Interview: Jeff Grubb (Part II)

 6. You were in charge of design and development on the original Forgotten Realms boxed set. What was it like to pore over Ed Greenwood's pages of notes and turn them into a publishable product?

I reached out to Ed, who had previously published articles about the Realms in DRAGON magazine. He started mailing me the material from his campaign is massively-over-wrapped packages (there is a thick Canadian cellophane he used that could duplicate window replacements in strength, and my office-mates would hear me spending five minutes just unwrapping them). Soon we worked out a system using the new FedEx, which made things easier, but otherwise we depending on US and Canadian Post, and the border agents.

Ed’s material was extremely verbose – most of the “Elminister’s notes” in the original Grey Box we pulled directly from his notes. He would type single-space, using infinitely thin margins, and occasionally cut out a section and paste it in another place. This was just as desk-top-publishing was getting started, and part of his initial payment for the Realms was a Macintosh with two floppy disk drives. Later we got him a hard-drive as well. All of this was typewritten, and his typewriter was not always the best, so he hand-drew the “t”s on his page after he finished, so it looked like a little graveyard.

For his maps, he hauled them down to the library where he worked and photocopied them in pieces. The original Realms map was 24 8x11 pieces of paper that I had to reassemble. I colored in the coastlines, forests, and major trade routes with high-lighters and hung in on the wall outside my office. Alex Kammer of GameHole Con has that version now.

7. A number of changes were made both to the map and content of the Forgotten Realms, such as the enlargement of the Moonshae Isles and the inclusion of Vaasa and Damara. Was the decision to do that yours or was suggested by others at TSR? 

Back at the time, we had a number of projects already published or en route while we worked on the FR Grey Box. We wanted the Realms to be a place where you could put just about everything, and I made it a goal to show how we could do it. We changed the maps accordingly. The H-Series had two products out, and we drained part of the Great Glacier for Vaasa and Damara. Doug Niles had a half-written novel for a cancelled project, so we adopted it for the first Realms novel. The Desert of Desolation series found a home after being orphaned for a while, and also Under Illefarn, which made it into the Realms. Oh, and Ten Towns was in the far Northwest, because most of the northern border had other people working in it. For the first couple years, I had the various areas marked as one person or another working in it, and if you went there, you should double-check. Ed, of course, had dibs on the Dales, Cormyr, and Waterdeep.

8. Of course, you're probably most well known for having designed both editions of the Marvel Super Heroes RPG for TSR. How did you land that particular job?

This one has three origin stories:

In college, we had wrapped up a major D&D quest, and rather than starting a new campaign in Toril (the name of my campaign), I suggested a superhero game. From there we started playing with “the Junior Achievers”, the JA branch of the Avengers (the was before the West Coast Avengers and other subsidiary teams). The players were characters like The Beacon, Big Man on Campus, and Super-Pin, the Pro-Bowler of Steel. They fought crime in West Lafayette, Indiana, usually battling against some Marvel Villain on the lam from NYC. I called it Project: Marvel Comics.

When I got to TSR, management asked for “Blue Sky Projects” that we would like to work on. I presented the idea for a very grimdark cyberpunk settings (some parts of that got in the FREELancers setting for Top Secret SI). The proposal may have frightened people, because they came back and said, “What else you got?” And I had Project: Marvel Comics from my college years.

It still may not have happened as a game, but in the GenCon booklet for that year, Mayfair Games announced THEY were doing a Marvel Super Heroes game. Our people saw that and contacted Marvel, who said, no, there was no deal, but was TSR interested? And that is how we got the license. It was great working with Marvel. Mayfair turned around and got the DC license, and also did a Marvel Super Heroes calendar, which reprinted the text from a calendar 11 years previously (which is why the text on the calendar has so many Dick Nixon jokes).

9. How much did Marvel assist you in the creating and supporting the game? Obviously, they provided lots of art resources, but did they offer any other assistance?

Marvel was incredibly supportive both from a standpoint of approvals and getting us art. They had a warehouse across the river with all of the original art, and every month or so, they would send someone over to get us photostats of what we needed. We also got original art by John Byrne for some of our modules. On the back of one page, he sketched out alternate TSR Logos. I don't have that piece, alas.

