The Final Day‘s grimdark end of the world has a makeover!
This roleplaying game generator has 36 unique cataclysms to ring-in your fantasy game’s apocalypse. While made under license for Mörk Borg, the descriptions are general enough to apply to any game needing a conclusion 🔥
The Final Day comes in ‘friendly’ and ‘ink bane’ versions. The addon is available now on sale over here.
Cheers to your (fictional) ruin! 💀
Warning ⚠ Linked, unaffiliated content has mature themes of violence, blood, and everything “Nano-infested doomsday RPG about cybernetic misfits and punks raging against a relentless corporate hell” would imply 💀
Dark-fantasy Mörk Borg is all about the end-times. From the set of Miseries to the seventh and final obliteration, the end is nigh.
The ending is also abrupt – slam book closed, burn your game sheets. To eek out a bit more play, I created an awarded module The Final Hours of the Final Day (read about it in the post).
Problem: That set of fictional cataclysms depend heavily on the lore, setting, and rules of Mörk Borg. Prophesies, grim fantasy, monster rules.
So it struck me: what would a present day apocalypse look like? Thus this new system-agnostic modern module Today Is the End.
Let’s discuss:
A grimdark, modern-themed list of 36 terrible ends to the world. Rolling D66 (one six-sided die is the first value, a second D6 the second value) selects a tragedy to bring into the game to send a one-shot night of play or a whole campaign off with a bang.
From the rules:
The seventh seal is broken, the final war begins, the bombs drop, the world burns, and the enemy calls upon society and soul. These are your final hours. Every 15 to 30 real-minutes (or 1 hour game time), roll D66 twice on the below. If the same number has been used before, use the next highest that is unused.
The curtain falls for the last and final time when:
- all characters the players have or could play as (such as friendly NPCs) are dead and gone,
- all six of a section have been enacted (crumple and burn the pages here – existence snuffs out without warning),
- actions have miraculously stopped the machinations of the End Times.
Meant to come at the end of what already may be a long gaming session, Today Is the End careens headlong into chaos and cataclysm at a literally-breakneck pace.
To cater to any game system set in the modern world, Today Is the End relies on random trait selection and ‘qualitative’ difficulties (is it easy, moderate, or hard to do?).
Find Today Is the End here on Google Docs: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1akgCDW6yAVIEOThIfabPMF9tDJTlG26i_tTOPUj2P7w/edit?usp=sharing
Like The Final Hours, I am looking for an artist open for commissions! Whether in a Mörk Borg style or its cyberpunk sibling CY_BORG, I want to talk business 😁
Finally, the legal stuff:
Compatible with CY_BORG. CY_BORG IS ©2022 STOCKHOLM KARTELL.
Today Is the End is an independent production by Jimmy Chattin and is not affiliated with Stockholm Kartell. It is published under the CY_BORG Third Party License.
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Ready to play? Keep an eye out for a CB-related list of ruin next year along with a space-faring sci-fi rapture too.
In the meanwhile, shoot me your artist recommendations and suggestions on changes / replacements to Today Is the End. Cheers to your much-less-eventful end of year!
I have written before on converting D100 and D20 dice systems to 2D6, but never have I ever brought all these dice into one place.
For your and my convenience, a table to convert any dice for any game rolls you may encounter, percentages of that outcome and at (>=) or over (>) the number specified:
| Quality | D100 > | % | D20 >= | % | D10 >= | % | 2D6 >= | % |
| Easy | 25 | 75 | 5 | 80 | 3 | 80 | 5 | 83 |
| Medium | 50 | 50 | 10 | 55 | 6 | 50 | 7 | 58 |
| Hard | 75 | 25 | 15 | 30 | 9 | 20 | 9 | 27 |
| Very Hard | 95 | 5 | 20 | 5 | 10 | 10 | 11 | 8 |
Do the percentages match? No. Is it worth it to be exact? Also no – these are for use in games of fun and non-monetary chance, each no more than ~10% from one another. As I once heard from a lead game designer (in paraphrase): “If a change isn’t 10% or more, it doesn’t matter.”
