Double the cohosts, double the mechanics, double the Kickstarters to back! This week, Sam talks with Kali Lawrie and Dan Phipps of Gem Room Games about Mork Borg by Pelle Nilsson and Johan Nohr: its graphic design and the Calendar of Nechrubel.
Mork Borg is famous for the absolute assault on the eyes [complimentary] committed by its graphic design. In this season of the podcast about how mechanics can be more than just rules, I really wanted to cover it. And who better to do that with me than Gem Room Games, authors of Dukk Borg, the mashup of Mork Borg and DuckTales? We talk about the look, comedy, and sheer commitment of Mork Borg in this double-stuffed episode.
Dukk Borg by Gem Room Games is on Kickstarter right now.
Further reading:
Mork Borg: https://morkborg.com/
Sam’s other favorite Gem Room Games game Subway Runners: https://gemroomgames.itch.io/subwayrunners
Socials:
Kali on Bluesky and Twitter.
Dan on Bluesky and Twitter.
Gem Room Games on Bluesky, Twitter, and itch.
Sam on Bluesky, Twitter, dice.camp, and itch.
Our logo was designed by sporgory, and our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey.
Join the Dice Exploder Discord to talk about the show!
Transcript:
Sam: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Dice Exploder. Each week we take a tabletop RPG mechanic, place it beneath our butts, and wait for it to hatch. My name is Sam Dunnewold, and today I have not one, but two co-hosts, Kali Lawrie and Dan Phipps, collectively known as Gem Room Games.
I'm gonna start this intro with today's game: Mork Borg designed by Pelle Nilssen with graphic design by Johan Nohr, an OSR dungeon crawler that describes itself as "a doom metal album of a game. A spiked flail to the face. Light on rules, heavy on everything else." You'll pay for your whole seat, but you'll only use the edge.
Mork Borg is famous for the absolute assault on the eyes, complimentary, committed by its graphic design, and in a season about how mechanics can be more than just rules, I really wanted to cover this.
And I thought who better to talk to about that than Gem Room Games,[00:01:00] who thought about the graphic design a lot as they've worked on their own game, Dukk Borg, a loving satire and mashup of Mork Borg and DuckTales, and which is on Kickstarter right now. Don't walk, run to your phone and check out the link in the show notes.
But we didn't stop there because Gem Room Games wanted to bring in another mechanic from Mork Borg too, and I figured two co-hosts, two mechanics. Why not? Two of everything. Two Kickstarters to plug. Remember that this very show is going to be kick starting its third season in October, and you can go into the show notes right now and get a link to sign up for that when it launches.
So we're also talking about the Calendar of Nechrubel, a part rollable table, part in game apocalyptic prophecy that sets the tone for the world of Mork Borg in a completely different way than its look does.
A final note before we begin, it didn't occur to me until after recording that I'd have loved to talk with Dan and Kali about whether we think Mork Borg is an accessible [00:02:00] game for low vision people. Like, sure, there's a bare bones edition that it's plain text, but as you're about to hear us discuss it's undeniable that you lose a lot of what Mork Borg is when you can't see it.
So I've got lined up a companion episode to this one, all about art and accessibility with Mork Borg's graphic design as a jumping off point. We haven't even recorded it yet, so it might be a bit, but... Just know that that's coming and get excited.
In the meantime I'd love to see an attempt at like a Mork Borg audiobook. Mork Borg alt text jam when?
So two Kickstarters: Dukk Borg. Dice Exploder. Two co-hosts: Kali Lawrie and Dan Phipps. And two Mechanics, Merck Borg's, graphic design and the Calendar of Nechrubel.
Dan: Let's talk about my favorite comedy game.
Sam: Kali, Dan, Gem Room Games, welcome to Dice Exploder. Thanks for being here.
Kali: Thanks for having us.
Dan: Really excited to be here.
Sam: Yeah. So What have I forced you to come talk about on this show?
Dan: So today we are talking about Mork Borg and we were dragged here to the charnel pits to talk about its graphic design and how that intersects with play.
Sam: Yeah.
So, all right, let's start with a little fictional context. So to one of you want to tell me about like the world and the setting of Mork Borg.
Dan: Yeah, so Mork Borg, I forget this when I think about Mork Borg, but it does spend a lot of time on like this very specific setting with this sort of and I'm not gonna pronounce any of this correctly, but there is two, two-headed basilisks with four heads that have argued for hundreds of years. and so there's a lot of He and She, which I believe are the two basilisks which have been arguing for so long that the world is dying.
And like that is the most important thing about the setting, like the hard frame of this whole thing is there's a ticking clock of everything's going to end and kind of none of this matters 'cause well, worst thing we'll just wait a couple weeks and that'll solve all your problems.
Kali: There's a nice bit of nihilism there.
Dan: Yeah. There's a couple of cities, there's Graven-Tosk and uh, Galgenbeck. There's the Endless Sea and the Bergen Crypt. Everything is very like Nordic death metal grim. But like all of these things, right? Like, I mean, they matter, you know, like obviously. I don't want to suggest they don't, but like , you don't even actually need to read them super closely, even though you'd be well rewarded if you did. It's like pretty good world building prose. But like, you can just look at the way the Western Kingdom is written and it's like, oh, I get it. there's a skull, there's a bunch of creepy guys. called Wasteland and some songs, there's like
Kali: But you got, you know, your, dying world, your occult, your gothic cathedrals. Mm-hmm. This is where I feel like the art in the book- I have actually read people saying that the art in this book is useless. And it's that is, this is the worst possible example of that, because the art in this does so much to tell you about the tone and the world and what's going on in it.
