Mork Borg (28-01-21)

 

As much a work of art as game I think, a punk zine aesthetic with prestige format production values; varied paper types, embossed cover etc, it is a beautiful little artifact. Its random tables seem as much evocative performance as actual rules, not to slight the content. Everything is both incredibly concise and super expressive. I feel like you could open it and just start playing.

‘A doom metal album of a game. A spiked flail to the face. Rules light, heavy everything else.’

Like the VtM core rule book it starts with lore presented directly, a dozen pages or so of a world inspired by metal and medieval millennialism, more Bosch than Tolkien.

The rules are fairly simple and I was going to say hark back to D&D (I feel, with limited knowledge that the system is inspired by Knave and the whole OSR thing - having not actually read Knave yet, though I have dipped into Rakehell) but that may be lazy thinking on my part.

On the face of it it's not terribly mechanically interesting, save that it throws in random tables with eclectic results wherever it feels like it. Random is king. It screams, 'Just roll it! Now!' It feels very anti-math, anti-system.

For action resolution its a roll greater than or equal to a Difficulty Rating system. Throw 1d20 and add the relevant Ability, a normal difficulty being DR 12 with ability scores range from -3 to +3. Abilities (there are 4; Agility, Presence, Strength, Toughness) are rolled like D&D stats on 3d6, but you simply keep the bonus part (a 13 say would give you +1) and throw away the roll.
Like PbtA the enemies don’t roll (I think), the player simply rolls their attack & defence each round, giving and/or taking damage as the dice dictate.

The one stand-out rule character wise is ‘omens’ which are much like fortune points in Conan (re-roll one die, do maximum damage etc) except you are not awarded them but rather have d2 or whatever each day.

I wonder what it would be like to play, I suspect the appropriate way would be with loads of random tables, yet the sample adventure is not really like that, it has a fixed floor plan with some nice details linking its contents.

Oh and how could I forget (because the mad formatting!) - the Calender of Nechrubel. You roll to see when the world will end, each day the GM rolls to see if a misery is activated. Miseries are presented as Psalms. “6:6 And the unnamed enter the earth, passing through the Veil as it is sundered by Daejmon, the left underling of Nechrubel.”

Here’s rpg designer Chris Bisette rolling up 2 Mork Borg characters.

And here’s its own brilliant character generator - its a one click wonder of a thing!

And and here's the official Mork Borg website with shop links etc.