A Primitive Hack for Mork Borg: Follow my Design Progress
I have now returned to my full time job, which means—unfortunately—work on the project will be slowing down. My goal is to get work done on weekends, evenings (if I feel up to it), and possibly even on my lunch breaks at the office.
Here's a work-in-progress shot of what will be used for the Troglodyte (non-) class, just to show you things are still moving!
At least I have a nice view at work now... when it's not raining.
This is the biggest challenge I’ve encountered while designing this ruleset. As there aren’t silver coins and shop merchants to get your gear from, you have to make it all yourself. Crafting is an easy mechanic if you’re playing a video game, not so much for a table top RPG. Roleplaying it out or having a bunch of dice rolls to see if you successfully chip a piece of flint isn’t very exhilerating, so my approach is simply going to be: you just do it. Although I have yet to play test any of this, these are my concepts.
Skill Sets: Each class will have a skill set for what they can craft: simple weapons, complex weapons, simple items, complex items, camp items, and totemic items.
Resources: The only resources that are tracked are food (meat and ruffage), herbs (for mixing poultices), and animal hides. Other resources like bone, wood or stone, are up the the GM. If you’re in the forest, there’s lots of wood and plant matter to work with, if you’re in the middle of the desert, it might be hard to find. Water does become a resource, but only if the environemt calls for it.
Herbalism: There won’t be any “mix one Herb A with two Herb B to make Poultice C.” Herbs will just be a general term, one poultice might take six Herbs to mix, another might take three. Although I may make an optional rule for people who really want to get into the weeds—pun sort of intended.
Crafting, Hunting and Gathering: Option 1
Time: Rather than rolling to see if you’re successful, you basically have a time frame to craft items. After a day of travelling, you might have five hours of “camp time” to hunt, forage, cook food and craft. Each item will have an entry something like:
Pack
Used to carry up to 6 normal size items to free up your hands, you can only carry one pack.
3 Hours | 2 Hides + Handaxe
If you have at least three hours, two hides and a handaxe, then you have successfully made a pack. No need to roleplay, no need to roll.
So simple a neanderthal could do it.
Because survival can be day to day, having to roleplay scenarios of hunting rabbits or gathering nuts and berries is unnecessary and slows things down. So, depending on the biome you’re in, hunting small game, gathering nuts, berries, and grubs, and foraging for herbs are each done with a single roll for each. Hunters get a bonus for hunting, and Gatherers a bonus for foraging. As above, you can make a test to hunt/forage for each hour that you attempt to do that task. The difficulty rating will depend on the biome you’re in. Hunting or foraging in a forest will have a low threshold for success, in a barren, dry desert, it will be much harder to find animals or viable plant life.
Forest Biome
Hunting DR10 | 2D6 Meat
Forage, Ruffage DR8 | 2D8 Ruffage
Forage, Herbs DR10 | 2D6 Herbs
Crafting, Hunting and Gathering: Option 2
To simplify the process even further (which might be a good thing), each player could have 2 “Camp Actions” to perform: cook, hunt, forage for food, forage for herbs, and/or craft a normal-sized item. Crafting would follow the rules the same as before in regard to resources, but ignore the time by replacing it with the Camp Actions. Each biome would have a die associated with an action, something like:
Forest Biome
Hunting D8
Forage, Ruffage D8
Forage, Herbs D8
Desert Biome
Hunting D4 – 2
Forage, Ruffage D4 –1
Forage, Herbs D4 – 2
Simply roll for each Camp Action that each player wants to peform, and that’s what you generate. Perhaps the hunter class would shift the die up by one for hunting—from D8 to D10, in the case of the forest, and the gatherer class would do the same for foraging.
Actions for crafting larger items, like a canoe or a hut, could take multiple actions beyond 2, that require help from multiple characters pitching in with the work.
Even simpler, a dim-witted neanderthal could do it.
Again, this all just my thoughts, as of yet to be tsted around the table. I am, of course, open to any thoughts the community might have. Has anyone played a game with crafting rules you thought were done really well? Leave a comment below by smashing your keyboard with a rock.
Game Concepts
Cave Borg is a game of survival in a wild, savage land as your tribe struggles to avoid extinction. The same base rules of Mork Borg will, of course, be the same with numerous tweaks, alterations, and new rules without taking away from the spirit of the system. I’m trying my best to keep all of the extra rules as optional as possible, for anyone who wants to stick the original Mork Borg experience.
The Basics
Keep in mind, these are all subject to change, as none of this has yet been play tested.
Hit Points, Omens and five ability scores (more in line with Pirate Borg and Cy_Borg) remain. The scores are Bash (Strength), Grit (Toughness), Instinct (Presence), Agility, and Wisdom (Knowledge).
A new addition to the stats will be Gut, because of the survival theme, your cave people will need to eat to sustain themselves. The bigger, tougher cave people will need more food than the smaller, weaker ones.
An optional (but recommended) rule will be Vocabulary. When players interact with one another around the table, they can only use the words in their vocabulary list. This is determined by their class, Wisdom score, and added to throughout advancement (called Evolving, in Cave Borg).
