Let's create a Mork Manual character!

This week I'll continue my character creation series, continuing the series of Borg-like games characters made for a future project of mine. These will be alternating with other kinds of posts, like my solo campaigns recaps and some gameable content coming from my Duet Pirate Borg home game.

This time we're going with Mork Manual by Rodney Rickrode, a Borg hack that keeps the iconic Mork Borg style but is closer to the classic fantasy of games like B/X, of which it retains the race-as-class. Without further ado, let's get into it!


1. First of all let's roll for our CLASS, d10: 3, Fallen (basically an Elf), a character who has a bonus on reaction rolls made against creatures you haven't met before and is immune to diseases, poisons and old age (among other things);

2. Next let's determine our ABILITIES, for which this game offers an alternative to the usual Borgs: d4-d4 x4, to be assigned as you wish and then modified by the class (in our case +1 to AGI and -1 to TOU). We end up with:
-Strength: -2
-Agility: +1
-Presence: -3
-Toughness: -2;

3. Now we have a few EXTRA rolls to make:
-HP, d6+TOU: 1-2=...we can't go below 1, so that's what we'll start with (an alternative rule in the book allows us to take max HP for our class...but this is funnier);
-Omens, d2: 2;
-Powers, d3+PRE:...whatever we roll, we'll get the minimum, so 1. Powers in this game are necessary to use Scrolls and to activate certain class abilities (in the Fallen case, for example, we can expend one to act first in combat regardless of initiative or to do a second attack at +2 DR if our first attack hits);

4. Let's now roll to determine our STARTING GEAR:
-We start with a Backpack which can hold 7 regular-sized items, a waterskin and d4 (4) days of rations;
-First gear table, d12: 3, Caltrops;
-Second gear table, d12: 1, Rope of garlic;
-Weapon, d6+4: 5+4=9, Crossbow (d8), which goes well with my AGI;
-Armor, d2+1: 2+1=3, Chainmail (-d4 damage, but -2 to AGI tests);
-A Scroll of Bestial Speech and 2d6x10=70s (given by our class);

5. There's a QUEST GENERATOR on the back cover of the book, so let's use it! We need to roll 3d6:
-6, An exasperated merchant
WANTS YOU TO
-2, investigate whoo is digging up dead bodies
WHY?
-4, to take credit for the job;
Ok...I can come up with something starting from this, it's an interesting result;

6. Lastly, we need a NAME for our character, but there is no generator here, so I'll just pick one: let's go with Malkov.

And here we are! I'm interested in trying this game, and especially this character, to see if they can survive despite having 1 HP and kind of bad stats. Only one way to find out!

This is all for this week, see you next Sunday for my next post!

May your dice never betray you,
Kirhon

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