Cy_Borg TTRPG will be the cyberpunk apocalypse we truly deserve

Mörk BorgThe award-winning rules light role-playing game ” is receiving a spinoff with high concept. The title Cy_Borg, the 160-page book is written by Christian Sahlén, with art by franchise illustrator Johan Nohr, and in partnership with the Stockholm Kartell. Described by Free League Publishing as a “deck-hacking, brick-throwing upheaval of a game,” it will be crowdfunded on Kickstarter beginning Nov. 13.

Polygon caught up with its creative team to get an exclusive look behind the scenes at the 2022 tabletop release.

To understand Cy_BorgYou first have to understand what you are doing. Mörk Borg and how it’s different from other tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) like Dungeons & Dragons. The 80-page, hardcover book was designed by Pelle Nailsson and is part of OSR, or the Old School Renaissance. It’s a movement among TTRPG creators to streamline the role-play experience, paring it down to its most basic elements. You’ll find many randomized tables that can be used to tell stories as you go. The stats are smaller and the stat blocks less. Sessions can be brutal and violent, but they are short.

Johan Nohr/Free League Publishing

Nilsson tells Polygon that the goal of OSR isn’t to fetishize the work of Gary Gygax, Dave Arneson, and the other luminaries who helped create TTRPGs. This is a way to make games like these more accessible.

“I think [the fifth edition of D&D] made it simpler,” Nilsson said, “and that was the impression that I got when I read it first. But it’s still very complex as you climb the levels. I think by level 10 or something it becomes too much for me, at least, to keep track of everything.”

“I did run a lot of PathfinderAnd [third edition D&D],” added Sahlén, “and just the amount of time I had to spend learning monsters stat blocks. Once the characters got up to level 12, or something, it just took me hours.”

According to the couple, this is their final result. Mörk Borg It is about rules and not rules.

“Not everything has to be written down in the book,” Sahlén continued. “Just figure it out as you go along. Now you have the core concept. You know how to hit someone with a blade and how to keep yourself from falling into death traps. All the rest is optional. […]Simply make it. Roll something that feels right, right now.”

That’s not to say that Mörk Borg It lacks context and clarity. It makes up for what it has in fluff with beautiful art and graphics design. Every corner of the slim, 80-page manual is crammed with visual spectacle, with treatments that range from 16th-century wood carvings to pen-and-ink demons that look like Satan’s own Rorschach test.

The game’s tone is what sets it apart. It’s not a post-apocalyptic game. You are actually witnessing the end of all things. The violent ending is certain for your characters who are culled from the scraps of society.

“Your character is not having a happy life,” Sahlén said, “and they’re not the big heroes, because when the campaign ends, the world ends, and you burn the book. And that’s it.” Players shouldn’t expect apotheosis, but if they’re lucky they’ll get some chuckles and a little catharsis out of the ordeal.

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Cy_BorgInspired by Mörk Borg, but also by Sahlén’s own day job working in IT and risk compliance. Each day, he struggles with the daily realities of living in late-capitalist cyber dystopia. His vision is for a game that more accurately reflects the doomsday scenarios of where we’re heading as a society than, say, Cybepunk 277Did.

Cy_BorgIt started as a pun, and then became a shitpost. It resolved itself out of Sahlén’s desire to run a Cyberpunk 2020-style game, to celebrate the release of R. Talsorian Games’ seminal TTRPG with a modern, rules-light system instead of its own revamped new edition, Cyberpunk RedIt is. But Sahlén couldn’t find a system that was light enough to meet his needs, so he rolled his own. It was a matter of time before he could find the right system, so he created his own.

If D&D traditionally starts in a tavern, then Nohr says Mörk Borg It is much more common for characters who are hungover from previous nights to begin in the gutter. Cy_BorgThe other possibility is that they may start at a skitt bar. The one thing that is certain, however, is the financial ruin of your characters.

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  Cy_Borg has sample art.
  
  
  Johan Nohr/Free League Publisherinh
  

• 
  Cy_Borg has sample art.
  
  
  Johan Nohr/Free League Publisherinh
  

• 
  Cy_Borg has sample art.
  
  
  Johan Nohr/Free League Publisherinh
  

“Maybe [they’ve stumbled into] a weird, darknet forum,” Nohr said, “and a mysterious avatar comes with a data package for them. Each character will have massive debt to pay. You have this heavy economical burden on you that you have to get rid of, and so you have a real incentive to go out there and try to do something.”

“That means that you also have people that may ask you for favors,” Sahlén said, “because you already owe them a lot of money. So, we’re gonna raise the interest here if you don’t do a favor for us. Or do this and we write off part of the debt.”

It is up to both the game master as well as the players on the table what will happen next. What happens next? Cy_BorgManual, as it stands, will contain many more tables than Mörk Borg Did. Art will still be extravagantly and strange, however it will be much more in tune with glitched stock photos and digital graphics.

“I think the punk part is extremely vital in this game, and very important,” Nohr said. “This game is about rebellion and upheaval, breaking the systems that are. […] There’s a fury in the art style, I think, and in the writing as well. […] You can tell in the text that the narrator in this game really hates this place, and that’s very important.”

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