Marvel was very accommodating about letting us know what they had in the works as well, trusting we would not spill the beans. And they double-checked everything - there was an issue of Marvel Age, their fan magazine, in which they mentioned an editor looking for the Russian translation of "Crimson Dynamo" for us.

One interesting thing: we did the Gamer's Handbook of the Marvel Universe (we called them the phone books, since they were the same size as the Lake Geneva Yellow Pages), with the idea we could just get all their text off their computers. As it turned out, none of the text from the original Official Handbooks of the Marvel Universe had been saved, so we input all the text, then shared the files back to Marvel.

10. Is there a product or products for Marvel Super Heroes that you're particularly proud of?

I hate choosing a favorite child, but I really liked how Murderworld! turned out - pitting Arcade versus the Fantastic Four. I always likes Arcade as a baddie: "Instant androids, Love 'em!"

11. The last time we chatted, you were employed by Amazon Game Studio as Senior Narrative Designer. What does that job entail and are you working on any projects you can share with us? 

I have been the Senior Narrative Designer on the recently-released Crucible project. In that role, I have overseen the text and voice-over for the game. I have to write, or at least review, all the words on the screen and the characters speak. I have been aided by our other talented narrative designers, and together we create a backstory for the world and the personal history of the hunters you play. We help select the voices you hear and oversee the recording. I am still world-building, but now it on a much bigger screen.

12. Do you still play RPGs these days and, if so, which ones?

I am still playing twice a week (now over Discord as we are all living in solitude), and have a band of usual suspects. We usually run Call of Cthulhu with a rotating Keeper – right now I am running Masks of Nyarlathotep, and they just finished the Nairobi chapter. Veteran editor Steve Winter, who worked on MSH with me all those years ago, runs a D&D 5E game of Forbidden Caverns of Archaia on Monday nights. I still read RPGs voraciously, and have had the chance to learn Blades in the Dark from a co-worker at Amazon.

Sage Words

The late Jean Wells inaugurated the first "Sage Advice" column in issue #31 (November 1979) of The Dragon. About the purpose of the column, she stated,

I hope to answer many questions that people may have on their minds about D&D or AD&D. Part of my job at TSR is answering questions about the game, and sometimes refereeing a dispute between players and their DMs.

While this might seem like a exercise in tedium, particularly in light of statements by Gary Gygax and others that implied Advanced Dungeons & Dragons would possess clear and unambiguous rules (lest it become a "non-game" like its predecessor), it was not, thanks in large part to Wells's humor. Take, for example, her answer to the second question ever asked in the column.

Here's another amusing entry in that very first column. Taken together, I think they set the tone for her tenure as the Sage.

Wells once explained why she wrote her columns with a certain playfulness:

 I adopted this approach because this is who I am. I tend to look at humor in life. I believe in laughter especially when things are taken out of context and way over done. I chose the strangest most far fetched questions for two reasons. One, they were funny, and two they were also a sad statement on the depths that some people played this "game."

I felt the youngsters under the age of sixteen were spending far too much time being far too serious about a game when they needed to focus some of that attention back on their families and schools. I'd hoped the kids would see the humor in the situation and not take the game so seriously that every breath they took, every word they said was about D&D. 

Sword of Sorcery

In the early 1970s, DC Comics acquired the rights to Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser tales, resulting in a very short lived bimonthly fantasy comic series called Sword of Sorcery. Denny O'Neil acted as writer, while Howard Chaykin, Walt Simonson, and Jim Starlin provided the art. Sword of Sorcery only ran five issues, from March 1973 to December of the same year (not counting the lead-in story, which appeared in issue #202 of Wonder Woman). 

During its brief run, O'Neil adapted four of Leiber's short stories ("The Price of Pain Ease," "Thieves' House," "The Cloud of Hate," and "The Sunken Land") and wrote one original tale of the Twain, which appears in issue #3. Interestingly, Chaykin would himself adapt several Nehwon stories for Dark Horse Comics in 2007, this time with Mike Mignola and Al Williamson providing the artwork. 

I'd never seen any of these until fairly recently, since I was quite young when they originally appeared. Overall, they're not bad, roughly comparable to the adaptations you'd see in Marvel's Conan the Barbarian, which predated it by a three years. Indeed, it's quite likely that Sword of Sorcery was part of an attempt by DC to take advantage of the growing popularity of not just Conan, but fantasy stories in general. 

