REVIEW: Dragonbane

Last month, I mentioned that, because of the extended absence of a player in my ongoing Dolmenwood campaign, one of the other players offered to run a short adventure using Free League's Dragonbane rules. Despite my own deficiencies as a player, I welcomed this, both as a nice break from my own weekly refereeing duties and because I'd actually wanted to give Dragonbane a proper playtest. I've had a copy of the game for about two years and it wasn't until now that an opportunity to actually make use of it arose.

We concluded our playtest earlier this week and, as I expected I would, I had a great time. Originally, my intention was to write a short follow-up to the post linked above, in which I offered some further thoughts about the game. However, as I did so, I soon realized that my “short follow-up” was rapidly turning into something closer to full-on review, The result is what you're reading now, though be warned that this will be a somewhat idiosyncratic review based largely on my own interests rather a more "general" assessment of the game.

Case in point: I come at Dragonbane from the perspective of someone who's played a lot of Dungeons & Dragons over the decades. And while it's never been my system of choice, I also have a deep respect for Chaosium’s Basic Role-Playing, upon which Dragonbane's Swedish-language predecessor, Drakar och Demoner, was based. Consequently, I approached Dragonbane with a great deal of curiosity. I was eager to see how it would blend its BRP heritage with a more streamlined framework. After several sessions, I can confidently say Dragonbane delivers a fun, engaging experience that bridges the gap between D&D’s broad fantasy and BRP’s more grounded, skill-driven mechanics.

As I said, Dragonbane is built on the bones of Basic Role-Playing, a system known for its granular, skill-based mechanics. Free League, however, has distilled this foundation into something far lighter and more approachable, swapping BRP’s percentile dice for a d20-based system that might feel more familiar to D&D players. Character creation is quick: choose a kin (human, elf, dwarf, or even anthropomorphic creatures like wolfkin or mallard), a profession (knight, mage, artisan, etc.), and assign points to skills. Unlike the sometimes-fiddly process of building a Call of Cthulhu or RuneQuest character, Dragonbane keeps things brisk, almost rivaling old-school D&D’s straightforwardness even while retaining BRP’s emphasis on skills over character classes.

The core mechanic – roll a d20 under your skill or attribute score – will probably feel like second nature to BRP veterans, but the system’s boons and banes (the advantage/disadvantage mechanic that seems to be in every RPG these days) simplify modifiers in a way that keeps play moving. Opposed rolls and critical successes/failures add further depth without being overwhelming. For a D&D player, the shift from class-and-level progression to skill-based improvement is definitely a change. Even so, Dragonbane never feels too alien, aided not just by its use of d20 rolls but also its reliance on familiar fantasy archetypes (knights, rogues, mages, etc.).

One of Dragonbane’s most distinctive mechanical features is its use of willpower points. These function as a limited but flexible resource that can be spent to fuel both heroic abilities and spells or to reroll a failed skill check. I liked how this gave players a choice during play: burn a willpower point now to avoid a blunder or save it for a special combat move or spell later. It adds a welcome layer of resource management without being overly complex. 

Dragonbane thus feels both flexible and grounded. It lacks the sprawling feat trees or subclass options of, say, WotC-era Dungeons & Dragons, but compensates with a system that rewards player ingenuity. For some BRP fans, it's possible the game might seem too pared down. Where are the hit locations or complex magic systems of RuneQuest? But, for someone like me, more accustomed to D&D’s approach to these things, the streamlined rules felt right, emphasizing speed of play over simulationist detail.

As I noted in my earlier post, combat is where Dragonbane really shines and, as someone who often finds RPG combat a functional but unexciting necessity, I was glad of it. The system strikes a nice balance between simplicity and tactical depth, offering a dynamic experience that rivals D&D’s ease of use while avoiding the slog of overly complex BRP combat.

Each round, players draw initiative cards (reshuffled every round for unpredictability) and can move and act, with heroic abilities or even weapon choices allowing for creative flourishes. The card-based initiative is very simple and straightforward. Players can trade initiative or act out of turn in certain situations, which I found helps to keep everyone engaged. Combat maneuvers like disarming, grappling, or shoving provide further tactical options without requiring constant reference to the rulebook. Mechanics like morale checks and weapon durability add yet more stakes and flavor. For example, a critical hit includes the possibility of increased damage, ignoring armor, or gaining an additional attack.

Another feature I appreciated is the way Dragonbane distinguishes between monsters and NPCs. While NPCs use the same mechanics as player characters, monsters do not roll to attack. Instead, they act according to randomly determined behavior tables, intended to simplify referee workload and to reinforce the idea that monsters are unpredictable forces of nature. It’s an interesting design choice, but I'm not yet certain whether it works as well as intended. I'd need to play more to see how well it holds up to repeated use.

Compared to D&D and its descendants, where combat can feel like a regular cycle of attack rolls and spell slots, Dragonbane combat feels more unpredictable. Hit point totals are fairly low, which keeps fights brisk and the risk of injury or equipment failure makes every combat potentially deadly. BRP players will recognize the system’s DNA, but Dragonbane trims the fat, avoiding much of the bookkeeping that can bog down RuneQuest battles. The result is a combat system that’s both approachable and exciting, encouraging clever play without relying on too many subsystems or edge cases.

Dragonbane doesn’t come with a very detailed campaign setting of its own. Instead, its implied setting is gritty but evocative and seemed to me to take some inspiration from fairy tales (an impression born no doubt of its artwork, done by Johan Egerkrans, who also provided illustrations for the explicitly fairy tale-inspired Vaesen). The profession options suggest a world where heroism is hard-won, not guaranteed. Magic is potent but rare and monsters feel dangerous. This tone aligns more, I think, with games like RuneQuest than Dungeons & Dragons as it's often played, though the game seems flexible enough to handle varying degrees of character skill and power.

Free League’s production quality is, as usual, stellar. The rulebook included with the boxed set is relatively concise (112 pages) yet comprehensive. The set also includes dice, cards, and a second, 116-page book containing eleven sample adventures that can be strung together to form a campaign, making it a complete package for new players. Compared to a lot of RPGs these days, Dragonbane feels leaner and more focused, while still offering enough material to fuel a campaign. BRP fans accustomed to Chaosium’s dense rulebooks might find Dragonbane’s comparative brevity a relief.

In the end, I came away from our Dragonbane playtest impressed, not just by the mechanics, but by how much fun I had. It reminded me that a well-designed game doesn't need to be complex to offer meaningful choices and satisfying play. As someone who usually sits behind the referee’s screen, it was a pleasure to be a player again, especially in a system that hit such a sweet spot between familiarity and innovation. I’m glad I finally got to give Dragonbane a try and I hope I have the chance to return to it again in the future.

Initial Thoughts on Dragonbane

As I mentioned at the start of the month, my ongoing Dolmenwood campaign is on a short hiatus while one of the players is away traveling. In the meantime, another member of the group has kindly offered to run a few sessions of Dragonbane, Free League's fantasy roleplaying game, and I’ve taken the opportunity to step out from behind the screen and join as a player. I jumped at the chance, not only because Dragonbane has been on my radar for a while, and this seemed like the perfect time to give it a try.

For those unfamiliar with it, Dragonbane is the modern English-language evolution of Drakar och Demoner, Sweden’s first major fantasy RPG, originally released in 1982. That game was built on Chaosium’s Basic Role Playing (BRP) system, adapted under license and inspired in part by Magic World and RuneQuest. Over the decades, Drakar och Demoner went through numerous editions in Sweden, each refining or reshaping its rules. In 2023, Free League acquired the rights and reimagined the game as Dragonbane, distilling its BRP roots into something faster, lighter, and more accessible. While it retains the BRP hallmarks, like skill-based resolution, opposed rolls, it swaps out percentile dice for d20s and favors simplicity wherever it can.

