# Mörk Borg - Work: Tabletop RPG - Date: 2019 (Kickstarter); worldwide release February 25, 2020 - Houses: Free League Publishing (Fria Ligan) - Platforms: Hardcover rulebook (92 pages) - Canonical: https://www.lanternhall.org/works/mork-borg/ > A doom-metal album of a roleplaying game: a tiny, ferociously designed rulebook about a world that is ending, where characters are wretches and a secret calendar counts down to oblivion. **Why it matters:** Mörk Borg made graphic design part of the game itself, swept the 2020 ENnies and inspired a vast underground of third-party zines and spin-offs within the old-school movement. ## Quick answers **When was Mörk Borg first released?** Mörk Borg was first released in 2019 (Kickstarter); worldwide release February 25, 2020. **Who published or developed Mörk Borg?** Free League Publishing (Fria Ligan). **What kind of work is Mörk Borg?** Mörk Borg is a tabletop RPG in the Old-School Renaissance (OSR), Dark Fantasy and Tabletop Roleplaying Games tradition, released for Hardcover rulebook (92 pages). **Why is Mörk Borg important?** Mörk Borg made graphic design part of the game itself, swept the 2020 ENnies and inspired a vast underground of third-party zines and spin-offs within the old-school movement. ## Overview *Mörk Borg* looks like a black-metal record sleeve and plays like a coffin nail. Created by Swedish writer Pelle Nilsson and artist and designer Johan Nohr, crowdfunded in 2019 and released worldwide by [Free League Publishing (Fria Ligan)](https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/free-league/) on February 25, 2020, it is a short, rules-light [roleplaying game](https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/tabletop-rpg/) about a world in its final days. The rulebook, a 92-page hardcover of screaming color and black, splatters its text across spreads in fonts that are sometimes deliberately hard to read. Free League's announcement called it "a doom metal album of a game." Underneath the noise sits a lean, old-school game in the spirit of the [Old-School Renaissance (OSR)](https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/old-school-renaissance/): roll some dice, make wretched characters, crawl into a dungeon, probably die. ## Origins Nilsson had written earlier Swedish roleplaying games, and *Mörk Borg* began as a small zine he planned with Nohr, a designer at the studio Stockholm Kartell. The pair have described working without commercial expectations, "just" making a game they thought was cool, and refusing to trim art or pages to meet industry norms — filling every spread as they wanted and adding luxuries such as foil on the cover. Their Kickstarter was a surprise success, reportedly finishing with 1,152 backers and SEK 489,252, nearly ten times its goal; Free League's press release said it funded in about 66.6 minutes. The finished book became the first title from Free League Workshop, a label for externally developed games, with the English text edited by the British writer and blogger Patrick Stuart. ## How it plays Characters have four abilities — Strength, Agility, Presence and Toughness — rated as small modifiers. To attempt something risky, a player rolls a d20, adds the relevant ability and tries to meet a Difficulty Rating, typically 12; easier and harder tasks move the number down or up. Hit points are low, equipment is random and often cursed, and character generation takes minutes, which is fortunate, because death is frequent. Optional classes, such as the gutterborn scum and the esoteric hermit, give characters stranger starting kits. Armor is simple and brutal: rather than making characters harder to hit, it reduces incoming damage by a d2, d4 or d6 depending on its weight. Omens, a small daily pool, let characters bend fate — rerolling a die, softening a blow or making an attack count. Magic comes from scrolls, both sacred and unclean, and from twenty occult powers — each paired with a catastrophe for when casting goes badly wrong. The game's signature device is its apocalypse. The book contains a prophecy of seven Miseries that will end the world, and the game master secretly consults the Calendar of Nechrubel to decide when the next arrives. As Miseries accumulate, the world visibly decays. After the seventh, everything ends — the campaign included. The world's cities and horrors, from Galgenbeck to the Blood-countess Anthelia's palace, are sketched in fragments, with random tables for corpse plundering, treasure and dungeon creation, and a single introductory scenario, *Rotblack Sludge*. ## Reception & impact *Mörk Borg* dominated the 2020 ENnie Awards, winning gold for Product of the Year, Best Writing and Best Layout and Design and silver for Best Game. Its supplement *Mörk Borg Cult: Feretory* won a gold ENnie in 2021, and digital tools for the game won again in 2022. Its most visible effect was on the underground. A third-party license and a do-it-yourself ethos invited fans to make their own zines and spin-offs, and a large number of expansions, adventures and "Borg" variants followed — from cyberpunk to pirates — alongside official siblings from Free League. The book's aggressive art direction also influenced how small-press designers present their games, placing layout on a par with rules and prose. ## Legacy *Mörk Borg* sits alongside [Old-School Essentials](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/old-school-essentials/) and [Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/dungeon-crawl-classics/) as a defining work of the modern old-school scene, but it points in the opposite direction from OSE's clarity. Where OSE made old rules easy to read, *Mörk Borg* made reading itself an experience of dread. It proved that in the age of PDFs and print-on-demand, a roleplaying book could still be an art object — and that a game about the end of the world could be the start of a movement. ## Facts - Free League's press release described it as 'a doom metal album of a game. A spiked flail to the face.' - It won gold ENnies in 2020 for Product of the Year, Best Writing and Best Layout and Design, and silver for Best Game. - The game began as a small zine planned by writer Pelle Nilsson and artist Johan Nohr; Kickstarter backers turned it into a full hardcover. - The Calendar of Nechrubel decides how quickly the world's end arrives; the world ends after the seventh Misery. - Armor does not make characters harder to hit; it subtracts d2, d4 or d6 from incoming damage. - The supplement *Mörk Borg Cult: Feretory* won a gold ENnie in 2021. ## Sources and further reading - [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%B6rk_Borg) - [Free League Publishing: Mörk Borg](https://freeleaguepublishing.com/games/mork-borg/) - [Official site](https://morkborg.com/) --- From The Lantern Hall (https://www.lanternhall.org/), a museum of fantasy literature and roleplaying games.