The more one delves into the popular culture of the late 1960s and early 1970s, the more sense the appearance of Dungeons & Dragons at that precise time makes. There was definitely something in the air at the time. 

Interview: Jeff Grubb (Part I)

Jeff Grubb worked at TSR Hobbies from 1982 to 1994. During that time he served as the design consultant on Gary Gygax's Monster Manual II and Unearthed Arcana, joined the team behind Dragonlance, developed the Forgotten Realms, and designed the Marvel Super Heroes roleplaying game, among many other projects. He very kindly agreed to answer a few questions about his time at TSR as well as his current projects. The second part of this interview will appear tomorrow.

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

I played Risk as a child and was into wargaming in high school (Avalon Hill, SPI, had a subscription to S&T [Strategy & Tactics – JM]). My first week at college, I went to the Purdue Wargamers Club, and there was a table of people talking and yelling, without a board or miniatures. I walked up, and someone handed me three six-sided dice and said, “Here, we need a cleric.” It was all downhill from there.

2. How did you become employed by TSR?

In college I started running D&D Open tournaments at GenCon in Kenosha, overseen by Bob Blake. One year, a friend mouthed off about the quality of that year’s presentation within Bob’s earshot. He spun on his heel and said “congratulations! You’re designing next year’s tournament!” Soon afterwards, I was laid off from my job (Civil Engineer, designing air pollution equipment), and had the time to oversee the product. As I result, I designed the bulk of the adventures for that year’s open (“Quest for the King” – not a great title), and on the strength of that (and calling every week), was hired by TSR.

3. One of your earliest credits is the Boot Hill module, Burned Bush Wells. Do you remember anything about the experience of working on that project? Were you a fan of the game or of Westerns.

Burned Bush Wells (great Larry Elmore cover) was presented to me as an assignment, with a town that Allen Hammack designed and a random encounter table from Brian Blume (or perhaps vice versa). I was supposed to make them work together. I had played Boot Hill in college, along with an Avalon Hill game called Gunslinger, but I was not a huge fan of Westerns – I think my favorite as a kid was The War Wagon with John Wayne and Kirk Douglas.

4. In his dedication to Unearthed Arcana, Gary Gygax wrote that you "belabored me with so many pages of questions and suggested qualifications that I'll never forgive him." Can you elaborate on what he meant by that?

I had worked previously with/for Gary on Monster Manual II, and was charged with putting together all of the material for UA, which included previously published articles, new spells that appeared elsewhere, and other concepts. I did not meet with Gary directly, as he had other things to deal with. Instead, using Frank Mentzer as an intermediary, I passed all manner of questions to him on computer print-outs. He would mark them up long-hand, and I would incorporate his comments. As I started bringing all the disparate notes and articles together, I asked a lot of questions about the design philosophy behind the new spells. I would ask “why” a certain spell would function this way, and how it would affect other spells, and Gary would reply “It’s magic!” in a marginal note.

One thing that Gary was not responsible for was the inclusion of his infamous pole arm article in the book. That was my bright idea, and he was not sure about it. I take the blame for that one. I also reached out to Roger Moore and incorporated his non-human divinity articles as well.

Ed’s material was extremely verbose – most of the “Elminister’s notes” in the original Grey Box we pulled directly from his notes. He would type single-space, using infinitely thin margins, and occasionally cut out a section and paste it in another place. This was just as desk-top-publishing was getting started, and part of his initial payment for the Realms was a Macintosh with two floppy disk drives. Later we got him a hard-drive as well. All of this was typewritten, and his typewriter was not always the best, so he hand-drew the “t”s on his page after he finished, so it looked like a little graveyard.

5. So you're responsible for the polearms appendix? Do you recall why you wanted to include it? (I ask this as someone who's glad it's there, because, as a younger person, I wasn't as knowledgeable on the fine gradations of polearms as my older peers.)

I had similar reasons for reaching for the older article. Back when the Players Handbook was new, we had this full listing of all manner of pole arms, with no explanation what they looked like. Researching, I found there were different names in different sources, and the article pulled it all together in an "official" version. So now we have an idea of what a Bohemian Ear Spoon looked like. I regret nothing. 