Like you can, read the words and find out exactly what is going on here. You can also flip through and get a really strong sense of it just from, from the violence and the sharp lines and dramatic colors.
Sam: That's what I was gonna say is that like in some ways you learn the same apocalyptic tone from a rollable table that is a picture of a guy stabbed with 10 different weapons as you do from like uh, uh, there's some sort of apocalyptic basilisk got there in the world's ending. Like, I, I understand what you are trying to convey, author, from both of those things.
Kali: Well, and the fact that this is what you have instead of a more straightforward table, that there is a requirement for you to engage with this type of a visual.
Sam: Yeah. All right, so let's get into the meat of this thing. I'm obsessed with the graphic design on this game. It's legendary. If you're listening to this show, like you probably have taken a look at this thing, and if you have not, I certainly can't do it justice. But I don't know, either you want to take a crack at what this thing looks like?
Kali: So I actually spent a lot of time like taking notes on what it looks like and breaking it down and sketching it and so on. So I might be a little, in the weeds with it, but it's got a strong color scheme. It's got a sort of zine-y quality to way that it is assembled. Strong art, a mix of original illustration and public domain stuff.
Dan: The spine is glow in the dark.
Kali: The spine is glow in the dark.
Dan: There are letters that show up under UV light.
Kali: Everybody talks about the fact that it's got like 80 different fonts, but not that they, actually achieve things. I think people get stuck on “it's got 80 fonts” and not “it's got 80 fonts that function to help convey the tone of the book.”
Sam: Yeah,
Dan: Yeah, I think what is being attempted here is broadly misunderstood. And, you know, it makes sense because RPG fans have an affinity for rules frequently, and this is a pretty massive flex in the knowing the rules well enough to break them school.
But also like the level of thought, like I think when they went to print, and I'm trying to look this up to confirm it, but I'm pretty sure Johan talked at some point about how most of the time you get like C M Y K and they actually did custom print to get C M Y K and then Mork Borg yellow and Mork Board pink as like their own dedicated ink into the thing to make it so vibrant. And then they did like even more for Cy_Borg I think so, it's very like thought about at every possible level to become this wild physical object.
Kali: Yeah, I think people discount just how thoughtfully made this was.
Sam: Yeah. I immediately have like six other things I wanna say. So the, the first is like my understanding is that Johan has like a rich history in graphic design and this kind of visual style as a career. Is that right?
Kali: You know my understanding is that he definitely has some professional knowledge and experience in that, but definitely this is one of those if you are, say, a teeny tiny indie designer trying to do it yourself, you should not look at this and feel bad that this isn't what you could accomplish on your second try.
Sam: That was the thing I really wanted to underline because I certainly remember opening this book for the first time and being like, well, I'm not gonna do this career. I'm out. Like I can't do it. Like, it's fine. And it, it's just so delightful to look at, assuming you delight in over the top misery to comedic effect.
Kali: One of my favorite ways to look at it is side by side with Into the Odd Remastered because Johann did both and it's such a delightful example of the breadth of skill there and I think really underlines, again, I've spent a lot of time kind of analyzing the layout here, but there's so much in this that, like it's got a really solid structure. It's really good bones upon which all of the sort of chaotic violence is built.
And I, I love that how like you can look at it and just go, oh my God, this is overwhelming and violent. And sometimes people get this misconception that that's all there is to it is chaos and, visual violence and that you can't possibly read it or understand it because it's so visually chaotic.
It's like, no, no, no, there's really solid bones there supporting all of that visual violence so that you can still read it and enjoy it in that way. Like there's, there's such good skill in this.
Dan: I mean, and I'm sympathetic to people who maybe don't love this 'cause it is adversarial. Like it is fighting with you. But it's, you know, it is fighting fair at the very least, and playfully.
Kali: Well, and I get, you know, using the bare bones version when you want to actually sit down and play and use it as a reference piece instead of engaging with it as a tone piece unto itself, but
Dan: Rules are all on the back. It's fine.
Sam: All right, so this is a podcast about examples so I would love Kali if you would just pick like your favorite spread in this book and do your best to like walk through it and explain what it looks like and how that is leading to function.
Kali: So who, boy, the face that I just made Here. Here, Dan, say something while I flip through and try to... oh, that's a good one. That
Dan: was my favorite. Well, we can get back. Actually no, that's my favorite. No, I think that one's my favorite.
Kali: So, okay. So what I'm noticing as I flip through is most of our favorites are pages with tables.
Pages like 44 and 45: arcane catastrophes. First of all, the whole spread is this sort of neon yellow in your face. On the left side you've got this huge, bold, hot pink text that's kind of wobbly and skinny and tall and a little bit hard to read, but not impossible to read at all. And over that is slapped this black rough hand lettered looking text.
On the right side you got two fonts, mm-hmm, but mostly it's slight changes in size. Some of the text is pink, most of it is black. The major thing that shakes the page up is that the alignment of the columns, it's sort of like, you took the page and shook it a couple times. just a little gently and things got a little skewed out.
Or like, like I'm looking at the right most column, which has numbers 11 through 20, and the point is instead of it being one column straight down, 14 goes straight to 16, and then 15 is kind of squeezed in beside those in its own little sub column.
And I don't know, it, it conveys a lot of action and energy and motion in the way that it is set up.
Sam: Yeah. how does this all make you feel? Like looking at this spread and the way that the page has been shaken, as you say.
Kali: I mean, it's unsettling, right? Like you look at it, it's not welcoming you in for a quick, easy read. It, it shakes you too. It makes your eyes jump back and forth and adjust to a couple things the same way that the text itself is doing.
Dan: Well and like, think about the moment at the table where you're rolling. Like this is when you've ruined a spell and something very bad is about to happen, right? Like that's the moment.
