This week, I got my hands on indie tabletop role-playing game sensation MÖRK BORG. I’m late to the party, but I’m making my way through the vast sea of indie TTRPGs, and this one specifically was quite hard to get, on the merit of being sold out basically everywhere. As I parsed through the tantalizing pages of MÖRK BORG, I quickly realized why the game won Gold in the 2020 ENNIE awards for Best Layout and Design, along with Best Writing and Product of the Year. This is a thing of beauty, spawned by a mind suffused with Heavy Metal music and post-apocalyptic visions.
The monsters section opens with the most classic of critters: a goblin. There is nothing memorable about its stats (MÖRK BORG is very rules-light, especially for monsters) but the short lore entry shocked me, to the point that it will forever change the way I look at low-level monsters in TTRPGs, including Dungeons & Dragons. In MÖRK BORG, goblins are actually humans, cursed to assume a hideous form while their minds slowly go crazy by witnessing that decline. How the curse is spread, however, is where things truly get malicious. If the players are attacked by a group of goblins, usually lurking in the dark depths of Sarkash forest, then the curse automatically spreads to the characters. No need to be hit or wounded, no saving throws. You just get it, and in D6 days, the characters will transform into goblins. The only way to stop this is to kill the monster who originally carried the curse.
This may seem trivial, but keep in mind that this is not D&D. These goblins won’t stay around to get slaughtered. They’ll ambush the party and then run away into the woods, and good luck finding the exact critter who carried the curse. You have to kill them all. If you find the whole scenario as amusingly wicked as I do, know that it’s also the subject of a nice little third-party adventure, Goblin Grinder, by Johan Nohr and Ripley Caldwell. The idea truly fits MÖRK BORG‘s vibe of apocalyptic despair tempered by dark humor. Moreover, it made me reflect on how to make even low-level monsters truly scary in TTRPGs.
One of my biggest complaints with D&D is that, as a Dungeon Master, the level of the player characters somewhat limits the selection of monsters you can throw at your players. Let’s say, for example, that you really like the Grell, an abomination that is essentially a big floating brain with a beak and barbed tentacles, which hovers near the ceiling in dark caves, swoops over prey, paralyzes them and drags them away. It reminds me of the scariest Pokémon of all time, the floating balloon-like Drifloon, who, according to its Pokédex entry, “tugs on the hands of children to steal them away.” (Yep, you read that right.) However, the poor Grell is merely challenge rating 3, meaning that, unless you want to throw a swarm of these at your players, it will quickly lose that scary factor that is essential, in my opinion, to all monster encounters.
Those cute little goblins are the quintessential beginner-level enemy in D&D. They can surely be scary for a level 1 party, but if you meet them again after that point, it’s very likely that they will be just comedy relief or meat shields for a stronger enemy. Which is fine, every evil mastermind needs goons to hide behind, but they surely won’t scare your players. Even the new approach in the 2025 Monsters Manual, which introduces different tiers for the same monster entry, caps goblins at challenge rating 3 with the Goblin Hexer. MÖRK BORG throws a big middle finger at all that, making every little goblin you meet a threat worse than death.
Before you go wild in the comments, I know there are many ways to make low-level monsters more effective and dangerous in D&D. Preparation is an essential part of a DM job, and you can come up with great monster strategies by consulting resources such as The Monsters Know What They’re Doing (both the blog and the book). Clever use of terrain, abilities, and surprise can make even low-level monsters shine. And of course, there are plenty of guides on how to beef up a monster stat block. However, all that is work that the DM has to do. Nothing against that, but in terms of game design, MÖRK BORG showed me a truly clever approach that could be applied to D&D, without having to go full grimdark.
For example, goblins are known for being pretty sneaky and nimble-fingered. Their motivation could be to steal the party’s most valuable possessions, which seems more realistic than trying to take on with wooden spears a group of adventurers glowing with magic power. By adding proficiency in Sleight of Hand and a higher Dexterity score to the Goblin stat block, all of a sudden you can have even experienced adventurers sweat at the thought of encountering them. Imagine being swarmed by the little critters, and after killing a bunch of them, realizing that your pockets feel much lighter. This can spark many narrative scenarios, with the party having to track down the goblins and invade their lair, where the monsters will have a significant advantage (and where stronger creatures may be waiting).
Having weak monsters bestow a curse is also a good way to make them dangerous, even if it’s not something as wicked as what MÖRK BORG does. I love the idea of players casually slaughtering a weak creature, and then slowly realizing in the following days that something just feels wrong. However, this approach is made moot in D&D by the level 3 spell Remove Curse, which removes all curses on a touched subject, with no rolls or material costs. (Personally, I would homebrew this spell to make it consume expensive materials at least 1,000 gold worth.)
Overall, indie TTRPGs of the Old School Renaissance wave, such as MÖRK BORG, make every monster dangerous by simply making the player characters much weaker. In an epic fantasy game such as D&D this is not possible nor encouraged, so DMs have to find other ways to make every monster encounter, if not scary, at least memorable.
Studying tactics and improving stat blocks is one way, but I personally like the design approach that MÖRK BORG brought to the table with its goblins. It uses lore to stimulate gameplay and keep players on their toes, which is something I hope to achieve in my D&D games, too. Every monster should feel like a threat, no matter its challenge rating.