A Momentous Summer

The summer of 1978 was a momentous one for TSR. At the Origins Game Fair, held in Ann Arbor, Michigan on July 13–16, the company released Gamma World. A little over a month later, on August 17–20, TSR unveiled the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Players Handbook. I can't tell you how much time I spent as a younger person poring over both of these. I imagine I wasn't the only one.

Have Space Suit – Will Travel

When I was a child, I owned a copy of the Marvel Treasury Special adaptation of 2001 by Jack Kirby. I can't recall how I acquired it, though I suspect it was a gift by a well-meaning relative who knew that I liked science fiction. I am certain that I read the comic before I ever saw the movie (which wasn't released on home video until 1980). The combination of Clarke's story, Kubrick's visuals, and Kirby's art was a heady mix and I was equally enthralled and frightened by what I saw in those large newsprint pages. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I became a fan of 2001: A Space Odyssey when I finally did see the film and it remains one of my favorite movies. I recently re-watched it; my feelings toward it are unchanged: I consider it not only one of the greatest science fiction films of all time, but one of the greatest films regardless of genre. 

Even if you disagree with that assessment, it's hard to deny how influential the movie is. Without even paying close attention, you can recognize imagery, set designs, costuming, even plot details that have clear echoes in subsequent motion pictures. Ash from Alien owes a lot to HAL 9000, for example, particularly in his having been given a hidden agenda at odds with those of the human characters. Likewise, the Enterprise's encounter with V'ger in Star Trek: The Motion Picture would have been impossible without the final act of 2001, "Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite."

Growing up in the immediate aftermath of the Apollo lunar lanading, astronauts and space suits were everywhere. 2001 has particularly stylish and iconic space suits – so much so that I am convinced the multi-colored thruster suits from the aforementioned Star Trek film are a tribute to those in Kubrick's masterpiece. Come to think of it, Alien also had remarkable space suits, but those are the work of French artist Jean Giraud, better known by his nom de plume, Moebius. 

On the other hand, science fiction like Star Wars or Battlestar Galactica didn't have a place for space suits – flight helmets, yes, but not full suits of the sort seen elsewhere. It's probably for this reason that I've subconsciously come to divide space-oriented sci-fi into space suit and non-space categories, with the former being more "serious" than the latter. The lack of space suits is something I associate with action-oriented space opera rather than idea-based science fiction. Obviously, this is a completely unfair distinction, one largely based, I imagine, on the prominence that space suits had in 2001: A Space Odyssey. 

Nevertheless, it's a distinction that's been lurking at the back of my mind since childhood, affecting even my feelings about science fiction roleplaying games. One of the most basic and ubiquitous skills in GDW's Traveller is Vacc Suit (though I've never discovered the origin of the second "c" in the word). Consequently, I've always seen the game as a sober, serious, and indeed thoughtful game, compared to, say, TSR's Star Frontiers, which, while I have a great fondness for it, didn't even mention space suits or their equivalent until the release of the Knights Hawks expansion a year later. Ironically, it was Star Frontiers that saw an adventure module based on 2001: A Space Odyssey, not Traveller, which only goes to show how arbitrary distinctions like this can be.

Retrospective: Dwarven Glory

I wrote about the early game company Wee Warriors once before, in a retrospective about their first publication, Palace of the Vampire Queen. One assumes that Palace was sufficiently well received to justify the publication of a second. Entitled Dwarven Glory, its initial release was in 1977 and, like its predecessors, Pete and Judy Kerestan are listed as its authors. 

Also like its predecessor, Dwarven Glory calls itself a "dungeon kit." As you will see, this is an apt description. The product consists of eight hex map sections, each of which can be connected to the others in a variety of different ways (more than sixty, according to the text). This allows the referee to configure the dungeon according to his own wishes (or re-use it). Thus, Dwarven Glory is as much a set of geomorphic maps as it is an "adventure module," as the term is generally understood. 

These maps detail a semi-abandoned dwarven community that is now overrun by the Ten Orc Tribes. Their keys are comparatively brief, but not minimalist. Here's a typical example:

This room contains 4 locked cabinets (each with 6 bottles of Dwarven Ripple Wine), 18 empty bottles (on the floor), and a long table with 8 plain cups (in the corner).

