I am a fan of Tania Herrero‘s art and prior works in the TTRPG space, whether it be adventures like Crown of Salt or supplements like Menagerie of Unbearable Things, so my interest was piqued when she announced she was working on her own MÖRK BORG system. With concept images alone, I knew the art would be captivating, but that didn’t give me any hint on what she planned to do design wise with Femoria.

Then the quickstart dropped a couple weeks ago and I knew I had to squeeze a one-shot in somewhere. Did I plan on having the flu while GMing? No. But I was told I should GM while flu-stricken more often, so I must have done something right.

I plan to speak about this both as a discussion of the choices that were made in the art/layout and the game’s design, as well as relay the interesting story that my group told playing the quickstart.

But if you want to skip all that and get to brass tacks (and why would you, I’m writing this while still flu’d up and giving you my all, respect it!), know that I was enchanted by this game and I look forward to backing it once the crowdfunder starts.

Beyond this there will be spoilers for the quickstart adventure, so reader beware.

Layout, Art, and Vibes

You know who else I am a fan of besides Tania Herrero? Johan Nohr. It’s probably not fair that these two worked together on this. I seethe with jealousy.

I consider what that jealousy means. Does it add anything to my life? Or is it a reflection of my own self? Am I adequate enough? Are Tania and Johan really the problem, or is it my self-belief structure? Is it finally time to accept myself for who I am, while knowing that I can always strive to learn and grow without being destructive?

Yes.

Wow, I’ve really grown in the last few sentences. Round of applause.

The layout is great. The art is great. The writing is great. I took little screencaps from the quickstart and posted them in the discord chat as we were playing to supplement the written atmosphere and it worked wonders.

There’s really not much to say here. It gets the mood across, the layout works, they did a fantastic job. I have a minor quibble with how the information was presented and would re-order it myself, and I know that people who aren’t familiar with Borg games have reported to me having difficulty understanding or contemplating running it, which I think the layout order and lack of hyper-links partially contributes. I love a hyperlink.

EDIT – Apparently there are hyperlinks and my flu brain did not know how to access them. Weeping emoji.

Game Design

There are a lot of games compatible with MÖRK BORG, and it’s easy to see why. It’s a great system that’s both simple and agile, with a dark aesthetic that calls my secretly-dark metal heart. Seeing how this game has been reimagined in the past has been great, and I’ve had a lot of fun playing games like Pirate Borg and Vast Grimm.

Much like those games, Fomoria doesn’t just slap a veneer of fantasy paint on it and call it a day. I really like the new things it implements!

However, these additions can make it confusing for someone who has never touched a Borg before. I think the game is special enough that it’s worth the extra effort to learn its intricacies, but know that if you’ve never touched a Borg, you do have the option of downloading the rules for MÖRK BORG free in black-and-white, art-shy format, along with the starter adventure (Bare Bones and Rot Black Sludge, respectively). I’d say play that, get the feel of the system, then try to add another layer of mechanics on top with Fomoria.

Some of these design choices are:

1. Hitting 0 HP. Or SP, as well. Fomoria gives you two tracks, one for your body and one for your mind. Whether it be from some killer horror you’ve come across or the haunting darkness when you’ve lost your last torch, when you hit 0 HP or less, it doesn’t mean you automatically kick the bucket. You roll on a d10 table (the quickstart hints at more options on these tables in the full game) and suffer some sort of permanent injury. Some of those injuries ARE a swift death. But some are severed fingers, mutilated faces, and in addition to the body trauma, your stats are reduced. You can still participate in the fight, but you’ll be a little worse as death nears you. The tension is palpable and awesome.
2. Torches. Darkness is a big deal in Fomoria. Darkness is when the bad things happen. My players would have been down to their last torch by the end of our adventure had a dead character not been replaced. Much like in Shadowdark, there are consequences, but it’s not just you have disadvantage on sighted tasks and more likely to have an encounter occur. It encourages loss to your Stability Points, your mental well-being, as well as strange and unhelpful behaviors. And it’s a wonderful feeling to take a torch away mid-combat.
3. Praying to Darkness. There was a moment when all seemed lost for a player (I’ll get in more detail further below). There were no Threads of Fate left (this game’s version of Omens), and the roll was unsavable. So I had the chance to offer a player a dark opportunity. They could turn to the darkness, asking for its aid, in exchange for permanent SP loss and perhaps a little more. They took it and made an amazing self-sacrifice to win the battle. I love that there is a dark option, a last-ditch choice you might have to make but really don’t want to.
4. Honorable Mention: Weapon Expertise. After every combat, players roll a d6 to see if their character has gained any mastery with a weapon. If they get a 6, they gain 1 Expertise, and at every 3 Expertise they gain an Expert Feat in that weapon. It’s a cool concept. But in the multiple battles my players ran across, not a single one of them had earned 1 Expertise, let alone 3. Were I to run this again, I would use the alternate rule of giving Expertise whenever you feel they should, and giving it every fight so they get to experience that system. Oh well.

Also, praise to the editor, Jordan Boschman. We should all praise our editors.

