Quite literally the reason I made this blog was to gush over this. fucking. game.
I have learn my fair share of RPG systems, most of them very rules heavy, stuff like Cyberpunk Red, Lancer and the such. I feel like I was clinging to these games really hard because of their mechanical complexity (not to say that isn't fun), even though they weren't my favorites to run. Every rules light game I had played up to this point has been very story based, which is cool... (kinda, Thirsty Sword Lesbians was pretty fun though), but I'm not the biggest fan of non-in-depth combat(?). I now realize the missing link in game design I've glossed over. I don't know if I can thank the OSR genre as a whole for filling this gap, or if it's just the
parasitically gripping flail to the skull of a game known as Mörk Borg
Hylics meets Fear and Hunger. For those who don't know those games, Mörk Borg's world is a post-apocalyptic fantasy universe in all the wrong ways. A two-headed basilisk, HER, had a scornful child, HIM. They're worshipped throughout the world because of their* unshakable truth, the world is ending.
As you would assume, everything is almost absurdly dark (this is where Hylics comes into play). Don't get me wrong, it is very edgy, but this is a time when edgy works very well. Monsters are brutal, characters die constantly, and the world ending is quite literally a mechanic (how fast it happens is up to the GM's discretion); more on that later.
It is surprisingly a very complete setting for how little it actually has to work with. It is obviously written with maximum GM freedom in mind, but at the same time gives vague enough outlines for each region of the land and major rulers that could easily serve as plot hooks (or be just as simply replaced... hey, NPCs die just as easily as the characters).
Though what this book lacks in setting description, it more than makes up for it in presentation.
The rulebook is more of an art book distilled straight from the same neurons vibe with the sound of doom metal, this is where dread gets fun. Just because the world is ending, and even basic goblins can curse you to turn into one of them for the rest of time, doesn't mean you can't have a grand time exploring catacombs hosting venom-fuelled drug parties, hacking through evil foliage to find a wish granting sarcaphogus, or trying to take down a rather well spoken cannibal warlock with a glowing hot flail (the same flail that took on of my players' heads smooth off).
The one thing this game has done for me the most is inspire me. I have never been this captivated by a setting so obviously made to be expanded, and expand I have. It's not like it's the pretty art and open ended story that got me hooked though, no... this game has some of the smoothest combat I've experienced in a looooong time.
As a member of the OSR genre of TTRPG, this game is very fond of giving the players agency and letting the dice speak. The one thing that shocked my players the most was how this game has basically no plot armor for the players, if you pick a tough fight, you better have an amazing idea to get out of it, because this game is designed to be a character meat grinder (which is fine because it takes like 3 minutes to make another one).
I don't know if it's because I have been cooped up not being able to kill characters in other RPGs, but something about actions having deadly consequences really gets me when GMing. Paranoia was the first game I had played that kills people off regularly (kinda, they had multiple lives mechanically), but Mörk Borg's swift, unexpected perma death just brings another kind of stressful fun to the table... like Overcooked!
The combat as well is just so buttery, especially compared to.. *gulp*.. DnD. There are 3 checks in combat: Melee attack, Ranged attack, and Dodging. All of them are DC 12, adding their corresponding stat (of which there are only 4). The base game only has like 10 weapons and 20 spells (which is fine, I'll get to Mörk Borg Cult later), which seems like a small amount, but when you have to fight tooth and nail almost every encounter, players start to feel like each individual weapon is a blessing from their last, especially because weapons can break on you...
Enemies don't even roll dice, so it leads to an elegant combat system where each person already knows what they're going to do when their turn comes up, and it becomes this suspenseful train of rolling dice back to back as they brawl to their last breath in the fiction.
There are a few classes that are very interesting takes on generic RPG archetypes, only twisted to survive in the harsh environment of the setting. Making a character is less of an exercise of premeditative creativity, but having a flawed, more often than not unnaturally aggressive thing pushed on you for your brain to characterize after it's done. Quite literally, everything other than your class and name is randomized, which can lead to very interesting playstyles and party dynamics that you rarely see in exploration-based RPGs. Using your character's skillset authentically feels more like surviving than conquering obstacles; something that the game does on purpose that masterfully ties its mechanics to its atmosphere while still taking on the dungeon crawling gameplay loop in a fun way.
Just when you thought I was done, I just had to go and bring up all the official extra content...
So when a writing team and homebrew rules love each other very much, the rules get beautifully illustrated and put on morkborg.com/content/
Guns, Overland Travel, Mysterious Merchants, Magic Items, and Extra Classes galore
All for free, for the fans, unlike some other games... *gulp*.
Anyways, if you made it this far, thanks for reading my goblin rant, had to get this out of my system :P