Note: Some games start the player’s characters strong, or the goals are to instill a dire feel in play. That just means to up the tiers of quality by 1, e.g. easy rolls as if medium, medium becomes hard, etc.
Anything smaller than a single D10 or two D6 is really hard to make work intuitively.
Going back to the ~10% difference, look at a D6 -> a ‘very hard’ roll would be a 6 or more on a D6, a 17% chance of happening with a single die. We violate the ~10%-or-less rule. Could we make it happen? … Yes, if a roll requires a final number greater than the faces of the die (e.g. a 25 on D20), but now we are getting into some severe nitty-grittiness.
If using a system specifically designed for a ‘DX’ roll but a player brings a ‘DY’ to the party, make sure to convert the stats any fictional character uses from ‘X’ to ‘Y’.
Example: A D10 is used for a D20 system – stats for the D20 system need to be cut in half in how they would add or subtract from the D10 roll.
An example for the example: A +4 Toughness stat would add to a normal D20 roll in the game. However, since using a D10, only +2 (half of +4) would be used when D10 is rolled.
Here is another: A D6 is brought to a D20 system. Stats would thereby be about one-third as applicable (+3 becomes a +1).
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Hope this helps if needing to get people playing quickly at your table with any dice for any game. Might put this into something printable for an index card – let me know if I ought get that going sooner than later 👍
Cheers to you rolling what you need to 🎲🎲
Warning ⚠ Linked content has mature themes of violence, blood, and everything “a spiked flail to the face” of “a pitch-black apocalyptic fantasy RPG about lost souls” would imply 💀
Available now for purchase from the Store! Read about the release.
October had the goal to make a Mörk Borg module – The Final Hours of the Final Day is it, the perfect RPG tool for your own game’s end times 🔥
A grimdark, fantasy-themed list of 36 terrible ends to the world. Rolling D66 (one six-sided die is the first value, a second D6 the second value), select a tragedy to bring into the game to send a one-shot game or a whole campaign off with a bang.
From the rules:
The seventh seal is broken, the onslaught of the seventh Misery begins. These are your final hours. Every 15 to 30 real-minutes (or 1 hour game time), roll D66 twice on the below. If the same number has been used before, use the next highest that is unused.
The curtain falls for the last and final time when:
- all characters the players have or could play as (such as friendly NPCs) are dead and gone,
- all six of a section have been enacted (close and burn the book – existence snuffs out without warning),
- actions have miraculously stopped the machinations prophesied by Verhu of HE so long ago.
Meant to come at the end of what already may be a long gaming session, The Final Day careens headlong into chaos and cataclysm at a literally-breakneck pace.
While catering to the stats, lore, and ‘weird’ of Mörk Borg, The Final Day can be brought into any fantasy setting – stat effects can be either random stats or a best-call for the system in question, monsters are monsters or their near counterparts, and difficulties are generic enough for any system (minimum 10% change in probabilities).
Find the original The Final Hours of the Final Day here on Google Docs (again, the most updated can be purchased through the Store!): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dnWZciEVZwBLRh73qAV9NG6b1JzwydF1gc2lvCPF3m8/edit?usp=sharing
I seek out a graphic artist open for paid commissions who would put together The Final Day in the style of other Mörk Borg content. Send your recommendations my way!
Finally, the legal stuff:
Compatible with Mörk Borg. MÖRK BORG is copyright Ockult Örtmästare Games and Stockholm Kartell.
The Final Day is an independent production by Jimmy Chattin and is not affiliated with Ockult Örtmästare Games or Stockholm Kartell. It is published under the MÖRK BORG Third Party License.
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That’s it! Working on a modern day, system agnostic version of The Final Day – expect a post on that soon.
In the meantime, shoot me your suggestions and artists who are open for work! Cheers to your gaming ~
A thousand rolls of the dice? More like 7,752.