Many entries contain even less detail. However, a few are more elaborate, containing not only specific information but the germs of side adventures.

The door is trapped with a bank of crossbows set to fire 5 hexes across towards Room #4. A Minotaur (HP 21; AC 6) carries a +2 hand axe and 4,000 SP. The room contains a roasting rack with several Human skeletons and 2 bedding areas. There are 4 gems: one is worth 1,000 GP, one is broken with no value, one is a Gem of Giant Strength, and one is a Gem of Sexual Change. The Minotaur puts the party under a geas to find and return his son unharmed. Failure to perform this task invokes a curse upon the party members (loss of 1 intelligence pt per day, unless the geas is resumed; the effects are not reversible). If the geas is fulfilled, the Minotaur will obtain Gauntlets of Ogre Power for each party member.

Judged by the standards of later times, Dwarven Glory seems quite primitive, being little more than a collection of simple maps and sparse keys. That's undeniably true but it's also reductive. To explain what I mean, allow me a lengthy digression.

By the time I had entered the hobby in earnest, in early 1980, Wee Warriors was no longer producing support materials for Dungeons & Dragons. I had never even heard of the company or its products, let alone seen them. That changed one summer – I wish I could nail it down to a specific date, but it was certainly before 1984 – when I attended a "games day" at a local library. 

These were regular events where the library opened up its meeting rooms for six or eight hours to players of RPGs. Referees would claim a table and set up, while players milled about, inquiring as to what games the referees were planning to run. Once enough players joined a table, the referee would begin. 

One of the great things about these events was that they introduced me to games I otherwise wouldn't have known about or had the opportunity to play. This is where I became better acquainted with RuneQuest and The Morrow Project, for example, and it was also where I first set eyes on Dwarven Glory. A referee had set up in the boardroom, a room adjoining the main play area, in which there was a long table and lots of chairs. Somewhere between ten and fifteen players grabbed chairs on the assumption that, given the magnificence of the venue, the adventure scenario would must be just as grand. We weren't mistaken.

Even after four decades, I remember the scenario quite vividly. We had a lot of fun and Dwarven Glory most certainly played a large part in that – not the only part, of course, since, like so many good times I've had while roleplaying, the fun was the result of the inexplicable alchemy of referee, players, source material, and randomness. Nevertheless, the experience left me with fond memories of the little yellow booklet the referee kept hidden behind his screen. I assumed that it had to be one heck of an adventure, because we all enjoyed ourselves so much, which is just about the highest praise I can offer an RPG product of any kind.

Over the years, I would occasionally try to find a copy of Dwarven Glory, but to no avail. Like Metamorphosis Alpha, this booklet became a white whale for me, albeit a minor one. Indeed, I'd pretty much forgotten about until very recently, when I discovered that Precis Intermedia had acquired the rights to the entire Wee Warriors catalog, including Dwarven Glory. Having now had the chance to read the dungeon kit for myself, I was transported back to my youth, remembering weird little details from it, like the underground tavern run by a half-orc and the dwarven police station (yes, really!). I cannot claim that Dwarven Glory is, in itself, a forgotten classic, but it's both an important artifact of the early days of our hobby and a source of personal satisfaction. That's reason enough to celebrate it.

The Other Howling Tower

After yesterday's post, I was reminded that The Howling Tower is also the name of Arduin Dungeon #2, published in 1979 by Grimoire Games. So far as I can tell, there's no connection of any sort between this dungeon and Leiber's short story, but I have not looked at it closely in some time (but may do so for a future retrospective). So far as I can recall, the main attraction to the module is the inclusion of some artwork by a young Erol Otus before he was employed by TSR (though this is hardly unique to The Howling Tower).

Pulp Fantasy Library: The Howling Tower

The question of which works of literary fantasy most strongly evoke the experience of playing Dungeons & Dragons (and, by extension, all fantasy roleplaying games) is a hotly contested one, with the works of Robert E. Howard and J.R.R. Tolkien both being commonly cited and not without good reason. I cannot claim consistency in my own opinion of the matter; over the years, my stance has oscillated. Recently, though, I've grown more certain – or at least as certain as one can be about a question as vexed as this one – that Fritz Leiber's stories of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are likely the best candidates for this honor.