Like, you know, in video games there's like, like they call it juice when the, there's screen shake and slow-mo and all that sort of stuff. And there's something really juicy about like everyone at the table knows something bad is gonna happen to the wizard. It might happen to all of them and it's the agonizing amount of time you spend rolling a d20 and looking through this thing and then noticing in the upper right corner where the text like kind of goes around and then is sideways about what happens if you roll the same thing twice and like what the italics means, like while your dungeon master is trying to find the 15.
Like arguably that's bad interface design, but also like that's what a game kind of is, is like, yeah, it's needlessly difficult to get what you want and that. Just, it's stretching that agonizing moment while you wait to find out if a two-headed basilisk that got multiple pages at the beginning of being the harger of the end of days, is just gonna snap you right up or what.
Kali: Well, that, that anxiety that that brings is totally appropriate to the world of the game. It does a really good job of reinforcing itself over and over in that way.
Dan: Yeah.
Sam: Something you said in there too about how it, it's difficult to engage with in certain ways. I think, it's not inviting to read, as you say. And I think that that it's like the book itself is stepping up and demanding that you be an active reader, an active engager with the text in a way that I think fits the idea of playing a game especially well.
Like because of the way it's laid out, it forces you to be paying attention at all times or to go find something else. And if you wanna find something else, Mork Borg sure as shit doesn't care.
Kali: Yeah.
Dan: Well, and it, and the reason this works is 'cause it, it's not like, oh, hey, this is a world that's hard and difficult and weird and everything wants to kill you laid out in a classical textbook style. It's like, and every,
Kali: Everything is hard and weird and difficult and wants to kill you. Yeah. This is, this is appropriate.
Dan: While still having that undercurrent same as like, yeah, okay. The game is trying to kill you. The rules are so easy to pick up. And it's, the same with the content of this book. It is a difficult world, it is difficult text, difficult graphic design made easy to engage with in its weird way. Like the difference between the rules and in the graphic design is the difference between hard 'cause it's bad and hard 'cause they wanted to make it a satisfying, challenging experience.
Sam: Well, and I think minimal rules also is what you want in a game that is primarily concerned with its graphic design. Like if it had really complicated rules, that wouldn't leave nearly as much space for the visual assault that is the primary thrust of this game, right?
Kali: Yeah, I think that it's, the world and the tone that they've made for you to play in that is the most important. And at every turn, that's what is the most emphasized.
Dan: Yeah. It kind of lets itself be what it needs to be, whereas this is not a consistently baroque text or work. So it makes sense to not have consistently baroque rules to ride alongside.
Sam: All right. I also wanna double back to my favorite spread, which I mentioned earlier, that rollable table of weapons. Dan, do you want to tell us about this one?
Dan: Yeah. It's a d10 table that's given three pages I'm sorry, four pages, I apologize. Two spreads for, 10 entries of just like, here are the cool weapons and a whole page for femur, which is when I knew this was, this is the comedy moment of this.
The reason that this book is my favorite comedy RPG is a hundred percent the reason why I love the comedy in especially the first act of the Barbie movie, because there are very few jokes in the first act of the Barbie movie. Like aside from the beach off sequence but like there aren't very many jokes. It's mostly just someone is sitting down and saying Hey, if we really think about how Barbie land would work, let's just spend a long time here. And it's,
Kali: and just like genuinely commit to that.
Dan: And like just the, it's a depth of thought of like, okay, well what if this was the most bleak thing possible, and let's just let that ride. Like if the world is ending at the beginning of your RPG? What makes sense from there, and it's what makes sense is 10% of the time you, you're the only thing you own is a bone that you just found on the ground. Everybody's got a bone like mwuah peak, peak comedy.
Sam: the thing in Barbie that I remember from that first half hour is the moment when she steps out of her shoes and her feet are still shaped like high heels and the magic of that visual moment, it's a gag, right? But it also does all of the world building, you are talking about. It like is it a joke or like, do you laugh at it or is it just something that you kind of marvel at?
Kali: it a or that incredible depth of commitment? Because it, because it's real. Barbie's feet are like that. And they, they did a really good job also. Yeah. Basically I think Dan and I have talked a lot about humor 'cause we've made a couple of funny games now and the our favorite, I'm speaking for Dan when I say our, our favorite type of humor is the humor that really commits genuinely. It's not trying to make fun of the subject, it's committing to the subject and the humor springs from naturally as opposed to trying to pull jokes out of that by force.
Dan: Yeah. I think using the, the, Barbie stepping outta the heels moment as an example, which is, you know, Mork Borg's femur to me is like, both of those are, they're definitely jokes. I say they're not jokes, but they're jokes. It's just, it's a clear understanding of like who gets to be funny and who's the straight man.
And like, I think a, a lesser movie and a lesser game would have thought that it is the author of the game's job to be the funny one here. And no, you are the straight man. You're just telling the facts and letting the world be wild. And like trusting that that is like enough to like
Kali: it's jamming.
Yeah. You, you come up with the problems. Solutions are somebody else's department. You just commit.
Sam: People love to show up to the table and meme, right? What you wanna do is give them a fun container to meme inside.
Dan: And again, this is a very strong flavor of game and it is definitely not gonna be everyone's cup of tea. But what I love about it is it's, The emptiness of the bowl of like, I'm building this fucked up bowl with spikes all over. That's hard to pick up and cracked and creating lots of space for you to be like, yep, I'm femur guy. It's not gonna tell you what to do with the fact that you're femur guy. You get to discover that.
Sam: Yeah, I have always compared Mork Borg in my head to a different movie, John Wick, where my experience watching John Wick the first time was like, you know, it takes half an hour before you get to the first human murder in that movie. And it is a little unclear for a lot of that how seriously the movie is taking itself.
