The Other OSR: Candle

The Player Characters know that they are in trouble when they appear somewhere different than to where they were. The Player Characters know that they are in trouble when they appear somewhere to the stench of incense, blood, and burnt hair, and the sounds of screams echoing around the high-vaulted ceiling of the room lit by blood red candles. The Player Characters know that they are in trouble when they appear in a summoning circle, one marked with lines filled with salt and powdered silver, and two of the five cultists in the room dead on the floor, their throats cut. The Player Characters know that they are in trouble when they appear somewhere and towering over them is a devil, skin like blackened iron, his horns craping the ceiling, and steam rising from every one of his pores. He is looking down on them and he is furious. As well as knowing that they are in trouble, the Player Characters have no idea where they are, how they got there, and even if there is a way out of where they are, let alone the reason why the devil is angry at them. And they definitely have no idea that the situation they are in is entirely their own fault.

This is the set-up for Candle: A Reverse Dungeon Crawl. Published by Loot the Room, this is a scenario for Mörk Borg, the Swedish pre-apocalypse Old School Renaissance style roleplaying game designed by Ockult Örtmästare Games and Stockholm Kartell and published by Free League Publishing. Although the scenario can be run at almost any time, it actually requires a bit more set-up, ideally in several adventures run before Candle. This is because of the ‘candle’ of the tile, which is what puts them in their new and terrifying situation. The candle, or Taper, consists of two feet of thin, twisted wax with a goat’s hair wick. When lit it provides light equivalent to a candle visible to the person holding and anyone touching the wielder. Although it burns with the strong smell you would expect from burning hair, the wax never melts and the candle burns indefinitely, and its light is only visible to the wielder and those touching him. The intent is that Player Characters get used to benefiting from it, being able to move in the dark without being seen—although the smell will be a giveaway. At which point, the Game Master runs the scenario and the Player Characters suffer the unforeseen consequences of the Taper’s use and origins.

The devil’s name is Gomduloch. Not only does he hate being summoned, he thinks the Player Characters are somehow connected to his being summoned, and now he hates them. Having butchered some cultists—and definitely willing to butcher more—he is coming for the Player Characters. So not only do the Player Characters have to find their way out of a dungeon filled with cultists, dead bodies, roaming imps and devils, and all the perversity and horrors you would expect of a cultists’ lair, but they have to do that whilst being chased by a very angry devil.

The scenario begins in what would be the last room in any other dungeon, the room where the summoning would be about to take place were this any other dungeon. Then it proceeds to present its rooms backwards, from thirty-three counting down to one, and the exit. Divided over two Levels, one above ground, the other below, the dungeon is relatively linear, but instead of the Player Characters going in and discovering its secrets as they get to towards the end of the dungeon, here they begin by discovering those secrets on the way out. There are plenty of secrets to be found and discoveries to be made. The secrets will help the Player Characters, often to withstand, at least temporarily, the influence and reach of Gomduloch, whilst the discoveries tend towards the gruesome. What else would you expect though, it is a scenario for Mörk Borg after all. The challenge, ultimately, is to discover a way to banish Gomduloch and get away. In the case of Candle, survival is its own reward, so the players and their characters should expect very little reward beyond that.

Physically, Candle: A Reverse Dungeon Crawl is well presented. Each location is given a one-page description and the map for the relevant Level is also included on the two-page spread. Bar the Taper itself, there is no artwork in the book. The only issue with the presentation is in the choice of fount for the sidebars, which is too fine and too light to be read with any ease.

Reverse dungeons are not new. In most cases, they set up the Player Characters as prisoners and expect them to escape their confinement, making them about breaking out, not breaking in, but others flip the dungeon by making the Player Characters the monsters not the heroes. Reverse Dungeon, published by Wizards of the Coast in 2000 is an example of the latter, whilst Escape from Astigar’s Lair, published by Judges Guild in 1980, is an example of the former. Of course, Candle: A Reverse Dungeon Crawl is definitely an example of the former, but given the nature of the Player Characters in Mörk Borg, it could also be argued as being an example of the latter. That said, as much as the Player Characters are monstrous in Mörk Borg, they face worse monsters in Candle.

The problem with Candle: A Reverse Dungeon Crawl is the Taper. The Game Master has to set the scenario by luring the Player Characters not only into finding it, but also using it and coming to love. Without that, the scenario is far less effective. There is no advice for the Game Master to ease or overcome that problem. Nevertheless, once set-up, Candle: A Reverse Dungeon Crawl opens with a bang and keeps the horror going with the desperate Player Characters going to be so glad to have escaped their imprisonment in the cultists’ lair, let alone the anger of Gomduloch!

