I played Mörk Borg solo and wrote about it

Posted on 18-02-2025 | Last edited on 18-02-2025

But first, a tiny review of one of my very favourite TTRPGs:

There’s a staggering amount of style packed into Mörk Borg’s 100 page book. The actual rules fit on a page or two, meaning the rest of it is dedicated to grim lore and gruesome art. Everything about the book is in service to this style, from the grating colours to the unreadable typefaces and off-angle lettering, to the crude, goat-headed skeleton on the cover, and the blend of modern and medieval art in the interior. Reading it, I suddenly understood what people in the 70s and 80s must have experienced seeing D&D for the first time, in the midst of the satanic panic. There’s even a section listing bands that inspired the game. One of them is Mayhem, who participated in the actual church burnings of Norway’s 90s black metal scene. Now there’s a satanic game.

Also much like the D&D of yore, Mörk Borg is near impossible not to make your own. In the 70s and 80s, what rulebooks provided was often rather vague, because each play group was expected to develop something that worked for them through the course of their game. Mörk Borg does that as well, though by slightly different means. The rules as presented on quick reference pages at the front and back of the book, as well as the included adventure module, are quite clear and concise. That the rest of the game is not, is no accident. Where other games use long stretches of text for flavour, or to guide play, Mörk Borg uses its art to evoke that which no amount of text could match.

No other game in the old-school renaissance has captured both that sense of novelty and that DIY attitude from the games they emulate. And on top of all that, the rules, minimal as they are, actually make for very fun, quick and deadly games.

A photo of the materials I used to play Mörk Borg. The book lies on a table, surrounded by various printed materials and a number of dice.

Now onto my solo game. I’ve made the report quite technical, mostly for the sake of my own introspection, but the story is in there if that’s what you’re here for. And here’s a scan of the notes and drawings I made while playing, which show the full story as written while it was unfolding:

download solo_borg.pdf

I had played a solo game once before, using Ironsworn, but couldn’t really get into it. To make a long story short, in that attempt I was trying to write a book instead of playing a game. The story in my head didn’t match what the dice were saying, so I got frustrated and stopped. I was inspired to try again by Castle Grief’s articles on solo gaming, especially this one. This time, I promised myself two things; One, I wasn’t going to plan ahead, and two, I wasn’t going to worry about playing “correctly”.

Then, I collected the materials I thought I was going to need in addition to the Mörk Borg core book. All materials not hyperlinked are either from that core book or one of the official expansion zines, parts of which are available for free. I printed and/or stapled together the following:

With that, the game began. I rolled up an initial party of four characters. First was Niduk, a priest in service to the Basilisks. Second was Graft, who got the fanged deserter class, terrible stats, and a zweihänder. Third was Belum, a wretched royal with a magic sword and a squire to carry it. Finally, Von, an occult herbmaster, got a huge +3 in constitution and the ability to make healing items. The most useful member of the party for sure.

With these unfortunate folks ready, I rolled on the Where do you wander? and The Basilisks demand tables to generate a quest starter. Apparently, I needed to get from the Valley of the Unfortunate Undead to the coasts of Grift to find “Silver from a sinner’s grave”. I asked the chaos portents from Sölitary Depths for more detail, and came up with Torvul the Reborn, whose grave I’d be robbing.

Setting off, I began tracking each day of travel using Roads to Damnation, rolling for the Calendar of Nechrubel, Mörk Borg’s prophecy of doom, and a random event each morning, and consuming rations each evening. On the 7th day, I rolled both Psalm 1:3, which says that stone structures are to collapse, and an encounter with a troll. Falling debris knocked out Graft immediately, and Belum was killed by a hit from the troll after only getting in a single strike himself. Luckily, the book states that trolls are cowards, so it didn’t chase the rest of the party as they fled, dragging Graft along.

This encounter was definitely worth a level-up. While going through the process of improving (or worsening, in Graft’s case, she’s had really unlucky rolls so far) my characters, I decided I wanted to use Unheroic Feats instead of the base-game system. I converted the three still-living characters’ class abilities to feats and, since they were now much simpler, moved them off their separate sheets onto a single party sheet. For this, I first used Forbidden Psalm Character Cards, but then made my own.

The next significant event happened when I reached Galgenbeck. I asked the oracle if there was someone there willing to join my party, and it gave a resounding yes, so I rolled up Felban and had her join without any fuss. She proved to be quite skilled with the crossbow. On that note, I used a couple of different yes/no oracles during the course of this game. After various iterations of 1d6 and 2d6 oracles, I settled on a 1d20 oracle where 1-9 is no, 10 is something unexpected, and 11-20 is yes, using higher/lower and even/odd numbers for nuance whenever relevant.

What follows was more trudging along, hunting for rations, and looting an abandoned outpost for a magical spear (from The Tenebrous Reliquary) due to another lucky oracle roll. I switched from using Roads to Damnation to Sölitary Depths for my event tables, and soon ran into the next encounter. An unusual creature, generated using The Monster Approaches, blocked the road. Even though it was 4 against 1, the creature put up a remarkable fight, during which Niduk’s fancy new spear fried him alive with lightning (not so lucky after all). The rest of the party pressed on without their basilisk priest to guide them.

The game continued with yet more travelling, and I started consolidating the days without events in my writing. The fifth character, a seer named Urvarg, joined the party. I had her start at level 2, and gave her a feat with which she could scry for information. The group also enlisted five earthbound followers.

On the 26th in-game day, I reached Múr, which separates Grift from the rest of the world. At this point, the party was searching more than travelling, so I stopped tracking the daily travel procedure with as much care as before. We slew a straw-lion (from Eat Prey Kill), but not before it took out one of the earthbound. Urvarg used its guts to scry for the location of Torvul’s tomb, and I used a few oracle rolls to determine that meant following a stream to the coast, then scaling a cliff down to a tide pool. Another earthbound was lost in the climb down.

At the base of the cliff was the place I’d been working towards. Some rolls on the tables from One of the many bedeviled dungeons determined the threats this place would pose. At the entrance, sapient vines dragged the third earthbound casualty to its doom. The main threat, however, was “Tergol’s escaped experiment,” which I made using The Monster Approaches. I played out a large battle against the experiment and five skeletal warriors, using dice to track each combatant’s position and HP. I got quite lucky again here, and none of my characters died.

After the battle, I was down to my makeshift notebook’s last page, and I felt that these characters and their quest had run their course. I wrapped things up by having the party find the silver in the next room, and letting them make it back to Galgenbeck to offer it up before the Basilisks. I still rolled on the Calendar of Nechrubel for each day of the journey, but the apocalypse seemed to have been staved off by my party’s success.

Looking back, I feel that I stuck to the two promises I made, and that they did indeed make for a more fun experience. In future solo games, I want to lean on oracles more, further fleshing out encounters, characters and the game world. Hopefully, that will lead to a less superficial story. Giving the party a more vague goal, or perhaps several goals at once, might also make it easier to get sidetracked and discover things I ignored this time because I was beelining to a far-off location. For the system, I want something even more OSR, with proper levelling and a less grimdark setting. Luckily, my physical copy of Shadowdark just arrived, which does exactly that. It’s like I planned that or something. I might write a similar piece about that game at some point.