But at some point in there, you get the Russian guy, like on the phone just going like, Oh, or you, you get like, some cool weird title on the screen that is just a little too poppy for a movie that was taking itself super seriously.
And so by the time John shows up and like murders 16 people or whatever it is you kind of have figured out like, oh, this is a movie that is daring me to take it seriously even though it understands how silly and just fun it is actually going to be. And I see that same sort of daring you to take it seriously quality in Mork Borg.
Kali: Like, we're gonna take it seriously. Mm-hmm. And dare you to go along on that ride with
Dan: Yeah. The, there's an incredible sincerity in both of them. Like everyone involved in John Wick thinks John Wick is the coolest thing in the world. And I think that's, And you, you see comedies that like, what's the difference between Tucker And Dale Versus Evil, which is explicitly a comedy like is a jokey horror comedy, versus like the long list that we could spend all day doing of attempts at horror comedy that don't land.
And I think for me If you set out to make a bad movie, you're gonna achieve that goal. But to me, you know, tastes subjective or whatever, but there's no moment in those movies where they stick the landing where they, they are like looking down their nose at the horror movies that they're playing in.
And it's the same thing with Mork Borg and like, 'cause Mork Borg is relatively late to the OSR Post OSR and the, you know, these are genre terms that are fuzzy and, and ill-defined by their nature. But it's a relatively late comer to the scene and it goes really, really hard. And I think it goes really, really sincere. Like this is made with tremendous love. Mm-hmm. For a style and philosophy of play.
Kali: Yeah. We talk a lot about sincerity and how that makes comedy work. And I think love also ma here we are talking about Mork Borg and I'm like, it's the love that really makes this work for, oh yeah.
Dan: Mork Borg is an act of love,
Kali: it is, but because you, you love it, so you commit to it and that commitment is what allows humor to come out of it.
Sam: Yeah, I think that commitment that you've brought up a couple of times I so agree that it is the thing that is making this work, but I also think that it is a outgrowth of. like there's the idea of the movie that's so bad it's good. And I have spent a lot of time in my life trying to challenge people on whether those movies are actually bad.
You know, like if it's good, if you love it, doesn't that just make it good?
Kali: It's like the Fast and the Furious movies. You, when you watch that, you know that people were having a good time making. That.
Sam: Yeah.
Dan: Yeah, like, I chafe at the phrase elevated horror as like a distinct kind of horror. And it's like, no, that's nothing. You just don't like that you like a horror movie, so you're giving yourself an out by calling it elevated horror.
And I think also like, remembering when Mork Borg came out, I think this is in conversation with a long tradition of games that played with these themes, but like were kind of difficult to engage with because they have kind of rough histories around the people involved in their creation and the subject matter and whether or not they were made by people who wanted everyone to have a good time.
Whereas Mork Borg in its license is like, Hey, you can't be transphobic if you want us to like, bless this mess.
There's just a little bit of a like genuine appreciation and also something similar to what happened with the, flare up of like the Sword Dream movement to be like, Hey, can we have our fun, dark adventure game and kick the Nazis out, please? Could we have that?
Kali: I think there's a good point of clarification too. We've been talking a lot about sincerity and commitment, and that doesn't mean that you can't be playing with something and enjoying it also. Like just because you have committed sincerely to making a thing in a world, you are still playing in it, you are still engaging with it. The makers can be having fun while they are seriously enjoying it. They should be enjoying it.
Sam: So speaking of all of the comedy elements that we've been talking about, like I think Dukk Borg, your supplement for Mork Borg is brilliant. And I would love for you to sort of set up like what is it exactly, and, and how did it come about and how do you see it fitting into all of this?
Dan: So the context for Dukk Borg is that, you know, Mork Borg came out, big hit, and then they announced Cy_Borg. then that kicked off on, I think the brain trust discord a lot of Borg puns because oh, they're gonna do Cyborg, what's next? And then one of them, I did life is like a hurricane here in Duck Berg, Borg, and immediately got a “fuck off Dan.” And it was like, great, we have a hit.
Um, and then I said, okay, if this is still funny in six months, then I'll make it. And it was, it was but uh, the goal of it was that same thing I was talking about earlier of like, okay, if we're doing this, we're gonna do it.
Like how does this happen? Like what is this world? And like, looking at the fiction in Mork Borg and like, well, what happened to that world? And like, okay, well that was a world like ours that these basilisks happen to, and now it's like this and it's dying.
So let's chart the path for, well, what if you start with Saturday morning cartoons and go along the same arc and leaning really heavily on the, the visual language and the organizational language of how Mork Borg told that story.
Like what would Scrooge McDuck see at the Tabletop RPG store he would not buy because the margins are too thin? Um, and like Dukk Borg is what we imagine would be on the, on the shelf.
Sam: The thing I love about Dukk Borg is that it takes that thought we were talking about earlier of Mork Borg daring the reader to take it seriously and is like, Okay, but would you take Dukk Borg seriously? Like, like just, it kicks it up a notch to just like make everything clearer and like to, to like double down at people about everything. It is
Kali: I mean, absolutely. We are dead serious about this game. It is a, our most serious piece of art that we have ever made.
Dan: I mean, I definitely, it is that same sincerity of like, this is not a joke. It just happens to be very funny in the same way of the heel feed in the femur page.
But like the thing I'm really proud of, when we tweeted about it again because we pseudo knew what we were doing, like the, one of the responses that really kind of warmed the cockles in my heart was just the like, Oh, cool, now I can play Mork Borg and see what that was all about. You know, if Mork board was an appreciation and love letter to this sort of history of, OSR and post OSR and new school revolution or whatever, then this was a love letter to Mork Borg that could help share what we loved about Mork Borg with people who wouldn't necessarily have felt comfortable engaging with that material.
