Mork Borg RPG Review (w/ bonus Mangled Bodies table)
Mork Borg is the new hotness, the winner of 4 Ennies, and the most visually striking RPG product in years. Rules-light and condensed, while also being completely, absurdly saturated with aesthetics. Every person I've shown it to, roleplayer or not, has told me they need to get one just to keep on their shelf. Mork Borg is art-zine RPG design epitomized.
Physically, even holding the book is enjoyable. It has a soft texture and the art is embossed into the cover, giving it a great feel. Every page you flip in the book is a surprise. There is no predicting what comes next- oversized gothic script, silver foil, chiaroscuro, biblical verse and even subtle little easter eggs. It makes you want to play it.
There are 4 general sections: setting, rules, random tables and optional rules, and a starter adventure.
The world lore is presented in short 1-2 paragraph chunks for each region and laid alongside evocative art. You're quickly immersed in a world of melancholy, corruption and devilish basilisk prophecy. The dark, nihilistic tone of the world blends things together a bit, but the purpose of the game is for quick, minimal dungeon crawling which uses heavy aesthetics. The regions are more backdrops than living places, meant to set the tone and push you into gloomy sepulchers than give you the urge to hex-crawl and do large-scale things. The world is so hopeless and the characters so insignificant and pitiable that you innately grasp that the best you can do is boot-lick the lords and go on their suicide missions, that you're funneled into dungeoncrawling and that filching a bit of silver is the best your character can do for themselves in this life. Their highest achievement, after all, is to survive until the inevitable apocalypse and die a righteous death.
The rules are light and pull you through almost effortlessly. I can't recall a time I've ever read an RPG book all the way through like this, even a small one. All the essential rules fit in 18 pages, and it's not dense text- some pages only have 5 sentences. Rolling stats, gear, armor, spells, and rules for combat and challenge resolution all fit in here in small, clear chunks with something gorgeous on each page to look at while you read.
The rules themselves are incredibly minimalist. Everything is resolved by challenge rolls, based around a Difficulty Rating. Players roll d20 and add their modifier to complete challenges, attack, or defend. They roll defense- the Ref doesn't have to roll ever if they don't want to. Put the PCs in charge, make every roll transparent, and make them do the math. Brilliant!
When rolling a character, the standard 3d6 is used, but the raw number is discarded, just the modifier is recorded. Every step of character creation is randomized, including starting gear. You can buy stuff with your silver, but a few random rolls are going to be just fine for a one-shot, and if you want to blow that up into a campaign, you could probably get by. The character creation is very quick, if you're playing the bare bones. Even spells take only a single page, with 10 "unclean" (magic-user) and "clean" (cleric) scrolls.
It gets a bit more involved if you use the optional rules, like classes. Yes, classes are optional. They're analogues of the archetypal classes of the OSR, with slight ability modifications and a few really cool special features. "Omens" are a simple metacurrency that gives players a few ways to come back or score a critical when they really need it. The random tables that follow the character creation and combat rules, the meat of the game, are good for fleshing characters out within the aesthetics of the game. Origins for characters, bad habits and deformed physical characteristics give you a quick backstory and are all good for a laugh. If you were to use all the tables and classes, about 20 rolls with various dice would give you a character with all of their stats, gear, abilities, and a built-in backstory. Trying it out for the first time, I think it took 30 minutes total to create 6 characters for 3 players and explain the Difficulty Rating system. Then we were off and playing.
I used the included adventure, Rotblack Sludge. It's a dungeoncrawl basically perfect for a 1-shot, having only 15 rooms and a quick, compact layout. Each room follows the bullet-point style becoming more and more popular in the OSR similar to Death Frost Doom or the OSE books. Everything is very accessible, and with a quick read-through prior to running and minimal notes should go off without a hitch. I ran it on short notice, so I didn't do that, but everything still went fantastically.
Mork Borg deserves the hype. For the asking price, you get an art object. You get inspiration that could benefit any occult or gothic themed game. You get a new take on minimalist game design, with mini-modular design which allows you to strip out character classes if you want to. There's not a lot that's comparable to it, but there are a lot of things that could be taken from it.
This is a game you should have.
Bonus Gameable Content: Mangled bodies!
Roll a d20 for each column to create a Mad Lib description. It's sequenced in a deliberate order- players can smell before they see, see before they touch, and when they search it for treasure, it makes a sound.
Enjoy.
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