I like my games simple, but not all games are so. Some require more dice than the d6s the BITS System uses – this can be a problem if a player doesn’t want to carry around a dice bag 🎲🎲 Or a new player isn’t sure they are ready to invest. Yet other times a die just cannot be found!
Instead, I want to share with you different dice each with 1292 random rolls that are ready for print to distribute alongside any other piece of gaming material – physical dice not included 😉
d6, d8, d10, d12, d20, and d100 are all included in the DICE ROLLS – Essential doc on Google Drive.
Each page has labels for your convenience. All sheets have a normal distribution of probability, so the rolls are as accurate (or more) than physical math rocks.
A person can start from any corner and go in any direction so long as it is consistent (I would suggest the ol’ left-to-right, top-to-bottom approach). As you go along, mark off which numbers have been used.
Some dice are missing – with a little imagination, all the sheets can be more than they seem:
These are convenient sheets, though beware! Anyone who uses them may feel influenced to “meta game” – giving in to the temptation to look forward at what the next rolls might be and choose to act or not in certain unsporting fashion.
You can also make your own like I did:
Or you can skip all that to make a copy from my sheets in Google Drive 😉
Enjoy your games and your play, now made easier with a thousand some-odd rolls of the dice. Cheers~
In June, I blitzed the development of Gunslinger in The West (play the demo, an easy-to-read 2 printed pages!). Now is July’s turn to have its own game made.
A long-time passion project, As Above, So Below explored what it meant to make a game for me. It grew fast and big and needed some cooling-off time – now is the opportunity to brush the dust away, coming in at a cool 1 printed- and 2 printed-page collection for your enjoyment:
The worlds are old. Very old. Too old. Created in the rift between mysterious heavens above and deadly hells below, you adventure in the ruins and wilds of all that’s left.
Whether ridding the last bastion of corruption by careless caretakers, purging dragons and worse from the dark places, uniting the Beings of the world against supernatural punishment, or making it back alive to the tavern with your plunder, you have the same chances as any angel or devil to leave your mark.
By word and sword and spell you are judged. So rely on your adventuring fellows and roll your two dice in sacrifice to luck – you will need it.
Be a competent, cooperative, and courageous adventurer with your friends. Fulfill your needs, get in trouble, and have fun along the way.
(Links below go to Google Drive and the latest game documents.)
Best option: 2 pages, front-and-back. Magic, tables, guides, even a field of battle showing ranges. Too much? Then check out:
1 page, printed both sides. Gives the highlights of the system and some tables. Foldable.
That’s all that comes to mind 🤷♂️ (“That’s all,” he says, as if a month or more of work is so meager!)
Again, the 1-page, 2-page challenge really honed the vision I had for the game, a work-in-process for two years. While both Gunslinger in The West and As Above, So Below had fuller versions explored before the challenge, they are clearly better for it.
I think any potential game benefits from a ‘bare bones’ to ‘skin-on-bones’ treatment – it clarifies what should be in a ‘meat-on-bones’ publication, hones rules, and streamlines play as a standalone or for testing further additions.
Simple.
And simple is what BITS and its derivatives are meant to be 😉
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Give these prototypes a whirl – after my playtests, I would adore hearing about your experiences!
Cheers to all the fun times you have coming up~
June 28th 2022: Huzzah! A preview of the full game is available too! See here:
For June’s goal, I am counting Gunslinger in The West as out now! Have a one-pager and a two-pager condensing a larger 15-page document I’m keeping on the backburner for some more formal testing (graphic design would be nice to have too).
Without further ado, Gunslinger in The West:
The West is a land of the lawless and everyone else. You gave up all to come here as a Gunslinger on your horse with your gun to protect – or to take – what little is left.
Perhaps you found some fortune on the way, perhaps you made some friends, all fleetin’.
Regardless of how the sun set, you are here now. There is no Law or government man to tell you what, so how will it be? Save the innocent from the rough? Rough ’em yourself? Explore the wild, undiscovered places? Seek your own justice or justify your own acts?
