Kicking off today is a new Kickstarter by Severed Toys and Stockholm Kartell to bring their multi-award winning Mörk Borg roleplaying game to life with four brand new, seven-inch, fully articulated action figures. Available to back on Kickstarter, Backers who pledge in the first 48 hours will also get a free exclusive Flanged Mace weapon for their figure.
In 2020, Mörk Borg swept Gen Con’s Ennie Awards, picking up the top gold prize for Product of the Year, Best Writing, and Best Layout and Design, along with silver in Best Game.
Check out the personal essay from Severed Toys Owner Justin Sirois about how he and his team picked and designed the different variants of the figure below!
Designing the Mork Borg Action Figure Variants by Justin Sirois
The spirit of tabletop roleplaying games is collaboration. Without a game master and players, game books don’t come to life. A lot of the fun comes from players customizing their characters. They add backstory and relationships, scars from battles fought, and their most trusted weapons. We want to bring this imaginative and playful spirit to our Mörk Borg (Dark Fort) figures, while honoring the iconic character on the cover of the core rule book with four action figure variants, a new zine, and the many weapons that could be unlocked as stretch goals.
We want Dread Risen to feel like it has literally risen off the pages. Our sculptor nailed the visceral filth of the undead skeleton with a rotting hyena head. Mörk Borg’s art and design are so unique, and it’s vital that we make this figure stand out. Since we’re a small team, we really get to do what we want, and that freedom is liberating. We have four variants of Dread Risen: Iconic, Bloody, Glow-in-the-dark, and Cursed. Each variant is designed to pay tribute to the one-of-a-kind game and to help inspire players to keep expanding the world of Mörk Borg in new and exciting ways.
Dread Risen – Fasan själv uppstigen: This figure is a pure representation of Johan Nohr’s black metal-inspired artwork. The texture is super important for the sculpt because we needed to honor the source material and embellish it just enough to elevate the action figure to something unique for both RPG and action figure fans. If someone wants to feel like Dread has risen right off the cover, this is the figure for them.
Blood-drenched – Bloddrypande: This one will be hand-flecked with an ample amount of gory red paint. This goes well with the Mörk Borg theme of “you’re probably going to die during this game.” We also love that the blood will be variable. No two figures will be the same. This honors the spirit of indie RPGs where no two game sessions are ever the same and each player walks away with a one-of-a-kind experience.
Glow-in-the-dark – Upplyst: If you walk by your bookshelf at night and take a look at the Mörk Borg rulebook, you’ll notice glow-in-the-dark text on the spine. I didn’t realize this until I had already owned the book for a few months. A glowing action figure isn’t unusual in the toy scene, but this one is also a wink to the book we are adapting. In RPGs, characters often glow with power, and it’s easy to imagine a radiating undead skeleton lurking through dank crypts.
Cursed – Förhäxad av Yetsabu-Nech: After seeing our artist’s render, this might be my favorite. It will be molded from matte black plastic with very little paint. What’s more appropriate for a black metal-inspired RPG? I feel like this variant captures the vile spirit of Mörk Borg.
It will be fun to see how people mix and match the variant heads if they unlock as stretch goals. And with the additional weapons packs, we’re bringing more elements of the core book to life with Omen Crows, Scrolls, Zweihänders, and more.
Stretch goals also include variants of the zine that Pelle Nilsson and Johan Nohr created. Each figure will come with a copy of this book—a short guide that allows people to randomly assign backstory and lore to their figure. This further honors the spirit of the game as it gives a personal touch to each figure from the award-winning creative team behind the RPG.
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