Make a Mork Borg sandbox FOR FREE

So many free adventures, no excuse to not build a doom metal sandbox.

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Disclaimer: I advocate for paying creators. If you enjoy the free content produced by Stockholm Kartell please consider buying their amazing products.

The lovely folks at Stockholm Kartell have released a lot of material FOR FREE over the years. I’m going to show you how to use those FREE goodies to make a Mork Borg sandbox.

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Sandbox in Seconds

What’s a sandbox? There’s a few ways to design one. Here’s what we’re doing:

• We pick a game system (in this case Mork Borg).

• We grab a map to set the game within.

• We choose an adventure to kick off the game with.

• We put other adventures elsewhere in the map so that characters can stumble upon (or pursue) them.

• Plant rumours linked to the other adventures throughout the game.

• When players finish the first adventure, rumours lead them to opportunities and they can choose which adventure they are going to do next.

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System

Image Credit: Johan Nohr

Get ‘Bare Bones’ Mork Borg (free). Most of what’s in there is for GMs, tables of horrors to kill off your players’ characters with.

Give your players the cheat sheet, you can have them use SCVMBIRTHER for automated character generation so they don’t really need the book. Characters will die. Have players use SCVMBIRTHER to get back in the action quick.

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Setting

Image Credit: Johan Nohr

Get the Overland Travel supplement (free). It’s a world map with encounters and travel times. Use setting information from Bare Bones to describe the locations named in the supplement to your players.

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Intro

Start your campaign with the adventure Rotblack Sludge (included with Bare Bones). Set it in Galgenbeck, it’s right in the middle of the map and players can easily go in all directions afterwards.

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Onwards

Ten more free adventures I like:

• Death and Pestilence

• Devil’s Tomb

• Bloat

• Goblin Grinder

• Graves Left Wanting

• Sepulchre of the Swamp Witch

• The Death Ziggurat

• The Unseen Vaults of the Optic Experiment

• The Court of the Blackhearted Gnome

• A Spluttering And A Splashing

Set them wherever you want, or roll a d10 for each adventure to tell you which area it’s in:

1. Allians

2. The Endless Sea (North West)

3. Graven-Tosk

4. Grift

5. Mur

6. Valley of the Unfortunate Undead

7. Galgenbeck

8. Bergen Chrypt

9. Schleswig

10. The Endless Sea (South East)

Some of the adventures have rumours/hooks in them. If an adventure doesn’t have a rumour, create one. Put rumours in a roll-able table: 10 rumours means a d10 table.

When the party finishes Rotblack have them rest somewhere in Galgenbeck. Roll some rumours they overhear, have them to pick a lead to follow. Use the travel rules to get them there, then you’re running that adventure for them next.

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That’s it?

Lean and mean, just the way ‘Borg meant it to be.

What are you waiting for!? Go run Mork Borg NOW!

If you want the version with the beautiful art, go here.

And if you want to learn more about why small sandboxes are awesome go here.

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Recommendations

Book/YouTube: Ben over at Questing Beast went through his game Knave 2E on his channel. It has been fun to follow Ben’s work over the years and this is the culmination of a lot of his work! Watching a creator thumb through their own book, and pointing out what they most enjoy is a wholesome experience worth your time. You can get Knave 2E here.

Blog: Sean McCoy talks about how there is no notion of ‘making it’ in this industry. As an indie creator, it’s great to read this from a designer who has been the main hand in one of the most successful indie RPGs in recent memory (Mothership). Sean points out how all there really is after completing a project is the next ‘thing’. That resonates with me, and it’s well worth a read for anyone interested in the RPG industry.