepulchre of the Swamp Witch (Mörk Borg)

I just finished running this scenario for my Mörk Borg group, so I thought I'd do a review while it's fresh in my mind. 

On a purely aesthetic level, the art and layout are fantastic. I love the black and green color scheme. There are multiple full-page illustrations that look really great. The dungeon key is extremely usable. As is often the case, I think the terse keying leaves a lot to be desired conceptually, which I will get to in a bit.

SPOILERS for Sepulchre of the Swamp Witch!

The scenario takes place in the Slithering Swamp, east of Lake Onda, which is itself east of the "sad-but-gaudy" city of Schleswig. The Mörk Borg core book tells us that Schleswig is ruled by the "paranoid, fat, and increasingly mad" King Fathmu IX, who is obsessed with the basilisk Verhu's prophecies and aggressively taxes and raids the surrounding lands.

The scenario begins by describing the Sepulchre of the Swamp Witch, which contains an altar of dead roots. Legend has it that if one chants forbidden words at the altar, any wish is fulfilled. The altar can even stop the Doom foretold by Verhu.

Unfortunately, the Sepulchre is now home to the Strange Serpent Drug Cult, a psychedelic free-love sex cult formed by Ueth the Scalehunter after he was bitten by the Emerald Serpent, causing him to come under the influence of a permanent hallucinogen. Ueth returned to his village, recruited many of the villagers to the Cult, and kidnapped the rest. 

The Cult makes regular sacrifices to "the serpents" (it's not immediately clear if this is the Emerald Serpent, if there are multiple Emerald Serpents, or if these are some other serpents entirely - eventually we learn that this refers to one other Emerald Serpent as well as a bunch of mundane snakes who live in a pit) in exchange for permanent happiness after the world's end.

The party has "stumbled on" the forbidden words that they need to chant at the dead root altar "on a murdered messenger wearing mad King Fathmu IX's crest in a ditch". Was the messenger bearing the words for some reason? Were the words carved into his flesh? Who killed him? Is the ditch in the Slithering Swamp, or somewhere else? Why is the party in the swamp, or wherever they were when they found the messenger?

It's not super important. It framed the scenario by telling the players that they had passed through a nearly-deserted village and that the few remaining villagers begged them to save their children from the sex and drugs snake cult. Sprinkle in that the cult is hiding out in an old tomb with an altar that grants wishes, and even the more self-serving characters might be interested. But the scenario doesn't suggest what the players' motivation might be.

I am beginning to feel that there's something to be said of Mörk Borg's "motivation problem" - that is, in a world so awful, on the brink of Doom, why do anything? It's easy enough to run Rotblack Sludge and say, "You have to do this or you'll be executed," but it's more difficult when the players have to decide they want to do something. Why would they? 

Because we're playing a game and this is what I have prepared, of course, but that doesn't always cut it for every player. Things did not go well for my players in the first session of this scenario, and after narrowly escaping from the Sepulchre once, they asked, "Why are we doing this again?" I said, "To save the children from the sex cult. And get a wish at the altar, maybe." They said, "Well we don't even know what we would wish for. And saving the kids doesn't seem that worthwhile because the entire world is extremely messed up anyway. Something else equally bad will just happen to them as soon as we leave." And honestly, fair enough.

(I think the scenario is trying to imply that the characters are at the Sepulchre to make a wish. The scenario does not at all suggest that the cult members need saving. I added that in myself because I felt the altar motivation was extremely tenuous and I didn't think my players would want to wish for anything. In hindsight, I would recommend simply asking the players: "You've journeyed to the Sepulchre to make a wish at the altar. What is it?" Eventually, one of the players rolled an arcane catastrophe that gave them a magical STD which caused everyone they had sex with to turn into a zombie that wanted to kill them, so they decided to wish that away. That was halfway through the scenario, though.)

The adventure summary includes a d6 rumor table, which is...whatever. There's some foreshadowing about elements of the scenario, but none of the information was especially useful. I just gave all the rumors to the players. More information equals more agency. 