There are many reasons for why I believe this, but chief among them is that the tales of the Twain possess the right mix of elements. Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are an unlikely duo: one a burly northern barbarian, the other a small, witty urbanite. Further, their primary goal is self-enrichment. In these two respects, they are not unlike most D&D player characters in my experience. Notable too, I think, is the way that Leiber writes the stories of the pair's adventures. They are equal parts dramatic and comedic. They neither take themselves too seriously nor devolve into farce. Instead, there is a balance that, again in my experience, comes closest to what it's like to play in a fantasy RPG campaign.

"The Howling Tower" is an early entry in the saga of these two brothers in arms, first appearing in the June 1941 issue of Unknown, edited by John W. Campbell. Unknown was the fantasy sister publication to the more well-known Astounding, for which Campbell also acted as editor. Looking at the cover, I am struck by two things. First, compared to the covers of, say, Astounding or Weird Tales, Unknown looks rather dull. There is no art to speak of, certainly not of the gory or titillating sort that was commonplace for the pulps of the era. Second, the featured authors are, with the exception of Theodore Sturgeon, largely forgotten today. That shouldn't be a surprise, given that, at the time, Leiber was still comparatively unknown (his first piece of published fiction having only appeared two years previously), but I think it's remarkable all the same. 

In the best tradition of pulp fantasy, "The Howling Tower" begins abruptly.

The sound was not loud, yet it seemed to fill the whole vast, darkening plain, and the palely luminous, hollow sky: a wailing and howling, so faint and monotonous that it might have been inaudible save for the pulsing rise and fall––an ancient, ominous sound that was somehow in harmony with the wild, sparsely vegetated landscape and the barbaric garb of the three men who sheltered in a little dip in the ground, lying close to a dying fire. 

The three men are Fafhrd, the Gray Mouser, and a local guide whom they have employed to help them traverse the wilderness. Fafhrd is convinced that the sound comes from wolves, whom he is eager to engage in combat, but the guide demurs,

"I have never seen a wolf in these parts, nor spoke with a man who killed one." He paused, then rambled off abstractedly. "They tell of an older tower somewhere out on the plain. They say the sound is strongest there."

The next morning, the guide has disappeared and Fafhrd surmises that he was a superstitious coward who fled rather than face the howling wolves. The Mouser is not so sure and counsels caution. His companion will have none of it and seems obsessed with the idea of taking on the "little wolves" that he remains convinced lurk nearby. Scanning the terrain, the Mouser spies "an irregularity in the horizon toward which they were tending." Squinting, he concludes that it "a tower of some sort."

The next morning, like the morning before, someone goes missing, in this case Fafhrd. The Gray Mouser awakens to find that his friend has seemingly wandered off during the night. He follows Fafhrd's footprints, which are "wide-spaced, made by a man running," across the countryside, They lead the Mouser, inevitably, toward the tower he'd spied on the horizon. The closer he gets to the tower, the louder the howling becomes. After carefully surveying the area near the tower, out of concern that perhaps Fafhrd was right after all about the presence of wolves, he concludes that the big swordsman must have somehow entered the tower, which

was not as high as he had thought; five stories or perhaps six. The narrow windows were irregularly placed, and did not give any clear idea of inner configuration. The stones were rudely hewn; seemed firmly set, save for those of the battlement, which had shifted somewhat. Almost facing him was that dark, uninformative rectangle of a doorway.

Naturally, the Mouser enters the doorway in search of his friend. What follows is a well executed ghost story, filled with mounting dread and barreling toward a terrific climax in the best tradition of sword and sorcery literature. Leiber's command of mood and emotion is put to very good effect in this story. "The Howling Tower" is very short in length and I think its brevity contributes greatly to its power. Leiber is concise and to the point, which lends an urgency to the Mouser's quest to locate Fafhrd and save him from whatever – or whoever – it is that dwells within the eponymous tower. It's great stuff, maybe not Leiber's best, but certainly memorable and well worth a read.

"The Howling Tower" was later collected, along with nine other short stories (most notably "Bazaar of the Bizarre"), in Swords Against Death in 1970. 

REVIEW: Mörk Borg

What did I just read?