The Classes
The Hunter: Just like it sounds, prefers ranged combat.
The Gatherer: Excellent at crafting and using resources.
The Warrior: A simple minded brute who likes to smash stuff.
The Shaman: A spell caster that supports, buffs, and heals.
The Mystic: A spell caster who calls upon animal spirits for combat.
The Feral: A wild, stealthy cave person who prefers the company of wolves.
The Troglodyte: The basic, classless cave person.
Each class (The Hunter, The Gatherer, The Warrior, and The Feral) will all have a base trait, as well as six traits that they gain as they Evolve.
Instead of traits, The Shaman and The Mystic have incantations (spells) that they gain, and like Pirate Borg, these incantations have three tiers that allow them to cast progressively more powerful versions.
Who am I?
I’m a graphic designer, illustrator, animator (a bit), gamer, and nerd. I’ve been a gamer for as long as I can remember, the only reason I wanted to learn how to read in elementary school was so that I could read the red box Basic D&D set (which I still have, with seven year old me’s pencil marks still in it). I work full time in the resource industry as a mining company’s branding and design lead. Before that, I worked freelance as a designer and illustrator for various advertising and creative agencies, and also a film production company doing graphic design and concept art.
My first job related to gaming was doing illustration work for Goodman Games back in 2005. Then I got much deeper into the world of OSR games by doing illustration work for Greg Gillespie’s mega-dungeon Barrowmaze, which led to me designing and illustrating for it’s next iteration, Barrowmaze Complete. After that, I also designed and illustrated his next release, The Forgotten Caverns of Archaia.
I’ve been fortunate enough to share illustration credits with the likes of Erol Otus, Larry Elmore, Jim Rosloff, Russ Nicholson, Jim Holloway, and Timothy Truman. Artists I idolized as a kid—seven year old me would be proud.
What is Cave Borg?
First off, Cave Borg is a working title—although I am kind of partial to it! Cave Borg (or whatever it will be called, but for now, that’s how I’ll reference it) is a Mork Borg hack set in a primitive fantasy world of cave people, mammoths, sabre tooth cats, dinosaurs, and even primal demons from the underworld. Inspired primarily by Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal animated series, as well as The Land of the Lost television series, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, the 1966 film One Million Years B.C., and anything else that has cavemen co-existing with dinosaurs—except for maybe The Flintstones.
Where am I?
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Not that it really matters. But it does mean that there will be no Armor Tiers, but there will be Armour Tiers.
When am I Doing This?
Right now! But this project started back in 2021 during covid lockdown—sort of. To keep myself busy I invited a friend to start meeting once a week to develop our own RPG. We started developing a Star Frontiers inspired sci-fi game with our own ruleset, but as the project started to get larger and larger (and because I can’t focus on a single idea very long before my brain starts coming up with different ideas) we switched to a post-apocalyptic game, and then to a caveman board game. When I discovered Mork Borg, I decided that making a Mork Borg hack was the best route to get this done. Once it’s in a proper state and been play tested, I plan on starting a Kickstarter to fund the production. If successful, I would like to move on to my more expansive ideas for making other hacks with larger scopes, and I already have an idea for a supplement for Cave Borg.
Why am I Doing This?
I’ve been in my design and branding role for over twelve years, and in the last year it’s been a very stressful, chaotic atmosphere, coupled with ongoing family issues, it has created a perfect shit-storm of an environment. At the time of this writing, I’m on leave from my job for my own mental health and to hit “the reset button” on my life and job. For the past twelve years my design work has been almost exclusively corporate, and adheres to strict brand guidelines—but my natural inclination is for dark imagery, inky black chaos, monsters, and grimdark fantasy—so Mork Borg seemed like the perfect fit for me. In design school, I was known as “that guy that paints the ink spattered crows,” and this project is a throwback to those (more creative) times.
Additionally, a friend of mine invited me to illustrate his entry for the Pirate Borg design jam for their upcoming book, Cabin Fever, which we won first place in the miscellaneous category—so I figured the community must at least like my work a little bit!
As for why I’m doing this blog, I hope to get input and feedback (the helpful kind, let’s not be troglodytes!) from the people who play these games, as I am constantly blown away by the creativity and support that I’ve seen in this community. Even if you’re someone who just buys these books for the art and design, I also want those people to like what they see—so far, the feedback has been positive! I’ll be sharing sneak peaks of art and design, as well as discussing ideas for rules and game concepts.
I’m also doing this as a challenge to myself, as I will be be writing, designing, and illustrating the entire project myself. Although, if I have a successful Kickstarter campaign, I would like to bring on a proper editor, and possibly enlist the services of a more well known artist for the cover art.
Most of all: No deadlines. No armchair art directors. No meetings. No brand guidelines. No one typeface to use. No grids. Just creative design and illustration that I want to enjoy making and other people enjoy looking at.
Survive. Evolve. Die. Welcome to Cave Borg.
