Friday Faction: Art by Nohr

Johan Nohr has had an almost unparalleled effect upon the roleplaying home. Together with Pelle Nilsson, he created Mörk Borg, the pitch-black pre-apocalyptic fantasy roleplaying game which brings a Nordic death metal sensibility to the Old School Renaissance, designed by Ockult Örtmästare Games and Stockholm Kartell and published by Free League Publishing. Since its publication in 2019, has gone to become the basis of several other roleplaying games, such Cy-Borg, Pirate Borg, and Death in Space, as well as a host of other supplements, scenarios, fanzines, and other third-party content. It has not only retained its popularity, but become a firm fixture of the Old School Renaissance hobby, even if it does not share the same origins. In particular, Johan Nohr created the look of Mörk Borg, beginning with the distinctive chromium yellow of its cover to the swathes of deep black and neon pink inside. The look and style of Mörk Borg is art punk, inspired by the post-punk rock sophistication that drew on the theory of art.

Art by Nohr, subtitled ‘Drawings and Doodles by Johan Nohr, Made Between 2006 and 2033’ and published by Stockholm Kartell following a successful Kickstarter campaign, is part retrospective, part showcase of the graphic designer and illustrator’s work from before, during, and after Mörk Borg. It is a coffee table artbook, that in truth is dominated by his art for Mörk Borg and other roleplaying games, but there is more than that just here, some it of simple sketches, some of it more. Some of it is simply annotated, most left to speak for itself. From the beginning there is always a jagged edge to Nohr’s style, figures and monsters lurking in the gloom, such as ‘The Skull Crone. Malevolent forest spirit I made up when living in the woods’, the annotation a story in itself, the old woman caught in the shadows of the tall trees, clawed hands reaching out, the skulls piled atop her head hiding her face in their shadows as green flames flicker from their eye sockets. Others seem to stagger at the viewer, whilst other images draw on classic heroic heavy metal fantasy, great horned helmets and mighty weapons, but here the weapons are cracked and stained through use, the helmets keeping the warriors anonymously inhuman. Witches wail and goblins cackle, strange figures stare accusingly at the reader.

‘Barkhäxan’ looks at an earlier collaboration with Pelle Nilsson, a folk horror roleplaying game, a startling simple black and white suggestion of horror and the unknown that contracts sharply with the more widely seen Mörk Borg style. This is widely showcased in the book, with covers and internal illustrations from titles both official and third-party. Some are accompanied by fuller explanations, such as that given for ‘Wickheads’ who have lanterns for heads and who lurk in the dark only for their lights to blaze and blind, before going dark again and striking at the temporarily sightless. They are shown in four images, charting the development of the creatures. For the Mörk Borg there are interesting images of books that have never appeared, such as ‘The End’ which would have depicted the ‘36 Miseries’ which marked the end of the world. The illustrations for third-party both show how popular Mörk Borg has been and act as an illustrated catalogue. The artwork for Cy_Borg is given a similar treatment, but typically less monochrome and more frenetic in its use of colour and energy, but clearly a Mörk Borg-style game.

Nohr changes tack for Into the Odd Remastered with a more subdued style that consists of collages that depict a world of industrial horror and mystery. There is a subtlety to this not seen in the punchiness of the illustrations elsewhere in the book. It is a shame that there is not more of this, both here and in other roleplaying games. ‘Other Projects’ covers a range of promotional posters, album covers, and other roleplaying products. Other sections highlight the other sometimes near illegible typography employed in Mörk Borg, whilst the most fun are the ‘Cardboard Drawings’ that Nohr decorates packages he sends out, whilst the artbook comes to a close with some of the maps he drew for Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days and its predecessor.

Physically, Art by Nohr is an imposing book. All of the artwork is crisply reproduced and it is fantastic to see so much of it presented in double its original size given that its typical format was digest-sized. It also provides an opportunity for the reader to see a lot of art that can only be found on the covers of hard-to-find books and fanzines. Fans of the Old School Renaissance and fans of the artpunk will both enjoy this book, but ultimately Art by Nohr is definitely a book for fans of Johan Nohr and for Mörk Borg, who will appreciate seeing the collection and development of the artpunk style.

—oOo—

Stockholm Kartell will be at UK Games Expo which takes place on Friday, May 30th to Sunday June 1st, 2025.

[Fanzine Focus XXXII] Thoughts & Prayers 2023

On the tail of Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another Dungeon Master and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. One of the more recent retroclones to inspire fanzines is Mörk Borg, but there are fewer fanzines dedicated to its sister roleplaying games, Death in Space and CY_BORG. Thoughts & Prayers 2023 addresses this by providing support for all three.

