War(game) Stories

There was an interesting piece on Rascal last week analysing a recent interview between Wizards of the Coast's new'ish president John Hight and industry channel The Game Business. Having made his name at video game studio Blizzard, Hight is clearly comfortable with a situation where digital games play a greater and greater role in both Dungeons & Dragons future and WotC's bottom line.

Honestly you don't need an MBE to look at the somewhat lacklustre launch of D&D 5.5 compared to the gangbusters success of Baldur's Gate 3 and see why that scenario would make sense to anyone with a seat in Hasbro's c-suite. Still, there was one point he made that caught my eye, where he starts to talk up the possibilities that gen AI offers computer games.

As Chase points out, that's something tabletop roleplaying games have always offered.

Now, Hight is clearly talking about video games but you don't have to look far to see people, people with inevitably more power and money than ideas, expounding similar pablum about all forms of media. What strikes me is just how miserable it all sounds, a future where all of us are locked into our own unique worlds, all common points of cultural reference erased as the algorithm keeps us sated, pacified with our own personalised soma.

It's true that one of the great strengths of tabletop roleplaying games, and what makes them so hard to review, is that they can be infinitely variable. The, more often than not true, cliche being no two tables will ever run the same scenario the same way. Indeed most modern, especially indie, game design leans ever harder in this direction. Whether it's OSR or PbtA style games, when people try to sell us on their new title more and more it'll be attributes like no prep, shared worldbuilding or rolling on tables to create every single thing as you go, that get pushed to the forefront.

There's a hundred good reasons for all this, and I probably agree with most of them, but I still believe there's an incredibly valuable space in this hobby for old fashioned pre-written, official scenarios and campaigns. Issues of railroading and the like aside, there's a lot to be said for those big set ups, and the kind of involved plots that can't spring out of any table fully formed, that create shared moments across different tables beyond the universal, mechanical thrill of rolling a natural twenty.

In an increasingly atomised world what's better than being able bond with someone you've just met over experiences shared across time and space, whether that's the end of Empire Strikes Back, arbitrary and unfair deaths in Fighting Fantasy books, the realisation of what's actually going on in Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, commiserating with anyone else who powered through the original Enemy Within campaign only to find a dispiriting dungeon crawl tacked on at the end or, as author and game designer, Gareth Hanrahan put it...

So, here's to our shared experiences, as increasingly unfashionable as they may be, even the rubbish ones can still provide us with some sense of much needed community. As ever, we'd love to hear about your memories of magical moments, set pieces that have stood the test of time and transcended your own tabletop, so drop a comment below or email us and we'll share a few of them next week.

And, whilst we're at it, if you do want another shared experience (come on, you knew it was coming) then you could do a lot worse than order our new issue (or even our mega back issue bundle) and be amongst the literal dozens of people worldwide who will hear it drop through their letterbox sometime in September, how's that for a segue!

Right, enough of that, read on for an interesting Scandi-noir take on Mörk Borg, plus all the other stuff that's kept us glued to our screens this week, including snail fighting knights and a moving church! Till next week...

John x

We have a new issue out in September, it's packed with great stuff but we only get to make more if you buy it. So if you think that's something we should do then head over to our shop now...

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Cörk Børd

The latest game from Paul Baldowski (Cthulhu Hack, The Dee Sanction etc), Cörk Børd, is that absolute rarity in the world of indie RPGs, a Mörk Borg hack whose derivative title has had more than 30 seconds thought put into it. It's a low bar but one that's most approach with all the subtlety of Marvel's Juggernaut*.

Anyway, Cörk Børd keeps the original game's Scandinavian spirit alive just swapping out the battle jackets covered in patches for bands like Meshuggah and Opeth for the kind of well-worn knitwear sported by craggy faced, emotionally unavailable cops in TV shows like The Bridge, or indeed Borgen.

Yep, this is Mörk Borg reimagined as a nordic noir police procedural. So an equally bleak setting, similarly violent murders and the kind of morally compromised characters you've come to love, just this time the blood covered skeletons are less likely to get up and try and stab you with a rusty sword.