Your skills got you here, but they will only help keep what is yours yours, steel and soul. So roll your two dice, rely on what makes you particular, pray to luck. You will need it.
Be a deadly Gunslinger in The West with your posse of partners. Fulfill why you are there or get into your own kind of trouble.
(Links below go to Google Drive and the latest game document.)
A single page (both sides) giving the highlights of the game.
TBD – Full game system written with extra characterization, examples, and Belle’s Town, and introductory showdown. (Art also TBD.)
The TODO list is pretty clear cut:
But what got the game here?
In all truth, Gunslinger in The West is a test project to see what a BITS game with only specialties (the S and no BIT of BITS), called “particulars” in this game. To genuine surprise, this take on the system works quite well!
Further, exploring what it is like to play a ‘hero’ character was eye-opening for development. I will be applying this later to a Halo / DOOM inspired RPG – keep eyes out for it! 👀
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Ride on, Gunslinger! Cheers to your time in The West ~
Chatting about roleplaying games (RPGs), it struck me: Why are there not rules for leveling-up gear like player characters (PCs) do?
Time to discuss:
Leveling is when someone or something has accomplished a great deed or series of actions.
What causes a PC to level is everything from grabbing more gold, having adventures, slaying a dragon, or just surviving to fight another day.
When a PC gains a level, some boon or bane happens to them. In most games, the PCs get better with more health, increased performance, and special rules they can use in-game. The rare few games allow a PC to get worse – since these are a super-minority, let us ignore ‘getting worse’ in this analysis.
Gear, equipment, weapons, armor, trinkets, and more – “gear” for now. These are the tools that assist or enable a PC to do things.
In both real myth, fictional fantasy, and sci-fi, gear is everywhere. Most of it involves no-name, indistinguishable junk – a sword exists for someone to have a sword, nothing more, a helmet could be a hat for how much value it has.
That gear doesn’t matter.
Or maybe it does? Famous pieces of gear had to start somewhere after all.
Some examples of famous gear that get more legendary as time goes on:
Plenty of gear has gotten better with use. Why, then, do virtually all tabletop roleplaying games miss out on this opportunity to grow bonds and allow players to influence the fictional lore?
You get where I am coming from now. TTRPGs ought include a benefit for players to keep around the gear their PCs use.
Not only will leveling gear increase player investment, it will also serve as an avenue for story, roleplay, and unique leverage should the PC’s gear ever be the focus of aggression.
What such a system could look like might be this, what I am including in the BITS system (by no means exhaustive of possibilities):
When a piece of gear is worn or wielded during or is otherwise actively used in completion of a game milestone (slaying the dragon, intercepting a bullet meant for another, broken by the enemy and reforged afterward, etc.), that gear may level up.
When leveling up, gear gains an ability either related to what it was involved in or used for, or is chosen randomly from a table.
Gear may also gain a name the first time it levels up, e.g. Sting. Gear may also gain a title the second time it levels up, e.g. The Orc Finder.
Gear may only have a total of 6 abilities. If there are already 6 abilities for given gear, the gear may not level up. Abilities may be removed if the gear is destroyed, severely damaged, re-created, or otherwise changed fundamentally in form or function.
Why cap at 6 abilities? That is to keep all the special things gear can do to a manageable minimum. (Humans can only maintain about 7-ish items in memory.) But I am not married to the idea – with further playtesting, perhaps 4 or 3 is a better cap.
The above comes with the idea that magic/ancient/prototype/exotic items will already come with some abilities, a story to tell about their creation and history. Whether the player keeps pre-made famous gear or births a story of their own, that is roleplay, something up to the player 🙂
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Any better ways to add legendary power to gear?
Always open for suggestions! Tell me in the comments or send me a DM.
Now off to make a randomizing table of famous abilities gear has had in fiction and history – cheers!
Start at the beginning, or jump to what’s been missed:
Part 1: Murder and Worms – Three from death-row scour the rooms and horrors of the buried den of the addictive Rotblack Sludge.
Part 2: Meat and Statues – The trio meet the ruler of the underground complex.