The Other OSR: The Thing from the Swamp

On the edge of civilisation lies Lake Onda, pregnant with rain, its waters ready to break. Already, they gulp at its banks, choking the earth and saturating the trees and the plants and subsuming them into a mire that spreads and spreads. The inhabitants of the surrounding villagers eke out what life they can, drowning from the moment they were born on the hot, moist air, never knowing the comfort of a respite from the rot and the stench. The lucky few escapes to a life of poverty elsewhere, free of their sodden origins. The unlucky few falls prey to a coalescence of mouldering vegetation and undergrowth into a brain sparked into life by the violent storms that wrack the skies above the lake, its only feeling being one of hunger. The villagers only know it to be something foul and want it ended. King Fathmu’s royal biologist wants a cutting from the creature for his gardens. Some have had visions of a nascent godling born in the swamps and know they would be well rewarded were they to nurture and protect it to its intended status. There is said to be a temple in the swamp with an entrance to the underworld where great riches lie ready for the taking. The right flowers of the swamp can be harvested for useful remedies.

This is the set-up for The Thing from the Swamp. Published by Loot the Room, this is a scenario for Mörk Borg, the Swedish pre-apocalypse Old School Renaissance style roleplaying game designed by Ockult Örtmästare Games and Stockholm Kartell and published by Free League Publishing. The scenario focuses not on the swamp, but on the remains of a building that has slumped into the swamp and what lies underneath its cracked roof. This is a complex of rooms dedicated to researching and testing the creature that lives in the fetid caves beyond, that with the building’s collapse have succumbed to the stagnant waters of the swamp, the walls pierced with tough roots and dripping slime and mould, the air thick with spores ready to infest the lungs.

The remnants of the research and experimentation can be found throughout the complex, but they are not the only things to be found in the waterlogged ruins. There are riches to be recovered—but this is a scenario for Mörk Borg, so not very much, and the fabled flowers to be harvested, but there are also signs of Frankenstein-like experiments too and encounters with various parties with an interest in the creature, perhaps to capture it, perhaps to kill it, and there is also a worshipper of the creature, bidden to tend unto godhood. Most of these will be encountered at random. Perhaps the strangest thing that the Player Characters will find is ‘The Walker’, a mobile mecha suit powered by a human heart, which could be used to attack the creature, but is almost as dangerous to operator as it is to anyone it attacks.

As atmospheric as The Thing from the Swamp is, it is poorly set up. Like other scenarios for the Old School Renaissance, it is designed for emergent play, but it suffers from emergent comprehension too. In other words, the elements of the story that can come into play as the Player Characters explore the complex, also emerge as the Game Master reads the scenario. This is poor design that hinders the Game Master’s preparation efforts. The Game Master should have been given this information upfront as a necessity. However, the technological elements of the scenario, including the obvious signs of pseudo-scientific research being conducted in the complex and ‘The Walker’, make the scenario far more flexible than one would think. Of course, it is easy to plonk almost anywhere remote on the island of Tveland, the default setting for Mörk Borg, but with adjustments, The Thing from the Swamp could work just as well with CY_BORG or Pirate Borg.

Physically, The Thing from the Swamp is well presented. There are some nice touches away from the scenario such as its content warnings being presented as The British Board of Film Classification film classifications from the 1970s. Away from this, the layout is clean and tidy with the map presented on each two-spread marked with the locations being described. It is light on artwork, but the descriptions make up for that. It does need an edit though.

The Thing from the Swamp is an atmospherically soggy dungeon whose secrets will emerge as the Player Characters explore, though they should have been signposted earlier for the Game Master. It otherwise is a classic self-contained dungeon for Mörk Borg, easy to add to a campaign or run on its own.

The Other OSR: The Chapel of the Hanged God

As the world slides towards its seemingly inevitable end, there are those who desperately search for ways to stop its collapse—or at least forestall its ongoing effects, if only not to be the last king, the monarch whose reign would be the ultimate in failure. King Fathmu IX searches for ways in which his realm can be maintained rather than lost and now his eyeless scryers say they have seen traces of Verhu in the catacombs beneath the ruined Hangman’s Church, deep in the Valley of the Unfortunate Undead. Are these visions one more sign of the impending apocalypse or does Verhu’s chapel hide secrets that will enable the kingdom to survive? King Fathmu IX sends the worst of his servants to find out—his crypt breakers. They are given a map and a simple mission. Traverse the ruined paths and lands of the Valley of the Unfortunate Undead, gain entry to the ruins of The Chapel of the Hanged God and descend into the tunnels below, survey their extents, and take what they can, before reporting back to the capital with what information and evidence they can find.

