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 2023’ 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.

The Other OSR: Psalm IV:I

As the world turns and dies and the prophecies of the Two-Headed Basilisk come true one after another, the coming apocalypse edges ever closer. On the last land in the Endless Sea there is no hope for those who have survived the pre-apocalyptic events to date, but for some, faith in the Two-Headed Basilisk and her prophecies can blind them to all else and for others it can lead them away from the prophecies of the Two-Headed Basilisk seeking solace and hope in other gods, false gods. In the family of one priest of one church, both of these things have happened. When her father’s devotion to the Two-Headed Basilisk blinded him to the love she sought, jealousy took root in the daughter and impregnated her, leading to the birth of a demon son. Aghast at the two-headed monstrosity and its wailing from mouth and the heresies whispered from the other, the father’s faith was broken and he cast both daughter and grandson into the earth under his church, where they fell under the influence of the vile-servant of They, the Seamstress. As the boy grew and wailed in the darkness, the Seamstress filled son and daughter with dark dreams until she became the Queen of the Darkest Chamber and he founded the Order of the Two-Headed Man. She wants her son to be worshipped as a god and he wants to take the prophecies of his demonic grandson to the people and the Order of the Two-Headed Man to supplant the Church of the Two-Headed Basilisk. Are their wishes one more heresy against the Church of the Two-Headed Basilisk or do they actually fulfil the prophecies of the Two-Headed Basilisk as was foretold?

This is the set-up for Psalm IV:I, a scenario for Mörk Borg, the Swedish pre-apocalypse Old School Renaissance retroclone designed by Ockult Örtmästare Games and Stockholm Kartell and published by Free League Publishing. Published by Storeywood following a successful Kickstarter campaign, Psalm IV:I is a short, vile and bloody scenario that interprets ‘Psalm IV:I’ of the Two-Headed Basilisk’s prophecies, enabling the Player Characters to explore its revelations and both its ramifications and those of their actions as events in and under the church of the Two-Headed Man play out. Thus, it is designed around a specific timed event in the pre-apocalypse of Mörk Borg, although the Player Characters—and even the players—will not be aware of this. Alternatively, Psalm IV:I can simply be used as a short encounter in the Game Master’s campaign, easily slotting into that or any one of the various hexcrawl adventures published for Mörk Borg as a singular encounter of its own.

Psalm IV:I includes several hooks to get the Player Characters involved, including a local priest—the Father—beginning to flay and crucify the local townspeople, the Church of the Two-Headed Basilisk hiring them to suppress the Father’s heresy, a priest escaped from the Order of the Two-Headed Man asking them for their help, and their hearing rumours of a Two-Headed Man promising to save them. It provides a detailed background and backstory to the situation at the single church dedicated to the Order of the Two-Headed Man, including a lengthy timeline. Motivations are given for the quartet of involved in the story—the Daughter/Queen of the Darkest Chamber, her son, her Father, and the Seamstress—so that it is possible to interact with them and even side with them depending upon their actions and attitudes. Ways are suggested how such interactions might play out as are the possible effects of the Player Characters’ choices.

As a place to explore Psalm IV:I describes three distinct areas. These consist of the Courtyard with the Father’s crucified victims and the blood-trailed church; the Undercroft, the cramped crypts which have been twisted into the service of worshipping the Queen of the Darkest Chamber even as the Seamstress lurks, and ‘The Darkest Chambers’, where no light can reach or shine, and the Son wails and whispers piteously… The maps to each location are clear and Psalm IV:I adheres to the Mörk Borg format of keying maps and locations and their descriptions on the same page.

Psalm IV:I only introduces the one monster, the ‘Undead Courtier’, drawing primarily upon those in the Mörk Borg rule book. It does provide a guide for handling fear in the Undercroft, which includes exploiting the possible phobias of the Player Characters, which can be accrued either during character creation or through the result of trauma during play. There is also the means detailed to overcome the phobia as well. These phobia rules are optional though.

Physically, Psalm IV:I is a small book. It is mostly done in black with its artwork almost scratched into the pages in white or crayon-like colours. The effect is weird and creepy and adds to the gloom and sense of darkness that pervades the whole book.

Psalm IV:I is a solid scenario for Mörk Borg. The Game Master will need to make sure that she grasps the motivations of the four NPCs in the scenario, but otherwise Psalm IV:I is easy to add to a campaign, drop into a hexcrawl, or run as a one-shot, serving up a helping of spurned love and double heresy.

The Other OSR: Operation S.A.N.T.A.