While I’ve played my fair share of BRP-based games over the years, most of my fantasy RPG experience comes from Dungeons & Dragons and that likely shapes how I see other systems in the genre. That said, Dragonbane feels immediately familiar in all the best ways. Like older editions of D&D, character creation is fast and to the point: you choose a kin (i.e., race), a profession (class), some skills, and you’re good to go. It's more straightforward than making a character in RuneQuest and only marginally more involved than in D&D. You can feel the BRP ancestry throughout, but almost everywhere the system has been pared back to emphasize ease of play. The use of d20s streamlines resolution, and Dragonbane replaces modifiers with “boons and banes,” a system akin to advantage and disadvantage.

All of this is well and good, but what pleasantly surprised me was the combat system. I’m someone who often finds combat a necessary but uninspiring part of roleplaying games. I don’t dislike it outright, but I rarely look forward to it. In Dragonbane, though, combat has consistently been fun: brisk, dynamic, and full of opportunities for clever play. In fact, I’ve found myself anticipating combat encounters, which is not something I say lightly. It’s almost as if the Dice Gods are mocking me for having just written a post about my ambivalence toward combat mechanics. If so, I don’t mind. I’m grateful to have found a system that’s helping me understand what I do enjoy in RPG combat.

Each round, a Dragonbane can move and act. Special weapons or abilities can bend the rules in flavorful ways, but the core loop remains fast and approachable. Initiative is determined with cards rather than dice and reshuffles every round, introducing a layer of unpredictability. There are ways to act out of turn or swap initiative order, which adds some tactical flexibility. Beyond that, there are other mechanical wrinkles, such as morale checks, weapon breakage, special maneuvers, that bring the system to life without bogging it down.

That, for me, is what stands out about the Dragonbane combat system: it hits a sweet spot that’s hard to find. Too often, combat systems fall into one of two traps: they’re either so streamlined that they feel flat or they’re so loaded with options and subsystems that the pace suffers. Dragonbane threads the needle rather well in my opinion, offering just enough crunch to make combat engaging, but not so much that it becomes a slog. Whether this will remain my considered opinion over the long haul remains to be seen, but so far, it’s been a delight.

High Adventure and Low Comedy

Free League publishes not one, not two, but three different fantasy roleplaying games at the moment – Forbidden Lands, Symbaroum, and now Dragonbane. Each one is quite distinct from one another, not just in terms of rules but also in tone. For example, Dragonbane, the latest iteration of the venerable Swedish RPG, Drakar och Demoner, sets itself apart from the other Free League fantasy RPGs by its willingness to embrace lighter, even sillier moments, as designer Tomas Häremstam points out in his preface:

Though a toolbox for allowing you to tell fantasy stories of all kinds, Dragonbane is a game with room for laughs at the table and even a pinch of silliness at times – while at the same time offering brutal challenges for the adventurers. We call this playstyle mirth and mayhem roleplaying – great for long campaigns but also perfect for a one-shot if you just want to have some quick fun at your table for the night. 

Dragonbane is quite an interesting RPG for a number of reasons and I hope to get around to discussing it at some point, but there are several other games and gaming products ahead of it in my review queue. However, the "mirth and mayhem" tagline really caught my attention, in part because it reminds of a phrase my friends and I have used for years – high adventure and low comedy.

I can't quite recall precisely when we coined this phrase, but we did so as a way to capture what the experience of playing most RPGs was actually like at the table – not what its designers wanted to be like, which is quite a different thing. This is an important distinction. With a handful of exceptions, like Paranoia or Toon, whose stated intention is to be humorous, most roleplaying games are written and meant to be played seriously. "Serious" doesn't mean utter devoid of humor, of course, but the humor is accidental, a natural consequence of the unpredictability of playing any game, especially one where player choice and dice rolls contend with one another.

What my friends and I call "high adventure and low comedy" is thus very often (though not exclusively) the result of exactly this: dice with a mind of their own. One of my most popular posts touches on this very topic, though from a slightly different angle. However, the point remains the same, namely, that it's well nigh impossible to avoid moments of unexpected levity when so many of a character's actions are determined by the roll of dice. There's simply no way to ensure that even a high-level and competent character will always succeed at the right moment. Instead of making his save against dragon breath, he might fail and be burnt to a crisp. The reverse is also possible and the all-powerful Dark Lord might, metaphorically speaking, slip on a banana peel as he attempts to menace the heroes who've dared to confront him in his lair.

Over the years, I've experienced many examples of this. In my House of Worms Empire of the Petal Throne campaign, the character Aíthfo hiZnáyu has fallen prey to bad dice rolls on several notable occasions. And while I used those unintended mishaps as an opportunity to introduce new elements to the campaign, there's no denying that they were also funny – so much so that the players continue to chuckle about them years later. House of Worms has never been a deliberately funny campaign. Tékumel, with its detailed history, ancient mysteries, and constructed languages is perhaps the very definition of serious business when it comes to RPGs and yet there's no way to prevent unexpected silliness from creeping in from time to time – nor would we want to do so!

Dice rolls that go awry aren't the only source of humor. Players are every bit as unpredictable as dice. Sometimes, a player might just be in a whimsical mood and decide that his character does something goofy. Other times, he might be bored and want to shake things up by choosing to act in a way that's, in his opinion, more entertaining. Or maybe someone misspeaks, calling a character by the wrong name or accidentally – or, worse, intentionally – making a pun that causes everyone to erupt into laughter. There are simply so many ways that a roleplaying game session can descend into unintentional humor that there's no point in worrying about it. Instead, it's best to embrace it these moments of levity and enjoy them for what they are.

I think that's why, when I came across the passage I quoted above, I was so taken by it. Over the years, I've read a lot of roleplaying games. Very few of them acknowledge that low comedy is very often the inescapable companion of high adventure. You can't really have one without the other, not without clamping down so hard on anything that deviates in even the slightest way from the Truth Path that, in the process, you've also sucked all the fun out of roleplaying. These are games, after all and they're meant to be fun. They're also exercises in human creativity and interaction, both of which often take us to unexpected places. 

Isn't that why we play these games in the first place?

More "GDW" News

Over at the Mongoose Publishing forums, Matthew Sprange made the following announcement about two other roleplaying games originally published by the late, great Game Designers' Workshop:

We are both very happy and proud to announce that Twilight: 2000 and 2300AD have been acquired in their entirety by Mongoose Publishing, joining our library of games alongside Traveller.

All three are games I read and played as a teenager, and so it is both awesome and humbling to become their stewards.

So, what does this mean?

Twilight: 2000

Twilight: 2000 is currently published by the frankly stellar people at Free League. We have had conversations with them and not only will Twilight: 2000 continue to be published by Free League for the current licence period, as things stand we have every expectation it will stay in their capable hands beyond that.

2300AD

You will be seeing more 2300AD material coming in the near future, and we have manuscripts due for both Invasion and a brand new book of adventures. In addition, we will be bringing 2300AD to the TAS programme on Drivethru, likely within the next few months – so get writing! Classic Traveller will be appearing on TAS within the next month or so, and once that is up and running we will get cracking on 2300AD.

At the moment, past editions of both Twilight: 2000 and 2300AD are available on Drivethru (https://legacy.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/45/) and will soon be appearing on our website. Of course, Free League have the current edition of Twilight: 2000 (seriously, check them out, they have done excellent work)!

In addition, both 2300AD and Twilight: 2000 have been added to the Fair Use Policy.

That covers our immediate plans for both games, but both properties clearly have immense potential and we hope to be able to bring you more news in the near future.

Very interesting stuff! I suspect this is connected to the other recent news regarding the future of Traveller. Seeing as I've been refereeing a Twilight: 2000 campaign for just shy of three years now, I'll definitely be keeping an eye for further news on that front, since there's potential, albeit small, that this might impact the subsequent development of that game. As for 2300 AD, I haven't played any version of that game in close to thirty years(!) now, let alone the Mongoose version, that this doesn't much impact me. In any case, it's fascinating to see the way that Mongoose Publishing has become the inheritor of a significant portion of GDW's gaming legacy, something I'd never have expected.