This is the set-up for The Chapel of the Hanged God. This is a pointcrawl and dungeon adventure published by Loot the Room for use with Mörk Borg, the Swedish pre-apocalypse Old School Renaissance style roleplaying game designed by Ockult Örtmästare Games and Stockholm Kartell and published by Free League Publishing. This is a classic scenario for Mörk Borg, packed with its trademark mix of misery, weirdness, and horror. So much so of the latter that it carries a well-deserved content warning for suicide, self-harm, cannibalism, mind control, and more. Make no mistake, The Chapel of the Hanged God contains strong themes, suicide especially, so the warnings are necessary.

In terms of content, The Chapel of the Hanged God is a pointcrawl consisting of eight locations, one of the actual Chapel of the Hanged God. These are connected by a series paths, some known, some hidden, the hidden ones have to be found, but consist of shorter routes. All of the routes, whether hidden or not, shift and change, so that sometimes the journey along them is shorter, other times longer. This is handled by rolling a number of dice to determine how many ‘watches’ it takes to traverse along any one path. Each day consists of six four-hour watches, two of which can be spent travelling, two exploring or foraging, and two resting. So, it might take as little as two watches, or two days, for the Player Characters to make their way along a path, but on another attempt, it might take twenty-four watches, or twelve days.

Similarly, the various locations take a varying number of watches to cross. Seven of these are given a two-page spread, with an illustration on the left hand page and the description, along with a random encounter table on the right hand page. They include ‘The Wetlands’ where those who shamed themselves in service to King Fathmu IX and have been consigned to a pit of black filth which they wade across on stilts trawling the rot and the ordure for treasures that will enable them to return the king’s service; a maze of shifting walls, filled with writhing fat worms, faces leering out of the walls, and beset by torrential rains, as guards stand on the walls to stop the shambling dead and prisoners from escaping, and the Player Characters can search for treasures or a way out; and a Hermit’s Hut, wrapped in thick chains and with thick black smoke and heavy ash pouring from its chimney, whilst inside the hermit is bound and melded to the floor by thorny roots, his mouth the source of both the black smoke and heavy ash, and prophecies of dubious quality.

Eventually, the Player Characters will find their way to the ruins of the Chapel of the Hanged God. Inside is a dead man who speaks with one of three voices, making promises and attempting to persuade them that they can help the Player Characters. Of course, these are all lies and each voice is actually a demon trapped in the corpse. Below lies an ancient crypt dedicated to the Hanged God, full of looters and profane writings and dedications, but long abandoned bar one twisted servant who awaits the return of the Hanged God. There are worse things to be found though, including a gospel of the Hanged God that if read may enrapture a Player Character, proselytise him to worship the Hanged God, and even emulate the Hanged God and string himself up (this is where the content warning is required and the book actually repeats it here again to enforce the point). The ultimate secret below the Chapel of the Hanged God is the existence of the Book of the Hanged God. This vile tome is made from the skin of the god’s last priest, but is not yet complete and at least one of the Player Characters could be driven to follow the directions marked on a number of maps created via foul means—a combination of swallowing a ball of human skin, auto asphyxiation, and vomiting—each of which leads to the location of missing pages from the book. Once the book is complete it creates a book akin to one of the four described in IKHON, each of which provides numerous benefits, but at a cost in terms of sacrifices necessary and potential aftereffects. Although the Player Characters do carry a map marked with routes to the Chapel of the Hanged God, once there, it begins to change and push the owner to seek the catacomb where the Book of the Hanged God is kept, almost as if it wanted to be united with it…

Physically, The Chapel of the Hanged God embraces the neon bright colours of the artpunk style of Mörk Borg, but not the actual style. Thus, the colours are big and bold, and so is the layout with the map of the Valley of the Unfortunate Undead. The cartography, big and blocky, is serviceable at best. Despite the artwork being somewhat better than the cartography, the book does look most basic in several places.

The Chapel of the Hanged God can be run as a one-shot, the Player Characters essentially stumbling upon a map to the Valley of the Unfortunate Undead, but it works better as a scenario in which they in service—willingly or not—of King Fathmu IX and so are driven to search the loathsome, often repulsive confines of the Valley of the Unfortunate Undead to find clues and secrets that might hold back the apocalypse that everyone knows is coming. This is a journey into revulsion and perhaps the only thing driving the Player Characters onwards is the knowledge that they might find something to give them hope in the Chapel of the Hanged God, though this being a scenario for Mörk Borg, they may find something, but it may not be what they, or anyone, is really looking for.

