I could have sworn I already reviewed this minimalist trash at some point. I saw reference of it in my Doing it Wrong series, but no individual full posts. Really there's not much to say. It's an art book first, a RPG second or maybe even third behind being a creative writing exercise designed to push a dark/broody/metal theme but in the lightest, least offensive way possible.
I'm saying in no uncertain terms that it's shit. it's rules, other than minimum effort random tables, fit on a post-it note. Textbook minimalism for the sake of minimalism, the game's only mechanical identity is defined by what's missing. And lots and lots of things are missing. End of review.
Appendix A-Z: Idiots doing idiotic things because they are idiots
So I went looking and found a comparative review of Mork Borg (MB) (yeah I'm not putting the dots on all the 'o's throughout the entire review) and Lamentations of the Flame Princess (LotFP), which is basically the game MB would be if the authors were players of proper roleplaying games (IE understood the importance of mechanical identity).
Link to garbage review here. Don't bother clicking, I'll provide adequate quotes.
I call this review garbage because after looking around the site I quickly found out this reviewer likes minimalist games, which makes him an idiot and proves that even morons can have a great vocabulary. If only the brainpower used to house the dictionary of words at the blogger's disposal were instead used for critical thinking, this person might be smarter than me. Too bad he picked wrong. let's go through this comparative analysis and dig deep into the shit this dumb fat white guy posted:
"LotFP is significantly heavier than Mörk Borg (and other rules-lite OSR mainstays like Knave and Into the Odd). It puts some mild twists on standard fantasy archetypes for classes, and it lays out basic rules and mechanics for situations like water adventures and business enterprises."
This is an interesting way of saying LotFP is actually a game and MB is trash that took zero effort to design. The design of MB is so bad that further iterations of the game (Cy_Borg and Pirate Borg) always add a fifth baseline stat. It's pretty fucking bad when people latching on to a trendy ruleset realize they need another goddamn ability score just to make a game function.
"Mörk Borg’s leaner ruleset lets GMs make their own rulings for situations beyond the fundamentals."
I had to stop here because MB doesn't "let" you do shit. It's incompleteness FORCES you to add stuff to make the game usable. This is not a feature. Stop pretending being incomplete is a feature. It's trash.
"The core mechanics are straightforward, but Mörk Borg supplements these with the Calendar of Nechrubel (which counts down to the end of the world) and, at character creation, players flesh out their scum with bad habits and physical impediments. Powers (its equivalent to spells) are inherently hazardous and even lethal to the wielder."
This is completely irrelevant, this is just you trying to sell this game. It has nothing to do with comparing the two. Let me compare the two: LotFP has maritime rules. MB doesn't. LotFP: 1, MB: 0
The countdown to the end of the world/game gimmick (wherein you're instructed to burn the book, which nobody has or will) is a cheap gimmick. Nobody playing MB has ever employed it. There's no mechanical benefit to anyone in employing it. There's no incentive other than "thank god we don't have to try to play MB anymore"
I've also been a part of 2 different MB games, neither of which rolled calendar events, bad habits, or physical impediments, all for the same reason. You need to get something out of a mechanic for anyone to care about it's existence. There simply isn't any juice to be had for the squeeze in MB, and frankly nobody cares about a game system that doesn't care enough about itself to be complete. MB is really just four lame stats and a bunch of stale-ass tables to roll on, that's what it's treated as and therefore that's what it is.
"In short, Mörk Borg incorporates mechanical elements that establish and emphasize the game’s tone. LotFP’s mechanics amount to a slightly chunky retroclone with no formal attention to cultivating the desired mood in its players."
MB doesn't have enough mechanics to establish and emphasize a bowel movement, let alone a dark metal fantasy tone. It would have to have mechanical identity to do that. LotFP is often derided as B/X, though everyone who does that hasn't fully read the rules, merely glossed over them and pretended to read them while thinking of B/X substitutes. Example: nothing adds to damage in LotFP. High Strength only adds to-hit. Only Fighters actually get better at combat over time. Dwarves do NOT get better at combat over time, but do accumulate HPs and are pack mules (they actually play quite different from Fighters in LotFP). These are subtle adjustments that are easy to miss if you're not paying attention to the game's mechanical identity. Those who care about systemics in any way will only find one of the two games even mildly interesting. And it ain't MB. MB isn't bringing asses back to seats by itself. It has no campaign potential.
"On the one hand, this places greater responsibility on LotFP GMs and players to establish and adhere to the desired tone. But at the same time, despite the preponderance of incidental mechanics, it provides no real formal basis for building this experience, only some advice and guidance in the Referee Book.
The Referee Book, unlike other GM guides, contains no mechanics whatsoever—no additional game rules, no monsters, and only a handful of sample magic items; it expects GMs to make their own or else convert them from other systems. The book consists almost entirely of the designer’s philosophy of how to play RPGs.