The Old Man and the VTT (Part II)

You may recall that, at the end of last year, I expressed some dissatisfaction with the Foundry virtual tabletop that I was using for my weekly Barrett's Raiders Twilight: 2000 campaign. Though extremely powerful in its functionality, it was also unwieldy and poorly documented, leading to a great deal of frustration on my part. Nevertheless, I decided to continue to use it in the hopes that, over time, I'd grow more adept at using it to its full potential. After all, a great deal of effort had obviously gone into the creation and development of both the Foundry and the Twilight: 2000 add-on module and I wanted to give them both a fair shake. 

A couple of sessions ago, as the characters prepared to infiltrate Baranów Sandomierski Castle, I finally reached the limit of my patience with the VTT. I won't waste time with a summary of all the issues I encountered during that session. I will only say that they were sufficient that I seriously considered abandoning the campaign entirely. Before I took such a rash step, however, I spoke to my players about my frustrations and discovered that they largely felt similarly about the situation. Since everyone was enjoying the campaign, we simply decided to abandon the use of the VTT for future sessions, opting instead for simple sketch maps on a Jamboard rather than anything more elaborate (this is what I've done in my House of Worms campaign for years now).

I know that many people, even people as ancient as myself, regularly make use of virtual tabletops with great success and that their enjoyment of games is greatly enhanced by them. I'm sincerely happy for such people. For myself, though, the opposite has largely been the case. Over the years that I've played online, I have never found an elaborate VTT to offer any significant benefit beyond the storage of character sheets and as a dice roller in games that use funky dice (as Twilight: 2000's current edition does). Most of the time, the VTT worked against my enjoyment of play, in large part because of how arcane they were to operate. 

I certainly understand the theoretical appeal of a virtual tabletop. As its name suggests, it's an attempt to emulate the look and feel of playing in person while seated around a common table. As I've said repeatedly on this blog over the years, playing in person is the ideal way to play a roleplaying game and, until the last decade or so, I never even considered playing any other way. That's why I'm sympathetic to the intention behind VTTs and why, in my naivete, I have attempted to make use of them in my online games. None, in my experience anyway, have come close to bringing an online game any closer to being an in person game. If anything, what they have done is make it all the more plain that I am not playing a game face-to-face. They've made it all feel like a clunky, analog video game and what's the point in that?

I've often commented that one of the few unalloyed goods that the Internet has given us is the ability to connect with people all over the globe who share our interests. I've made many wonderful friends over the years because of the Internet, most of whom I'd never have met otherwise. I'm deeply grateful for that. Yet, even as Internet technology has improved, it has still not improved enough that I feel as if a virtual tabletop is a good option for playing a RPG with friends. If refereeing the House of Worms campaign over the last eight years has taught me anything – and it's taught me a lot – it's that simple is best. The online experience can never replicate, let alone replace, being there in the flesh, rolling actual dice with your friends, of course, but the fewer layers of mediation between you and your friends, the closer you come to it. That's why I'm giving up on the Foundry for Barrett's Raiders and going as bare bones as possible. In retrospect, that's probably what I should have done from the beginning.

REVIEW: Ikhon

A common criticism against Mörk Borg is that it's all style and no substance. While I can see its critics' point, I also feel it's an unfairly reductive assessment of the 2020 dark fantasy game published by Free League. Certainly, a key element of Mörk Borg's appeal is its extravagant esthetics – a chaotic graphic design accentuated by riotous colors and moody, uneven illustrations. What's overlooked, I think, is that this sensibility is more than a mere artistic affectation but rather a deliberate design choice intended to convey as much to the reader as its text, proof of the old aphorism that a picture is worth a thousand words.

Yet, I must admit that the game's latest release, Ikhon, skirts very close to prioritizing style over substance, especially when compared to its previous releases. Written by the game's creator, Pelle Nilsson, Ikhon comes in a small (6.25" × 4.5") box, inside of which are four, staple-bound 20-page booklets. Each booklet is dedicated to one of the four titular Ikhons, "ancient god-vessels of cured skin and soot-black wood, as rare and as valuable as they are blasphemous." These vessels are reputed to be the handiwork of the dark divinity Nechrubel, who bound within them "the Profane Profound," a quartet of lesser but nevertheless potent supernatural entities: the Bilkherd, the Becklure, the Old Dead, and the Silkfiend.

A character who somehow manages to obtain an Ikhon may call upon the powers of the Profane Profound shackled within. Doing so is not just a blasphemy according to the inquisitors of the Two-Headed Basilisks but also fraught with danger, as the powers of an Ikhon may rebound disastrously upon the wielder and/or his companions. Each booklet contains a brief description of one of the Profane Profound, along with pages numbered from one to "ten+." The pages detail an escalating series of responses to attempts to call upon one of these "age-old and nigh-forgotten folk gods." Which response a character gets is determined by a roll of a d8. The roll can be modified by +1 "for every willing human sacrifice" and "for each significant body part severed from the wielder of the Ikhon," to a maximum of +3. An Ikhon is thus a bit like a deck of many things or a wand of wonder from AD&D, an unpredictable source of power that can harm as well as aid.

The responses vary considerably. All are evocatively described, but many completely lack game mechanics of any kind. Consider, for example, the lowest (1) response in the Bilkherd's booklet:

He summons his Herd. 

To the hateful goats, you are the field-poisoners, earth-salters, torch-wielders and slaughter's heralds. A thousand thousand strong, trampling all in their path and leaving only blood, sorrow and the dust of crushed bones. 

All is obliterated under spiteful, churning hooves.

Meanwhile, the highest (10+) response in the same booklet is the following:

The Lamb from Beneath the Mud: heralded by rotten stench and glistening carmine eyes hanging at its hooves.

It devours one chosen foe, effortlessly masticating and grinding them whole, before sinking into the burbling muck.

Summon the Lamb within the hour – and never speak of it again.

 As I said above, the responses are evocatively described, but, in many cases, I'd trade that for a little clarity. Now, I am not opposed to inspirational vagueness. Indeed, I think a degree of textual indeterminacy is a necessary feature of old school roleplaying games. Such indeterminacy serves to inspire; its an encouragement to make a game one's own by filling in the gaps oneself. Perhaps that's what's being done here, too, but, if so, it eludes me. Rather than inspiring, Ikhon simply feels frustratingly incomplete.

In some respects, Ikhon reminds me of Tékumel's The Book of Ebon Bindings, another RPG product that ostensibly introduces the summoning of powerful supernatural beings into its associated game. While Ebon Bindings is grandiloquent and Ikhon terse, both shed far less light on their subject matter from a gaming perspective than I – and I suspect most gamers – would find immediately useful. In the case of the former, one can at least luxuriate in its overblown language. Ikhon, though, mostly offers Samuel Arraya's gloomy artwork, which is something, I suppose,. Whether that's enough to justify the purchase of this product is an open question.

I wish I liked Ikhon more than I do. The idea behind it is a solid one, very much in keeping with the dark fantasy inspirations of Mörk Borg. As presented, though, I find it inadequate to its intended purpose. Others may feel differently and indeed I can easily imagine that the very things I find wanting, such as its gnomic text and limited game mechanics, might prove attractive to others. Goodness knows I often enjoy game products that others do not. In the end, I suppose my feelings about Ikhon derive from how much I've enjoyed previous Mörk Borg releases. Compared to them, this one fell flat and I am left disappointed.

The Old Man and the VTT

My Twilight: 2000 campaign has been going for a little over a year now. The characters, consisting largely of US soldiers caught behind enemy lines after the disastrous Battle of Kalisz (July 9–18, 2000), have recently been spending their time in the Free City of Kraków. There, they regrouped and plotted a course to head westward and into (presumably) NATO-held territory. In last night's session, they finally executed that plan and are now following the course of the Vistula River. hoping it will eventually lead them to the Baltic Sea and, from there, to friendlier places (there are rumors that the forces of the Free Polish Congress – an anti-Soviet government-in-exile – have a presence in the region). It will be interesting to see how the campaign unfolds in the months to come.

