We Played Mork Borg (and it was awesome) 

It was such a blast meeting y’all at Gamehole Con and we are so thrilled that you enjoyed RagnaBorg! We had a lot of fun bringing it to life and thanks for sharing with your viewers!

So hyped to see the Dudes talking about different games. D&D is great, but there's so much else out there to enjoy!

Cool fact: Pirate Borg has A LOT of amazing references to Secrets of the Monkey Island. That for me was more than enough to KS it :)

Whoa! It's so cool yet surreal to see you guys stumble upon this system and actually feel enamored to it! From my experience with the system (me and the group are 6 sessions in) is no worse for a campaign than any other. Even a single level up might skyrocket a 1 HP character to 7, vastly improving their chances of survival. This, however, opens up other issue, like characters fighting with enemies that can't penetrate their armor rolls. And if the group (like mine) happens to be extremely lucky - they may end up with a scroll of resurrection and healing as rewards for leveling up. That said, the book has surprised us by drawing out our imagination. With such a simple system it is surprisingly easy to upkeep several different characters without much headache, which actually has led us in a situation where my current player party consists of two parties by the same people. I also am surprisingly in love with the fact that the game isn't really concerned with balance. Maybe I'm lucky to have players that trust me, but nobody so far has complained about the few deaths that have happened. One of them being being swallowed by a ginormous worm and the other by looting glass. With such simple rules it is actually easy to come up with your own custom classes for the game. For the first time in my life I actually feel confident enough to publish something of my own (me and a friend of mine are polishing up some content we'll give up for free soon). I actually want to share a lot more, but I feel like nobody would read this lol. Anyway, if you guys (DDs) have reached this point - might I suggest you also check Shadowdark? I feel like that game strikes the middle point between 5e and Mork Borg. You might like it! And thank you for reading.

I will never forget how much fun an terror I had with my friends when we played a game using the Dread mechanics. Literally all you need is a Jenga tower and you can create the most horrifying, anxiety-spiking one shots by forcing players to pull blocks in order to survive the hell you put them through. So fun!

The best thing about Morg Borg is that you can take the last two pages (the basic rules) and you can adapt to your setting so easy: space, victorian England vampires, Tolkien world.. this are one of my goto rules.

I have Mork Borg, Cy Borg, and Vast Grimm. All are super fun to play and run. One of my players for Cy Borg was a roller-blading punk who only had grenades - all randomly generated.

Love that you reviewed Mörk Borg and some of its hacks. Makes me very proud as a swede as well. Fan of you guys and of Mörk Borg. So happy you enjoyed it.

so funny as a swedish person to hear them say this name. it sounds so much less omnious lol.

Imagine my surprise, coming home from running an original one-shot of Mörk Borg (hours after this vid dropped) to see my artwork at 11:13! I’m a full time game artist but I did this as pure fan art. I'm not affiliated with Stockholm Kartell and this art is not published in any MB books but I'm SUPER stoked to see it being used to promote this fine game from some very fine folks over in Sweden! Cheers Dudes! PS: I was the 666th Like on this video. Hail Nechrubel!

I read this title as Monk Borg and had a very different idea of what this video was going to be.

I was extremely surprised to see this topic. I loved this game and was the solo survivor of two dungeons. I called this several times - d&d hard mode. Another wonderful video dudes.

Mörk Borg is especially well-suited for a classic prison break opening, thus, I highly recommend Trapped Within as a one-shot or starter adventure with gorgeous layout and thought-provoking concepts. The Mörk Borg community is very dedicated, so you should easily be able to find a 3rd-party product that suits your taste.

Welcome to OSR! 5E is built to be about as much crunch as it can get away with. The rules-lite approach of a lot of OSR really helps put that in context. I've been having a blast with Shadowdark recently, it really does live up to the hype.

So stoked to hear you guys talking this game up. Awesome Mörk Borg hacks you didn't mention: Bork Borg (play as dogs) Frontier Scum (Old west Borg) Challengers of Vanth (the setting from Encounter Critical, but with Borg rules)

I played Mörk Borg already and yes... It is an experience. My Character had 1 HP and I really notice how fragile he was. You don't run straight into a room full of enemies. You just go in combat when you have the upper hand and know that you can win. At least most enemies also die in one hit.