Solitaire: CHVLR

The war is unending, against an enemy that threatens us all and seemingly cannot be stopped. The only things which can stand up to them are the colossal bipedal robots known the CHVLR—or ‘Chevalier’ units. Developed as part of experimental military programme, it was discovered that the pilots were the young pilots, the adolescents who could combine their brains with their reflexes. Now you have been selected as the newest recruit. You may have been a willing candidate and volunteered for the programme or you may have been drafted unwillingly even though your test scores proved you were capable. Your surgery is complete and you have been fitted with the SCS—or ‘Seiygo Control System’—implant which will keep you connected to your CHVLR and you are ready for basic training. Yet there will be no time for your training, basic or otherwise. You are needed on the battlefield and your only training will be real battles that you learn from or die. Perhaps you will. Perhaps you will survive to become the veteran of many fights. Perhaps you will die, your life cut short. What you have to rely on is hope. Is it powerful enough that you will survive or is its absence so powerful that you fear failure, let alone death?

In CHVLR you are that young pilot, cast onto that battlefield years too early, augmented and unready—perhaps unwilling, but without another choice. CHVLR is a solo journalling game published Black Cats Gaming, best known for The Spy Game: A Roleplaying Game of Action & Espionage. As its set-up suggests, it is inspired by mecha anima such as Neon Genesis Envangelion, Mobile Suit Gundam, and Robotech. For its mechanics it uses the rules and format of The Wretched, the Science Fiction journalling game published by Loot the Room. Thus, the game requires an ordinary deck of playing cards without the Jokers, a six-sided die, a Jenga or similar tower block game, and a set of tokens. In addition, the player will require a means of recording the results of the game. It is suggested that audio or video longs work best, but a traditional journal will also work too. In terms of background, CHVLR offers very little—and intentionally so. Beyond the fact that the pilot of the CHVLR is young and inexperienced, and that there is desperate war being fought, nothing else is known and everything else is up to the player to define as he records his experiences and responses in his journal. Where the battle is fought? Up to the player to decide. Who is the enemy? Up to the player to decide. How will the pilot and his CHVLR react to the stresses of war? Up to the player to decide. What will the pilot and his CHVLR encounter? Up to the game to decide.

Play proceeds from one mission to the next. Each mission the player will draw a random number of cards and then turn them over one by one, following the instructions of each and recording the outcome before moving on to the next. The four suites correspond to different aspects of the mission. Hearts represent the pilot’s ‘Personal Files’, his physical health and mental state of mind; Clubs are his ‘CHVLR’ and the bond he has with it; Diamonds represent the ‘Battlefield’, the ruins of cities ravaged by war and beyond; and Spades are ‘The Enemy’, each a direct interaction with them or the aftermath of their actions. The cards correspond to particular prompts in CHVLR and it is these that the player is responding to and recording the consequences and thoughts of his character. As play progresses, there will be prompts too to draw from the tumbling tower. Sometimes, the pulled brick is actually removed from the game, sometimes the player is instructed to track tokens which if they run out will indicate that this is his pilot’s last mission. If at any time, the tower collapses, the game is over as the CHVLR is too damaged to continue operating and the catastrophic failure results in the player’s death. At this point, the player reflects upon his pilot’s career and record, and considers who might be receiving it.

Like all of journalling games based on The Wretched, the subject matters of CHVLR are dark and distressing. Here those subject matters are child soldiers, physical injury and psychological stress, and more. The game advises that the player stop playing should he have issues with the prompts that game gives him.

Physically, CHVLR is cleanly and tidily presented. There is no art bar that on the front and back cover.

CHVLR is a bleak and foreboding journalling game. This is in fact the bleakest and darkest of The Wretched clones given the subject matter and it is almost a relief that the play should no last no longer than a session (or two at most).

The Other OSR: A Waning Light

There is a realm that lies between the land and the sea that is neither land nor sea. It is said that this is where the giants died, their blood spilling as a gift that turned the realm into something in between, a land of peat and oil and mud that languorously discharges into the Endless Sea. This is Fattvëlland, the Great Slick, beyond Targ-Dungel and the festering swamps of the Rotlands, and here no flame burns except that which cannot die and burns constant below the peat and the oil and the mud. The Great Wick drinks of the land and gives birth to shunned and raging Wickheads, trimming them before sending unwanted and unloved out into the lands on the other side of Targ-Dungel and the Rotlands. Their purpose unknown to themselves and the Great Wick, no Wickhead has ever returned—or seemed to want to. Until now. This is the set-up for A Waning Light, a scenario for use with Mörk Borg, the Swedish pre-apocalypse Old School Renaissance retroclone designed by Ockult Örtmästare Games and Stockholm Kartell and published by Free League Publishing.