Thoughts & Prayers 2023 is a fanzine published by the Stockholm Kartell, the design group for notable Old School Renaissance such as Mörk Borg, Death in Space, and CY_BORG. It provides support for all three of those roleplaying games—and more. That more consists of content found in the more personal style of fanzines, often consisting of filler material, but despite the professionalism of the fanzine, it does not feel out of place. The most notable aspect of Thoughts & Prayers 2023 is that it is only available direct from Stockholm Kartell and then only at conventions on the Thoughts & Prayers Tour 2023, which took in Gothcon, the Blackwork Tattoo Convention, Lincon, UK Games Expo, and Gen Con. In addition, all proceeds from the sale of the fanzine go to charity. Most of the content is written is by Johan Nohr, the co-creator of Mörk Borg, except where noted.

Thoughts & Prayers 2023 opens with ‘Hog God’, a short scenario for Mörk Borg. It begins with a fight and every drop of blood from the wounds inflicted floating into the air and shooting towards Goresnout Crag. This leads the Player Characters to a series of caves where a new god is about to be spawned attended by his Hog Men acolytes. There is a porcine fleshiness throughout this mini-dungeon, pleasingly mapped by Skullfungus. The second scenario in Thoughts & Prayers 2023 for Mörk Borg is by Pelle Nilsson. In ‘Skewed Angel’, the Player Characters find themselves the honourable winners of a lottery to remove a ‘Fallen’—either an angel or a daemon—which are despoiling the crops in the fields. This has the feel of a more traditional Mörk Borg scenario, more detailed in its location descriptions, and offering two sessions’ worth of play.

Also for Mörk Borg, ‘Who goes there, at the end of all things?’ is a table of strangers, quest givers, companions, and victims for the Game Master to roll on and develop. The longest entry in Thoughts & Prayers 2023 is Christian Sahlén’s ‘d66 ways to slay your enemies’. Beginning with ‘A (Sometimes) Spiked Flail To The Face’, this describes six interesting weapons under the categories of flails, polearms, blunt trauma weapons, blades, heavy weapons, and missile weapons. For example, the Crow’s Caw is a Bec de Corbin, which has a +2 bonus to attack, inflicts damage equal to that of a dagger, but against heavy armour, it ignores the armour modifier, and with the sound of a caw, a crow begins to claw itself out of the opponent’s armour, impeding his actions and inflicting damage. All thirty-six of the weapons in the article share the same level of inventiveness, and whilst designed to be used with Mörk Borg and SKR, they can easily adapted to work with the retroclone of the Game Master’s choice.

Christian Sahlén’s ‘Sprawling Car Park’ describes a location for CY_BORG in the manner of the CY_BORG Asset Pack. This gives a map of a typical car park and then options for what it actually is and what such locations might actually be hiding in the city of CY. The location works as well as other similar locations for the roleplaying setting. He follows this with ‘In Case of Emergency’, which presents a trio of NPCs belonging to an ‘ERT’ or ‘Emergency Response Team’. This can be used in various ways. Perhaps as a team that has to rescue the Player Characters, perhaps a rival ERT team, or a team the Player Characters are hired to act against. Christian Sahlén is also the author of ‘A Day in the Life of a Cy Corp Drone’, a short story detailing the unsurprisingly nasty last day as a regimented, monitored wage slave. It makes clear exactly why the Player Characters do not want that life… ‘Fraudulent Freemium Game Generator’ and ‘Why is the product cheap or free?’ and more by Christian Sahlén and Johan Nohr add tables for inspiration for CY_BORG and Death in Space.

The first actual content for Death in Space is the scenario ‘Cesium 66’. Written by Carl Niblaeus, this details a complete sector ready for the presence of the Player Characters. It gives people, locations, factions, and imminent trouble, including an authoritative leader, a murderous resistance/terrorist group, and science artists who only leave cryrosleep to perform Zero-G dance rituals and speed the end of the universe, and a hive decayer in an adjacent sector. Throw in some contracts and the sector is ready to boil over, seething with tension waiting to be exacerbated by the Player Characters. The other scenario for Death in Space, ‘Transit Precinct 45’, is by Carl Niblaeus and Christian Plogfors. This is set aboard an old marshal satellite station which was staging outpost for the enforcing company law and regulations during the Gem War, but is now operated by rogue corrupt marshals. They capture new prisoners and imprisoning them under false accusations. The Player Characters are hired to extract a wrongly accused prisoner whose family cannot afford the bail to free him. The station is nicely detailed and there are random events tables for the approaches the Player Characters can take to solve the situation—talking and scheming or sneaking around—as well as possible environmental events. It is a more direct affair than ‘Cesium 66’, which has a sandbox feel, but both are easy to add to a Death in Space campaign.