That was my immediate thought after attempting – and failing – to read Free League’s apocalyptic fantasy roleplaying game, Mörk Borg. As you can probably gather from its title, Mörk Borg (meaning “Dark Fort”) originates in Scandinavia, specifically Sweden, and is the brainchild of writer Pelle Nilsson and graphic designer and artist Johan Nohr. Together, they have produced, in their own words, “A doom metal album of a game. A spiked flail to the face. Rules light, heavy on everything else.”

I bought Mörk Borg solely because of its physical characteristics. A local friend of mine raved about it months ago and then, while perusing Free League’s website recently, I caught a glimpse of it in all its lurid glory. I was so intrigued by its bright yellow cover and black, white, and red artwork that I ordered a copy and anxiously awaited its arrival. I was not disappointed when it appeared at last: the 96-page A5 book is sturdy and well-made, like so many European RPG books these days. Most of the paper in the book has a satin finish, but its last section, presenting an introductory adventure, has a rough, natural feel to it.

The graphic design is remarkable. Scarcely a single page looks like any other, both in terms of layout or the headers, fonts, and other elements used. This gives the whole book a jumbled, chaotic feel to it, which no doubt contributed to my initial inability to make heads or tails of it. Nohr’s illustrations, whose execution runs the gamut from primitive to florid, are accentuated by a riot of bold colors – red, yellow, and pink – that contrast with the black and white pages, with occasional silver highlights, that make up the bulk of the book. The overall effect is disorienting and I expect that was intentional. Unlike most RPG rulebooks, particularly those “in the OSR genre” (as the game describes itself), Mörk Borg can’t be easily digested in a single reading. That was my mistake.

Mörk Borg is laconic, even elliptical, in its prose. Much is left to the reader to infer from its short, suggestive paragraphs. This is particularly true in the early sections of the book, which introduce the game’s setting. Brief sketches are given of the major locations of the world, such as Galgenbeck, “the greatest city that ever was,” the vast cemetery of Graven-Tosk, Kergüs, ruled by Blood-Countess Anthelia, and the Valley of the Unfortunate Undead, among others. There’s a map of sorts included, but there are few details and no scale. Instead, it’s largely impressionistic, depicting relations between the named locales rather than showing how many miles Wästland is from the city-state of Grift. 

This should come as no surprise, as Patrick Stuart is credited with both “English writing and creative consultation.” Stuart is well known for his gnomic writing, most famously in Deep Carbon Observatory and Veins of the Earth. I must confess that the appeal of Deep Carbon Observatory eludes me, which likely speaks to my own mental dullness, but here the prose strikes the just right balance between cryptic and opaque. Rather than feeling thwarted, I felt transported and I have little doubt that Stuart played a significant role in shaping Pelle Nilsson’s words to achieve this effect.

The prophecies of the recently discovered Nameless Scriptures accurately predict the coming death of this world. As events unravel, “reality decays, truth becomes dream and dream, truth. Cracks grow in the once-stable structures of the past, allowing things misshapen and vile to worm through, emerging into day’s wan light.” This is the backdrop against which Mörk Borg is set – a dark, depressing, and cruel place burdened with miseries aplenty (there are even random tables for determining which misery befalls the world each dawn, in accordance with the texts of the Nameless Scriptures). In this respect, it’s kin to games like the venerable Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay or the more recent Shadow of the Demon Lord in being more a “pre-apocalyptic” fantasy, albeit steeped in an extra layer of Nordic gloom.

The rules of Mörk Borg are where OSR influences are the most apparent. Character generation is completely random; everything from ability scores to equipment is determined by dice rolls. There are four abilities – Agility, Presence, Strength, and Toughness – whose scores range from –3 to +3. Character action (or tests) are made by rolling against a difficulty rating (DR) on a d20 and adding the appropriate ability score. The book provides numerous options for character generation, most of which are not additional or expanded rules as such but rather flavorful random tables. A notable exception are six optional character classes, each of which grants one of several random abilities and a bit of background. Even then, these abilities are more inspirational than mechanically significant. I would say that Mörk Borg is in the vicinity of Moldvay/Cook D&D in terms of its overall rules complexity, with slightly more options.