Traditionally, roleplaying scenarios involving Christmas have the Player Characters doing one of two things. Either Santa is unable to complete his round the world trip and cannot deliver of the presents to boys and girls everywhere, so the Player Characters have to complete the task for him, or Santa’s grotto is under attack or he has been kidnapped, probably by the Elfish Workers’ Collective or decidedly non-Christmassy Trolls, and so the Player Characters have to go and save him. In the process, the Player Characters save Christmas and everyone is happy. Which is boring and a cliché and does not exactly reflect that sometimes Christmas is not always as good everyone hopes and sometimes it is even rotten. So, for a change, why not have a Christmas roleplaying scenario is also rotten and horrible? Why not make Father Christmas the evil for change? Why not run Operation S.A.N.T.A., an anti-festive scenario in a world where it turns out that Santa is a horrible tentacled alien who has turned the North Pole—technically Greenland—into a dystopian, nuclear waste spoiled horror-land, Polar Bears are still grumpy and hungry, but Penguins turn out to be anarchists able to talk and use tools, the latter very badly. Operation S.A.N.T.A. is not going to ruin Christmas for you, but it might make you appreciate the one you are going to have, because it serves up the worst December the twenty-fifth that you can imagine.

Operation S.A.N.T.A.—or the Strategic Annihilation of a Nefarious Tentacled Alien—is published by Beyond Cataclysm following a successful Kickstarter campaign, and includes stats for use with two different, Old School Renaissance adjacent roleplaying games. One is 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 other is Troika!, the Science Fantasy roleplaying game of baroque weirdness published by the Melsonian Arts Council. That said, the technical nature of the setting means that it would work better with Troika! rather than with Mörk Borg, but the tone of Mörk Borg fits Operation S.A.N.T.A. better than Troika! does. That said, Operation S.A.N.T.A. is easily adapted to the roleplaying game of the Game Master’s choice.

At the top of the world and thus at the heart of the scenario sits Rødt-På-Hvidt, an alien tentacled being, all red and white—or rather red on white—which crashed to Earth in Gertrud Rask Land, the very northern-most tip of Greenland. Its exact plans are unknown, but it has twisted both the land and all those who enter the region where it holds sway. Thus, has arisen the legends of the Elves in red and white with thin stature and pointed ears, but that is the least of their mutations. Aerial reconnaissance has revealed bear patches of rock, free of the ice, clouds of toxic mist, zones of unexpected life in the arctic region, and deep pools of liquid radiation. Few stand against Rødt-På-Hvidt, who continues his experiments unhindered, his ‘Elves’ loyal and his ‘E.E.’ Elite Elves troop ready to defend the strange patch of land that is his. The Polar bears might snap and claw at the Elves if they could, for they hate Rødt-På-Hvidt, but only slightly more than they hate everything else. The Penguins would bring down Rødt-På-Hvidt immediately, were it not for the fact that every action needs a mandate of the masses and so vote on anything and everything, and they are too busy putting up subversive posters and developing an amazing array of fish-flavoured ice cream. Then of course, there is the United Nations, which would like something done about the region, so it might suggest that Canada or the USA investigate…

Operation S.A.N.T.A. suggests reasons why the Player Character might have come to Gertrud Rask Land and how and why they got there, but suggests that the players develop these in play too. The majority of the scenario is dedicated to describing the locations of the region, from the Polar Bear Compound and the Elfanage to the Power Plant and Santa’s Grotto Lair. Each is given a page or two of detail and a colour illustration or map which neatly depicts the location. The locations are presented with a minimal of fuss, enough for the Game Master to bring into play, but still leaving plenty of room to add or create content of her own. The monsters are given similar space, if not more, to help them come to life, especially the Elves and their mutations. Included alongside that are the Nisse, mythological creatures from Nordic folklore associated with the winter solstice and Christmas. These can replace the Elves already in the scenario or even be included alongside them if the Game Master wants to add an element of factionalism to the play of Operation S.A.N.T.A.

Physically, Operation S.A.N.T.A. is presented in big bold colour. Suitable then for a Christmas celebration, but not one of jollity and joy. Operation S.A.N.T.A. twists the annual festivities into a journey into the unknown, to face anarchy in the Arctic and horror for the holiday, but not in the traditional way. Operation S.A.N.T.A. serves up a scenario that is as poisonous as Christmas can be, fouls the festivities, and could just make Christmas an utter catastrophe. 