Extra content in Thoughts & Prayers 2023 consists of ‘Public Domain goodness’, which is a selection of black and white publicly available artwork, which can work as inspiration or illustration. ‘Regarding the misses’ discusses ways in which failed attack rolls can be made interesting, a not uncommon point of discussion in Old School Renaissance-style roleplaying games, whilst Pelle Nilsson’s ‘Broken Body Bits’ gives twelve unpleasant maladies that are annoying to the affected character as well as those around him. Jonas Stattin explores the afterlife in ‘The Hell Realms’, drawing from Buddhist traditions to describe several different hells. Unfortunately, it is not anything more than this and there is no application or development. That is left up to the Game Master and reader to do. Fortunately, ‘A Love Letter to the Reaction Roll’ is more interesting because it tells a story. Christian Sahlén begins by telling us how Dungeons & Dragons was looked down upon in the nineties in Sweden, but explains that for him, its saving grace was the reaction roll whenever the Player Characters encountered some monsters or an NPC. It is rather an endearing piece dedicated to the author’s favourite roleplaying game mechanic. Skullfungus adds ‘That weird egg you picked up last session? Yeah it just hatched, and this space-god-spawn crawled out…’, a pair of tables that do exactly what their title suggests.

Rounding out Thoughts & Prayers 2023 is the more personal, non-gaming content. In ‘Ryūnosuke Akutagawa’, Jonas Stattin provides a quick examination, but informative of the Japanese short story writer. This is more interesting and possibly useful than the earlier ‘The Hell Realms’ as it is more likely to spur the reader to investigate further. Lastly, ‘Dronedevil and Massgrav’, described as anonymous Stockholm Kartellites, pen ‘2022 in records’, reviews of the best music in the noise, drone, doom, and black genres. These are either space fillers or interesting depending upon the reader’s interest in these genres.

Physically, Thoughts & Prayers 2023 is well presented. Its artwork is more ‘Doom Punk’ than ‘Art Punk’ and works well in black and white.

Thoughts & Prayers 2023 is a good fanzine. It provides support for all three roleplaying games from the Stockholm Kartell—Mörk Borg, Death in Space, and CY_BORG—and more. That the proceeds go to a good cause is a bonus on top of the solid support, the most fun of which are the delightfully vile weapons.

[Fanzine Focus XXXI] CY_OPS Issue.One

On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another Dungeon Master and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will be compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. Not every fanzine is written with the Old School Renaissance in mind, with more recent fanzines being inspired by roleplaying games that, if not part of the Old School Renaissance, are often adjacent to it. One such roleplaying game is CY_BORG, a cyberpunk purgatory that is modelled upon Mörk Borg, the Swedish pre-apocalypse Old School Renaissance retroclone designed by Ockult Örtmästare Games and Stockholm Kartell and published by Free League Publishing.

CY_OPS Issue.One has the distinction of being the first issue of the first fanzine for CY_BORG. Published by LETTUCE following a successful Kickstarter campaign, it also has the distinction of being one of the smallest fanzines, being only A6 in size. Then, at least in its physical format, it has the distinction of coming with its own cloth patches and its sticker, which is designed to be used to fill in the picture of the empty vest (or possibly body armour) found in ‘PATCHES!’ on pages fifty-seven and fifty-eight of the fanzine and then submitted to the editor to not win a prize. Which one of the three distinctions is actually important, if any of them are, is up to the reader to decide. What is important is that CY_OPS Issue.One provides a lot of support and content for CY_BORG and CY_BORG being a Cyberpunk roleplaying game, a lot of that support is technical in nature. Essentially guns and gear. There is more than that in the pages of the fanzine, but nevertheless, a great deal of it consists of guns and gear. Surprisingly, given that its genre is Cyberpunk and it contains a lot of guns and gear, there are no stats in CY_OPS Issue.One. This lack of stats is also intentional. CY_OPS Issue.One is designed to be player facing, meaning that it can be read by both the player and his character and is thus an in-world artefact in its own right. And doing something as low grade as a physical print fanzine would be both punk and low fi, even anti-corporate if you will.

