Designing Weak Characters

Foul Kickstarter now live

It’s launch day! Today I’ll talk about how I adapted an old school TTRPG format, the notorious funnel, to a modern TTRPG. That funnel, Foul, happens to also be live on Kickstarter from today until 6/1/24.

• Foul Kickstarter is Live

• Making MÖRK BORG characters even weaker

• Content Corner

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Foul Kickstarter is Live

My newest MÖRK BORG module, Foul, is now funding on Kickstarter.

Cover mockup for Foul

Why Kickstarter? Because I have special plans for this zine. Until now, I have used digital printing for all of my physical products. The results have been fine, but they have not been anything that stands out from the crowd.

With Foul, I’m doing something new (to me). Risograph printing. Oh yeah, that cover you see in the picture above is going to be riso printed on a sickly green paper with all of the glorious texture and perfect imperfections that the risograph has to offer. The inner pages will still be digitally printed, but the cover will be a removable affair with the player-facing maps on the inside to ensure everyone at your table gets to enjoy this work of art.

If any or all of this sounds interesting, check out the Kickstarter page:

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Making MÖRK BORG characters even weaker

Foul is a classic “funnel module,” designed in the spirit of the classic DCC module Sailors on the Starless Sea. The basics of a funnel are as follows:

1. Level 0 characters

2. Players each start with multiple characters

3. The group of characters embarks on a deadly mission

4. At the end of the mission, each player has only one character left

This one remaining character can then advance to Level 1 and be taken on more adventures.

When I set out to write a funnel for MÖRK BORG, I hit a snag right on point #1: there are no levels in MÖRK BORG! Sure, you might Get Better (or Worse)™️, but that system does not have the same progression as DCC and other classic TTRPGs offer. So, I had to make my own system, weakening the infamously weak characters of MÖRK BORG even further. To do this, I looked at each step of the character creation process, and I asked myself, how could I make this worse? Here’s where I landed:

Now, it’s all well and good for me to take a bunch of stuff away from the characters, but I still want the game to be FUN. And you know what’s fun? Getting cool stuff. To facilitate this, I built a miniature Getting Better (Not Worse)™️ system:

And when a player has only one character remaining, they get to choose a character class. Now, we’ve accomplished two things:

1. We’ve given players a chance to customize their characters by choosing which attribute improves. They may choose to buffer a character’s weakness or max out their strength, but either way, they get a choice.

2. We’ve given players a reason to risk their characters’ lives. They aren’t going to get any better if they don’t lose a few (and they each start with 3-4, so there’s some room for experimentation).

Add to this the new Fouled condition, with the Foul Aberrations that it brings, and this mob is going to be a wild party of characters by the time they have faced the Lord Beneath (if any survive).

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Content Corner

I’m digging deep into my old notes today with a D&D 5E magic item for anyone that’s ever wanted their cleric to use a shotgun.

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Thank you!

That’s all I’ve got for this week. Don’t forget to check out the Foul Kickstarter, and I’ll be back soon with more design notes for my MÖRK BORG funnel adventure.

—MAH