At the same time the new edition of Twilight: 2000 was released, Free League also released a virtual tabletop module for use with The Foundry. Because I was a supporter of the crowdfunding campaign for this edition, as part of my rewards I received a code that gave me access to the VTT module and I decided that, since this campaign would be online, I might as well make use of it. Or perhaps I should say attempt to make use of it, because it's been something of an uphill battle for me to try and do so with any facility. Indeed, more than a few of our weekly sessions have been spent trying to figure out how to use the VTT to handle this or that aspect of the game's rules.

Now, as readers undoubtedly know, my House of Worms Empire of the Petal Throne campaign, just a few months shy of its eighth anniversary, has been an entirely online campaign since its inception in March 2015. At the beginning, we made use of Google Hangouts (now called Google Meet, I believe) to communicate with one another during each session, though we eventually abandoned it in favor of Discord at some point. The House of Worms server has a dicebot for handling random rolls, though some players occasionally make use of real dice, which they roll and whose results they then report verbally. We also use of Jamboard to do quick sketches of things like maps when necessary. 

As you can see, the House of Worms campaign is rather technologically unsophisticated, particularly when you compare it to what's available to roleplayers today. However, it works very well for us and there's never been the slightest suggestion that we ought to adopt something more elaborate. I suspect the fact that we're playing a game as simple and straightforward as 1975 EPT probably has something to do with that, as does the fact that almost all of the players, myself included, are middle-aged men in our 50s who are very comfortable with "theater of the mind" roleplaying.

The new edition of Twilight: 2000 makes use of special dice and its hexcrawl through post-war Poland campaign frame means that having a map available to all the players is important. There's also the fact that many aspects of its rules, like combat or keeping track of supplies, demand a higher degree of attention than does EPT. Certainly, one could play Twillight: 2000 without recourse to electronic assistance; were my players seated around my dining room table rather than scattered across the globe, I would probably do so. Playing online, though, this is a bit more onerous, which is why I decided to take the plunge with the Foundry.

The experience, as I have already noted, has not been wholly salutary. Some of this is no doubt a consequence of my being unfamiliar with The Foundry and its byzantine intricacies. It's a fairly robust VTT, with lots of bells and whistles. That it would take some getting used to is inevitable. Likewise, even after a year of play, there are still elements of the game's rules, like combat, that we're still learning and that, too, probably contributes to our ongoing difficulties in using the VTT to its full potential – and there's a lot of potential there. The mere fact that character sheets are always available online is terrific, since no player can ever misplace his sheet and, should a player be absent, his character can still participate in the action if necessary. There are many other truly useful and timesaving benefits to The Foundry.

Consequently, I find myself wondering each week whether using a VTT is worth all the trouble I encounter attempting to use one. From what I gather, large numbers of roleplayers make use of them in their gaming, so many, in fact, that many game companies now devote resources to producing modules for their RPGs and adventures. For many roleplayers in their 20s and even 30s, the use of a virtual tabletop is increasingly de rigueur. Likewise, each new iteration of these VTTs and the modules used with them include more features and options, right down to the automation of many aspects of gameplay. Perhaps it's simply my age talking, but I don't much care for this. To my mind, this comes dangerously close to aping video games and I see little point in that.

I intend to keep soldiering on (no pun intended) with The Foundry in my Twilight: 2000 campaign, because I'd like to give it a fair shake before passing final judgment. And, as I said, there are a few elements of the VTT that even I, a cantankerous old Luddite, find worthwhile. For the moment, though, my judgment on the whole thing is mixed to negative and it will take a fair bit to convince me that the hobby is better because of this innovation. 

REVIEW: Mörk Borg GM Screen

As I have mentioned before, I haven't made regular use of a referee's screen in many, many years. In my youth, it was more or less expected that the referee would have and use a screen, behind which he'd keep his maps – and dice rolls – hidden from the prying eyes of the players. Consequently, I used to own screens for RPGs I played regularly, assuming they had them, of course, as Gamma World did. Back then, I simply saw screens as part of the referee's "kit" and that was that.

At some point, my feelings on the matter changed. There was no single reason why they did, but an important one was the unwieldiness of most referee's screens. To use them effectively, one generally has to have a large, flat surface, usually a table, available for use. This wasn't always practical during my university and grad school days and so I largely abandoned my prior attachment to referee's screens. In recent years, I've been refereeing online a great deal; the idea of setting up a screen for these games seems positively laughable.

Despite all that, I not only own but think rather highly of the Mörk Borg GM Screen. Simply as a physical artifact, it's quite impressive. Consisting of five A5 panels, it's made of very sturdy material; there's no question in mind that it's far more durable than almost every other screen I've ever examined. Because of its size, it's also compact, meaning that, even unfolded, it takes up far less space on the table than the screens I was familiar with from my youth. That's important to me, given my eventual feelings about the practicality of using screens. 

The screen's player-facing side features moody illustrations in black, white, red, and gold by Johan Nohr, who also provided the artwork for the Mörk Borg rulebook. To be honest, I think many of these illustrations are even better than those in the rulebook, being somewhat more subdued in both content and presentation. I think they do a good job of demonstrating that a more restrained, even sober, version of Mörk Borg's doom metal fantasy is not only possible but completely in keeping with its spirit. Of course, the interior, GM-facing side of the screen is the usual riotous yellow, with black text and white highlights, that is Mörk Borg's visual calling card. Much as I appreciate the more muted artwork of the player side of the screen, I would have been slightly disappointed if my eyes weren't assaulted by garish color contrasts as well. 

Because Mörk Borg's rules are few, the interior of the screen is able to include most of them for reference. The game was already simple enough that the GM could more or less run a game session without the need to flip through the rulebook, but the screen makes it that much easier. Not only are there the usual charts for combat, equipment, and magic, there are also the statistics of common NPCs and multiple random tables covering everything from the weather to city events to traps. Some of these tables are printed on sheets of cardstock that can be swapped in or out of the screen, thanks to plastic holders at the corners of the first and last panels of the screen. The GM could use them to hold other appropriately sized sheets – like maps – further increasing the utility of the screen.

No referee screen is a must have and the Mörk Borg GM Screen is no different in this regard. At the same time, this one is durable, attractive, and practical, making it one of the best examples of its kind I've ever owned. If you're refereeing the game regularly, I think you'll quickly find there's genuine benefit to having it,

REVIEW: Mörk Borg Cult: Heretic

Much like Dungeon Crawl Classics – another fantasy roleplaying game that sometimes catches flak for its deviations from old school orthodoxy – a remarkably creative community has sprung up around Mörk Borg. Dubbed the "Mörk Borg cult," this community has produced an abundance of new material for the game, some of which can be found on its official website, as well as scattered across forums and blogs across the Internet. Periodically, some of the best material from these sources is collected into a printed 'zine, the first of which I reviewed last year.

Heretic is the second such 'zine and, like its predecessor, it contains a varied selection of material for use by players and Game Masters alike, though, as is usually the case with products of this sort, it's generally of more immediate interest to GMs. Also like its predecessor, Heretic employs an anarchic graphic design suffused with arresting colors and cacographic fonts to assault the eyes of its readers. Like it or not, this is an essential part of Mörk Borg's appeal; the game and its supplements simply wouldn't be the same if they were more visually self-restrained. 

Heretic is a 62-page staple-bound book with a gatefold cover on which content is also included, such as "Seeds of a Cult," a series of random tables to aid the Game Master in generating a villainous secret society. Everything from the cult's name to its headquarters to enemies can be quickly determined with a handful of rolls, "Unheroic Feats," meanwhile, details thirty-six unusual abilities that a character might acquire when getting better, Mörk Borg's version of leveling up. Examples include Beastly Scholar, which gives a character the ability to scry by means a dead animal's viscera, and Piper, which enables a character to befriend and speak with rats. Most of these feats provide only a small mechanical benefit but all of them are fairly flavorful. Heretic also presents two new classes, the Sacrilegious Songbird, a bard who's made a demonic pact, and the Shedding Vicar, a religious devotee who sheds his flesh to gain power.

