PATHS OF POWER: TWO EXPANSIONS FOR MÖRK BORG

 There are about a gazillion reasons I love MÖRK BORG. 

For starters, I parted company with the big, bulky math-heavy RPGS back around 2000. I'd played some of them in the 80s and 90s, but the older I got, the less interested in them I was. By the time Dungeons & Dragons 3e and 3.5 came along, I was already playing with B/X again. I've probably run Risus far more than I should have.

When MÖRK BORG appeared in 2020, it had a system that made B/X look Byzantine by comparison, so rules light it was zen. For the handful of unfortunate victims who stumbled into this post not knowing what MÖRK BORG is, a quick summary: written by Pelle Nilsson with graphic design and art by Johan Nohr and "dead people,"MÖRK BORG self identifies as a "doom metal album of a game, a spiked flail to the face...(r)ules light, heavy everything else." It's set in a late medieval fantasy world that is suspiciously Swedish and undergoing an apocalypse. The characters' lives are positively Hobbesian. The game initially had me at "doom metal," but then again I am a 55-year old goth with black fingernails and an unnerving number of pieces of jewelry with pentagrams on them. But once I got the game, what really bowled me over about MÖRK BORG was the design.

By this I mean not only the game design, but also the graphic design, because more than any game I have ever seen the two work hand-in-mailed fist to create the total play experience. As game design, MÖRK BORG wants to know what the absolute bare minimum you need to run a classic dungeon crawler is. All of the rules fit on a single page. Monsters don't have stat blocks, they hav hit points, morale, a few terse notes and a name. Spells, referred to as "Powers" in the game, are often half a sentence. Take "Foul Psychopomp," which reads "summon (d6) 1-3 d4 skeletons, 4-6 d4 zombies."

These economy extends to descriptions of the world. The regions of this dying world get about a paragraph of brief description, tops. There are no lore dumps here, no "in the reign of King Harmug IV." Instead we are told "Galgenbeck...is the greatest city that ever was" before moving on to a few lines on religion and politics. Reading the text, I often felt I was reading song lyrics instead of prose...a neat trick for a game that takes its inspiration from music.

But this is where the graphic design and layout come in. 

If the text of MÖRK BORG is the lyrics, the way the book is laid out, the art, and the presentation, are the basslines, guitars, percussion, and vocals. They convey more about the game and its setting that words could. 

An easy example is the order the information is presented in. The inside front cover and front page are random item charts: NPC names ("Man? Woman? Lost souls all."), d10 Occult Treasures, Traps and Devilry, Weather, and Corpse Plundering. Just glancing over these, a picture of the world and the kind of game MÖRK BORG is becomes clear. The first thing we learn about the setting is the prophecy that dooms it. Then we get a brief tour of the regions. It isn't until pages 16 and 17 that the first real mechanic shows up: the Calendar of Nechrubel. This is a random table present as a quasi-scriptural page divided into seven sections or Psalms. Every game day the GM rolls a die (the type of die is determined by the players ranging from d00 to d2. On a one, a "Misery" in unleashed, rolled off the table of Psalms. These Miseries change the conditions of the setting, and after 7 of them the world ends.

The point is, by page 17 we get it. The doomed world is conveyed to us in very few words and clever presentation. MÖRK BORG swept the Ennies the year it came out, taking gold in Best Writing, Best Layout and Design, and Product of the Year, with the silver in Best Game. It did this for giving us a very different way to experience game books.

But MÖRK BORG's obnoxious "in your face" presentation is not to everyone's taste...neither is metal for the same reasons. Aside from this complaint, another thing that puts some players off is that the game, by design, is sparse. Characters are defined by only four abilities (Agility, Presence, Strength, and Toughness) and character classes--a staple of this kind of game--are entirely optional and presented almost as an afterthought. They are for the most part very tongue-in-cheek takes on the classics...Fanged Deserter for the fighter, Esoteric Hermit for the mage, etc. They don't really bestow many unique abilities. Instead, characters are defined, primarily, by what they carry, not what they are.