I was waiting for that. Not for Mörk Borg specifically but for you guys to talk about other RPG systems.

Great to see you highlighting independent games. The design and layout of Mork Borg is mesmerizing

Last year at Origins I ran a game called Shmorgish Borg where I stapled all of the Mork, Cy and Pirate Borgs together. It was super fun and only needed a few changes to work.

I also played Mork Borg at GHC and it blew me away, too. What an immensely fun game.

Lol- the only "issue" with the non-Swedish way of pronouncing is that it sounds like 'Bork Bork' from the muppet chefs and combining it with the Borg from Star Trek. The two dots over the "O" is essential. Glad you liked it.

I would love to see the dudes play Mork Borg on the channel

Love the channel! You guys inspired me to run a game for my friends last year. We don't get to meet as often as any of us would like. When we do we have a blast so thanks for the motivation. I just discovered a cool detail about Cyborg and Mork Borg books just the other day. Put them on the shelf spine-out and turn off the light. Watch what glows in the dark!

It was great playing with you both at Gamehole! Thanks for this fantastic video!

Wow I was just commenting about this on your last video. Awesome stuff. Looking forward to that live play.

Hey guys! Awesome video on Mork Borg games. I love'em & what's really cool is their creators are just really nice & passionate people. So glad i met some of them at Gamehole Con. And it was great meeting you two & hanging out with Mike on Saturday evening - Jefferson :)

Thank you for helping spread the word about this fantastic game. I have run it a handful of times and each time it was a blast.

Cool to see you check out some of the swedish games :). Can recommend checking out many others of Fria Ligans games such as Symbaroum ( the 5e version is great but the original is a flavor of its own ) :D

This is my current favorite TTRPG. I'm actually working on starting my own RU-vid channel that will be exclusively dedicated to it. Still have a bit more work to do, but I feel like there a lot more depth than people give it credit for, and I look forward to digging deep and unpacking all of that.

Omg, We're gonna play our first game of Mörk Borg tomorrow! I saw Mystery Quests series and got hooked instantly. I also bought Troika and Mothership in the same go.

Love seeing you review different games! Especially darker settings, which you dudes seem to understand very well (not surprising for the channel that created Drakkenheim). I would love to see more of this kind of content.

Exciting to see you guys make a video about other games! Keep it going!

This is so exciting! I've been trying to convince my players to try Mork Borg for over a year!

So glad you guys tried and enjoyed Mörk Borg. Our group plays it when I'm too busy to run our 5E campaign. A friend's girlfriend who falls asleep with D&D's crunch and is too busy to get into it actually likes playing Mörk Borg because it's so easy to play. Such a fun game!

If you guys enjoyed Mörk Borg, you should check out the Cypher System Monte Cooks games (namely Numenera). They also have Old Gods of Appalachia (based off the podcast). Very similar to the Borgs, where players do 99.9% of the rolling against target numbers. Even the "Roll to attack, roll to dodge" stuff. I will say, while Mörk Borg may not good for longer campaigns, it is good to add to a rotation of games, especially with the "Misery" system. The world of Mörk Borg is ending, eventually the GM will roll those seven 1's. It's not meant to go on forever, and that's okay. It's almost like a ttrpg version of a rogue-like.

I feel like you said Mork Borg so much that it stopped being words in my brain 😀mmmm brrr

i always imagine the Mork Borg world as a domain of dread within the shadowfell, since the story of the world is constantly beginning and ending in approximately the same way every campaign.