A Waning Light is best described as a ‘swamp crawl’ in which the Player Characters are hired by a Wickhead called Lygan, whose wick is growing short and who wishes to return to his point of origin before the God Tree and pluck a new thread and thus wick from it. He promises them riches and a sight which no mortal man has seen before. Adding A Waning Light to an on-going campaign is relatively easy. Its location can be slid onto any coast and in addition, there are suggestions which tie various other scenarios for Mörk Borg to the Great Slick. These are Rotback Sludge, Treasures of the Troll King, and Putrescence Regnant and all three come with helpful notes on how to make the connections. A table of rumours serves as other means to spur the Player Characters to action.

Published by Loot the Room, it presents a sludge-ridden region where geysers of oil blot the sky, goblins scavenge on long stilts, baleful balls of light whisper secrets, and tar oozes blend below the oil slicked water ready to strike at the unwary. There are strange henges to be found, their stones cracked by black ivy, a colony of mournful goblins who have turned their backs on their wild and dangerous days, and an ancient dragon, Nithul, her brittle bones turned silver with age and her wings pinned to the mound of silver she sits on by foot-long iron spikes. Her only company is the calcified statue of the knight who was trying to kill her, his sword still held high, and she is half mad with loneliness. These encounters are fantastically forlorn, fitting the sombre, even woeful nature of the land. The heart of the adventure lies in its two dungeons—‘Inside Julud’ and ‘The Sink’.

The first and smaller of the two is ‘Inside Julud’. Located within the skull of a dead giant, this is a mini-dungeon consisting of fourteen locations across two levels, the lower level, either partially or wholly flooded. There is constant movement within the flooded and submerged rooms below, primarily of water and natural gas, and this is decidedly hazardous environment. Unfortunately, there is really very little reason to explore its rooms beyond greed and curiosity and given its nature it may be one that the Player Characters readily avoid all together. Perhaps a rumour or hook or too might have pushed the Player Characters to the location beyond mere chance—and perhaps the Game Master might want to develop one or two herself. Finally, despite being in the head of a giant, ‘Inside Julud’ does not feel like it is.

The second and much longer of the two dungeons is ‘The Sink’. Here the Player Characters may eventually discover the God Tree and Lygan find a way to replace his wick so that his memories need not be lost. A mixture of worked rooms and caverns, it is double the size of the ‘Inside Julud’, full of soot, oily vapours, ancient industrial machinery still covered in thick grease and dirty lubricant, and a dampness that pours in from the swamp above. Despite being a ruin, the cult operating here lends the place a sense of purpose, even if the main NPC here, the leader of the Moth cultists, is underwritten inn terms of motivations and reactions, especially in light of the attention given to the prophetic, Three Flames, the past, present, and future Voice of the Flame, the burning equivalent of the three witches from Macbeth or the Graeae from Greek Mythology. Again, this is something that the Game Master might like to develop herself.

Physically, A Waning Light is not as terse as perhaps other scenarios and dungeons are for Mörk Borg and there is a lot more description than you would normally expect. All locations are marked easily—though not always accurately in some cases—on the map, which appears on each page of the dungeon for easy navigation by the Game Master. The writing is clear and in general, presented in a bolder fashion than other scenarios for Mörk Borg. In places, the Game Master is left to wonder who or what something is until the book explains it.

A Waning Light is in need of a few hooks to get the Player Characters to explore some of the locations in the swamp and the Game Master may also want to develop the motivations of the NPCs further, as well. Fix those and A Waning Light will provide the means to explore the origins of the Wickheads from Mörk Borg, memorably set across a festering, oily sludge of a swamp, full of of mournful and scarred locations and encounters.

Solitaire: The Wretched

The Wretched is lost. The crew of the intergalactic salvage ship is all dead, bar one. Adrift between stars with its engines having failed and a hostile alien lifeform having stalked and killed most of the crew, you made one last, brave stand. You drove the alien off the ship, flushing it out via an airlock. You hoped that this would kill it. It did not. Having seen it kill your friends and family aboard, it now scrabbles and skitters across the hull of the ship, searching for a way in, for a way to reach its last victim aboard ship—you. Unfortunately, you cannot truly escape it, but you can hold on and hold out for rescue. Someone out there has to find you. First, you have to keep life support going long enough to repair and activate the distress beacon, and then hope that someone will respond, all whilst fending off the predations of the alien lurking on the other side of the ship’s hull.

