#Mork Borg

[imsobadatnicknames2]

After months of slowly chipping away at this I FINALLY get to post it.

A couple years ago, as some of you might know, I started working on Mörk Själ, a soulslike hack of Mörk Borg, as a little passion project of mine. I've released a couple versions of it, but I've been working on a BIG update for a year or so, and it's finally here, and I finally decided I've done enough work to actually put a pricetag on it.

So... the full version of Mörk Sjal is here, boasting:

Fast character creation with randomly generated starting equipment

Simple but tactical combat rules.

Simple stamina management and equipment damage systems.

Instructions to convert creatures from Mörk Borg, B/X, and AD&D

Public domain art edited by me.

Aside from correcting a few typos and modifying mechanics from the previous version, this new release includes a ton of new content, namely:

Creature generator.

Weapon generator.

A pretty sick dungeon module.

The Black Salt Temple is a 100-ish room dungeon, heavily inspired in concept by the Zipaquirá Salt Cathedral here in Colombia.

In fact, all the pictures used are Creative Commons licensed photos of sections of the cathedral, heavily edited by me.

This new version of the game is $8 USD.

There is also a free version available, including all the rules and content of the old release. You just miss out on the new stuff.

I'm super proud of the work I did on this, even if it just started out as a little hack I made out of spite because I hated that the official Dark Souls RPG was built on the D&D 5e system. Hope y'all enjoy it.

[vintagerpg]

OK, obviously not an RPG, but Art by Nohr (2024) collects art by Johan Nohr, who is instrumental in the success of MÖRK BORG, which is one of the defining games of the last decade, so it felt appropriate to include this week.

A couple of things here that I find very cool. First is Nohr’s art broadly — I was an instant fan as soon as I got MÖRK BORG rule book into my hands. It’s black metal, but highly designed, bright but dark, grim but very funny. I have an endless capacity to enjoy haunted horned figures in robes and Nohr endeavors to test those limits. I love him for it.

Second is seeing these images big. The book is 11x14 and, for the most part, I’m used to seeing Nohr’s work in zines, so it is easy to be wowed by the size of this stuff. I also like the fact that this book collects a large number of pieces that were used for third-party MÖRK BORG — I’ve long thought that Nohr’s willingness to contribute to products he isn’t developing himself has lent community MÖRK BORG products an unusually cohesive look. And seeing all this stuff gathered in one place reinforces that.

Finally, it is great to see all the MÖRK BORG stuff right next to Nohr’s other work, which displays a range of styles that I think might surprise casual fans. Sure, it’s obvious that the same guy did MÖRK BORG and Cy-Borg, but then you see his Death in Space stuff or the collages from Into the Odd and it suddenly becomes apparent Nohr’s a lot more versatile than MÖRK BORG might have you believe.

This book collects work from 2006 to 2023. Already looking forward to volume two in 2040.

[insectghost]

My current Mörk Borg character ( his name is Wort and he can’t read)

[jouste]

That's a spooky wrap for this year's #Morktober! Always a ton of fun to play around in the world of Morkborg and the palette really kept the ideas flowing. Happy Halloween!

[gilgalahad]

Tania Herrero

[goblincow]

#MÖRKTOBER – 01/31

Day one of WAIL OF THE ROT KING, an adventure playset for Mörk Borg.

["ai" art theft is not the same as collage]

:// Welcome to GREEN MILK, the GOBLINCOW newsletter and this very special 8-part series entitled SAVE VS DESPAIR, a holistic retrospective of the cultural object that is Mörk Borg that will be publishing every 4 days over the course of October.

A release calendar, for the sickos among us (thank you kindly):

GREEN MILK | #007 | 7:1 — What is Mörk Borg? (01/10)

GREEN MILK | #007 | 7:2 — Interlude I of II — Rules Light, Vibes Heavy (05/10)

GREEN MILK | #007 | 7:3 — Cultivating Mörk Borg (09/10)

GREEN MILK | #007 | 7:4 — Digging Deep in Graves Left Wanting (13/10)

GREEN MILK | #007 | 7:5 — The Vigorous Undeath of Mörk Borg (17/10)

GREEN MILK | #007 | 7:6 — Interlude II of II — A Funeral Playlist for the End of the World (21/10)

GREEN MILK | #007 | 7:7 — Life Locked and Failing in a Dark Fort (25/10)

GREEN MILK | #007 | ?:? — Burn the Book (29/10)

GREEN MILK | #008 | Save vs Despair — Mörk Borg: a Holistic Retrospective (02/11)

[haveyouplayedthisttrpg]

Have you Played MORK BORG

By Pelle Nilsson and Johann Nohr

Heavy Metal inspired grimdark OSR dungeon crawls

MORK BORG takes place in a grim, lightless world where the apocalypse has already begun to rot away reality.