Part 3: Eyes and Ash – Lesdy inadvertently provides the last clue.
Over 4 hours of actual play, 3 well-powered characters controlled by 1 player survived by lucky rolls and ingenuity but barely.
There were 15 rooms, 9 Tier 2 enemies (guards and Lesdy; 2 damage, 2 HP, roll 9+ to attack or defend against them), 6 Tier 1 enemies (Lesdy’s aids and the strangling plants), 1 Tier 4 (Fletcher), and 1 uber-Tier Worm that was, sadly, never given the chance to eat a character 😢
Riches and weapons and some Rotblack Sludge were acquired too, but these things may not last long.
I will leave the details to be included in other posts as I continue to develop BITS.
Suffice to say:
The game was great! I had so much fun being a first-time full-blown GM. Player C had a great time too, with special compliments to including low-key background music (sad violins) and rockin’ boss-fight beats (Smells Blood on loop).
The biggest piece of improvement feedback came for picking lowest rolls with disadvantage. Player C really did not like that, as even after the first roll all hope could be lost. A real heartbreaker, those!
I understand now that the characters were overpowered as they were able to proceed without caution and given lots of chances for lucky rolls. Further, I took a lot of time drawing the rooms on notecards that would then be a visual indication of what was happening; the map was invaluable, but the time spent certainly had its own value perhaps better spent.
After careful consideration, here is what I would change:
That’s about it!
Mork Borg is a solid game system. However, I have my doubts about its world and definitely about its first adventure.
I turned what Fletcher was doing into a kingdom-wide problem (Rotblack as a drug) and made ash fall from the sky. How the mission is given to the characters and how Aldor gets handed off also got clarified. The world begins its end at the end of the first mission, not randomly on some day down the line.
As for BITS, I truly feel BITS made the system more straight forward, faster, and no less deadly (ignoring the extra powers I gave the player’s characters). Every conflict of interest is resolved with no more than 2d6, tables are reduced to a d6, random effects and character sheets exist on notecards, and the rest is left to improv.
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Bam! First time as an established-game-system GM! First time with Mork Borg! First time giving BITS a full flex as a system and conversion!
I couldn’t be happier for all the fun had and all that was discovered along the way.
Now is the time to take these learnings for application to other BITS games and notes. (And to see if player C will continue their adventures in the current game’s ash-eaten world 😁)
What did you find when you played Mork Borg? Who survived the first dungeon delve? How have you improved your own TT RPG sessions after experiencing them firsthand?
Let me know all that and if you’d like to play in a game using BITS in near-literally any game world you have in mind. I am sure we could whip something up 😉 Cheers to your dice rolls! 🎲🎲
Read part 1 for a synopsis of the Mork Borg game, this story’s start, and part 2 for dangerous encounters:
Part 1: Murder and Worms – Three from death-row scour the rooms and horrors of the buried den of the addictive Rotblack Sludge.
Part 2: Meat and Statues – The trio meet the ruler of the underground complex.
Something twists and strangles.
The passed-out party awakes to bulbous plants using their roots to dig into skin, vines tangling around necks.
After the initial shock, it should be a cakewalk to snap apart weeds. Yet the first attempt fails. And the second! And…
Health falls. Struggling leads to naught as Invisible, the naturally lowest in health of the group, finally reaches zero hit points. He is on the verge of death, unless something, someone can save him.
Bubble Guy, in the nick-of-time, breaks their bonds. With a free action, Bubble Guy Blinks into the side of Invisible’s murderous creature, knocking it off the helpless companion.
Cat then escapes and together Cat and Bubble Guy pulp to mulch the plants most vile.
Getting Invisible awake again, he has a broken arm and is still on the brink of death. Cat stays with Invisible and purrs (a healing factor for others) while Bubble Guy Blinks rapidly through the complex to find… Anything at this point.
Desperation drives action now.
