Note: Originally posted on our now-defunct website on 30.12.24, with the site going down forever at 6pm the following day (RIP). One of Elodie’s many great analyses of TTRPG products here at Inner-Strength Check and for one of the most goddamn metal TTRPG’s ever in terms of aesthetic - Mork Borg!

Enjoy these locavore words of wisdom from our own resident visual art/RPG design expert!

Peace, Love and Psychedelic Doom Metal xoxo - Brady.

Author: Elodie.

Adventure Review: The Choir by Mobile Hut

Six strangers sit in the gaudy decadence of a noble’s waiting room, taking a brief reprieve from the noisome decay of Schleswig’s streets. The room is choked with perfume. As they sink into the plush velvet, the six eye one another. The urchin, caked in filth. The cloaked hermit, with nothing to his name. The warrior, long past his prime. The masked scribe, failing to hide their tumours. The barbarian, viciously protective of his mutt. And standing in the corner, a noble, slowly succumbing to decadence and filth. None trust the other five, but there is a job to be done, and silver to spill blood over.

An excerpt from my session of The Choir.

Background

Those of you mired in the tabletop roleplaying hobby (specifically the decidedly DIY community that has sprung up in the wake of the OSR, or ‘Old School Renaissance’ movement) may be aware that a team of designers led by Evlyn Moreau recently ran a successful crowdfunding campaign to produce a new module for the MÖRK BORG RPG.

The rest of you, however, will be sitting there wondering why the hell my editor would let me open an article with an onslaught of jargon and obscure names. So, a bit of background might be in order.

[Editor's Note - It's chill, fam. You've seen my obscure-posting, right? Heh. - Brady]

MÖRK BORG is a rules-light Swedish roleplaying game inspired by doom metal. It has become iconic for its evocative imagery (reality decays, truth becomes dream), hilarious grim-dark-bleakness (it’s the dragon game your pastor warned you about back in the ‘80s) and not least of all its… bold graphic design choices (careful your eyes don’t melt out of their sockets).

Evlyn Moreau is a big name in the independent and OSR tabletop gaming scene. To some people, she may seem out of place in the gore-stained world of MÖRK BORG. Her illustration work is, after all, as adorable as it is iconic, as are such offerings of hers as Doodle Land and Goblin Mail.

She is, however, no stranger to the grim and unsettling, and has previous credits on third party material for MÖRK BORG.

So, in the leadup to the general release for A Feast for a Sphinx, I thought I’d dive into one of Evlyn’s earlier outings into the dying world of MÖRK BORG. The Choir is an urban adventure written by Evlyn Moreau and Lett Morrison. Editing and layout was provided by Casey Jones, and it features art from Evlyn Moreau, Roxanne B and Lett Morrison.

Let’s take a look inside…

First Impressions

Straight out of the gate I can see so many creative ideas. A runaway heiress? A classic plot, and uniquely challenging when you remember how few adventuring parties are known for their discretion. A forest of blood? Without giving anything away, this idea was a favourite of both me and my players. Unique factions, motives and twists? Oh, you’d better believe it. The adventure is gory and unsettling without ever becoming crass.

The MÖRK BORG rulebook doesn’t spend a lot of time exhaustively detailing the dying world. A few sentences to set the tone; that’s all any location gets. This means, of course, that urban adventures are ripe with opportunities for worldbuilding and unique ideas. In this regard, The Choir absolutely delivers.

The module is incredibly light, clocking in at only seven pages of actual content. It is obvious that it follows the mantra of “Make. Every. Word. Count.” common in OSR adventure design. Personally I worried that the investigative portion of the adventure was almost too terse; on a first read-through I found it difficult to find things I could latch onto to anchor the adventure, and my imagination didn’t always flow from the words on the page.

This scenario consists of a few random encounters leading the party towards a small dungeon. It claims to take 1-3 sessions. My group ploughed through it in one monstrous (by my attention span’s standards) five-hour session. And as the scenario unfolded any misgivings I had about the module disappeared. I came up with an introduction to set the scene and relay the quest’s details to the group. Then, from the moment they stepped out of the quest-giver’s door, every random encounter in the leadup to the dungeon fell into place perfectly, making Schleswig feel like an immersive and atmospheric city. As an aside, I also want to mention that no urban MÖRK BORG adventure would be complete without these sumptuous (and currently free!) visual aids by Brian Yaksha.

Hiccups

As alluded to above, I initially made the classic mistake of treating the module like a novel, and wondering why there were so many gaps. Of course, some modules do read almost like novels, attempting to straddle the line between a fun read and a useful tool at the table. While the best OSR modules are also entertaining to read (The Choir is no exception) they certainly prioritise how a scenario feels to run over how it feels if it never makes it to the table.

The only thing I genuinely disliked about running the module was having to reference the important elements of the adventure at high speed during the session. I found some aspects of the module were organised very counterintuitively. Important NPCs and concepts were mentioned in multiple places with little visual signposting and no repeated information.

This made it difficult to read ahead and made me nervous that I might be missing things or waiting too long to introduce them. What stopped this from becoming a cardinal sin was just how terse the module was, meaning that I could sift through information very fast, and barely ever had to pause the game to allow time to reference the book.

I would call this a minor gripe, and not one that ruined the experience.

Flexibility

If you wanted to lengthen or shorten your campaign, I could easily imagine you squeezing more use out of the atmospheric encounters that build up to the dungeon, and adding more tension and red herrings, or skipping straight to the dungeon (though in the latter case I think you might lose some of that urban magic). Even in the dungeon proper, there were a lot of things I didn’t use, or encounters that could have gone differently, or things that a longer campaign might have contextualised differently. In short: I’m looking forward to running it again when my physical copy arrives!

I would say, without exaggeration, that this module helped me craft one of the best sessions I’ve ever run.

You can purchase digital copies of The Choir at Mobile Hut’s storefront or physical copies at Ratti Incantati.