Mörk Borg expects most people who buy the book will understand what RPGs are and how they work, and even if they have no prior experience, the rules are fairly simple and intuitive. Whereas LotFP’s core books amount to mechanisms and practices of control, Mörk Borg shows more respect to its GMs and players. It gives them a toolbox, some exposition and visual inspiration, and encourages them to go wild."
I let this run because each word digs the hole deeper than the last. I hadn't mentioned it yet but the Referee Book (that being the original lean book from the Deluxe boxed set, not the somewhat bloated version from the Grindhouse set that this person is looking at) is one of the best referee books in all of gaming. It explicitly lays out not only how LotFP is different, but how to build the proper tone and campaign. It is fundamentally important to the LotFP experience and a sore point to me that Jim hasn't gotten up off his fucking ass and produced a new version in spite if hundreds of people paying him to do so over a decade ago.
But that's an aside. I just think you, the reader, should go look at those quoted paragraphs again. Keep this in mind as you do: MB doesn't give you any hints for how to run it as a dark metal fantasy game. LotFP provides a free 48 page Referee book that does so. One game gives you a resource. The other doesn't. That's the difference between these two games. LotFP empowers you to change or not by giving you an option. This is not some bullshit I'm making up to prove a point, in the original Referee book it's explicitly stated on pages 41-42 under "Excellence in Gaming":
"As the first words in this book said, this work is merely one possible set of procedures, with infinite other possibilities available to you. Following the advice in this book may help you run a good game. But because styles are so unique, the advice in this book may hinder your ability produce the best game possible.
Excellence in gaming goes beyond casual enjoyment of the game. It requires a greater commitment to the game, and requires greater time and effort than just casual playing. This focus is not for everyone, but many people find it quite rewarding.
To start your journey, you simply need to play. When you want to take that next step, you need to step back and examine your gaming."
If a designer is worth a shit, they will tell you how to play their game to achieve the maximum value out of it. That's what Jim is getting at, above. It's how he thinks you can get maximum value out of his game. It's a net positive having an explanation like this. MB expects you to fend for yourself and cultivates a cult (pun intended) of idiots who think a lack of explanation or proper procedure or logic or understanding is meritorious to the game.
"Mörk Borg establishes tone through gritty visuals and apocalyptic lore. It conveys the latter in broad strokes and invites GMs to use it as they wish. The lean context is enough to provide the sense of a world with depth, motivate players, and give the GM a foundation comparable to the mechanics themselves.
LotFP doesn’t really provide much concrete lore at all. Whoever the Flame Princess is and whatever she’s lamenting, they aren’t explained to the reader. They serve only to set a certain tone, and LotFP follows up with a smattering of vibes and broad backstory in class and alignment descriptions. The book builds the game’s “weird horror” character primarily through two components: the illustrations in Rules and Magic and one single spell."
MB gives you four stats and tells you to go fuck yourself with some tables and shitty, too-specific classes built by someone that doesn't actually know what classes are for. The Fanged Deserter for example is the only mention that there's even an army (or conflict of any sort) in this highly specific-setting RPG which is just specific enough to elicit shrugs from anyone attempting to build off of it. Not only is it the only mention of an army, but the word "Deserter" in it's name is the only mention of an army. The Fanged Deserter is sorta the Fighter class, but isn't really because a LotFP Fighter could be a Viking, Samurai, Knight, Thug, Musketeer, etc. A Fanged Deserter is only one potential archetype, strangely being less broad than the heavier game, which is both stupid and uninspired. Pirate Borg does classes right which immediately makes it the best of the Borg family of games.
So he's saying essentially having a greater depth of system and breadth of options in LotFP vs MB is somehow to the detriment of LotFP. I don't think so. I think the blogger's perception is skewed. He is inventing value where there is none. Let's be fucking clear here: You could play a MB game (and a lot more) with LotFP. You could not play a LotFP game with MB, excepting one built explicitly toward MB's setting. Even then probably not as LotFP has actual classes and not pretendsies classes that don't actually provide mechanical differentiation between them. It's not entirely the classes' fault, the system doesn't have enough junk in the trunk to give that differentiation.
Lastly on Weird Horror: Somebody didn't read any of the LotFP spells beyond their titles. While not every spell is like this, there are a considerable amount of weird spells other than Summon (Seven Gates, Strange Waters II, Weird Vortex) along with revisions of old spells that produce weirdness:
Water Breathing
Magic-User Level 3
Duration: 6 Turns/level
Range: Touch
The subject of this spell grows gills in his neck, his skin takes on a scaly texture, and he gains the ability breathe water freely for the duration of the spell. Creatures under the influence of the spell are not granted any additional proficiency at swimming. Air Breathing (the reverse of Water Breathing) allows sea creatures to breathe air, but unless they already possess a means to move around on land, it does not grant them the ability to do so.