"Graves Left Wanting" describes the cemetery of Graven-Tosk and its weird inhabitants. "Bloat" is a much smaller (6-room) dungeon that was once an underground temple dedicated to an obscure goddess of fat and plenty. "Sepulchre of the Swamp Witch" presents the lair of a drug-fueled serpent cult found within the final resting place of an ancient sorceress. None of these are ready-to-run scenarios so much as locales that could serve as the basis for scenarios with some additional context provided by the GM. That's fine by me, since I prefer having a store of raw materials from which to build my own adventures and each of these gives me just that, with "Graves Left Wanting" being the best of the bunch.

"You Are Cursed" is a useful – and fun – collection of random tables for handling the nature and effects of curses upon a character, in addition to the method of lifting it. "The Merchant" offers an example of a cursed individual, Wretched Old Mikhael, an undead seller of peculiar goods. Just what he sells depends on where he is found and the results of rolls on a random table. Mikhael's an intriguing NPC and I can easily see him becoming an important part of a Mörk Borg campaign. "Blackpowder Weapons for the Rich and Foolhardy" are some simple rules for introducing primitive firearms into your game. As this variant's title suggests, such firearms are expensive but using them is not nearly as foolish as I had hoped they'd be. Mostly, they they're loud and slow to reload rather than potentially harmful to their own users, which seems like an opportunity missed to me.

"The Bone Bowyer" is a unique monster, a bogeyman said to slay children and fashion clothing and weapons from their bodies. Though simple in concept, the presentation is well done, complete with a creepy nursery rhyme to accompany it. The "Borg Bitor" is a giant centipede-like monster whose presentation is less compelling. More effective is the "Rotten Nurse," the risen corpse of a nurse executed for aiding and abetting the necrobutcher, Vretul Kanth. The creature is showcased in a short adventure, "Nurse the Rot," that sees the characters pay a visit a ruined chapel.

Also included with Heretic is "The Hexed Gauntlet of Kagel-Secht," which takes the form of a fold-out poster consisting of a series of comic panels that seem to tell a story involving the discovery and use of the titular magic item. Interspersed throughout the comic panels are game stats for monsters, traps, and the Hexed Gauntlet itself. There's also a "word map" of Necrohell Manor; rather than being a graphic map, it employs words, lines, and arrows to show spatial relations. I'm honestly not entirely sure what to make of this last bit of Heretic, which seems more an exercise in idiosyncratic design than a useful piece of game material. Indeed, it's almost a parody of Mörk Borg and its unorthodox approach to both content and (especially) presentation.

Ultimately, Heretic is probably of most use to those who play or intend to play Mörk Borg, though it contains a number of ideas, such as the monsters, NPCs, and locales that could easily be used with other old school fantasy games. That said, the book's style and content are still very much in line with Mörk Borg's garish, irreverent, and occasionally puerile sensibilities, which will certainly limit its appeal to those not already sold on them. I don't mean that as a criticism. One of the things that I appreciate about Mörk Borg is that it's a game that knows what it's about and makes no apologies for that. It's not trying to be a crowd-pleasing lowest common denominator fantasy RPG but instead a brash and quirky take on "doom metal fantasy" and all that entails. If that's up your alley, Heretic is well worth it.

9 Months and 18 Days

Earlier this year, I wrote a brief post about the Twilight: 2000 campaign I began in December of 2021. This campaign is in addition to my House of Worms Empire of the Petal Throne campaign, which is still ongoing. There's some overlap between the players of the two campaigns, but the majority of the Barrett's Raiders players don't participate in House of Worms. I should also note that we make use of the new edition of T2K published by Free League rather than either of the old GDW editions. (One of these days I should write a full review of the new edition, since, after nine months of play, I think I have a decent handle on its strengths and weaknesses,)

The title of this post is a reference to the fact that, while the campaign has been up and running for nine months of real time, only a few weeks of game time have passed – an average of about two game days for every month we've been playing. That may seem like an unduly slow pace, but a lot has happened in those few weeks of game time, as the characters have made their way from Kalisz toward the Free City of Kraków. Along the way they've scrounged for supplies, aided Polish civilians in the town of Krzepice, avoided dealing with some rogue US soldiers who'd established a base in Dobrodzień, dodged elements of the Soviet Third Tank Army, and more. It's been a very enjoyable ride for me as the referee and, I assume, the players, since they keep showing up each week.

Twilight: 2000 has always included a very strong hexcrawl element to its gameplay. The characters, after all, are the survivors of a US mechanized infantry division smashed by a Warsaw Pact offensive and now are left to their own devices. Whatever their goals, whether short-term or long-term, they have no choice but to travel overland through the terrain of war-torn Poland. Much of what happens in a given session is the result of random encounters that occur along the way. The Free League edition of the game is very good in this regard, providing lots of useful tables, not to mention maps, from which the referee can cobble together situations with which the characters can deal. Of course, there are also set encounters, too, scattered throughout the countryside, such as the aforementioned Free City of Kraków.

The characters' ostensible plan is to find other NATO forces so that they can get back to (relative) safety and eventually the USA. That's what led them to Kraków in the first place. As a free city independent of all sides in the ongoing war, they figured it'd be a good place to hole up for a while and get a better lay of the land. Unfortunately, Kraków proved almost as fraught with danger as the countryside, albeit of a different sort. The Free City is wracked with factions, several of whom attempted to recruit the characters to their cause. It quickly became clear that the place was a powder keg about to blow and they'd be better off leaving on their own terms while they still could do so.

While in the city, the characters did succeed in making contact with other NATO (and NATO-friendly) personnel. This not only increased their numbers – providing a pool of secondary and replacement characters – but also opened up more options to them, as they plan their next move, From what they have learned, the remaining NATO forces in Poland have retreated to the northwest of the country, where Free (aka non-Communist) Polish forces have established themselves. That's more or less on the other side of the country from their current location, which is why they're currently considering the use of a boat (or several) to move north more quickly.

As I said at the beginning of this post, the campaign has been very enjoyable so far, though not without its challenges. The wide range of possible avenues for character action has sometimes led to analysis paralysis on the part of the players. This, in turn, has sometimes made it difficult for me to anticipate what they might do and keep even five minutes ahead of them, which is what I prefer in campaigns like this. Consequently, I feel as if I've been thrown back on my heels more often than I like. This isn't something that happens often in, say, my House of Worms campaign, where I feel like I have a good handle on things most of the time. With this, I feel much less confident, but that's probably a good thing. I now have to exercise "muscles" I haven't in a while, not to mention re-learn certain refereeing skills I'd apparently let atrophy. 

Onward!

Days of Future Past

I've been refereeing a Twilight: 2000 campaign using the new edition recently released by Free League. The campaign began in early December and is played weekly with a group of seven players, who've elected to call their little band (for reasons that are largely the result of an in-joke and thus have no deeper meaning) Barrett's Raiders. I've been having a lot of fun with the campaign thus far, though I don't yet feel fully proficient in the new rules, particularly those for combat, which are quite different than those in the 1984 edition of the game with which I am most familiar. That's to be expected; I am sure, after a few more months of play, that I'll be sufficiently acclimatized to the new rules that I'll be able to referee our sessions almost effortlessly.

At the time of its original release, Twilight: 2000 was set sixteen years in the future. The good folks at GDW, being thoughtful and intelligent men – in addition to being well-read on matters military – did, I think, a pretty job of imagining a limited nuclear conflict scenario between NATO and the Warsaw Pact that was both plausible and, above all, playable, given then-current information. As we now know, the real world rather quickly was at odds with this scenario and, despite the best efforts of GDW to tweak it to take into account the unfolding of history, Twilight: 2000 was soon relegated to realm of alternate history.