However, the player-facing nature and the lack of stats in CY_OPS Issue.One raises issues of their own. The lack of stats means that the fanzine is all front and no backend. There is nothing for the Game Master to use readily and easily. So the Game Master will need to supply them. Fortunately, the mechanical simplicity of CY_BORG means that this is relatively simple. The downside to the fact that CY_OPS Issue.One is player-facing means that the fanzine is not necessarily a sourcebook for the roleplaying game that the Game Master can simply take something from and add to her game, ready for her players and their characters to encounter and interact with. Instead much of the fanzine works as a series of prompts that the players can choose from and have their characters go and do something with, whether that is undertake a job, make a purchase, or visit. Which the Game Master will respond to, meaning that CY_OPS Issue.One is an improvisation tool as much as it is a fanzine.

Yet the first article in the fanzine very cleverly helps the Game Master out no matter whether she has a copy in print or PDF. The ‘Classified’ section provides a set of adverts that suggest jobs the Player Characters can get involved in. On one level, the Game Master could go away and create her own, but each classified advert is linked to a published adventure, by a QR code in the printed fanzine and a hyperlink in the PDF. For example, “Alert. Reward available for any information on missing C.A.U Board members. Rogue crazed experiment on the loose. Ignore its lies.” links to the scenario, Cybergorgon. This is clever and subtle and nicely done, serving not only as a series of in-game adverts, but adverts for other authors’ adventures.

Only the first article in the fanzine makes use of this device. Elsewhere, ‘BREAKING INTO A CREDITS TELLER MACHINE’ is a guide to robbing every cash dispenser in the city and ensuring the Player Characters have a ready supply of petty cash until some corpo notices and puts in a fix, whilst ‘Know Your Enemy – Rehabilitation Frame’ describes a ghastly piece of ‘police brutality technology’, a prisoner mounted in a remote controlled drone forced to conduct pacification duties and who cannot be freed without setting off the tamper sensors and crushing the captive. Gear comes in a range of forms. The first is in ‘AD BY UNINF3CT3D_R4P3RD0C_666’, who is selling anti-nanite devices, such as the ‘TL.5HAd3s.rcd’ eye mod which visualises nanoswarms and ‘SCREECH_E-Z’ which encrypts your audio and text outputs against nanite detection. There are services too, the best of which is ‘BOTS.4.HIRE’, which offers bots for hire, the payment being a portion of any job undertaken, though a deposit is required if there is the possibility of the bot being damaged. Several sample bots are detailed and nicely illustrated. ‘Bounties’ provide a wide range of targets for the Player Characters to take down, for example, ‘DOLLY _XD’, a pleasure cydroid gone rogue, whilst ‘NuRelics’ describes items and things which the Player Characters could find, retrieve, or steal, such as ‘0x2020’, a master timepiece whose hands stopped at the moment of thermonuclear impact. Doubtless, there are collectors willing to pay to have them. ‘Tech Request’ gets inventively weird with its devices and weapons. For example, the ‘Head_Cannon’, unnervingly, really does shoot heads at targets, whilst the massive ‘Dreihander’ is a sword so big it has to be supported by a mechanical arm all of its own grafted onto the wielder!

Longer pieces such as ‘[Dispatch from an Abandoned Terminal]’ suggest a hacker at work, using a combination of social hacking and subtle hacking to free the bonds of A.I.; ‘Cold Storage Club’ a venue to frequent and an event, a battle of the bands to get involved in—whether as participants, support, or protection; and ‘Rumours About STNGR’ takes the reader into the underground world of street races to talk about “The Queen of the Streets”, known for her electronic eye-scrambling vehicle and her rumoured generosity as well as her determination to win every race. Their length means they are not quite as easy to bring into play. Lastly, ‘Cydonia Hanging Gardens’ describes a hanging footbridge which has been taken over and turned into a venue of sorts, which seems to be a mycobotanist’s dream gone wild, a sterilised, air gapped bar where lichen and other plant life is allowed to grow unfettered and free of the contaminants rife in the rest of the city. The question is, is it just a bar or is there something going on there? And just what are the staff growing and why?

Physically, CY_OPS Issue.One is presented in the Doom Punk style of both CY_BORG and Mörk Borg, though leaning more heavily into the punk style of the former. Consequently, it has a very busy, frazzled and fractured style, though it is not quite as artful as the core rulebook and is thus easier to read.

Ultimately, the contents of CY_OPS Issue.One do need a bit of effort upon the part of the Game Master to bring into play. Some, like the ‘Classified’ section and their linked scenarios are much easier to use than others, but there still is a wide range of content to pick and choose from. This though, is all for the players and their characters to pick and choose from, and for the group wanting more player facing, player driven play, CY_OPS Issue.One is a solid option.