LOVE Pirate Borg, and yes, Luke is a great guy. Played in an Oak and Iron game with him during covid as a pirate team. Then talked a lot with him at a local Pirate festival. I look forward to more Pirate Borg, and even some Mork Borg, and love the Raganaborg. Will have to check it out as well as Death in Space

Crazy cuz i was just told about this game from another DM at a game store. So awesome that you guys reviewed it shortly after hearing about it

Glad you guys finally got around to playing Mork Borg - it is such a killer game. Sadly, I fell away from you guys after the OGL fiasco when I divested WOTC from my gaming table. Glad to see you are branching out into other forms of D&D! OSR stuff is really cool and the community is really punk rock - Kelly I think you would dig it a lot. I probably won't be going to 6e with you boys but if you dive further into OSR or even if you get into MCDM RPG I will be right back here! Hope 2024 is good to y'all!

Super happy to see you playing other games, I enjoy your content but also d&d is only like 5% of the time I spend playing ttrpg's, I'd love to see a bit more of other systems

You guys finally talking about an OSR game! That`s great. The scene is so full of creativity. And man, the books are so much more artistic and stylistic than the corporate editions.

Have ever heard of the horror RPG *Dread*? It is super easy to pick up - for the players and the Game Master as well. It's because the characters don't have numerical stats. Characters make checks by pulling pieces from a tumble tower (Jenga). As the group is following the plot of a horror movie like story the tower is shaking more and more. So the suspense is rising not only by progressing in the story but also by the shaking tower. And if the tower falls... the character dies in the most horrific way you can imagine! 😈

Perhaps you could do an Untold Tales of Drakkenheim one-shot, Mork Borg style? The setting has a metal edge. I could see the Queen of Thieves hiring some unsavory lot to take on some high risk, high reward dirty business. Or maybe Lucretia has identified some zealot paladins that will plunge a shard into their chests and die trying, for the cause. Please?

Thanks for pointing out the text only version. A while back I was prepping a couple characters for a one shot, and I had trouble even knowing which pages had tables, because they don't look like tables. Once I figured it out it was fine, a lot of fun even, but it took me longer to interpret the beautiful, badass book than it did to actually make two characters.

I love Mörk Borg and have run it three times. I own all the Borgs shown except Pirate Borg and Ragnaborg (both are on my wishlist). I discovered game sellers/publishers Free League, Soulmuppet, and Exalted Funeral through my obsession with this game, and I own a bunch of related zines. These are some of the gems of the OSR Renaissance.

Thank you for the recommendation!

I had a blast playing Mork Borg! Our GM ran the adventure in the book for our group. I played a gutter-born scum named Klort who only had one hit point at the start of the game, a donkey named Ass, a sword, a crowbar, and a magnesium strip. I thought he would die first combat but he survived to the end of the game. It was amazing!

You guys should try Shadowdark if possible, great video. Good to see DnD content creators try other systems, there's so much out there to enjoy

This game is my new obsession. Started with CY_BORG because of the art and attitude. Read it in an afternoon because of its light rules and aweomness. And now a few weeks later I also grabbed Mörk Borg (Dimmuborgir in my native Icelandic. Like the blackmetal band) along with awesome zine books with adventures and more classes and tables. And Death in Space! Such beautiful artwork, theme and feel in all of them. So far DMd CY_BORG once (first DM timer and it went really well) and got to try and play Mörk Borg last weekend. Had a blast with both! 🎉

Super cool, love this!

19:25 sounds like a direct correlation to a scene in the anime “Vinland” which is all about Vikings! This is now the second time I’ve heard about Vikings and mushrooms. I’m now going to look up to see if this has some historical accuracy behind it!

I saw a preview of this at GenCon and it sounds even BETTER when these two get into it. I'm looking forward to this when I get a chance to play with my buddies that don't have enough time for a whole D&D campaign

I'm calling it now: "Dirtbags of Drakkenheim: A Mork Borg One-shot Adventure"

Glad you enjoyed it, I would say to try the pirate themed variant spin off, Pirate Borg

Loved the review, it is great to hear more about awesome third party stuff to try

Mork Borg/CY_BORG are BY FAR my fav rpgs. The Stockholm Kartel KNOCKED IT OUT OF THE PARK. The rules lite approach CHANGED EVERYTHING for me. Life is sweet and mork borg is BRUTAL. It's really the spirit of diy that this game totes that really ignites the imagination. As a Norwegian metal head this game speaks to my SOUL. I'm so stoked you lads enjoyed the game and are giving it attention on your platform.