Now, like a lot of nerds, I have a great fondness for alternate histories. Yet, for some reason I can't fully explain, I prefer that the points of divergence in my alternate histories be well in the past. Consequently, I had a difficult time continuing to play Twilight: 2000 in the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. An alternate World War II? Sure! An alternate conclusion to the Cold War? No – at least not in the 1990s or even early 2000s. Again, I don't pretend this prejudice on my part is any way rational, only that it's one I feel quite strongly, hence my putting Twilight: 2000 on the shelf for several decades.

By the time Free League announced they were producing a new edition, I had already become much more comfortable with the idea of looking on the game as set in an alternate history. As luck would have it, I was already in the midst of re-reading all my old GDW supplements when I heard the news of a new edition, which I took as a sign from the gaming gods that I ought to start up a campaign on its release. And so I did, as I've explained before. 

Free League's version of the game uses an alternate history, of course, but it's an alternate history where the point of divergence is in the early 1990s. The coup attempt against Gorbachev in 1991 succeeds and the USSR emerges revitalized and ready to launch the Sino-Soviet War in 1995. I understand why they went this route, but I don't much like it myself, preferring instead the 1984 timeline, which (for obvious reasons) does not include Gorbachev's rise to power at all. Quite simply, I prefer to referee a campaign set in the year 2000 as imagined by people living in 1984 than in one that shares the real world's history up until 1991. Once more, I say: this is not a wholly rational preference on my part but its one that makes it easier for me to run a game set in the aftermath of an alternate history World War III.

This preference has many consequences, as I keep reminding my players. So many aspects of the real 1990s, especially technological ones, do not exist in my Twilight: 2000 campaign. For example, computer technology is not as advanced as in our world. Likewise, the Internet, while it exists as ARPANET, has not had a significant impact on society, due to its limited user base. On the other hand, some experimental technologies from 1984, like the H&K G11 weapons system, entered service in this alternate history and are now more widely used. The same is true for a number of other bits of military hardware that, in our world, were never adopted.

One of the reasons I enjoy alternate histories is the consideration of paths not taken. This campaign has only just begun and the player characters have not yet got very far from their starting point – indeed, only four days have passed in-game – but I can already begin to see the seeds from which further historical divergences might grow. It's my hope, as the months roll on, that the characters will have the chance to influence events not just in southwestern Poland but perhaps farther afield. My dream is that, eventually, those that survive might make it back home to the USA and help rebuild it in the aftermath of the war. For now, I'm enjoying the ride, wherever it goes.

Barrett's Raiders

Regular readers will, of course, know about the House of Worms Empire of the Petal Throne campaign I've been refereeing for nearly seven years now. However, that's not the only campaign I'm currently refereeing. In early December, I started a Twilight: 2000 campaign, using the latest edition of the game published by Free League. 

Known as Barrett's Raiders, the campaign focuses on eight characters – seven Americans and one Russian POW – trying to make their way through central Poland in the aftermath of the disastrous Battle of Kalisz (July 9–18, 2000). The battle was the last big push by NATO forces against the Warsaw Pact and it ended terribly for the West. During the ensuing chaos, the characters fled south in a HMMWV and LAV-25, making their way to a forest between Kepno and Złoczew before continuing southeast to the area between Kluczbork, Praszka, and Krzepice.

The characters in the group consist of:

• Lieutenant Colonel Joseph "JD" Orlowski
• Sergeant Andrew Alexander "Double A" McLeod
• Sergeant Hiram "Dutch" Everts
• Sergeant Tom Cody
• Staff Sergeant John J. "Headshot" Miller
• Sergeant First Class Jess "Cowpoke" Gartmann
• Michael (a civilian intelligence agent who'd been posing as a Pole)
• Dr Vadim Konosev (Russian captured before the Battle of Kalisz)

Though we've been playing for two months now, only three days of game time have passed. The characters have been doing their best to stay hidden and avoid conflict with Warsaw Pact forces still in the area. With the exception of an encounter with some scouts of the Soviet 129th Motorized Rifle Division, they've largely been successful, though it's increasingly clear that their luck can only last so long. 

A map captured from the scouts suggests that the Soviets have their own internal problems. Many of their troops have deserted and turned to marauding. The map also seems to imply a concentration of US forces in the town of Dobrodzień, but there's no way of knowing if it's true. Moreover, given the general breakdown in unit cohesion and discipline on all sides, is it any safer to hook up with even their fellow Americans? These are the questions that occupy Lt. Col. Orlowski as he tries to keep this little band alive in unfriendly territory.

Like the House of Worms campaign, I'll write occasional posts about Barrett's Raiders and how it's unfolding. That's in addition to my thoughts about the new Twilight: 2000 rules and my experiences using them. Thus far, we've been having fun and I have high hopes that the campaign will be a long one (though perhaps not as long as House of Worms – few are!). 

REVIEW: Symbaroum Starter Set

After more than four decades of playing fantasy RPGs, I don't really need any more. From an objective point of view, I already own more than I'll likely ever be able to play. Even so, it's pretty easy to pique my interest and I'm usually willing to give a new game or setting a try, especially if it's recommended to me by someone whose opinion I respect. 

That's how I first came into contact with Free League's Symbaroum. In the Before Time, when it was still possible to get together around a table to roll some dice with people, a local friend offered to run a session of the game. Unfortunately, world events prevented our ever playing another session, but I enjoyed myself enough that I found myself looking into Symbaroum from time to time. I even grabbed a copy of the Core Rulebook, reading it with great interest.

Then, earlier this year, Free League released a boxed Starter Set  and that caught my attention. Subtitled "Treasure Hunts in Davokar," the set consists of two 64-page softcover books (one a rulebook, the other an adventure compendium), a set of polyhedral dice, two double-sided maps, and six character sheets (five of them describing pre-generated characters). The box itself is incredibly sturdy, being thick and heavy, as well as deep enough to provide space for additional books or gaming materials. Simply as an artifact, it's quite impressive – all the more so thanks to the brooding, evocative artwork of Martin Grip. 

Many fantasy settings include one or more "dark lords" who menace the world, their depredations providing a backdrop for the heroics of the player characters. Symbaroum's setting takes a slightly different approach, occurring two decades after the conclusion of a generations-long war against such a foe. Though victorious, victory came at a price for the Kingdom of Korinthia. The land was devastated by dark magic and the only promise for the future seemed to lay to the north beyond the Titan Mountains, which legend held was the original homeland of the Ambrian people. Korinthia's queen led her subjects on a mass exodus to the edge of the vast Davokar Forest, where she established a new kingdom and, she hoped, a better life.

Davokar is ancient and huge. Within its boundaries are innumerable threats, from barbarian humans to ogres and other monsters. Also found within the dark forest are many ruins associated with the mythical fallen civilization of Symbaroum. As the subtitle of the Starter Set makes clear, the baseline activity of Symbaroum is venturing into Davokar in search of treasure within the ruins of the forest. It's a good starting point for a campaign, part dungeon crawl and part hex crawl, and has a great deal of potential for development over time, thanks in no small part to the large number of factions who also have interests in the ruins of Symbaroum. 

The one immediate drawback of the Starter Set is that its 64-page rulebook does not include rules for character generation. Instead, there are the aforementioned five pre-generated characters and pointers toward the separate Symbaroum rulebook. While I can understand why this was done, I think it's a mistake, especially when you compare it to older "basic" sets, which were complete, playable – albeit limited – games. From my limited knowledge, this seems a common approach nowadays. It's a reminder, I suppose, that I am old and my tastes and preferences are out of step with the times.

That caveat aside, the rulebook is attractive and its rules clear. Characters have eight attributes whose values range from 5 to 15. Most actions are handled by rolling under the attribute on a d20, with various modifiers being applied based on the level difficulty. Characters also have a profession, of which there are four in the Starter Set (warrior, mystic, hunter, and rogue). Professions provide access to abilities, which are a bit like a bundle of skills and/or talents, like Acrobatics or Loremaster or Tactician, in addition to certain mystical traditions. Abilities have three levels – novice, adept, and master – that represent increasing degrees of knowledge/experience, though only the first two levels are detailed in the Starter Set.