A woman (not Lesdy) is in Fletcher’s ‘workshop,’ the fires burnt out and Bubble Guy leaves unseen. Through the rooms and halls, bodies are where they were left, doors open where left ajar. However, in the grand dining hall, Lesdy and 2 other women are sitting at the massive table there. Bubble Guy is not so lucky this time and is seen before Blinking away.
Lesdy and the women leave down the dark corridor. Bubble Guy, thinking ahead, activates their Bubble power and follows.
Down the spring door Lesdy’s group climbs. Bubble Guy follows but at such haste, falls down the ladder in the dark and one-handed (the other sustaining the Bubble magic).
Bubble Guy suffers only lite damage from the fall. An aid to Lesdy is not so lucky. Caught between hard rock and the impenetrable Bubble field, momentum carries Guy into the aid, and they squished into stone.
After witnessing their kin’s death, Lesdy and the other woman make greater haste into the greenhouse, daggers drawn, watching their backs.
Lesdy ought to have watched her front.
Cat, hearing the commotion, jumps into a tree before jumping down onto these two returned with weapons out. Without mercy and without words exchanged, Cat slays Lesdy and her ilk.
The trio, now rejoined, searches the corpses for anything useful, as one does. On Lesdy is a pocket full of bleeding eyeballs – large, small, grey, green, blue, brown, utterly black.
Eureka! The characters understand these are eyes for the one-eyed statue they found before.
A short journey later, an eye from the pile gets settled in the stone-king’s socket. With a crack and crumble, the wall behind the characters falls apart, rolling into empty spots in the cobble as by some unseen will.
Within the dreary apartment before hidden is the sought Aldor. The spawn is starved, slightly maddened, desperate for Rotblack, and unwilling to leave.
After what they’ve been through, Cat, Bubble Guy, and Invisible give but few words before hauling the youth out. Muscling Aldor through the ravages of the complex, Aldor is unable to break free before being matched back to the locked surface gate to a welcoming party… of no-one.
No sound echoes through the falling ashes, no form breaks the smooth monotony of mounded char. As above, so below goes the grey waste endlessly.
The characters barely have time to shrug at each other and rattle the bars before a collection of dark coaches rumble through the drifts.
Sleeker steps out to welcome them and welcome back Aldor. The Shadow King’s favorite rants and rages all for naught as hulking, shapeless things of flickering smoke and shadow guide Aldor into a windowless carriage.
The return of any of the party, not to mention all three, was quite unexpected for Sleeker, especially when the first day waned. So much is the surprise, Sleeker can only give a gift in the moment of the trio’s lives. Should they want more, they perhaps could inquire at the Shadow Keep.
As Sleeker boards the last coach, it has little worry all of them may meet again. After all, the prisoners-turned-heroes-of-the-kingdom have managed to cheat death so far…
Left alone in the falling grey, the characters must delay any decision making once more as the second day passes and darkness begins to settle.
Above, the clouds part to a blacker-than-black sky, a void that touches at the very foundations of one’s soul. From the expanse fall legions of stars that sound like a million million screaming trumpets. Yet all this is forgotten as between the visions seen in the nothingness above and fundamental, undeniable feelings of despair, comes meaning, as prophesied in the holy Calendar of Nechrubel:
OF THOSE WHO BUILD MIGHTILY, STONE BY STONE, SO SHALL THEY FALL, STONE BY STONE.
Divinity has ordained the end is nigh! Thus concludes one of the last days at the death of the world 💀
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By sword and fire and word and spell, Cat, Bubble Guy (formerly Untouchable), and Invisible managed to make it back onto the surface of their dying world…
… in time to see a herald sign of the end 🔥🤘💀🤘🔥
Where will the party go next?
That is a story for another time 🙂 What I can do is say to check back next week for Part 4: A Reckoning where I explore what worked (or not) and how that has affected the BITS system of tabletop roleplaying.
Big, big thanks to player C for being exquisite in roleplay, rolling, and patience as we got through a long and deadly adventure ~ Lots of fun in Rotblack Sludge!
See you next week! Cheers to your own dungeon delves 🐉
Jimmy Chattin 