'cause it does, like the goblin curse is real messed up. Like this thing, there's stuff in here that's like, I'm gonna X card that and it's just me and this book. I'm not reading this page about porcelain torture kids like that's, that's too far, far. I'm a dad. I can't with that. So like, you know, the fact that this might be an on-ramp for someone to see how fun violence can be um, is uh, is something that I, I take immense pleasure in.
Sam: Yeah, I know for me, I didn't realize that Mork Borg was supposed to be funny until I read Dukk Borg and then I was like, oh, obvi, of course, of course, Mork Borg is supposed to be funny. But it really was sort of a, skeleton key for me in like unlocking what Mork Borg was all about.
Dan: And you know, maybe you'll, invariably when you get Johan on the show, there might be some dispute about the, like,
Kali: This is a very serious game.
Dan: But like, my favorite tabletop RPG is Blades in the Dark. And I don't think I've run it the same way twice ever. You know, like, I'm not, the author isn't dead, but he's not doing great.
And like to me, this is funny. Like this is very, I I'm, I'm hesitant to make the declarative statement, but like
Kali: But at least for sure, Dan and I have both seen a lot of humor in it, and a I Dan just,
Dan: I just noticed the staples on page 21. They've got this old tiny wound man, which is uh, for those of you playing the home game like a classic medieval illustration to demonstrate like early exploration of an anatomy, and it's got staples in it. I love this book so much. It is so goofy. It's so dark and so funny.
Kali: Well, and that's how we talk about it. So I think applying something that is more commonly understood to be silly and funny helps to, to bring a different lens to this that hopefully, and it sounds like with some success, we've been able to show people this game in a different light.
Sam: I also, gosh, I have like three other things I want to just like Hit on the graphic design of this book before we, before we move on. The first is I think there's such a lesson to be learned about finding meaning or a joke or just like some other little bit of fun or way to communicate your overall theme and message in every single detail of the product.
Like you can see it all over the visual design of Mork Borg as we've been talking about or like the detail of the graphic design credit in the first place, like graphic design by Johann Nohr and dead people. Like just the way in which the graphic design is credited conveys the theme and overall vibe of this thing.
Kali: Oh yeah, this whole thing is really. Tightly, thoughtfully made.
Sam: But the other thing to just kind of like close off on the graphic design here, I do think it is not without drawback in that I sat down to run this game for the first time and was like, okay, I gotta get the plain text version so I can actually understand the rules to this game.
And I sat down, opened it up, started reading it with all the flavor at the beginning, and was like, oh fuck, this writing's really good. I'd just never known that the writing was so good before because it's so overwhelmed by the graphic design. Like there there is a way in which the loudness of it is so effective at communicating it's message that it overwhelms the message of the rules and the flavor.
And maybe that's fine because like the thing that it cares about most is the message of its vibes and of its design. Like I, I think if you went out there and were like, yeah, I would kind of playin this game however I want to, and like the thing I'm taking from the book is the spirit of the visuals, the creators would be like, fuck yeah. Like, that's what we wanted. But it
Kali: I think it is, incredibly effective at communicating its tone. And this is what brings me to my favorite cinematic experience which is The Lobster, which was, I don't think it's The Lobster's fault that it was marketed as a light romantic comedy, but it's,
Dan: That's why we went to see it.
Sam: I didn't know that. Oh my God.
Dan: We watched the trailer.
Kali: We watched the trailer, and we were like,
Dan: oh, like that's a weird dark romantic
Kali: Yeah, this will be a fun date night. And
Dan: it was not. Ladies and gentlemen.
Kali: Well, but so we go and, and Dan and I were game, we, we were able to roll with it and be like, all right, this isn't what we expected, but here we are.
And part of the viewing for me stopped being about watching the movie itself and became about watching the rest of the audience. Because there were people who were livid in that theater. People who were throwing stuff and yelling at the movie and storming out. It was incredible. I've never, I've never been in a theater with people who were so adamantly affected by a thing.
And that's a little bit what Mork Borg does too. I think it is, it is so effective at communicating its message that that can be off-putting. I think the, the plain text version is really good for making it actually a game that people can engage with. But it's as a whole, the original book, I don't think it is super worried about you, an individual, being able to get in there and get comfortable with it. It has a tone and it means to convey that tone whether that helps you or not, and probably it should not help you because that's not the tone of the book.
And I mean, it's, every time that, the creators have seen somebody giving it some terrible review and somebody pops in like, Hey, can we use that as a poll quote?
Like, they're not trying to make a comfortable experience for you. They're trying to elicit a strong reaction. And they that did that so well.
Dan: Yeah, I think there's sort of a like, a thing that people like to say, which is that like at the end of the day, a tabletop RPG is a reference text.
And I think when... I'm not even quite sure how to articulate what I'm going for here, except to say like, well sometimes, but clearly not always.
Kali: I think it can be more than just a reference text. Yeah, like if you, if you wanna write a reference text, like, great, do that. You don't have to write just a reference text. You can write an art book, you can write a reference text, you can write an, I mean, don't write a novel. Maybe if you wanna write a novel, maybe just write a novel. But like there are a number of ways to approach conveying this type of information. And you don't have to limit yourself to just one.
Sam: I think the other thing that your story about going to see The Lobster conveys is just how important the setting of expectations for a piece of work is, right? Like Mork Borg does this super successfully in all the ways that we've talked about, and I think as a result, people know whether this is a game for them or not really quickly.
And the
Kali: You're not walking into it going, oh, this is a nice light romantic game. Cool.