The tomb contains eleven areas. The main gimmick is Emerald Venom, which players can contract from the Emerald Serpent guarding the dungeon's entrance. The Emerald Venom makes the dungeon interior appear differently, gives the affected a penalty to initiative (which I don't think matters at all because presumably all of those inside the dungeon are also affected), an expanded fumble range, and most importantly, it reveals the presence of hidden passages.

Three of the four players allowed themselves to be bitten by the Serpent. The fourth wasn't too keen on that, and started a fight with the Serpent. Surprisingly, he dodged all three of the Serpent's attacks, then killed it. Hilariously, he then attempted to harvest its venom and fumbled, sticking himself with the hallucinogen anyway.

After the players retreated from the Sepulchre the first time, they rested, and the hallucinogen wore off. Then they went back, with clear heads, and noticed no passage where there had been one before. They correctly concluded that certain passages were hidden by illusions, which tipped them off that they had to search every room thoroughly for secrets. That was really neat.

One strange thing about the scenario is that the cultists don't know about the Swamp Witch or her tomb. One of the rooms, the garden, connects directly to both the tomb and altar, and the room is empty of any danger. Ueth "has heard the rumors of the Swamp Witch buried somewhere in here but hasn't gone farther than the garden, where he felt threatened and turned back." This is Rotblack Sludge's "Fletcher hates Lesdy but can't fit through the tunnel and won't send his guards to kill her for some reason" all over again. Extremely hard to believe as a GM, and not at all a conclusion I would expect the players to naturally reach.

To be fair, the garden is a little spooky, with glowing flowers, ancient symbols, and giant three-eyed toad skulls littering the floor, and Ueth is perpetually tripping, but this feels like somewhat lazy writing. The author included too much stuff in too small of a dungeon and handwaved the explanation. It's difficult to justify in-game, and I need to be able to justify it if my players start to ask questions of me or the NPCs.

Another strange element is that Ueth's lair is one of the first rooms the players can go to when they enter the tomb (if under the influence of Emerald Venom). If the party's main motivation is to kill Ueth (as it was for my players), they can try to do that pretty quickly. My players tried to do it, and got close, but were chased out of the tomb by a dozen or so cultists and had to take refuge in the swamp. Admittedly, this is something of a flaw in how I set up the scenario (with one of the two goals being "kill Ueth"), but I did that because the scenario doesn't provide what I feel is a sufficient hook. I felt the need to supplement it with additional incentive, and nearly broke the adventure as a result.

That being said, I appreciate that the majority of the cultists are friendly towards the party if they're affected by the Venom (which they are very likely to be). It allows the party to scope out the area, figure out what exactly they're up against, and then figure out a plan. (Oddly, my players did exactly this in Rotblack Sludge to resounding success, but essentially went in guns blazing in this adventure and made things so much worse for themselves. They eventually regrouped and figured it out.)

There's also the Croaking Trident, a magic weapon that eventually turns its wielder into a chaos frog warrior. That's pretty cool. I made sure the party's strongest warrior found it, and can't wait to see the results.

Eventually, we get to the Swamp Witch's tomb and she's just...floating there. You know, like an NPC in a video game who's just waiting for the player to show up? She wants the players to make a sacrifice at the altar, which is pretty interesting, but it does beg the question...why haven't the cultists found her? 

We're even told that if the Witch dies, the Emerald Serpents and Venom hallucinations disappear, suggesting she is connected to them. The Cult worships the Serpents. The Witch controls the Serpents. The Witch wants people to make sacrifices at the altar. Why don't the Serpents just tell the cultists to go to the altar and make a sacrifice?

I thought I had a good idea for how to get around this. Wishes at the altar only work if the sacrifice is unwilling. Since this is a drug-addled cult, perhaps they're too enthusiastic about being sacrificed for it to work? But no, the Cult has unwilling prisoners, and those are the people they're sacrificing. The scenario also explains that if a willing sacrifice is made, the Witch shows up and fights you with her cool sword. So, none of that works.

The only way to defeat the Witch permanently is to destroy her altar, which can only be done by making an unwilling sacrifice, making a wish, and rolling a 2 on the resulting d6 table. Otherwise, she just regenerates in her sarcophagus if the party defeats her. 

