[For the past year and change, I have been slowly writing/designing my own rules-light OSR role playing game: Battle Jacket. This is a record of its development.]
Part One: Obligatory Origin Story
My first game of D&D was when I was 8 years old. My middle brother got the Player’s Handbook. This was 1994. AD&D 2nd edition. The one with THAC0. He roped my sister and I into a game and ran us through a small encounter.
The “true concept” of what a role playing game is remains under discussion, but the concept for us at this tender age was easy:
Fun with friends and imagination, sharing an imaginary reality that we all shape together in real-time.
It is a game of Let’s Pretend using dice as arbiter and collaborator. Awesome.
This game exists in a reality with swords, armor, magic, and monsters. More Awesome.
You can use funny voices and really ham it up while you play. Sold!
There was a fatal flaw for me personally, the rules. There were too many. What there was seemed too convoluted, and they required too much math for a guy like me. If I was going to play, but not constantly ask the DM for clarifications (or be able to DM it myself) I would need a rule system that was much more streamlined, less mathy, and require more imagination. Lucky for me, this desire is very prevalent in today’s TTRPG community. Enter the OSR.
OSR: Acronym that stands for “Old School Revolution,” or “Old School Revival.”
Broadly, it means a return fantasy roleplaying games to a rule system and feel more along the lines of AD&D 1st ed. or its immediate precursors: B/X D&D. What makes this trend so invigorating for me is that with lighter rules, imagination becomes heavier. For me, that is exchanging a weakness for a strength. A more boring quality with a more fun one. Another much enjoyed side-effect of more imagination is that more game designers can design a variety of games with a new variety of mechanics, moods, and world building. Variety is indeed the spice of life!
My very first introduction to this brave old world was a spiked flail to the face in a bright yellow hardcover called Mörk Borg.
Written, designed, and illustrated by a pair of Swedes (Pelle Nilssen and Johan Nohr) Mörk Borg is described as an RPG that is “rules light and heavy everything else.” It has won multiple prestigious awards and garnered much love, attention, and fandom. Not least of which from myself.
(Fun Fact: My cousin, who introduced me to my wife, introduced me to this game as well. The dude has NEVER steered me wrong.)
Mechanically, Mörk Borg strips the rules of a typical fantasy TTRPG to the absolute bone. Only four stats in a character’s stat block. The rules for combat fit on one digest sized page with plenty of room for art. The summary of all of the game’s rules fit on two digest sized pages. A copy of the rules with all fluff, art, and lore stripped out clocks in at around 50 digest pages. In these pages are rules for the game, random items/qualities tables, character classes, and a bestiary of possible enemies. Easy to read, simple to understand, mostly intuitive, elementary math with no companion charts, and easily repeated for new players. It checks all my boxes with style!
While the rules are light, the tonality of the game is very heavy. The broad strokes are of a typical medieval fantasy that is grimdark to the Nth degree. The world is literally ending. Everything and everyone left in it is wretched and horrible, the players included. For players, death is likely, success is not.
The way I like to describe it to new players:
“Once upon a time there were amazing heroes with cool armor, enchanted weapons, and books filled with bitchin’-ass spells.
That time is gone!
Those heroes are dead.
You are what is left.
The weapons they left behind are nicked, busted, improvised, or all three. The armor they left has been stripped off those heroes’ corpses. Wrecked, and mended so many times they barely resemble what they once were. The spell books wizards spent their lifetimes writing and collecting have been torn apart. The individual disparate pages have been sold, exchanged, and used as magic scrolls. Only people who can read can cast these spells, but because none of them have training, the spells have little guarantee of efficacy, and the price for magical failure is dire!”
I can not fully describe how compelling I find Mörk Borg as both a game and a concept. A full game with potential as expansive and flavorful as any of the big ones, but in such haiku-like simplicity that it fits in a single digest book. A thing I previously thought impossible.
The book itself is an art piece that I will treasure for years to come. Johan Nohr is a graphic designer of quality with a distinct style. When it came time to put together the look and feel for this passion project, Johan took himself off the leash and ran with every one of his instincts breaking every graphic design rule pounded into me back in art school. The man knows exactly what he is doing, and is unafraid to take risks. A true artist, if I may be so pretentious. The result is a unique work in a unique style that can only be imitated, but never duplicated. (and good gravy, so many have tried!)
If there is a flaw to be found, it is that the text and world building of the game is evocative more so than explanatory. Pelle Nillson’s writing does an excellent job of describing and hinting in broad strokes about the world, but writes close to the edge of exposition without ever crossing it. It is a delicate dance for any writer to achieve, and Pelle does it with aplomb. However, for nerds like me, the evocative writing doesn’t scratch my insatiable hunger for lore.
As a writer myself, I feel as though I have been given a lovely and elaborate writing prompt. I can launch a thousand sessions, one-shots, and even multiple campaigns based on the material provided. However as a player, a GM, or even just a casual reader, I want so much more than is given.
In an interview, Pelle and Johan stated that they tried to make Army of Darkness in TTRPG form. I distinctly remember thinking, Gents, if that was your goal, you missed the mark!
Army of Darkness is an over the top tongue in cheek comedy of errors with chainsaw antics, an army of the undead, and one-liners cheesed to perfection. In contrast, Mörk Borg is a rusty dagger and a cruel smile from rotten teeth. It’s over the top and tongue in cheek, it has jokes aplenty, but sometimes the punchline is simply, “Isn’t that awful? Bwahahahaha!” I heard once that Swedish humor is way darker than most American humor. This work seems to bear that out, but Army of Darkness is American humor to a T.
At least that’s my crackpot theory.
This compelled me to imagine what Mörk Borg would be like if it actually was in the style of Army of Darkness. What would that look like?
The more I thought about it, the more I realized the result would look similar to, yet nothing at all like, Mörk Borg. It would be it’s own thing.
It would be easy, I thought. I can just re-skin these kickass rules with different lore, and maybe change a thing or two. I have a bunch of ink drawings in my sketch books that I can use. (I doodle heavy metal weirdness all the time.) My very own stock art. Easy-Peasy!
I started doing a lot more day-dreaming, some sporadic writing, and good bit more reading. “Maybe change a thing or two,” turned in to “maybe a few more.” Then some more…
It’s been hard work, but some of the most fun I have had as a writer/artist.
Thus, I wanted to share it in the hope that this is fun for you too.
—Next Time: What comes first? Lore, or rules system?