This is the set-up for The Wretched, a Science Fiction journalling game published by Loot the Room. Clearly and self-confessedly inspired by Alien and similar films, The Wretched is a game about isolation, fear, and perseverance and potentially, survival in the face of overwhelming odds. The game requires an ordinary deck of playing cards without the Jokers, a six-sided die, a Jenga or similar tower block game, and a set of tokens. In addition, the player will require a means of recording the results of the game. It is suggested that audio or video longs work best, and they are in keeping with the genre. A traditional journal will also work too. The Wretched is a played out as a series of days, the player, actually the flight engineer of The Wretched, undertaking a series of tasks each day and responding to prompts before ending the day by recording its events and his thoughts in his personal log. The odds are that the lone crewman is unlikely to survive, either due to catastrophic failure of the ship’s systems—which will happen if the tower block collapses or the alien finding him. There are multiple ways in which the crewman can fail and die, but only two ways to survive. Either repair and turn on the beacon and then survive long enough for a rescue vessel to come or to repair the ship’s engines and blast out of the situation he is in, leaving the alien behind.

The four suites correspond to different aspects of the ship and its environment. Hearts represents ship’s systems—life support, water purification, and the like; Diamonds are its physical structure—hull, opening and closing doors; Clubs are the crew—remnants of their presence such as their rent bodies and their tools and possessions; and Spades are the Creature—physically present or simply knowing that it is out there… Whilst the presence of the Creature veers between ominous and terrifying, the most horrifying of encounters are to be had with the crew, or rather with what they have left behind, both of themselves and their belongings, as well as memories of them. Here is where the sense of loss and perhaps the nature of sacrifices made in order for the player to survive, come to the fore. The player will have between one and six encounters like this each day, the player taking notes in readiness to record the details in his journal or log. Some end with the instruction to remove a block from the tower block game. Several have already been removed at start of play, so the structural integrity of the ship is imperilled from the outset. It is, however, unlikely that the player will go a turn without having to remove a single block.

Physically, The Wretched is cleanly and tidily presented. It is lightly illustrated, but the artwork is excellent.

The is a fantastic economy of emotion to The Wretched. Like every Journalling game, its tension builds and builds, exacerbated by the looming presence of both the alien and the possibility of the tower block game’s collapse—and thus the end of the game. Yet this is made better—or is that worse?—when the player’s reports and thoughts are recorded rather than simply noted down. Recording the daily logs as either audio or video adds intimacy and emotion to the play through, that is far more difficult to capture on paper. If there is an issue with The Wretched, it is that there are limited options to play more than once, but that experience is going to be fraught, frightening, and claustrophobically intimate.

Mörk Borg Minis

The pamphlet scenario or supplement packs as much information as can be got onto an A4 sheet of paper down in a trifold format and aims to make it playable. First seen as a support for roleplaying games such as MOTHERSHIP Sci-Fi Horror Roleplaying Game and Mörk Borg, the format enables publishers to present smaller content in distinct—and succinct—packages of their own that are quick and easy to prepare and run at the table. In many cases these pamphlet scenarios are available in collected bundles as well as singly, enabling the Game Master to pick and choose which one she wants and which ones she wants to run. The format, of course, has its limitations, primarily those of limited space and arrangement of information in that space. This can often lead to poor explanations of the context for their content, or worse, inadequate or missing explanations. In the case of the latter, the Game Master will have to supply that after reading through the rest of the content, whilst for the former, she will simply need to read through the pamphlet for it to make sense.

Loot the Room has published several of these pamphlets. Two are compatible with Mörk Borg, the Swedish pre-apocalypse Old School Renaissance retroclone designed by Ockult Örtmästare Games and Stockholm Kartell and published by Free League Publishing. One is a generic fantasy adventure. All three fall into the ‘GrimDark’ fantasy—or fantasy horror—genre and like the majority of content for the Old School Renaissance, are easily adaptable to the Dungeons & Dragons rules variant of the Gamer Master’s choice.

—oOo—

The God of Many Faces is not only compatible with Mörk Borg, but also set in the city at the heart of Mörk Borg—Galgenbeck, and it shares the Artpunk sensibilities of Mörk Borg in neon yellow as its choice of colour. It begins on the steps of the Cathedral of the Two-Headed Basilisks. Rumours ripple out and back again that a prophet has appeared proclaiming Verhu to be a fraud, that the Calendar of Nechrubel is sham, and the Miseries are the work of the Basilisks themselves. The Basilisks must be torn down and in their stead a new god will arise—the God of Many Faces, The Eternally Open Eye. As the rabble before the steps beats drums and cries for donations to their new god, the Player Characters must decide upon their course of action and examine their motivations. Perhaps they have to gather information upon The Many-Faced God upon pain of death, simply want to witness them first hand, seek salvation and a new life from them for a sick family member, or as an agent of Two-Headed Basilisks, just stop them by any means.