I like that it's difficult to truly defeat the Witch, but it does feel like the scenario will lack a satisfying climax 83% of the time. If the characters successfully make a wish and the altar doesn't break then they just...turn around and leave. And if they get it in their head that they need to defeat the Witch for some reason and haven't lucked into destroying the altar first, then they just fight her over and over until they die or run away.

Lastly, there's a black pit with a magical barrier behind which lurk Srolki and Yaoxl, a pair of antediluvian three-eyed humanoid toads who seek the Croaking Trident. Obviously this is a weapon of their people, but it's not clear why its especially important. After all, allowing it to stay up above will cause those who wield it to turn into chaos frog warriors, which seems like a win for the toad people. If the Witch is killed, the barrier vanishes, and more of the toad people will move into the area following that.

But of course, the scenario is not interested in suggesting what their deal is or what they might do once freed. Are the players to believe that the toad people are worse than the Cult or the Witch? Better? A lateral move? 

None of this really seems to matter. If left to their own devices, the cultists will get high and have sex and sacrifice some people who were going to live miserable, short lives in a terrible world anyway. The Witch will float in her tomb, collecting souls and granting wishes for...reasons. The toad people will stay where they are, or maybe some day be freed, at which point they won't really do anything except call their friends, who will then "appear in the area" and, presumably, do nothing.

The party can come here and make a wish at the altar, which the GM is encouraged to use to screw them over. If they wish to forestall the Doom (which is implied to be the main reason they would come here), it of course only postpones the inevitable next Misery. Obviously, Mörk Borg is something of a masochistic game for nihilists, so this fits the theme, but it could benefit from everything feeling a little less pointless.

Verdict

This is a solid dungeoncrawl with good ideas. It looks like a million bucks. The map, key, and monster stats are all highly usable. Unfortunately, I don't really see the point of it, and the scenario makes no effort to tie together its disparate pieces into any sort of coherent narrative. 

I overhauled it entirely, rethinking the factions and their relationships and motivations.

In my game, the Cult knew about the Witch and her altar, but they saw her as a goddess of love that they had to feed with the souls of the blind - those unindoctrinated into the cult. 

I decided that if someone were to make a willing sacrifice at the altar, it would break automatically, and the Witch would become weakened and vulnerable to being killed. The Witch thus ensured that the Cult only sacrificed the unwilling (either non-cult prisoners or cultists who have lost faith), and stopped anyone intending otherwise. 

The toads knew this information and would have shared it with anyone who talked to them so that they might be freed. They were bad news too, of course (they wanted to carry all of the cultists off to their underground cities and then invade the surface). The player never found the pit, so it didn't come up.

With this setup, the players have to explore and talk to different people to figure out what's going on, then decide what to do about. If they're here just to make a wish at the altar, they shouldn't have too much trouble. If they want to free the cult's prisoners, they'll have to hack through all the cultists. If they want to liberate the cultists (who are people too), they'll have to slay Ueth, the Emerald Serpents, and the Witch. And if they want to defeat the Witch, one of them will need to sacrifice themselves, or they'll need to find an enthusiastic cultist to offer themselves up. Then, they unleash the toad people, and have to decide whether to try to battle them back or surrender the Sepulchre to them.

What ended up happening is that the characters went to the Sepulchre to save the indoctrinated cultists. They tried to kill Ueth, but had to retreat back into the swamp with a bunch of cultists on their heels. One of them managed to lure several cultists out of the Sepulchre while the rest charged in at dawn. They caught Ueth sleeping, restrained him, and snuck through the tomb, killing isolated cult fanatics. The Witch got in their ear, urging them to sacrifice Ueth at the altar, and they did

I've said this before, but I run prewritten scenarios like this because I don't want to do a bunch of work to figure things out. This scenario has done the work of creating the map, stocking the dungeon, detailing the NPCs (barely), and coming up with big ideas. Unfortunately, it hasn't done the work of "figuring out" those ideas, leaving the GM holding the bag. It still beats coming up with the entire scenario on my own, but I wish it was more "ready to run" as written.

Mörk Borg Play Report and Review: Rotblack Sludge

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!