I have been playing tabletop RPG’s since the 1990’s when I got a box set of the “Classic Dungeons & Dragons” game at a local gaming shop, and it changed my life. Around the same time I found a love of heavy metal music that has never died. In my head it seems like games like Dungeons & Dragons and Call of Cthulhu just FIT with heavy metal. But it was never explicitly implied.

Mork Borg, a recent rules-lite, dark fantasy RPG by Alien RPG creator Free League has made that connection EXPLICIT. This new game was inspired by doom, death, and black metal, and even has playlist to accompany the game on Spotify as well as list favorite bands in the book (including Darkthrone and Cathedral among others).

The game takes place in a bleak, dying, Nordic inspired world. The GM can set their campaign for as long they’d like, but there is a specific mechanic that can literally trigger an in-game apocalypse (at which point you are suggested to burn the game’s player’s manual, don’t do that it’s expensive).

The game as mentioned earlier is pretty rules-lite, and that applies to character generation as well. With most games creating a character has a huge set of complexities involved with it, with Mork Borg they are covered with a few simple dice rolls and illustrations through a short portion of the book. Further, there are only 4 attributes that one must keep track of, including some that are modified equipment and abilities if you choose to take one of the optional classes. Things like combat are handled by attack rolls, but if you are attacked, you roll defense. It’s never the monsters attacking you.

The book contains everything you need to play the game. It is very short (which is so not typical for an RPG book), and includes an introductory scenario. A lot of other reviews have thrown shade at this scenario “Rotblack Sludge”, for being too straight-forward in direct contrast to the wild and humorous atmosphere of the book’s content, but I found it refreshingly straight-forward and directly out of an old school RPG. It also was amazingly simple to apply the game’s mechanics to, and get up and running.

One final very obvious thing, is how AMAZING the book itself looks. Free League’s books in general are top notch in the graphic design department, but this one really beats them all, looking like an upscale version hardcover version of a punk rock/heavy metal DIY zine. Mork Borg is basically a dream RPG environment for this old school metal-worshipping grognard. I haven’t gotten to play too many games (I am currently running CoC/Pulp Cthulhu via Zoom), but when this pandemic is over, I expect to be running this one much more. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.