Sam: That makes people who do want this thing, it makes it really easy for them to find it, right? Like the people love this thing because it was so clear about who should come find it and love it. And when you fuck that up, like with The Lobster, it's a big problem. Like the people who really wanted to see that movie probably had a harder time finding it, and meanwhile, like everyone in your audience hated it because they had the wrong expectations, and that that setting of expectations is so critical.
Dan: one example of this in a, in a different way that I read recently is Fist by Claymore RPGs, I think is the sort of non de plume, but it's, it's that same sort of like, oh, this looks like Metal Gear Solid so hard I can hear the UI as I read. Like this and it is delivering on that premise, that visual premise that it has indicated that like, nope, this is about being a bunch of weirdos with camo and like controlling bees and weird philosophical treaties about, and the bunch of nuke facts. Like, let here we go.
Like that experience, you're gonna get that. And it's such a clear like signal flare and delivery that is I think the like top of mind, what I think of as like, oh yeah, you know what you're gonna get. And you're gonna be happy 'cause you're gonna get it. And it's the same thing with, just looking at the cover of Mork Borg.
Sam: Okay. Um, Thanks for being here, Dan and Col. I really appreciate you coming on.
Dan: Thanks for having us.
Kali: Great to be here.
Sam: Welcome to another episode of Dice Exploder. Each week on the show we break down another part of Mork Borg with Gem Room Games. So Okay, cool. We're we have, we have two co-hosts this time, so we get two mechanics. So this is the mechanic that y'all brought to me. Tell us what the second mechanic from Mork Borg is that we're gonna talk about.
Dan: So we are going to talk about the calendar of Nechrubel. The nameless scriptures transcribed by Anuk Schleger the Monk. Which goes through 66 Psalms before reaching Psalm 7:7, and the eventual end of the world. The game and your lives end here. Burn the book.
Sam: I feel like I need to get a, a sound effect of like a heavy tome thumping onto the table as we talk about these.
Dan: I can take it again in a voice, but I don't know if
Sam: Yeah. No, do it, do it. Let's, let's run it back.
Dan: Well today we're here to talk about the calendar of Nechrubel. The nameless scriptures transcribed by Anuk Schleger the monk, psalms one through six before psalm 7:7, the last, the world trembles. One can feel it in ways, sharp and subtle.
The game and your lives end here. Burn the book.
Sam: All right, so, okay. What are these things in the fiction of Mork Borg? Because there's a mechanical element here and we'll get to that, but like, I want to hear about the fictional context.
Dan: So the fictional context is the world is ending, and that is the hard frame of the game. That is, the thing that must be true about the setting above all else for the game to make sense. And the way that is represented is you choose a die for when will all this agony end? Years of pain to the end is nigh. With dice having more sides, meaning the world last longer,
Kali: and thus your game can be longer
Dan: and thus a longer campaign. And every dawn in fiction, the GM rolls a die. And on a result of one rolls on the calendar of Nechrubel, which is almost certainly just a wild pronunciation there, which is written biblically but is a D 66 table, to find the psalm and the, and the passage, the misery that comes to pass.
And this is sort of just a randomly generated, at one day you'll wake up and the “liar arc shall make knots of the hearts of men sundering the strongest of bonds.” And that's just true now. Um,
Kali: They're kind of prophecies.
Dan: Yeah, and like, what does that mean for the world? Like, it's kind of a vague note.
Sam: Yeah, it's pretty clear what “the trees shall wither, shrivel and die” means, but it's a little bit harder to understand what like “and the unnamed enter the earth passing through the Veil as it is sundered by Daejmon, the left underling of Nechrubel. I don't know what that one is exactly.
Kali: But you get a vibe from it.
It's a
Sam: Yeah.
Kali: vibe.
Dan: And it's, you know, it's very interpretive. And once all of the Psalms has come to pass then the darkness shall swallow the darkness and rules as written, you must end the campaign. Everybody dies. Everybody everywhere dies. And you have to burn your copy of Mork Borg.
Kali: But I like it!
Dan: Which it has occurred because I know the, the Mork Borg account has retweeted uh, people doing it for the, the stunt of the thing.
Sam: you, you gotta play rules as written.
Dan: And I don't know if this is actually the first rule in the game that you would encounter but it is very early on because everything before this is, tone and setting.
And uh, as discussed on our last episode it is intentionally confrontational, it's intentionally challenging, and it's intentionally kind of teasing out the question of like, Hey, are you gonna follow all these rules? Like, you say you will, but like, will you? are you really,
Sam: Are you gonna commit as hard as we have?
Dan: Yeah, because we, you know, like we had to make this thing. Are you ready to do the opposite? Which, you know the answer, I think nine times outta 10 or higher is no.
But also there's an interview with the guy who designed Risk Legacy getting really frustrated that he would put secret cards in his game and a packet that says Do not open and then people would open it and find a bunch of cards that ruin the game and they'd be like, well, guess we gotta do it. And he was like, what do you mean? Why? Stop! But that's, you know, people are funny they'll do stuff just 'cause it's written down. So maybe we are all burning the book if we, play this game long enough.
I don't know.
Sam: I. I think that this mechanic is incredible for a lot of reasons. It does a great job of establishing setting. It provides that narrative clock of the end of the world that's like a fire under the asses of the players to like go out there and actually get your adventuring in. Like, whatever it is you want to get done here, you better get moving.
And it, it provides. Like a complications table too, like a random encounters kind of thing, right? Which is doing some of that like, you know, fire under the asses kind of thing but on this grander scale. It sets that tone.
But I also think like “The game in your lives end here. Burn the book” is the most rad line of text I've ever read in the game. It's just so fucking cool. Like it's, it does as good a job of setting the tone for what to expect from the thing in your hand as any of the art does.
