TTRPG REVIEW: Mörk Borg
As many of you may know, thanks to the COVID hyperfixation of my partner, I’ve had the opportunity to try out quite a few tabletop roleplaying game (TTRPG) systems over the past few years, in search of something a bit better than Dungeons ‘n’ Dragons, which we like, but… it’s not the best system, let’s be honest. Well, I would go on the record saying that Mörk Borg—a Swedish TTRPG system by Pelle Nilsson and Johan Nohr, published by Free League Publishing—is, in fact, one of the best TTRPG systems that I’ve played!
So first of all, Mörk Borg has excellent lore, set in a dying world where denying the approaching apocalypse makes you a sinner and a heretic, while strange events (miseries) occur slowly and surely, fulfilling the prophecy of the dying world. Not to spoil anything too critical, but I just love that the game suggests that by the time the world (and game campaign) ends, you should burn the book because there is nothing more for you here (even though you can, of course, continue playing). Everything is dark, grimy, twisted, mutated, and awful, in a wonderful sort of way. However, you don’t need to play with the game’s lore or dungeons, you can always make your own as well and just use the system on its own. Conveniently, there is an audio intro that you can play for new players that explains the overall lore, which my partner always shows players combined with the visuals and text from the digital manual.
One of the best things about Mörk Borg is that it’s a very easy game to pick up and put down. While I’m sure you could use it for longer quests and it’s very easily customizable, we are currently playing it more or less as intended, for one-shot dungeon crawls and adventures (so far we’ve only done the pre-existing ones) in an overarching campaign that relates to how many miseries (that foretell the end of the world) have taken place; I believe we’re at 5/8, so we’re getting to the far end of our world’s lifespan. We have a group of fourteen players, but we only need three or four for a session, since the campaign is a selection of unrelated settings that people can go to explore within the dying world. We usually make up a reason that our characters know each other before the session if our current characters haven’t played together before, which allows for some good RP warm-up and to get into the mood of the game. For example, two of us were acquainted because our donkeys had been bred together (our characters had both rolled donkeys, so why not?). Character creation, naming, inventory, animal companions, all of that sort of thing is rolled before the game starts. Players die regularly too, so there’s no point in getting too attached to your character. With this sort of setting, it’s easy to just offer up some dates for when the GM is available and see if anyone in the group is free those days. This makes it so much easier than the more storied campaigns that require the same players/characters to (ideally) survive, and if you’re a GM who doesn’t want to have to keep a ton of lore in your head, Mörk Borg makes it really easy.
Gameplay is also quite simple and easy to learn. There are four attributes: Strength, Agility, Presence, and Toughness. This keeps things straightforward and efficient, especially considering that the game is designed largely for hunting through dungeons. Your character sheet also tracks your name, description, class, powers, hit points, omens (which can be used to save you), weapons, armor, equipment, and silver, as well as the number of miseries that have taken place so far in the campaign. It has everything you need, really. There is some evil in the gameplay where you can actually lose levels permanently in-game, and you can also de-level during your level-up if you roll badly enough, though this tends to only happen to players who are higher levels (or very unlucky). The game is not designed for you to survive for too many sessions…
So yes, it’s pretty easy to die in Mörk Borg. I’ve not missed a session yet (meaning I’ve played about sevenish dungeons, give or take—I’m lucky that the GM is my partner), and I’m on my third character so far. Jotna Ratchild died off-screen after two sessions by failing to track down the goblin that cursed her (goblins in this game are so unfair, in a way that’s rather funny), while Vagaahl turned into a horrible frog monster three sessions in after finding a badass trident and making 13 kills with it (this trident is currently in the possession of another player, who is keeping track of its kills). My current character is a little gremlin-y fellow named Graft and he is miraculously still alive after two sessions, despite having a tendency to laugh in really inappropriate moments (a literal trait that I rolled). It’s definitely not a “my precious character” sort of story, by any means, because obviously, things just happen and you will be consumed by darkness and death eventually. If the world will not survive, no person will survive, of course. The risk of permanent death is very real and very fun.
On the whole, Mörk Borg is very punishing but simple to play and a lot of fun, so long as you’re not turned off by the gruesome setting. It’s definitely not a type of gameplay that suits everyone, especially those looking for big, heroic world-saving fantasy games (for that, you should probably just stick with DnD). However, if you’re looking for a fun, easy to learn, and easy to play TTRPG that’s good for one-shots or longer campaigns, and that’s also easy to pick up and put down for any length of time, I really can’t recommend Mörk Borg enough. Right now I’d say it’s probably one of the best horror-themed TTRPG systems around, so a tip of the hat to our neighbors in Sweden who came up with this concept.
Oh, and as a final thought, the artwork is amazing and we definitely have the Mörk Borg vinyl of themed stoner black metal (and no, we do not currently have a record player). Truly, the branding for this game knocked it out of the park and then some, because all of the extras that you can get with it are wonderful! Now, where can we find some of the dice that were included in their crowdfunding that we missed…
GM NOTE: The best thing about Mörk Borg is how evocatively everything is portrayed. The language and art used in the books is simple and easy to understand, yet descriptive in a way that invokes all of the senses, which gets the GM thinking. It hits the sweet spot between ease of prep and ease of play, while still being extremely entertaining as both a GM and player. If the GM is to take what is written in the books as true, it’s very easy to extrapolate where or what that leads to in the grander scheme of the game. You don’t need to be a creative type, logic will work just as easily. Whatever they put in the game—items, NPCs, rooms—it all combines into a cohesive reality, like it does in Dark Souls.
Compared to DnD 5e, which is very, “hey, go do all the cool shit your character build can do, there’s no risk of dying,” Mörk Borg feels more like, “hey, go figure out what all kinds of cool shit you can do, and have a blast dying in an awesome way.” Letting go of “my precious character” brings about a different sort of play, which allows for bigger moves. When GMing Mörk Borg, my players play in a bolder fashion, and they’re never just button-mashing special moves like in a video game. The game is exciting and enjoyably free-form, or like the back of the rulebook poignantly puts it: “A doom metal album of a game. A spiked flail to the face. Rules light, heavy everything else.”
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