Sounds fun! Would be interesting to see a comparison between this and Dungeon Crawl Classics which seems similar in terms of player mortality and being light on rules.

I love Mörk Borg. My character changes into a plague rat and makes enemies attack esch other when bitten. The roll by the GM for getting closer to the end of days is a cool addition.

Been running a Mork Borg campaign for 7 months now. It's been amazing.

I think the really cool thing about Mork Borg is less that it's got that dire heavy metal aesthetic and more that it lends itself so well to complete randomization. You're going to have an interesting character regardless because they have stripped away the boring stuff and just made interesting stuff. When you mix and match you won't necessarily get what you expected but the game is set up to make anything you might have be interesting, and since death is inevitable it becomes more about using what you have been given in interesting ways while you still can than worrying about having the best skills and loot to avoid death.

I’d love to see you guys play a one shot with this system.

Mørk Borg is one of my all time favorite games. Bought the book on sale since I loved the art. Read through it and instantly ordered all the other books I could get a hold of. Currently GMing it, and loving it! Now I'm kitbashing and sculpting all the monsters in the different books. Recommend getting Heretic and Cult, different authors, but same artist. Calo's book of monsters add a bunch of monsters for gamesmasters to use :)

Mörk Borg is a fast and lose experience when you just want to have fun playing far-out characters in a post-apocalyptic world. It's easily accessible for a one shot. A longer campaign works too. Not the least because it's a blast that leveling up implies "getting better or worse" where you roll to see if your HP and ability modifiers improve or decline. Don't expect to reach super hero status like in D&D. Stay griddy and rely of wits and items.

Thank you for your information video

Think I'm gonna dig this game really soon!

YES. I'm so glad you guys joined the Cult. How did you like it compared to crunchier rules systems? I had probably one of my favorite sessions ever playing Goblin Grinder.

As someone who has run a ton of one shots and is finally able to reach 7:7 with my groups current campaign (4 miseries in and we are using a 3PL rule for faster miseries), the big thing to keep the realm from just grinding players is to be sure to role reaction for pretty much everything. Nothing is funnier than rolling friendly zombies and the players are suddenly tasked with reuniting a zombie child with their undead parents.

Recently GMed a game of MB, it's so much fun. I was maybe a lil too nice to the PCs but for an introduction type game I think it worked. If you miss the crunch, just overlay whatever game mechanics you think you need onto the base game, it's not that hard to count feet or whatever if that's what you want. Not to mention, you can homebrew enemies/NPCs on the fly, there's only 3 stats you really need to pay attention to (hp, morale, DR) everything else is flavor. I think the best aspect to Morkborg is that the rules system trains new table top RPG players to think creatively and interact with their environment, rather than "roll perception" to see what's going on.

congratulations! you discovered 0D&D! random generation was the Rule and Improv *resulted* from the game, Drama was crafted on the fly, not planned like it is nowadays. if you liked this, you'd like Gamma World!

Mork Borg is a rules-light game, that is literally an OSR or OSR adjacent game, depending on your definition of what OSR means. My favorite and Not-favorite thing about Mork Borg, is that all my OSR-hating friends LOVE Mork Borg, when I tried explaining to them how the OSR, for example, Old School Essentials, Knave, the Black Hack, DCC are soooooo similar in game style, mechanics and philosophy, they just refuse to acknowledge it and still hate on the OSR or like-minded games.

Fria Ligan (Free League) produces amazing content, and i especially like how the systems can be modified for your choice of setting

yall should do a short campaign over december to introduce a new year!

Awesome Dudes ! I havent tried Mørk Borg yet, but it would be awesome to hear your opinion on other ttrpgs from Free League like: Dragonbane, Forbidden Lands, Væsen amd Symboarum 😊 BIG recommendations. At least the first three have granite solid Solo and Co-op options alongside standard group play! And Dragonbane are getting a hardcover Bestiary, Rulebook+intro adventure and Bestiary standees in spring 2024!

