This is easily the best review of Mörk Borg I've ever encountered. I like how in depth you are and that you actually spent time talking about the rules. That being said, I'm fairly certain you misread the rules for the apocalypse mechanic. You choose how long you want the campaign to last, not each event, and that tells you how often you roll for an event. They only happen on the highest result of a specific dice. When you get seven events, the world ends
Oops! My bad.I got it a tad wrong! The writing was a little bit hard to decypher. It's actually worse than i thought! The group decides on what dice the GM will be rolling - anything from a D100 to a D2. At each dawn, the games master rolls the dice. A result of 1 activates one misery. The seventh misery always ends the world. So with 1D100, average time before the end of the world is about 22 months. On 1D2, you have 14 days! You are on an express elevator, goin' down!
As for the doom aspect. In play, "The Borgs" family of games can just revel in the over the top "METAL" vibes. Like with WHFRP, there can be joy in just how laughably terrible things can get. It's often tongue in check and the folx at the table can meet the game at the intersection of humor and doom (Doumor, Huoum?) , they can have a good time for as long as the ride lasts. If your table may be experiencing tough things in the real world and find joy in dark humor (or enjoy horror films as a comfort) then they stand a good chance of enjoying play and feeling a relief from IRL doom. If they like cozy games, like Wanderhome or Ryutama, this will be anti-fun. I like the baked in end of the world mechanics. Many campaigns implode or get IRL-ed to death before a narrative end point is reached. So, it's neat that Borg-Fam games implicitly acknowledge this via a world ending doom mechanic. Embracing that means you can have a definite end , with a "last third of Akira" level of bonkers stuff going on.
I love your reviews. You speak from experience and it shows. And here you reviewed a game you didn't like in a really fair way. You separated the objective description from your opinion and presented both. That's great ! Tjanks !
If Terry Gilliam ran WFRP. The Borg family excite me in a way that very few recent systems and settings have. I'm glad you mention Pirate, that crams so much info into such a small book.
Cy-Borg was particularly good at getting so much of the "vibes" of a setting across while still leaving creative latitude. I've loved Pirate Borg, it's one of my favorites. The crowd funded Viking-ish one on the way looks interesting Since all of the games from this family have had an "End Times" mechanism as part of play, it seems perfect.
I really enjoyed 'Pirate Borg" - the art there is glorious! I have a slew of 'borgs' supported via kickstarter at the moment. Punk and heavy metal bords, mech borg.... I'm keen to see them!
Here's an idea - how about a game where players have a fixed "luck" pool, with high rolls being good and low rolls being bad. Every time a player rolls a die or dice they subtract from their pool so that a super-crit kill shot take up more of your luck pool then a critical fail. Therefor your Luck can thus run out in a battle but something like say Energy can be swapped for Luck and Hit Points swapped for Energy so if you are running out of Luck then you can start drawing on your other reserves to keep going. Doing so has longer term effects so maybe just stopping for a few rounds to rest might be a better idea. This rule alone would have obliterated Toxic Gamer's play style !
That would rock for a "Bugs" or "Legion Etranger" kind of game. I ran a Traveller game recently that hot-started thethe players with a weird battle through corridors o some sortf weird fortress. The enemies included robots, spider robots ,and guards that shouted 'Mein Leben!" when they died. It took the players forever to figure out that their characters were actually trapped in a immersive simulation game. They were all in cold sleep berths in a ship that wa slowly drifting towards a sun. They had to find a way to break out of the sim and save the ship!
This is easily the best review of Mörk Borg I've ever encountered. I like how in depth you are and that you actually spent time talking about the rules.
That being said, I'm fairly certain you misread the rules for the apocalypse mechanic. You choose how long you want the campaign to last, not each event, and that tells you how often you roll for an event. They only happen on the highest result of a specific dice. When you get seven events, the world ends
Oops! My bad.I got it a tad wrong! The writing was a little bit hard to decypher. It's actually worse than i thought!
The group decides on what dice the GM will be rolling - anything from a D100 to a D2.