Combat is handled similarly to other tests, though it is worth mentioning that players roll for both their characters’ attacks and their defense against enemies’ attacks. Armor is ablative and there are critical hits and fumbles. Hit point totals are low and, while healing through rest is available, magical curatives are uncommon. Indeed, magic of any kind (called “powers” in the game) are both unusual and comparatively weak, particularly when measured against RPGs like D&D or RuneQuest. Consequently, lethality is high, a fact the text brings up repeatedly, most memorably in the character generation section, whose fifth step reads: “Name your character if you wish. It will not save you.”

Flavor and randomness are the hallmarks of Mörk Borg. The book is littered with random tables (including the front endpapers) that either aid the GM (e.g. corpse plundering or the traits of followers) or convey the feel of the setting (e.g. weather or NPC names). Table results are generally allusive and free of game mechanics, in keeping with the tenor of the game. Intriguing hints and redolent intimation are Nilsson’s idiom. In this way, he offers the GM and players free rein in deciding what it all means in their own campaigns. Readers used to more traditional RPG rulebooks might therefore find Mörk Borg frustrating at first due to its seeming disinterest in straightforward and unambiguous prose, whether in describing its setting or presenting its rules. That’s certainly how I felt initially, but it’s also why I kept picking the book up and trying again: there’s more to this game than its terse text would suggest.

Mörk Borg includes twelve creatures, such as berserks, blood-drenched skeletons, undead dolls, and wyverns. Like everything else in the game, their game statistics are simple and their descriptions pregnant with inspiration. For example, each entry includes the creature’s value in silver pieces if sold, whether alive, dead, or in pieces. An adventure, entitled “Rotblack Sludge, or The Shadow King’s Lost Heir,” rounds out the book. Described as a dungeon crawl, the adventure is nicely presented, employing a series of bullet points, bold and underlined words, and boxed text to draw the GM’s attention to important details and thereby make it easier to use in play. The adventure also provides additional examples of creatures, as if to reassure the GM about the ease with which new opponents can be created.

If I have any criticism of the book, it’s that, for all its mechanical simplicity, Mörk Borg is probably not a good choice for a newcomer to the hobby. The text assumes, I think, that you’re already familiar with RPGs generally and with old school Dungeons & Dragons and its derivatives in particular. Given the popular resurgence of D&D in both its contemporary and “classic” varieties, I don’t think this a damning criticism. I’m on record as doubting the efficacy of “what is a roleplaying game?” sections in RPGs anyway and believe that the best way to learn to play is to be inducted into the hobby by an existing player. As a game, Mörk Borg is no more difficult to learn than most other old school RPGs; as a rulebook, however, it’s neither an ideal introduction nor a handy reference.

I struggled when writing this review, in large part because so much of what defines Mörk Borg is conveyed via art, layout, and graphical elements whose effects are hard to translate into words. Reading – and understanding – Mörk Borg is almost as much a sensory experience as it is a textual one. I’m not certain it’s possible to grasp what the game is and what it’s about without actually holding the book in your hands and reading it. Even then, I personally found it hard going; it took multiple attempts before I appreciated Mörk Borg and its unique take on fantasy roleplaying.

I might have had an easier time if I had been an aficionado of metal bands. As noted earlier in this review, Mörk Borg is self-avowedly a “doom metal album of a game” and includes a list of “music that helped,” which serves as the its Appendix N. I’ve written in the past about the role played by metal and metal fans in shaping the modern conception of fantasy, but, as I said then, my direct familiarity is limited. This lacuna in my cultural education no doubt contributed to my initial confusion with Mörk Borg. Viewed through the lens of metal music and its accompanying imagery, Mörk Borg makes so much more sense. Approach it with that in mind and you’ll likely have an easier time than I did in appreciating its unique vision.

Mörk Borg is not a game I would have expected to like as much as I do. So much about it, from its garish colors and “artpunk” esthetics to its gloomy, edgy tone would seem to run counter to my own personal preferences. Yet, somehow, Mörk Borg not only works on its own terms but also managed to capture my imagination. I’ve re-read it several times now, gaining new impressions each time I’ve done so, aided in part by some of the wonderful (and attractively presented) free support material available on the game’s website. This is a fantasy roleplaying game that has lodged itself in my imagination, which is a remarkable thing, after having read so many others over the course of my life.

If anything I have written here intrigues you, I recommend you take a chance on Mörk Borg. Even if you never play it, the game can serve as a source of inspiration and a reminder that the old school scene is still a source of boundless creativity.