Kali: Oh yeah. Well, and I love that for a book that spends two full spreads on one D 10 table, this puts so much into just one spread.
Sam: Yeah. I mean into one, one sentence, like three words. Burn the book. That by itself like, it, it, it is maximalism and minimalism in this book,
Dan: Yeah. I mean, it's, as a flex of tone control, right. Of communicating what you're in for. It does an incredible job. Just sort of like setting the stage that like, not necessarily do we expect you to do this, but like, this is how we are going to talk to you.
And like I don't think it's a wink.
I was about to call it a wink. I don't think it's a wink, but I do think it is a good sort of like, It's so on the face of it, absurd. Or like, so like, you couldn't possibly mean, you know, like, and blasphemous almost. 'cause people treasure their books like this, this, this is a gorgeous work of art. You're telling me to burn it.
And it does sort of like tell you a lot about the voice of the narrator and how you should... It's very instructive in how you should read the book and how you should interpret the words that are going to be coming.
Sam: Do you have a favorite Psalm on the calendar?
Dan: Oh, it's like choosing between my 66 children
Kali: See, asking me about a page and asking Dan about a psalm.
Dan: Yeah.
Sam: Kali If you wanna have a favorite Psalm, you're, you're more than welcome to.
Dan: I, I actually, I think my favorite Psalm because it doesn't make sense, but like I'm no biblical scholar, but there is something very, like the inherent contradiction of Psalm two misery six. “And She shall see Him grow stronger and She reveals herself and all shall be slain.” Okay,
Kali: And that's just two.
Dan: Well, A, that B, so wait is the game over? Like, but game doesn't know end until 7:7.
Again, it's that sort of, well, you, you can't mean what you just said, which is a, grand tradition in religious study. And the sort of like, there's sort of this really great anti canon, like, not all of this can be true at the same time. Like there's just, there isn't room for all of this to be true at the same time. Which sort of invites like in metaphor and interpretation of like,
Well, what do you mean all shall be slain? Like everyone within a mile radius is a perfectly valid way to do it. And also like, maybe everyone has changed in some way where the light has gone outta their eyes, like, kind of doesn't matter at the end of the day.
But it's very trusting that you as players are gonna know what to do with this. And again, that very clear understanding of like where the book ends, the game designer ends, the document ends and the table begins.
And like that trust fall of like, if the authors of Mork Borg care what is supposed to be the result of any of these psalms, you're not gonna find it in this book. And I really appreciate the sort of stepping back and the trust that the players are going to be able to do something appropriately Morky Borgy with the prompt.
Sam: Morky Borgy! On that perfect note, I have to ask also about Dukk Borg's calendar because I think the, the Dukk Borg calendar is my favorite joke in that book. So can one of you tell me about your take on this whole calendar situation?
Dan: I think from a text editing, passing back and forth between the two of us perspective, more time was spent on that than the rest of the book combined. So the theme song is, maybe not the best thing about Ducktales, but it is. It's up there. It's up there, right. Like it's a stone cold classic Saturday morning theme like and I think we worked backwards from like, where are we gonna put the theme in here? Because like,
Kali: Because it's gotta go somewhere.
Sam: Yeah.
Dan: You can't not have, and um, it was harder than I thought because uh, it turns out there's not that many words in the Ducktales theme song. So it became sort of this writing exercise of like, okay, “Life is like a hurricane here in Duckberg. Race, cars, lasers, airplanes. It's a duck blur.” Great. That's a psalm. Got it. And then it was like, oh no, I've, I've used up.
Kali: Oops, I committed
Dan: A I committed, and B, like there's just not that much left and I gotta make five more psalms.
Sam: Yeah. Yeah.
Dan: And against this extremely minimal palette.
But it also was a really great exercise because like the stranger got, like, we had to tell Rob like, okay, we need The Stranger.
And he was like, what the fuck is The Stranger? It was like, you know, from the song we, there's a Stranger out to find you. We made a big deal about The Stranger. So we're gonna need a Stranger. And I don't know what that means,
Kali: But definitely in that way, doing the deep dive of the theme song to rewrite the calendar did have a strong influence on what else we brought into the book.
Sam: Well, it feels like it was an incredibly productive exercise in strip mining the theme song for iconography. Like Mork Borg at large feels like it is really powerful game of iconography with, you know, the recurring basilisks and the calendar and even the femur, you know, and the colors.
And I feel like you, you found a lot of things in the theme song for Ducktales that you were able to draw out in the same way.
Dan: Thank you.
you. That's a very uh, that makes me very happy to hear. And also it's kind of made it into a dual source of, influence just because like the song in the, the show have very little in common aside from a general adventure motif, but like Scrooge is never mentioned in the theme song or the family dynamics or any of that sort of stuff.
So it really kind of forced a place for like the lyrics of a theme song to also be alongside the like weird wiki deep dives we were doing on like Episode 26 there's a gem and it does, you know, just of, of fun, divine inspiration. So like, okay, so what happens 10,000 years later and everything's all gross, like, what happens to this gem?
Sam: The thing that I think makes this spread like the, act of converting the Ducktails theme song into the Mork Borg calendar so powerful to me is that it becomes a statement about religion and Saturday morning cartoons.
That like, it is, it is a state like the, the kind of wiki deep dive you are describing doing is like, how is a wiki actually different from a Bible? Like it, the difference is 2000 years of time, right? Like there's not a, like, that's, that's what's going on here, right? Like the, the fact that you are finding all these obscure details and like putting them into this it's like this hilarious commentary on what it felt like to go to the Church of Saturday morning cartoons and what it felt like to go to fucking Christian Church for me growing up.