There is more flavor in this spell than the entirety of the Scrolls section in MB. Casting it would provide more weirdness than casting any of said spells in said section.
"A lot of LotFP’s illustrations are relatively generic fantasy filler. It puts some emphasis on weird, but nothing that compares to, say, Erol Otus’ work in AD&D."
This is bizarrely hurtful to LotFP's artists. The only pieces of art I don't particularly like in the entire LotFP book are on page 19 and 73. Every other piece is either exceptional or illustrative of the surrounding text or both.
Also comparing an indie producer's talent to someone who is considered one of the giants in the field is fucking ludicrous. Your kid in college basketball sure ain't no Kobe Bryant or Michael Jordan. Yes, few fucking are. None of MB's art holds a candle to the B/X covers by Otus, for example. It's petty to even bring it up so I decided to go ahead and stoop to the blogger's position. I'll take another step further, S&W's blue devil cover by Otus is better than any art in any Borg product anywhere. Has far more heart and soul, depth of understanding into the genre it's presenting, and better at eliciting emotions from the audience by the piece. But then that's true for most of the color art in LotFP, my favorite being on page 71.
"What really stands out is LotFP’s depictions of violence and bodily harm, particularly death and dismemberment. When it appears, it’s consistently graphic and frequently features women as victims of grievous harm or as femme fatales inflicting it.
In the two most extreme cases, it explicitly involves intercourse and reproduction. But that clinical terminology doesn’t do justice to how graphic the depictions are. (This isn’t the place to delve into them, but I’ll discuss this point further in a future post.)"
I assume he's talking about pages 72 and 73 specifically. I don't personally care for 73 so I won't defend it though it is representative of body horror, human sacrifice, and weird fiction/birthing evil creatures. I'm afraid the blogger's consideration of weird fiction is rather meek and pedestrian if he thinks that violence against the vulnerable is off limits and out of bounds or beyond the pale. Beyond the pale is the point, dumbass. The book says "18+ Explicit Content" on the cover for a reason. You need to be an adult to read it. Pretty sure the blogger didn't anyway.
But, I must disagree with this idiot's interpretation of 72. I had to look at every piece of art in the book to find "violence against a women explicitly involving intercourse and reproduction." So the art in question zombies tearing out the internal organs of a woman. One of the zombies is reaching up through her. This is not presented as sexual in nature. She is merely seen as meat to the zombies in the picture. A man would meet the same fate. This criticism is old, tired, and doesn't understand the meaning of the piece beyond the surface level, bare minimum consideration. That's why MB's rather surface level art gives this blogger such a woody. There is nothing past the surface in any of the art in MB.
"Mörk Borg doesn’t shy away from gore and violence, but the book puts greater focus on the weird through more abstracted or impressionistic depictions of the macabre and the monstrous. In both cases and in Nohr’s own words, “it isn’t realism.” From its blood-drenched skeleton to Anthelia removing a suitor’s head, Mörk Borg represents gore without aiming for mimesis. LotFP’s art, on the other hand, indulges in its realism and arguably fetishizes its gore."
So, in other words, LotFP is actually transgressive, and MB is only pretending to be transgressive. MB is tame garbage and doesn't do dark metal aesthetic well, while LotFP does. So that's a ringing endorsement. I know it was completely unexpected by me too.
"About half of Rules and Magic’s page count consists of spells. The vast supermajority are pulled directly from the d20 SRD."
This is an outright lie. Let's prove it. Random simple spell: Cure Light Wounds. There's no reason to even change that, right? Here's d20srd.org, specifically the 3.5 set:
Cure Light Wounds
Conjuration (Healing)
Level: Brd 1, Clr 1, Drd 1, Healing 1, Pal 1, Rgr 2
Components: V, S
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Touch
Target: Creature touched
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: Will half (harmless); see text
Spell Resistance: Yes (harmless); see text
When laying your hand upon a living creature, you channel positive energy that cures 1d8 points of damage +1 point per caster level (maximum +5).
Since undead are powered by negative energy, this spell deals damage to them instead of curing their wounds. An undead creature can apply spell resistance, and can attempt a Will save to take half damage.
Let's see LotFP's version:
Cure Light Wounds
Cleric Level 1
Duration: Instantaneous
Range: Touch
By the power of the Cleric’s faith, this spell restores 1d6 Hit Points to one damaged character, plus a number of points equal to the level of the caster. For example, if the caster is 5th level, the spell restores 1d6+5 Hit Points.
