The faded luster of Mork Borg: Reflections on game aesthetics and tone (w/ bonus Goblin Golem!)

 

Long ago, I reviewed Mork Borg quite favorably. I was young, then, and naive. After playing MB a fair few times, I found it to be quite unlike what I'd hoped. I didn't think I'd ever write this post, because I prefer to move forward and focus primarily on positive reviews, but I've been feeling pretty cold towards MB for a while now, and since I love Borgs Pirate and Cy_, it seemed important. Given that information, it can't be the system itself that I don't like- Cy_ & Pirate are fantastic. It's not the aesthetic, necessarily, at least not in whole- though the vivid high-contrast chaos is a more natural fit for Cy_Borg, it's also a part of Mork Borg's identity and why I loved it in the first place. 

It's the tone. Frankly, Mork Borg isn't up to the task of more than wacky, low-stakes one-shots, at least in my experience. It's inherently goofy, partly on purpose and partly by virtue of its utter insistence on grimdarkness. "But that's the point!" you say! Um, ok. I'm not quite sure it is- while I can't know for sure what the designers intended, I feel like they wanted some type of serious play to be possible with their system. Escalating tension from the Doom mechanic? Character growth beyond "getting better" maybe once in a one-shot? 

Wait, you say- Cy_Borg and Pirate Borg are both goofy, too. I... guess so? Cyberpunk is an inherently busy aesthetic, with the future whizzing around you at all times in the form of drone ads, flying cars, hoverboarders, etc. It jives, is what I'm saying. Pirate Borg is more aesthetically balanced. It uses brown and grey to channel storms and the rot of the undead, is full of shadows and silhouettes drawn in thicker strokes than the scraggly pencil art of Mork Borg. It names its character classes more reasonably; Brute versus Fanged Deserter, or Rapscallion versus Gutterborn Scum, for example. Now are Fanged Deserters cool? Sure, but they're rather aesthetically specific and difficult to take seriously. I can go into more detail about Pirate Borg another time.

Do people play the other Borgs for campaign purposes? I couldn't say. I'm currently involved in a Pirate Borg campaign, and the book includes a sandbox versus a one-shot. I've played and run a few Cy_Borg one-shots, no campaign. Again, I may be biased toward the genre, but heists/jobs/contracts are part and parcel of Cyberpunk. Mork Borg adventures feel more like DCC funnel meatgrinders, which are fun once in a campaign. If all you ever do is DCC funnels, you never get any damn abilities! You get stuck with your pitchfork, chicken and sack of potatoes- and while that's fun, I want to do some fucking Mighty Deeds! (DCC Funnel culture is also silly and should check itself- back to Mork Borg). That isn't the case for Mork Borg, of course.

Mork Borg doesn't have any 1st-party content in the form of detailed bestiaries, campaigns, or high-level character options. Oh, you're a Hermit? Well, you're gonna get the same 6 spells as every other Hermit, eventually! Sure, you can be a different class with 6ish options, but once you've plated the Spammibal Thrash-Head for a few sessions it will probably lose its luster too. You might want to say that the zines have material to address this, but I feel like the disorganization strikes here again. There aren't easily usable resources- I can't reach for the Morkster Manual and choose from 200 entries, I can search for some drivethruRPG Beastie Borg or whatever and get a whopping 8 creatures that have a 2-page splatter spread of some kind of skeleton-based art and a d8 table each. I like to reskin creatures and use statless bestiaries, sure, but it's hard to match the Mork Borgian aesthetic with things that aren't scraggly, skeletal, and yellow and pink. You can use anything for inspiration and if you're experienced, throw some stats in on the fly, but that shouldn't be required to have a diversity of creatures in your game. The MB community is strange- it's all micro-content, where you can find stuff all day long, often free, but it's limited and, to me, unsatisfying.

So, is this the end of Mork Borg for me? Kind of. I gave my 2nd printing copy to my friend to burn when we completed a mini-campaign, as the dark lords intended. I am replacing it with a physical Bare Bones edition, because it might solve the busy art problem for me, and I'm no longer interested in the MB world as a setting unto itself. It feels like a dark, benighted land of some other campaign setting that can be taken seriously. And if/when it becomes relevant within that campaign, the characters will not be called Pork-Lord the Fell Hogbeast and Shturpy the Phlegm-Golem. The system is fine, if a bit limited, but anything can be hacked. If anything, I see myself as a player of Mork Borg, not a BorgMeister or Basilisk Lord or whatever. 

Thanks for reading. Not much point in any of this, but hey, I never see critiques of Mork Borg, only glowing praise and enthusiasm, so I thought I would chime in with some thoughts. Feel free to join me if you're bitter and jaded too.

Bonus Gameable Content:

Gotta give the people what they want.

Shturpy the Phlegm-Golem

Shturpy is the spawn of goblins. Well, not so much the spawn as the sentient discharge of their repugnant noses and other orifices. Since goblin bites carry the goblin curse, so too do their fluids. Once ejected/ejaculated/excreted, if left undisturbed rather than hungrily devoured, they will congeal and come to life under the waxing gibbous moon in the fourth month of Qroqxbbel the Limb-Devourer, Ruler of All Refuse Heaps.

Shturpy itself is a maddened and deplorable creature. It has the intelligence of a mule-kicked fetal-alcohol-syndrome-afflicted incest baby but delusionally fancies itself a creation of some grandiose archmage who tragically lost their beloved creation, and whom Shturpy seeks eternally to find and reunite its happy family unit. Occasionally it is capable of a halting, odious and oddly unctuous speech, with which it either begs favors of those who may know its (nonexistent) father or demands food and baubles for its childlike fancies.

HP 32 Morale 9 Rubbery booger flesh -d4 Plague-infected snot fists d6 +poison (see below)
Special: Attacks against Shturpy are dr10. A result of 9-12 requires a Strength test or the weapon becomes stuck to its hide.

Whenever a creature suffers damage from or ingests part of Shturpy, they must make a dr14 Toughness check or suffer d2 damage every round. A success does not cure the damage but reduces the frequency to once per 10-minute turn. Further saves reduce the frequency to once per day, week, fortnight, month, season, year, then decade. One is never fully cured of Shturpy's foul ichorous infection.

Comments

  1. AnonymousSeptember 27, 2024 at 5:43 AM

    I'm not an MB player, but my skimming-impression is that it's a kind of novelty project, a gag -- or a series of artbooks sold to the game nerd audience that the designers are part of, rather than the artbook-buyer audience that's presumably foreign to them. People are drawn to the visual presentation and "vibe" and the game doesn't need to be sustainable. That's pretty typical of such projects. (Maze of the Blue Medusa has great PStuart-writing and great ZSmith-art and is also in the "artbook for nerds" category, if the lack of play reports is any indication.)

    In that sense, it's exactly like every other one-off heartbreaker storygame clogging the shelves at the FLGS nowadays, only with "better production values" -- and a surprising (heartening, though tiresome) community of followers producing additional stuff in the same style. It bums me out to see "low-stakes hardcovers," so to speak, eating hobby resources.

    Pirate Borg was an enjoyable read, though the design sensibility is not mine; when my next campaign kicks off, it'll help me fill the Tim Powers-y Haunted Caribbean part of the map.

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