Player characters can come from one of several races, though (again) only a few of them are described here, namely Ambrians (humans), goblins, and ogres. Likewise, there are only two magical traditions (theurgy and wizardry) described here, leaving the Core Rulebook to present the others. Unlike the lack of character generation rules, the more limited information on topics like races or magic did not bother me and indeed even made sense in a Starter Set. The point in such a set is simply to introduce the game and its setting to newcomers, in order to give them a taste of the full experience rather than to overwhelm them with unnecessary options. I wish a similar approach had been applied to character generation, though I can understand why it was not adopted.

It's worth mentioning that Symbaroum's rules are what I've heard called "player facing." That is, the players roll all the dice when it comes to determining what happens to their characters. In combat, for example, players roll both to attack and enemy and to defend against their attack. The Game Master's role is simply to adjudicate the results of these rolls rather than make them himself. If you're used to older RPGs, it's a bit strange and, honestly, I'm not convinced that it adds anything worthwhile, except perhaps to alleviate the GM from having to be the one whose rolls could potentially kill a player character. On that point, it's also worth mentioning that the game's death rules are rather lenient in my opinion. A character whose Toughness is reduced to zero does not immediately die (unlike NPCs or monsters) but is simply dying, leading to a series of escalating rolls to determine when – or if – the character finally shuffle's off this mortal coil. This is probably my least favorite aspect of Symbaroum, but one's mileage may vary.

The second 64-page book details the game's setting and provides two introductory adventures, along with information on expeditions into Davokar and the monsters and adversaries to be found therein. Whereas there were several aspects of the rulebook that I did not like, this book is almost universally excellent. First, we get an overview of Thistle Hold, an Ambrian settlement at the very edge of Davokar and a natural launching point for expeditions into the ancient forest. This is followed by rules and guidelines for handling things like movement, supplies, orienteering, and events within Davokar – all straightforward and useful. Symbaroum's monsters are (mostly) new spins on fantasy staples, but the spins are compelling. Elves, for example, are monsters and, therefore, not playable as characters. Long-lived, perhaps immortal, they undergo a variety of physical and mental changes as they age, effectively becoming different creatures at each stage. This is Symbaroum's general approach and it's a very good one in my opinion.

The two introductory scenarios are interesting. The first is quite simple and involves the exploration of ancient catacombs, as well as dealing with elves who take exception to the characters' presence. The second one presents a ruined tower and, more importantly, rival adventurers seeking to explore the same site. I'm a big fan of rival adventurers and am happy to see that Symbaroum includes them in one of its beginning adventures.

 All in all, the Symbaroum Starter Set did a fine job of introducing the game's rules and setting in an attractive and accessible way. My complaints about the lack of character generation rules aside, I think it nevertheless provides more than enough material with which to judge whether one would like other products for Symbaroum. For myself, I continue to find the setting fascinating and might take a look of some other of its offerings. 

The Mörk Borg Year

Since reading Mörk Borg back in August served as a major catalyst to my return to blogging after an extended hiatus, I feel a certain affection for the game that no doubt confuses some – and that's perfectly fine. Mörk Borg is, I think it's fair to say, an acquired taste and, by all rights, I should not like it as much as I do. In the end, I suspect that my fondness for it has as much (or more) to do with its let's-do-what-we-want-and-not-care-what-anyone-else-thinks attitude than its actual content (which is nevertheless quite compelling, as I've explained). 

Over at their own blog, creators Pelle Nilsson and Johan Nohr offer up a year in review post, looking back at 2020, which, even if it's not been so great on many other fronts, was an excellent one for Mörk Borg. From the looks of things, 2021 is already shaping up to be equally excellent for this weird little game, which pleases me. Here's hoping the new year will bring similar blessings to others as well. 

REVIEW: Crypt of the Mellified Mage

I've been playing in a weekly Forbidden Lands campaign for a year and a half now and enjoying it immensely. Forbidden Lands, for those unfamiliar with it, is a fantasy RPG published by Free League. Set in the eponymous Forbidden Lands, a region until recently covered by the noxious Blood Mist, game play centers around exploration and survival. Forbidden Lands is often described as a "hexcrawl" or "sandbox" game and I think those are fair descriptions that comport with my own experiences playing the game. Each Forbidden Lands campaign is unique, since the setting's hex map includes only a few established landmarks, with the bulk of its "adventure sites" created by the referee, in whole or in part, through the use of extensive random generation tables. 

In principle, the set-up of Forbidden Lands is relatively low prep, since the random tables provide the referee with plenty of inspiration in the creation of all the settlements, fortresses, and dungeons scattered across the Forbidden Lands. In practice, though, the game can't always be run on the fly, which opens up a space for published adventure sites that the referee can use directly or in part. Crypt of the Mellified Mage is a 80-page hardcover book that offers up four different adventure sites, each one written by a different author. 

The first of the four sites, and my personal favorite, is the titular "Crypt of the Mellified Mage." Written by Fiona Maeve Geist, the site is the burial place of the sorcerer Pagoag, who sought eternal life by steeping his dead body in specially prepared honey. The crypt is filled with bees and other insects, weird undead, and the sickly sweetness of honey, which gives the whole site a creepy, sticky feel that I found oddly compelling. At the very least, it's quite unlike your run of the mill evil wizard's tomb and its contents, including Pagoag himself, have the potential to have longlasting effects on the campaign, which I applaud.

The second site is the "Firing Pit of Llao-Yutuy," written by David McGrogan. The pits are a collection of caves that supposedly house a mysterious pottery maker – Llao-Yutuy – and his servants. The pottery he makes is magical, some of which have remarkable qualities. It's a diverting adventure site but smaller and less far-reaching in its consequences. "Temple of the Six-Limbed Lord" is written by Zedeck Siew. The Temple is an invader from another reality, filled with mischievous, sometimes malevolent monkeys, as well as the monstrous Six-Limbed Lord and his priestly minions. Like "Crypt of the Mellified Mage," the Temple has great potential to affect a campaign, not least because the chief priest of the Six-Limbed Lord wants nothing more than his master to be the only god worshiped in the Forbidden Lands and is prepared to do what must be done to achieve that goal.

The fourth and final site is "The Dream-Cloud of E'lok Thir," written by Adam Koebel. The Dream-Cloud is a dungeon created from the memories, regrets, and pains of the wizard E'lok Thir. For that reason, there is no map or key to the place. Instead, the referee generates the site through the use of tables, some of whose entries are keyed to locations that represent important moments in the wizard's life. It's an unusual approach to presenting an adventuring site and, without having used it in play, I can't say whether it works as well as intended, but I hope it does, because I love the idea of it – a memory palace indeed!

Taken as a whole, Crypt of the Mellified Mage is a solid collection of unusual adventure sites for use with Forbidden Lands, though I think one could, with a little work, use them with other fantasy RPGs. The unusual nature of the four sites is both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, variety is to be welcomed, particularly in a hexcrawl campaign; avoiding sameness is important to maintaining its vitality. On the other hand, the peculiar nature of these sites might be off-putting to some players and referees, which could limit their utility. Likewise, both the Firing Pit of Llao-Yutuy and the Temple of the Six-Limbed Lord contain cultural and esthetic elements that jar a bit with the implied, vaguely northern European setting of Forbidden Lands, which might also limit their utility. "Temple of the Six-Limbed Lord" directly addresses this to its credit, but I nevertheless feel that its southeast Asian flavor might prove an impediment in some campaigns. Regardless, Crypt of the Mellified Mage is a an imaginative, useful addition to Forbidden Lands that many referees will find worthwhile.