Quickstart – Spawn of the Hungering One

HUGE SPOILERS

One of my players was shocked that this adventure was free with the quickstart–that’s how much they loved it.

The session started with an abbreviated history of Fomoria and the players’ community, then having them describe their recently-disappeared loved ones. They decided to pursue the lost villagers by consulting with The White Fingers, their mushroom forest’s will manifested into an Eldritch being.

One of the characters, Drel, was proficient in the Occult, but he didn’t need to be. Not with how high he rolled. He made a sacrifice of blood to learn everything he could about what was going on with these missing people and the weakness of the boss monster, as well as learned a sick Boon (spell) that he unfortunately didn’t get the chance to use … for reasons.¹

The group followed The White Fingers instructions and found a pair of outcasts and their hounds surrounding an odd hole where the missing had descended. I rolled their reaction roll (indifferent), and one of my characters rolled high on presence to really charm the heck out of them. There was an attempt from the group’s self-proclaimed bard, Jorr, to convince them to join their expenditure, but the quest explicitly states they will run at the idea, and run they did. They did get some more info out of these outcasts, and stuffed their own ears with mud to protect them from the dreaded song that had stolen their villagers.

The group entered the ground hole where the villagers had been lured. Jorr the Bard made a bold-ass move and unplugged his ears on purpose, hoping to ear the song and where it was coming from without being enslaved by it. He failed that and became my little marionette. Jorr suddenly knew the fastest way down and swiftly descended as he hurried to find a place to dig.

The rest followed him, restraining him from descending down a rope ladder as they had become curious about an odd door. They very quickly realized the door was a spider guarding an entrance and launched into battle. The opening of the tunnel did surprise the person wielding the song, unbeknownst to my players, and Jorr suddenly regained control of himself.

Jorr could not be stopped. Jorr asked, having been so completely enchanted by the tune, if he could play the tune on his lute and attempt to control the spider. You’ve gotta reward that creativity. Jorr passed his roll and the spider went calm as a sleeping pup. Then they entered the cave.

The music’s player, who was suspiciously sitting on a mound of bodies and eating one of them, swore that she was a kidnapped victim and was hurt in the earthquake (related to the final boss’s awakening). She had to eat these already dead people to regain her strength in an attempt to flee from the spider. The party discussed what to do, deciding eventually to bring her with them deeper into the cave, but while they were distracted she blew her enchanted whistle, conquering the minds of 2 players.

But the one unenchanted player, Drel, shot an arrow that struck true, and with a Thread of Fate maxing out the damage, one-shotted her. With her dying breath, she crushed the whistle and released The Prisoner Song.

This guy’s stats were tough, but as usual, my players were creative and used their stupid brains against me. Jorr summoned the spider into battle … like a Pokémon. The party took some knocks but won the battle. Even the spider survived!

Then they heard their loved ones screaming in terror beneath them. When you start the dungeon, you roll a d6 and add 1. That’s how many stretches of time until the Plagued Ones on the other side of a wall finally break free (the wall Jorr wanted to dig at when first enchanted). Time was up and the Plagued Ones had arrived.

The party rushed down to defend their loved ones. The wolf Jotna dealt great blows with his axe while Jorr commanded his spider to join the fray, but poor Drel had his guts torn asunder and was about to bleed out in three turns. Drel wanted to use his net to catch the mindless Plagued Ones and when he failed his roll, with no Threads left for anyone in the party, he Prayed to Darkness. He asked for a complete success in this tactic, at the cost of his own instant death. I described as Drel waded into the Plagued Ones, sacrifice himself like bait as they tore at him until the mindless buffoons were apprehended.

With Drel dead, one of the surviving villagers took his place, the pangolin Xylas who just happened to be wielding a molten hammer. Fire is the one weakness of the boss.

The party took a short rest, then went deeper, stumbling upon an enormous arm unearthed from the ground and accidentally searing it with an exploratory tap from the molten hammer. The arm retaliated unsuccessfully and the party beat the crud out of it. This awoke the Hungering One, who slithered after them.

I ruled that he was way to big to dodge, so their attacks just hit. Though they suffered putrid ichor vomit (I don’t care how ichor is supposed to be pronounced, eye-cor is offensive to my ears and it should be ick-or) and another player hit zero, they were able to destroy the head before it could escape and free the rest of its body. I went with zombie rules, if the head dies it dies, so I didn’t make them fight a headless, armless goo weirdo.

The party returned to the top, unaware of the infection they had brought to their people. And then a minion of a previously unmentioned hag-mistress, Merle Blackfinger, appeared, demanding repayment for her lost servant, the witch who had the enchanted whistle and was attempting to dig out The Hungering One. Merle Blackfinger wanted one of the heroes to sacrifice themselves and become her puppet, giving them 3 days to decide. None took the offer and we ended in a showdown, the outcome uncertain.

Conclusion

I felt the tension in the fights, I felt the disgust and weirdness of the setting, and I can’t wait to return to Fomoria. Hopefully I won’t have to wait TOO long. It definitely has more mechanics than standard Borg, and that might turn some players off. But I think they add enough that it’s worth the extra effort to learn this game.

I love almost all of you. Goodbye.

1. He died. ↩︎