The God of Many Faces is a hex-crawl across the city of Galgenbeck. Just limited to ten hexes, the Player Characters will travel back and forth across the city in search of The Many-Faced God, constantly finding signs of their passing, including warriors with their eyes sewn closed; a rampaging Many-Faced Mare, sacred to The Many-Faced God, so killing it will be an act of blasphemy; and apostates ready to convert the will even as they castigate and execute the unwilling. There are a couple of encounters which the Player Characters must have in order to trigger the final encounter, so the Game Master will need to improvise what happens if the Player Characters need to return to previously visited locations. Other than a quartet of new Sacred Scrolls, The God of Many Faces is a short, direct affair, which can played through in a single session. It does suffer from not being quite clear as to what is going on, at least initially, as the explanation is on the inside back page of the trifold, with the full locations, stats, and map placed across the centre spread. However, read through that and the Game Master has in hands a riotously raucous adventure set across a city in uproar and religious fever that is easy to read through, and prepare in minutes.

—oOo—

SNÜNGEON is a molluscular dungeon that is easy to drop into a location. The husks of dead titan snails litter the landscape, slimy, grimy, and simply odd. Others come to the field of husks to find refuge, the secret treasures left behind by the giant molluscs, or for darker ends. For the Player Characters, might need to find the dead flesh of a titan snail to clear his debts, another to hunt down rivals who have hidden amongst the husks, or simply because wants a snail nail helm because they are cool! SNÜNGEON is linear, its innards spiralling deeper, odd and alien… This snail-themed dungeon might not contain all that the Player Characters are looking for, but what they will find is a secret cult of snail-worshippers, working towards their own molluscular transformation, and snail assassins which creep along the ceiling…

SNÜNGEON has an oozy atmosphere and a mature tone that echoes that of the Xenomorphs of Alien. It is a straightforward dungeon in a different type of environment, which runs to just seven, decently detailed locations. Again, easy to prepare and run, it is actually presented in a more accessible manner so that it is easer to prepare than The God of Many Faces.

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The Grasping Tunnels is not for, or compatible with, Mörk Borg, but it could be. It does take longer to prepare because it is systems agnostic and thus needs stats to be created by the Game Master. Once done, it is easy to drop into almost any location. It opens with the collapse of a patch of earth in a fallow field, followed by the expulsion of a blast of foetid air. What is in the tunnel? Where the air come from? Does it represent a danger to the children who used to play in the field? Some have already ventured below, only to return, wounded of body and mind, dragging their dead companions with them, and whispering of the grasping claws and teeth to be found below.

The Grasping Tunnels has Lovecraftian undertones in that its tunnels are home to strange beast with long arms which can snake the length of many corridors in the net, grasping for food to drag back to its babbling, tongue-filled maws. There is a strong sense of claustrophobia too, as the Player Characters face these flailing, grasping limbs in a series of lightless rooms and tunnels of crumbling earth. This is made all the worse by every hand being different—and odd, there being a table provided for the Game Master to roll randomly each time one is encountered. There are no suggestions as what kind of power or ability to pitch the adventure at, though the Player Characters do need access to decent magic, silver weapons, or magical weapons to effectively defeat the creature. The Grasping Tunnels is also clearly laid out and thus easy to use, and overall, provides a horrifying descent into the earth for the Player Characters.

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All three pamphlet scenarios are easy to use, in general, well presented, and above all, incredibly quick and easy to prepare. In the cases of The God of Many Faces and SNÜNGEON, very easy to prepare, taking only a few minutes. Overall, adventures like The God of Many Faces and SNÜNGEON, as well as The Grasping Hands, are decent mini-encounters, but worth holding in reserve when the Game Master needs something quick to run. Of the three The God of Many Faces stands out for capturing the rapture of a religious riot and making the Player Characters work their way through it.

The Other OSR: Treasures Of The Troll King

Every city is built on the ruins of a previous city. Buildings are torn down and new ones built in their stead. As the decades pass, a city changes. The torn down buildings are forgotten and their histories lost, and the new city continues to build upwards and over. What is left underneath are cellars and tunnels and sewers and the imprints of the previous buildings. Deep in the bowels below the ancient city of Galgenbeck lies the sunken chapel that houses Niduk, the Troll King, exiled long ago and driven into the darkness, to rot, wither, and be forgotten. Whilst the existence of the Troll King has passed into legend, the existence of his treasure has not. Whether you are dying and believe a cure to your malady might be found amongst his hoard, you have a debt to pay and his hoard is ready source of coins, you leapt into the sewers and ran into Niduk by mistake, or you simply want to rob him, somehow, you found your way into the foetid, stinking tunnels below the oldest parts of the city of Galgenbeck, in the land of Tveland, hemmed in by the tunnel walls and the ordure from the city above, but desperate and determined to find the chapel of Niduk, the Troll King, and get out again.