Interview: Pelle Nilsson and Johan Nohr

The Swedish old school roleplaying game, Mörk Borg, is dear to my heart. Reading it for the first time this past summer inspired me far more than I had any reason to expect it would, so much so that I sat down and wrote a review of it, resulting in the first new entry on this blog in nearly eight years. In a very real sense, Mörk Borg is responsible for the resurrection of Grognardia and for that I'll always be grateful. Consequently, I sought out its creators, Pelle Nilsson and Johan Nohr, for an interview as another way to help spread the word about this remarkable game. They kindly agreed and the results of our conversation follow.

1. How did you first become involved in the hobby of roleplaying?

Johan: I must have been 10 or 11 when the nerdiest of my friends—the guy with Warhammer minis and posters at home—showed me his big brother’s copy of Mutant (the Swedish post-apocalyptic RPG that would later evolve into Mutant Chronicles and Mutant: Year Zero). We really had no idea how to play it but the game had cool illustrations of anthropomorphic rabbits with hockey sticks, scythes and machine guns and that was enough to get our imagination going. Since then I played, wrote and designed for mostly Swedish games up until maybe ten years ago when I was first introduced to D&D and the OSR. I was hooked! Obviously not for nostalgic reasons but for the scene’s compatibility, the hackability and modularity where you didn’t have to limit yourself to one particular game or system. That kind of DIY mindset that thrived on Google+ and the blogs back then really resonated with me I think. 

Pelle: It was back in the mid 80s, and I was about 10 years old. The first games I ran into was Swedish games. For example the first version of Mutant (based on Gamma World with a Scandinavian setting) and a game called Drakar & Demoner (based on Chaosium's Basic Role-Playing). We used the rules a little bit but mostly made playing characters, drew maps and played some short adventures, often starting at some inn with an old man with a beard asking the players to get rid of an evil necromancer in a tower. Already then I started to make my first games and made huge labyrinths with many rooms and several floors. After a long break from role-playing games the OSR movement felt natural to approach together with some modern versions of my old favourites, like Mutant: Year Zero etc.

2. Since most of my readers are English speakers, they're likely unfamiliar with the world of Swedish roleplaying games. How would you compare the Swedish and English language scenes? What are the similarities and differences between them, particularly when it comes to subject matter?

Johan: The Swedish RPG scene is on fire, in a good way I mean. The community is small, everyone knows everyone, but the quality of the stuff that’s being produced is really high and the atmosphere is positive (mostly), constructive (I mean...) and supportive (…it’s still people on the Internet, so...). Since the hobby was so strong even back in the 80s, those games and designers have left a huge mark and a lot of designers today will probably be inspired by those old Swedish games in one way or another. Traditionally there’s been a lot of fantasy games but lately, it seems like there’s some sort of a horror game boom going on.

Pelle: Like Johan says, for me it's also a very special feeling to be in the same webcasts as some of the olden goldies writers from the 80s, to somehow close the circle and meet up with your childhood heroes. 

3. What was the origin of Mörk Borg? What inspired you to create the game?

Pelle: Rules-wise, I was inspired by the old books from 1974 and its clones from recent years. I wanted to create an even more rules light game, a portable game you can bring to the pub or cabin, possible to start playing in like 15 minutes. So I cut off all (what I found) unnecessary details and add a grim setting to all this. The femur weapon was one of the first things in the text! I was very inspired by zines and wanted to do something new and completely out of the box kind of thing and asked Johan if he would like to do this with my text. Since we have made one book together before MÖRK BORG (Barkhäxan, Nordic wood-horror in a modern setting (2018)) , and collaborated very well together, I was happy when he agreed. 

Johan: To me,   is just as much an art project and an experiment as it is a game, and when we made the core book we basically wanted to see what would happen if we broke a lot of rules and challenged a lot of norms when it comes to book design. We had no idea if it would work or not, but we wanted to get people’s minds going and wanted to show that you can go a completely different way than we usually do. It’s still a fully playable game, mind you, but the art aspect is important. And we plan to keep trying things out and experimenting, challenging ourselves and not get too comfortable. We want to explore new ideas and concepts and see what will happen. It might or might not work, time will tell.  

4. Is there anything you wanted to do with the rule book, in terms of art, layout, or content, that you weren't able to do? Did you have any ideas that were so "out there" that they didn't make the final cut?

Johan: Good question. I think it was actually the other way around--when we first began brainstorming with the printing house they showed us a portfolio, a list of options and some of the things they could do I had never thought of. Like, I didn’t know you could print on the bookmark ribbon and glow-in-the-dark ink was nowhere near as expensive or complicated to get as I had first imagined. But yeah, there’s actually one thing that we wanted to do but couldn’t because of the kind of paper we chose, but you’ll see that eventually in a different product...

5. Were you surprised by the positive response that Mörk Borg has received?

Johan:  Somehow it feels kind of cheesy to say it, but it’s 100% true that this incredible response and engagement has blown us away. We never expected anything like it, I mean the initial idea was to make the game a small print-on-demand zine only in Swedish. We would have sold maybe 100 copies (and I must admit I was very pessimistic about our chances when we made the Kickstarter). But instead we sold out of stock pretty much the day we released the book. We never had any ambitions or plans for getting big or popular, and I still get genuinely excited when I see someone posting about playing the game or making stuff for it. The community that has gathered around the game is -by far- the greatest reward for the hard work. 

Pelle: I haven´t got much to add here! Agree with Johan 100 %. Very thankful and surprised. 

6. I know that Johan worked with Free League before on the Symbaroum core rulebook. Was it because of this connection that the company became involved in publishing Mörk Borg?

Johan: Correct. I was part of a company called Järnringen who made Symbaroum and that later merged with Free League Publishing. Since before this merger I had been doing some freelance work for Free League (Mutant: Year Zero, Forbidden Lands, etc) and we knew each other quite well. So they were our first choice and the only publisher we reached out to when we got the idea of getting MÖRK BORG properly published. And it’s been a really good collaboration ever since. So far they haven’t turned down a single idea we’ve had so either we’ve got good ideas or they’re not reading our emails haha.   

7. Could you talk a little about the Mörk Borg Cult? That's your name for the fan-written content program, which has already produced lots of terrific material, some of which has been collected in Feretory. Was MBC something you intended from the very beginning or did the idea for it evolve over time?

Johan: So the story behind the Cult is kinda funny and a good example of how creative the community is and how quickly people took on the game. A while after the Kickstarter campaign closed we created the MÖRK BORG discord server and invited people to talk to us and brainstorm as we were finalizing the book. We’d ask the members for help with naming monsters, post music links and generally just hanging out. And not long after the first couple of books were shipped to backers you’d see community made content pop up in the chat. The first complete module was Svante Landgraf’s rules and tables for overland travel, which eventually found its way into Feretory, and that thing inspired us to create the Cult. So the Cult and the first modules were released before all backers got their books and by the time the game was properly released in stores, there were already two classes and two modules (hunting/bestiary and travel rules) available for free on our site. Around this time we also managed to get the random character generator Scvmbirther ready, which was initiated and developed by Karl Druid who is another frequent, high-quality contributor to the community. 

8. Do you have any clear future plans for Mörk Borg? That is, what sorts of new material might we expect for the game?

Pelle: We have some things that are clearly planned, and it looks like all those projects will take the whole next year to fulfill. We have something coming up very early next year. This is still kind of a secret I'm afraid, so you´ll have to wait and see.

Johan: We simply can’t stop making new stuff for the game and so you can absolutely expect more to come. We have only just begun. 

9. Beyond Mörk Borg, do either of you have other RPG projects you're working on and that you'd like to share with my readers?

Pelle: The MÖRK BORG thing is just a hobby, I have a full time job and small or semi-small kids …  for me personally there is no time for other things then very small projects. I tend to like one-page RPGs only to relax and zoom out a bit from the big BORG thing.

Johan: I’m in a very similar situation. This is a big side gig and the only real limitation is time. I try to squeeze in the occasional freelance project, but the calendar slots are quickly filling up. I’m currently working on a really interesting project that I believe will interest a few OSR people but I don’t think I’m allowed to spill any kind of beans yet so I’ll just shut up now.