I, I just think it's wonderful.
Dan: I mean, and I think that's one of the benefits of getting to sort of like as a launchpad... Oh.
Sam: Yeah. Yeah.
Dan: Okay, so I, I, now I just have to say it. So having Mork Borg as a launchpad to sort of like, a lot of what you just said is like what I see in the, the psalms in Mork Borg. Oh, this is a really interesting, like, Hey, you know, What if the Bible was totally messed up?
It is.
Sam: Yeah. Spoiler alert.
Dan: And like spoiler alert for The Bible.
Sam: Yeah.
Dan: What if, what if the, you know, but also this sort of understanding of, well, you know, how to engage with the Bible. It's weird. Like you should engage with this in a weird way where you don't really understand what's going on and there's thousands of years of like, scholarship that you could engage with to continue to not understand it. Of like saints in the year 500 saying, well this is how we're gonna think about, thinking about thinking about metaphors, but also sometimes the Bible, just sometimes a cigar's a cigar.
Like,
Kali: Yeah, the other day I was poking around on Reddit and somebody was suggesting to somebody else that they quote the Bible to their overly religious relative. And they were providing verses that might help with this argument. And one of 'em mentioned busybodies and that kicked off a whole thread with people going “busybody? I, I didn't know that the term busybodies back that far.” And then other people kind of being like, there have been translations. Yes. It, it changes. Yeah.
Dan: It turns out the Hebrew word for busy body, like no, no dog. That's not,
Kali: This is not a one-to-one actually.
Dan: But hey, Stephanie was a common name in medieval times. So who, who am I? Like the world is weird and history is piled on top of these itself and some days someone's gonna find this fucking thing and you like, what's this duck nonsense? So I'm like, that was a duck
Sam: And they have Mork or Ducktales to go off of. It'll just be very confusing.
Dan: Yeah. I've been reading a lot of Book of the New Sun lately, so I'm my head's in a very like, oh yeah, this is nothing and everything. Who knows?
Sam: So to bring it back to the Mork Borg calendar, do you think when people burn the book that their fictional worlds are set ablaze?
Dan: I think I,
Kali: I'm gonna say yes.
Dan: Like I think you know, John Romero's d and d campaign that he was running with the folks who were making Doom when he sold the world for a Daikatana. And then like that brought John Carmack's like 500 pound campaign Bible to a close of like, all right, the world's over.
Like I think ending worlds, even though they're much more valuable with all the time you've spent than the MSRP $29. 99 book that you can get at pretty much any friendly local game store that's worth its salt. And yet I think people would be much more ready to destroy their worlds than they would to burn the physical book.
Kali: Well, 'cause you can use the book to rebuild that physical world even after it has ended. Yeah. So it is, it is tempting to revisit and And have that tool at your disposal again. Although also I don't have a citation for why I said yes. It just sounded like a cool idea.
Dan: I no, I, I have nothing to back up my absolute confidence that worlds are being burned, probably not books.
And if you know, I think that it's a lot easier in my mind, I am much more comfortable, even though in retrospect, where I place, my value should probably be...
But you know, like how often have you had a tabletop RPG campaign end properly? Right? Like they don't, they just kind of peter out.
And it's like, and things sort of you, these adventures. So there is something very compelling about an ending. And baking that in that is kind of merciful now that I think about it, of like, yeah, we are going to end your game before it runs out of steam.
Kali: And especially for this game,
Dan: it's delightful.
Kali: That has so much to hit you over the head with, them going Okay, but, but we will stop someday.
Dan: Yeah, because we keep coming back to as a theme in our other games, we keep coming back to this sort of immortality question in our body of work, and I think there's something I hadn't thought about until this exact moment is the sort of like the mercy and necessity of like your game has to end. The good times have to go to a close and it's worse if it doesn't. Like the fading out and the unresolvedness is so much worse than like, yeah, you were halfway to this castle to do something and then the world is on fire now. Like, there's a beauty in that that I uh,
Kali: Your show got canceled, but gosh, it went out with a bang.
Dan: Yeah. You know, the fiction of an apocalypse that's going to happen like that instead of a million tiny cuts is very like, oh yeah, I'm, I'm with you in this optimism Mork Borg team.
Sam: I mean, set the podcast on fire. It's time to go.
Kali: Burn your phone.
Sam: Burn, burn your phones and your hard drives.
Kali: Your phone. Please. Please don't. There's PE sticks and stuff. It's really not a good idea.
Dan: Burn the mp3 to a cd.
Sam: Kali and Dan, thank you so much for being here. This was such a delight.
Kali: Thanks for having us. This was a delight.
Dan: Yeah, I had a great time. I learned something too.
Sam: Thanks again to Kali and Dan for being here. Again you can find the Dukk Borg Kickstarter right now by Googling it. That's D U K K, space B O R G, or through a link in the show notes.
You can find the Dice Exploder Kickstarter by Googling it or again in the show notes.
You can find Kali on bluesky at helloitskali and on Twitter at kalila.
You can find Dan on bluesky and Twitter at itsdanphipps.
That's K A L I for Kali and P H I P P S for Phipps.
As always, you can find me on Bluesky, Twitter, dice.camp, and itch at sdunnewold and there's a Dice Exploder Discord. Come and talk about the show with us if you want.
Our logo is designed by sporgory, and our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Gray.
And thanks as always to you for listening. See you next time. Follow my Kickstarter.
God, I didn't even mention Subway Runners. Ah, it's so good. Check it out. Someone come on the show and talk to me about Subway Runners. Gem Room Games: they make good shit.
Graphic Design // The Calendar of Nechrubel (Mork Borg) with Gem Room Games