An example of this is how magic is handled. Anyone can cast a spell or Power so long as they are in possession of a scroll it is written down on. Scrolls come in two flavors...Unclean Scrolls (think magic-user) and Sacred Scrolls (think cleric). But there are only ten powers of each type. Again...sparse.

There have been "fixes." Since its release MÖRK BORG has spawned a bewildering array of "compatible with" games. Many of these have moved the doom RPG vibe to other settings--feudal Japan, viking Europe, space, the old west, the pirate haunted Caribbean, and so on. But some have "nudged" MÖRK BORG towards being a more "vanilla" RPG. One of the best is Rodney Rickrode's Mork Manual, which complete re-imagines the standard setting into a world where the Dark Lord is returning. With classes more closely resembling classic RPG ones, a bestiary of familiar monsters, and expanded spell lists it goes a long way to address what some people don't like about MÖRK BORG.

But if, like me, you love the "doom metal" vibe of the original, but your players are whining...I mean, making legitimate requests...looking for more options and hardier characters, I have two solutions for you.

In 2024, Nicholas Volpe released Paths of Power: D666 Dark + Twisted Powers for MÖRK BORG. This introduced--alongside the Sacred and Unclean scrolls from the core game--18 more "paths" or "schools" of Powers, each with a dozen new spells. Characters could "specialize" in these paths, effectively changing what flavor of magic-user they were, or randomly acquire spells by rolling three six-sided dice and find the results. It was a huge expansion of the magic system, with 216 new Powers total.

What I liked about D666 was that it didn't just try to adapt already established classic fantasy schools of magic to MÖRK BORG. It didn't serve up Illusionist spells or Druid spells per se. These were new schools and they all had that dark, twisted, and funny flavor that made MÖRK BORG unique (I maintain that MÖRK BORG is not trying to be a "grimdark" game but is in fact taking the piss out of edgelord games). Thus you get the Path of Blood Power "Something Bloody" that soaks you in gore for ten minutes but makes you harder to hit or restrain because you are wet and slippery, of the Path of Death Power "Skeleton Valet" that gives you an animated skeleton companion for the day who is knowledgeable, well-mannered, and polite. MÖRK BORG is one of those games that doesn't take itself too seriously, and the tone of D666 reflects that.

This year, 2026, saw a companion volume emerge, Paths of Power: D44 Classic Classes. This volume adds 16 player character classes to MÖRK BORG. Some of these, like the Druid, Assassin, or Ranger, do resemble classic fantasy RPG classes we all know, but they are given very MÖRK BORG spins. Some others, the Inquisitor, Brawler, Templar, or Witchblade (my favorite) are new entries perfectly suited to the offical MÖRK BORG setting.

The classes in D44 are more robust than standard MÖRK BORG ones as well and more suited to campaigns.  Each offers 2-3 standard abilities, and then two D6 tables of additional class abilities. You roll (or choose) one ability from each of these tables , and then later on when you "Get Better" ( MÖRK BORG's version of leveling up) can roll or pick and additional ability. Many of them are quite cool. The Berserker spends a Power for example to go into frenzy: they must attack an enemy each round and may attack allies if none are available but they gain D6 temporary hit points and do double damage. The Witchblade can spend 1 or more Powers and each adds a D6 additional damage to their attacks that turn. 

In addition, D44 offers some optional rules to make player characters less fragile, and introduces the concept of conditions--like Blind, Staggered, or Stunned--into the game. Finally, it reprints every Power from its predecessor D666 in handy tables at the end of the book.

Both Paths of Power volumes are great resources for players and GMs who like the doom metal vibe of the MÖRK BORG game and setting, but want plenty of options to expand on the core game. There are other, more robust adaptations of MÖRK BORG but color inside the lines of the core game and are terrific resources.