At each dawn, the games master rolls the dice. A result of 1 activates one misery.
The seventh misery always ends the world.
So with 1D100, average time before the end of the world is about 22 months. On 1D2, you have 14 days!
You are on an express elevator, goin' down!
As for the doom aspect. In play, "The Borgs" family of games can just revel in the over the top "METAL" vibes. Like with WHFRP, there can be joy in just how laughably terrible things can get. It's often tongue in check and the folx at the table can meet the game at the intersection of humor and doom (Doumor, Huoum?) , they can have a good time for as long as the ride lasts. If your table may be experiencing tough things in the real world and find joy in dark humor (or enjoy horror films as a comfort) then they stand a good chance of enjoying play and feeling a relief from IRL doom.
If they like cozy games, like Wanderhome or Ryutama, this will be anti-fun.
I like the baked in end of the world mechanics. Many campaigns implode or get IRL-ed to death before a narrative end point is reached. So, it's neat that Borg-Fam games implicitly acknowledge this via a world ending doom mechanic. Embracing that means you can have a definite end , with a "last third of Akira" level of bonkers stuff going on.
It is a great one for convention play. Mayhem and doom!
I love your reviews. You speak from experience and it shows.
And here you reviewed a game you didn't like in a really fair way.
You separated the objective description from your opinion and presented both. That's great !
Tjanks !
If Terry Gilliam ran WFRP. The Borg family excite me in a way that very few recent systems and settings have. I'm glad you mention Pirate, that crams so much info into such a small book.
I love that description!
💖💖💖💖😃
Yup, nailed it.
Love it. You are always refreshingly upbeat, even for the horrifying, depressing Borg-verse.
Gleeee! Thank you!
Hearing english speakers say Mörk Borg is genuinely one of my greatest loves in life, it makes me so happy
It's a struggle not to channel my inner Swedish Chef!
Cy-Borg was particularly good at getting so much of the "vibes" of a setting across while still leaving creative latitude. I've loved Pirate Borg, it's one of my favorites. The crowd funded Viking-ish one on the way looks interesting Since all of the games from this family have had an "End Times" mechanism as part of play, it seems perfect.
I really enjoyed 'Pirate Borg" - the art there is glorious!
I have a slew of 'borgs' supported via kickstarter at the moment. Punk and heavy metal bords, mech borg.... I'm keen to see them!
Ah yes, right to the top of the "most brilliant game I'll never play" list.
I will have to check out Pirate Borg, though.
Pirate Borg is excellent! Great artwork.
So few people talk about how funny this game is, its not supposed to be taken seriously 😂
Yeah, can be funny. But man, you have to be in the mood for it.
Here's an idea - how about a game where players have a fixed "luck" pool, with high rolls being good and low rolls being bad. Every time a player rolls a die or dice they subtract from their pool so that a super-crit kill shot take up more of your luck pool then a critical fail. Therefor your Luck can thus run out in a battle but something like say Energy can be swapped for Luck and Hit Points swapped for Energy so if you are running out of Luck then you can start drawing on your other reserves to keep going. Doing so has longer term effects so maybe just stopping for a few rounds to rest might be a better idea.
This rule alone would have obliterated Toxic Gamer's play style !
That would rock for a "Bugs" or "Legion Etranger" kind of game.
I ran a Traveller game recently that hot-started thethe players with a weird battle through corridors o some sortf weird fortress. The enemies included robots, spider robots ,and guards that shouted 'Mein Leben!" when they died. It took the players forever to figure out that their characters were actually trapped in a immersive simulation game. They were all in cold sleep berths in a ship that wa slowly drifting towards a sun. They had to find a way to break out of the sim and save the ship!
Would you consider reviewing Dolmenwood? I'd love to get your take on the setting and the rules.
Sure! I'll have to find a copy.
Mork Borg is great fun. So is Pirate Borg. Most of the other third party stuff is crap
I'm looking forward to seeing the Punk Borg game, though. It's potentially funny!
Nanu Nanu, you will be assimilated