The Other OSR: Tyrannosaur Inside

Scenarios set on or within the bodies of enormous creatures are not new. For example, Genial Jack, is set entirely within the body of a blue whale and On the Shoulders of Giants is set not on the body of a single god, but the bodies of twelve gods. However, Tyrannosaur Inside – A T-Rex Crawl Adventure is very probably the first scenario to be set inside the body of the most notorious dinosaur of all time—the tyrannosaurus rex. Which is both bonkers and fun, but also, a bit “Tell me again, how I use this?”. Published by Beyond Cataclysm Books following a successful Kickstarter campaign, the scenario is designed to be played using 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. (In addition, it should be noted that a version is also available for use with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition.) It is not specifically set in the same doomed land as Mörk Borg, in fact, it is probably too over the top, if not a little silly, yet if the Game Master wants to set it in the same world, there is nothing to stop her. At best, and because it does involve a fifteen-thousand-pound meat-eating theropod, Tyrannosaur Inside – A T-Rex Crawl Adventure, works as a one-shot. This does not mean Tyrannosaur Inside – A T-Rex Crawl Adventure cannot be dropped into a campaign. It has the same effect as dropping a tyrannosaurus rex onto a village, which is exactly how the scenario starts.

Tyrannosaur Inside – A T-Rex Crawl Adventure begins in small village whose inhabitants have been scared out of their wits after a dinosaur out of the cretaceous period has appeared their midst. Of course, the Player Characters are tasked with dealing with because they are not the ones running away. The first two questions they have to answer are, how much they know about tyrannosaurus rex and how are they going to get into inside to take it down. The answer to the first question, is not very much, no more than their players do, unless one of the players happens to be a palaeontologist, in which that player is going to be very, very, and the author means, very surprised. Otherwise, the nearest town’s leper can tell you that the tyrannosaurus rex is renowned for having an ‘out’ door (underneath the tail) which can be used as a means of access if you are brave and bring lots of hand sanitiser and for having a helter-skelter which spirals down its spine… The answer is either to use the ‘in’ door, the ‘out’ door, or drill their way in via a toenail… In addition, Tyrannosaur Inside – A T-Rex Crawl Adventure does include extra answers to the earlier question, “Tell me again, how I use this?”. ‘d10 Things To Do With a T-Rex In A Fantasy Kingdom’ provides exactly ten answers by Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan, the best of which includes using it as the hiding place for a lich’s soul jar, grabbing it as a wizard’s tower after casting Flesh to Stone, and never, ever giving a Ring of Wishes to a six-year-old (which reads ever so slightly, as if Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan has actually done this…)

So the first really big surprise about the tyrannosaurus rex is that it not actually a tyrannosaurus rex. Well, it is, but just not the traditional sense. It is in fact, a tyrannosaurus rex operated by comparatively tiny—and that we mean, man-sized—tyrannosaurus rexes, some of whom are actually really bored of being the crew of a tyrannosaurus rex, some of which really hate their tyrannosaurus rex being boarded. Especially by the mostly hairless ape-like descendants of tree rats. So essentially, the tyrannosaurus rex is a giant t-rex-shaped mecha, but with teeth and really good skin. In game terms, Tyrannosaur Inside – A T-Rex Crawl Adventure is a hexcrawl adventure up the length of a tyrannosaurus rex, with each of the creature’s limbs, tail, abdomen, thorax, and head making up one hex. Some of the locations are quite expansive, such as the thorax with its maze of intestinal pumps, whilst others, like the Piddly Left Arm and the Piddly Right Arm, are narrow and constrained. There are some entertaining encounters throughout, such as the Dinogängers, which appear and attempt to replace the Player Characters, a lecture on dental hygiene by a T-Rentist, and a very cosy stop-off with the Old-Rexes!

As to getting around the insides the non-tyrannosaurus rex, it is relatively easy, even it is technically a tight squeeze, since this being a relatively modern tyrannosaurus rex, it is wheelchair accessible with signage in braille, the language of the user’s choice, and so on.

For the Game Master, there is mixture of tips and playtest notes—which mostly point out how silly the adventure is—and a table of motivations for the tyrannosaurus rex actually in charge, written by Grant Howitt. Dave Emerson contributes ‘d6 Reasons You Are Scared Of Dinosaurs’ which does not quite work with the medieval style settings of the roleplaying games that Tyrannosaur Inside – A T-Rex Crawl Adventure is actually written for.

Physically, Tyrannosaur Inside – A T-Rex Crawl Adventure is very well laid out and a lot of thought has gone into how the whole thing is organised. The various locations are always marked with a mini-version of the tyrannosaurus rex map with the right hex highlighted in red. Directions to nearby locations are marked with big teeth, very big teeth…

Tyrannosaur Inside – A T-Rex Crawl Adventure is dinosaurously ridiculous, but for that one instance where the Game Master wants to run a t-rex incursion recursion, Tyrannosaur Inside – A T-Rex Crawl Adventure is exactly what she wants.