Play as one of six 'damaged' archetypes from the broken inspector to the grief counsellor and hit the gloomy, desaturated streets to follow one of the game's new mechanics, clue chains. Each investigation's complexity and length determined by the number of pins on your, almost titular, cork board as you race solve a brutal crime before the inevitable breakdown of your psyche and/or strained familial relationships.

Which all sounds thoroughly miserable but very much in an aptly Mörk Borgian way, so it's good to see that after countless mutations, from pirates to the trenches of WWI, the system can still be adapted in a way that's both unexpected but also comfortably fits it like an old, possibly blood stained, Dale of Norway jumper.

Find Cörk Børd on Kickstarter, campaign runs until September 11

* full disclosure I have my own MB hack sat here on my hard drive with a supremely hacky title, when Wyrd Science finally crumbles into insolvency I may well inflict it on the world, a good as any reason to buy the new issue I guess.

Previously featured on The Gazetteer & still running...

After The World Ends - Brave the world of wasteland warriors with this lush book from French publisher Pulse that looks at all the post-apocalyptic movies that followed in the dusty wake of films like Mad Max. On Kickstarter, campaign ends August 28

Dragon Reactor, war is hell, but at least you've got a sweet ride in this new mech pilot RPG from Dinoberry Press. On BackerKit, campaign ends August 29

Serving Up Disaster - Inspired by Gordon Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares this lovely looking RPG zine sees you try to evict the cockroaches and turn around a failing restaurant in time for the series finale. On Kickstarter, campaign ends August 31

Being where we share all the other stuff, gaming and related or not, that's held our attention this week...

++ The question of why medieval knights were always getting into scraps with snails is one the internet asks, and answers, every few months but it's also one we'll never tire of.

++ The UK Tabletop scene lost a real one this week with the sad news of the death of Bud Baird, host of Bud's RPG Reviews, creator of the best selling Viral scenario for Call of Cthulhu and dear friend to many. Over to Dirk from The Grognard Files for a moving personal tribute.

++ A nice little speedrun through the mines of Moria in its various tabletop incarnations by Josh McCrowell, which reminds me I really need to check out The One Ring version.

++ Ever since buying Space Fleet on a wet caravanning holiday in Cornwall and forcing my very unenthusiastic family to suffer through it I've had a thing for space combat games, so we're very much looking forward to giving Casey Garske's new Voidfighter a go...

++ Budding fantasy authors of a Conanesque bent take note New Edge Sword & Sorcery have just opened up a new submissions window for 2026. Be specific, be weird they advise and who are we to argue.

++ Another great round of of new SF/F books to check out this month courtesy of Andrew Liptak. I almost bought Before Superman: Superhumans of the Radium Age when I saw it in a comic shop at the weekend, must correct my mistake.

++ Christian Lindke digs into the history of one of the first licensed RPGs, Flash Gordon & the Warriors of Mongo, published in 1977 by Fantasy Games Unlimited.

++ Can running a Kickstarter be fun? Geoffrey Golden asks the platform's Games Outreach Lead, Nicole Amato.

++ The Quietus goes sticks up in defence of Morris Dancing and celebrates its "radical and transgressive power."

++ If you're into horror then you need to check out Certified Forgotten, an independent, writer owned site that's run by one of our writers Matt Monagle and Matthew Donato. Smart stuff about scary films.

++ And talking of Matt, here he is over at Bloody Disgusting checking out the new comic prequel to everyone's favourite not-Warhammer 40K film Event Horizon. Sounds like it's going to be good.

++ When you see a Swedish church in the news it's normally because some corpse painted maniacs have decided to burn it to the ground, so it was a pleasant surprise this week when instead they just decided to move one across a city in one go like some cross between an Age of Sigmar cogfort and an out of town supermarket build in the UK in the mid 90s. Great stuff.

++ Over to Mike Paradinas to play us out this week. I've been digging through some of his recent albums the other day and found this stunner, tucked away near the end of 2023's 1977, that with its Carpenter-esque synth arpeggios just might displace Plaid's Do Matter as my go-to Mothership intro music (for a bit).

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