The spell can also be used to remove one temporary negative condition instead of restoring lost Hit Points. For example, if a character is paralyzed, stunned, or blinded for a set period of time, then this spell will remove any of these conditions. It will not work on permanent conditions, and only one condition (or damage) can be treated per casting of the spell.
Recipients of the spell can only be restored to their normal maximum Hit Points, and no more. Any excess restored points are lost.
The reverse of the spell can only be used to inflict points of damage.
So, the blogger is full of shit. I picked this spell out of a hat based on it having the exact same name as a SRD spell. I speculate that every single spell was rewritten to fit LotFP's system. Hell Turn Undead is a spell instead of a cleric ability but you won't hear this blogger talk about it because he barely skimmed the book due to his severe attention span issue requiring him to see bright lights and pretty colors to maintain interest.
Let's explain the differences beyond the obvious: There are more caster types in 3.X, so let's throw that out. The standard HD of a Cleric is d8 in 3.X and d6 in LotFP, so let's throw that difference out. What are we left with? One is a removal of the spell's limitation on bonus HP. A 20th level LotFP cleric does CLW for 1d6+20 HP, while 3.X's spell looses any semblance of use at that power level when it can only heal 1d8+5 HP. The LotFP spell also can explicitly remove temporary status conditions like being paralyzed, stunned, or blinded (only one condition, and no HP is recovered). So the spell is fundamentally more useful than it's 3.X counterpart in most cases (excepting wanting to damage undead, where the component of the LotFP spell is removed). So there is design in the spell. And this blogger is still a fucking jackass.
"Its most significant departure is Summon, which takes 10 full pages to cover. And that’s where the abundance of core LotFP’s weirdness and horror resides."
It takes a little more than 8 1/2 pages actually (as I don't count art as a spell description and neither does anyone else), but I don't expect honesty or any sort of factual basis from this "review" at this point.
"Besides the five-step rules and tables for summoning strange creatures, Summon also includes Abstract Forms the spell can manifest. Some of these are creative and cleverly conveyed in the text. “Disruption of the Universal Order” causes a new player to take up the referee role; “Imaginary Equation, Incorrect yet True” alters die-rolling mechanics and calculations."
I'm going to pause here because this is the closest we're going to get to the blogger saying "whoa, that's interesting design" or give any sort of props, however minimal, to LotFP.
"But multiple Abstract Forms involve loss of control on the PCs’ part. The most memorable among them feature (on par with the tone set by the art) suicidal compulsion, genital mutilation, and potential sexual assault resulting in demonic offspring. It’s pretty weird and horrific—but not, for me, in the way the designer intended."
It's exactly in the way the designer intended. He thought about this far, far more than the blogger did. See: the Referee Book this blogger failed to read in spite of bringing up its existence.
I'm now skipping ahead to the conclusion, there's nothing else interesting to comment on.
"Mörk Borg maintains its tone consistently throughout its exposition of the game’s setting and mechanics, and it even incorporates that tone into the mechanics themselves. LotFP instead presents a generic ruleset and places the burden of tone on its artwork and isolated textual components."
Says someone who definitely didn't read the ruleset. MB is more art book than game, it's ludicrous to make the assertion that LotFP's art is what is providing the tone and significant cognitive dissonance not to level the same exact criticism of MB. For LotFP there is an underlying structure, a "normal" by which the "weird" emerges. It looks like a B/X clone to the untrained eye. I think I've shown that it considerably diverges from that. MB doesn't have enough substance to provide a "normal" to diverge from. It expects you to bring the normal with you, along with the weird and look at the pretty pictures! See the keys jangling in front of your face! This is more fun! Yay!
"LotFP fundamentally mistakes explicit violence (and particularly sexualized violence) for weird horror. It inconsistently grafts these motifs onto a fairly genre-neutral OSR system that doesn’t inherently approach—let alone sustain—its intended experience."
This blogger fundamentally mistakes an art book with some a smattering of rules and random tables plastered across it as a RPG. He's a moron simpleton. My advice for him would be to suck less. Perhaps develop a learned opinion after playing a game with others instead of doing minimalist soloing by himself in the dark with his sweatpants around his ankles.
Appendix Omega: LotFP
I have a troubled past with LotFP, I don't really like the game as a whole, though the core is rather solid it is very different from traditional D&D and an interesting case of micro-design throughout, it's adventures are all rather hit or miss, mostly misses. The Ref book is a sore spot because I'm a backer and haven't gotten my book after ~12 years I've given up on it. I don't even buy LotFP products anymore because that just encourages Jim to keep dragging his fucking feet on the Ref book. I would rather his company was dead so he'd at least have an excuse for why he couldn't produce it.
So unlike the other blogger, I'm not exactly a fanboy. I just see things as they are, and I use my god-given wisdom to rule justly and fairly. LotFP isn't a bad game. MB is. End of story.