I played Mork Borg, and I was a Bear Skinwalker thing. Basically, I was incredibly hard to hurt, hit very hard and almost always succeeded Strength and toughness based stuff, but I was actually pretty easy to hit with attacks and not that smart. However, I was the only person who’s character never died, so that was fun.

Have played this as a short series of one shots, along with the sci-fi version cy_borg, absolutely can recommend both, it was a blast.

Have you guys checked out Forbidden Psalm? It's a Mork Borg hack that makes it a wargame, but some of the mechanics can work really well as alternatives in regular Mork Borg.

This game is supposed to be simple, but you say the rules can be difficult to understand when reading them from the source book. You also talk about how the characters are usually weak and fail a lot when attempting anything. It's also set in a gloomy depressing atmosphere. I'm not sure I get what makes this a fun game to play. Maybe it's a game that's better experienced than explained Idk. The Ragna borg variant seems like it might be a bit more fun as it seems more forgiving and has a more interesting setting(to me at least). Might be interesting to see you guys do a one shot for it. I feel like that's probably the best way to get across what this game is.

Mork borg is so great ! I just played this year with my dnd friends

If you really want to try a Wild West type of game that's rules-light, there is also a Mork Borg for that! It's called Frontier Scum by Karl Druid!

Mork Borg is a fantastic game that our group decided to try because of the Glass Cannon Network actual play! My second character started with 1 hp, and a scroll, and I immediately called my own death. Sure enough, first turn of the first combat, I fail the check to use the scroll, inflict 2 damage on myself and die. 😂 one of the most memorable gaming moments for me.

You guys have to try Ironsworn some time!

Mork Borg, Cy_Borg and Pirate Borg are my go to games nowadays.

This was of value to me to let me know why this would not be for me. Thank you.

I Love Death In Space which is built off of this system and is wonderful for a dirty sci fi ttrpg. Highly encourage it and their book is gorgeous. Same publisher too

Mork Borg is the best! They even have a module for playing solitaire, called Solitary Defilement.

I love watching you guys branch out. Mork Borg is such a fun system, both in mechanics and narrative flavor.

Just to add to your list of Borgs to futily resist- just saw a post on Fbook that there is Corp Borg from a Polish author.

I have Cy_Borg and I'm pumped to run it. :)

My friends and I actually played CybBorg in between our d&d campaigns and it was so much fun!! The roleplay potential in the Borg settings are just off the charts. I played a hacker who was for some reason super buff but all my friends just wanted me to hack into corporate TV networks so that we could watch Seinfeld episodes 😂

I'm actually wishlisting this game now.

Mork Borg and CY_Borg are some of my favourite games!

Great review of Mörk Borg and all the great hacks! There is an actual play podcast focused on Mörk Borg and the 3rd party content called Flail to the Face! I highly recommend checking them out! They embody the feel and vibe of this amazing game!

There's also a less "doom metal", more standard fantasy version called "Mork Manual" which has more of a focus on D&D style tropes, spells, elves, dwarves, etc.

Character creation is part of the game and i wouldnt skip it the first time. See also Pirate Borg, Cy Borg, Fe Bprg

Full respect for the commitment to design and I'm glad you had fun, but this sounds like very much not my thing.

I'm a big Mork Borg fan, and have all of those games as well. My wife and I were also at GameHole Con, and played Pirate Borg and Cy_Borg there. I'm surprised we didn't see you. But you should also try to track down a copy of Frontier Scum, the weird wild west borg hack.

I would love to hear what you guys think of Vaesen 😅

Great video, this looks cool but... ;) I'm extremely sceptical on the combining of Int, Wisdom and Charisma into one stat. One stat controlling how Charasmatic, Intelligent and Wise your character is just doesn't work for me as soon as you are asked to roll the dice for that stat, those are three TOTALLY different character traits. Unless you don't really roll for this stat that much (like early D&D, OSR) then maybe.... (I suspect I am not a fan of rules light games hehe)

Wait… your telling me there’s more versions of this amazing system?!?!? Awe man… now I gotta spend money…