[anim-ttrpgs]

I'd love to know what some of the team's favourite indie ttrpgs are (apart from Eureka, of course. Otherwise, it'd be at the top of the list, I expect.)

Yes of course Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy, but for non-Eureka indie and small-press games, here are a few of the team's answers

@sirobvious:

Mothership. Hands-down.

@chaospyromancy:

mork borg

@ashweather:

Ash's Picks (AKA the "get more literate in the medium" pack) (Most of these are small- or medium-press not strictly indie but ya know)

Burning Wheel Seventh Sea (1st edition) Fate of the Norns: Ragnarok Mothership Don't Rest Your Head Troika! Hillfolk (aka DramaSystem) Savage Worlds Masks

@theblackwarden:

A Dirty World PATROL: The Trench Raiders Triangle Agency Paranoia Mothership A World of Dew

[monsterfactoryfanfic]

The Antagonistic Design of Mörk Borg

My latest video is a brief look at the layout of Mörk Borg! While I'm not a big OSR guy, I found the ways the text challenges the reader with its design fascinating and innovative, and thematically enhances the experience of reading.

Transcript here.

[probablybadrpgideas]

play MORK BORG but instead of using enemy stablock you just use the random character generator to make squalid wretches for the players' equally squalid wretches to flail at viciously

­Average queer social group simulator

[theatsthetic]

The Pyrrhic Victory.

[vintagerpg]

Abyss of Hallucinations (2021) is, like most of Max Moon’s work, a fusion of occult themes and solid RPG design. In this case, a heremetic setting for MÖRK BORG that draws heavily on the work of Aleister Crowley, particularly The Book of Lies (which Max reprinted as a zine in the same trade dress, as an accompaniment).

The mixture is a little less than 50/50 here, I think, with RPG elements (60ish percent?) necessarily overwhelming the magickal elements (while Max does get it to more of a 50/50 mix in other projects, this volume at least perhaps illustrates how the precision of RPG writing is at odds with the obscurity of the occult).

There is a sort of phantasmagorical wilderness, populated by features derived from The Book of Lies, but only tersely described. This gives way to three character classes that each reflect some core aspect of Crowley’s personality (Seeker of the Left Hand Path, Offspring of Pan and, humorously, Mountaineer). Following that are several entities one might encounter, including Baphomet, Babalon and mystical Dinosaurs.

The centerpiece is a dungeon called the Unicursal Heptagram that functions as a sort of cursed puzzle as well as an initiation into the greater mysteries of the Abyss. It adheres to the difficult Thelemic logic of The Book of Lies (which, mapped to a dungeon, reminds me a little of the tortured thinking behind many point-and-click adventure games of the ’90s). The effect is disorienting and serves to erode a lot of player assumptions about just what everyone is doing here. Playing MÖRK BORG? Or something more?

[zilentis]

The 🟨Cube had been waiting for Eons in that Tomb, dust created from organic matter neatly avoiding it’s faces—debris and rock that have collapsed from above somehow not burying it—waiting and waiting for the right mortal fool to see such a bright ‘treasure’ for the taking.

I still have a bunch of Apocrypha Now’s Yellow Cube heads laying around, was fiddling with random pieces, Badsquiddo minis and anything really off and on for the last year. I came across that interesting base piece and immediately I started thinking of a temple thing, literally every single piece (including the base) are leftover bits from my bits box and I glued together this eldritch horror pretty quickly—with only a little bit of fine tuning. Really happy todo another Yellow Cube

[commander-ben]

The Kickstarter for Black Powder and Brimstone is now live!

Created by me and pubished by Free League this is an action packed TTRPG packed with Witchcraft and Gunpowder.

You can back the campagn here!

[worldchampgameco]

BLOOD BORG is funding on Kickstarter now for two and a half weeks :) a gutter punk urban fantasy with dumpster diving vampires and xeroxed zines of blood magic.

An attempt to distillate a lot of the feelings of my 20s: freedom to explore and find yourself, fear of who that self might be, sadness and anger at the world that doesn’t care about you, and power in finding your people and working towards making your life better.

Plus you can drain cops of blood to cast magic spells soooo hyfr.

Compatible with Mork Borg/Cy Borg but a standalone badass hardcover book of its own.

BLOODBORG.COM