This is the set-up for Treasures Of The Troll King, a sewer-crawl and dungeon for use with Mörk Borg, the Swedish pre-apocalypse Old School Renaissance retroclone designed by Ockult Örtmästare Games and Stockholm Kartell and published by Free League Publishing. The adventure itself is published by Loot the Room, following a successful Kickstarter campaign and is a relatively short, one or two-session scenario keyed around five locations—one major and five minor. The five minor locations include a collapsed building where the Player Characters are likely to encounter Niduk for the first time, a well, a graffitied gallery, and a hanging garden—the latter consisting of roots hanging down from the ceiling. The majority of these described in a succinct style, but the well is expanded upon to brilliant effect. It is not just a well, but a wishing well and a wishing with a pile of coins each with an associated unfulfilled wish. If any of the Player Characters pilfer the coins, then they become responsible for the wishes and are cursed to fulfil them. This carries on after the Treasures Of The Troll King has been played through, potentially setting up a campaign of the Player Characters being forced do ‘good’ things as they attempt to deal with all of the wishes. There is a table to randomise the wishes, but this almost deserves a book of its own.

The main room area consists of the chapel where Niduk has been hiding out all of this time. This has the feel of a dungeon, an ancient ruin strewn with the dead and detritus, half-haunted temple, half-charnel chapel. It consists of just eleven locations each described in detail, but without overwhelming the Game Master. The chapel is damp, dank, grim and grimy, haunted by ghosts and the undead, its slide into sewage-soaked ruin transcends the traditional depiction of the gothic church. There are hints of its former grandeur and gothic edifice behind all of the dirt and the decay, but they are long faded and despoiled. With only a few rooms, there are relatively few encounters to be had in the chapel, and even fewer random ones, but the ultimate encounter is of course, with Niduk, the Troll-King, himself. He receives a two-page spread of his, as does his den, for he may encountered slumbering there, or if their activities have alerted him to their presence, stalking the Player Characters. He is a great behemoth of a beast with feats capable of pulverising a Player Character in one blow. The Player Characters will be very lucky to defeat him—and that is on their second encounter.

If the Chapel of Niduk, the Troll King, is the ultimate destination in Treasures Of The Troll King, the first part of Treasures Of The Troll King is all about getting there. The route is not mapped out. In fact, there is no route. Instead, the Player Characters engage in a point-crawl—or even ‘sewer-crawl’—with even the points, or rather, the ‘spaces’ as Treasures Of The Troll King calls them, randomly encountered. The spaces of the point-crawl themselves are the aforementioned minor locations, the collapsed building where Niduk’s Banquet can be found, the graffitied gallery, the hanging garden, and the well. Of these, only Niduk’s Banquet is mandatory as an encounter, intended to provide the Player Characters with a foreshadowing of the nature of the creature they hunt. In between the spaces, the Game Master rolls for random encounters, with two small tables providing a mix of reusable and once-only encounters. Effectively, Treasures Of The Troll King is a linear adventure, though it will not feel like that in play.

In addition, Treasures Of The Troll King provides tables of reasons for the Player Characters to go looking, rumours, treasures to be found, new scrolls—both clean and unclean, and a table of sewer features to add flavour and detail to the tunnels as the Player Characters explore.

Physically, Treasures Of The Troll King is surprising. It approaches the artpunk style of Mörk Borg, but never steps over the line into the artpunk style. Consequently, the scenario is actually a little less busy and a lot more accessible, and thus easier to run from the page. The scenario is also written with some fantastic descriptions and details that add to the muck and the mire, and then twist it further in short fashion.

Treasures Of The Troll King combines the doom-laden artpunk style Mörk Borg with the pairing of a flavoursomely procedurally-created point crawl and some loathsome locations. The chapel itself is signature location of course, but the brilliance of the well of unfulfilled wishes almost equals it in terms of play potential—though that play will become apparent after the ‘Treasures of the Troll King’ have been stolen and the Player Characters have returned to the surface. Treasures Of The Troll King is an excellent and easy to run mini-dungeon, atmospherically foul, and a great addition to any Mörk Borg campaign.