Crow’s Corner

Cover to Cover Review of “Berserkr”

I enjoy running the occasional Borg game and I’m a fan of Norse mythology, so Berserkr seemed right up my alley. I’ve read and run Rōnin by the same authors with great success. The book arrived recently at my door and I dove right in. I haven’t been able to run it yet, so this review is based on my impression while reading it.

Some quick facts before I start:

Content Warnings: extreme violence, non-consensual transformation/pregnancy, harm to animals, death & fatalism, religious themes & divine cruelty, harsh environments, rage

Berserkr book

Vibe and Setting

Fimbulwinter is here and Ragnarök is fast approaching. The players are the heroes who will tip the scales in favour of either Odin or Loki: depending who they choose to bolster, the game plays out considerably different. One of my favourite aspects is that both sides are viable, allowing for meaningful player choice.

In a reference to Mörk Borg’s call to burn the book after playing, this one tells you to give the book a viking burial after the campaign, which was a nice touch.

This book is random tables galore. Each of the nine realms has the following tables, alongside a handful of stat blocks (usually four small ones and two bigger enemies):

I felt myself skimming many of these entries, as the sheer amount loses their uniqueness at some point. There’s a few too many just related to snow and ice and other more or less mundane environmental hazards, like crevasses in either ice or lava rock. Frost Spectres, Ice Wraiths and Mistwalkers; all sharing more or less the same flavour. What felt missing was concrete locations in the realms, as well as some more mundane NPCs or even just name tables.

The random encounters often felt like their own missions, so you can build a lot of content with them, especially alongside the local rumours table and the quests from Odin and/or Loki.

The realms are connected by the world tree Yggdrasil, which comes with mechanics for travel between those realms.

Other Play Materials

Enemy stats make up a large portion of the book, dedicating 4 pages to each featured norse god (Odin, Thor, Tyr, …) or other legendary creature (Fenrir, Nidhogg, Surtr, …): how to run them, three pieces of unique loot, combat stats and features, a boss phase and a great piece of artwork. Most of these are great and capture the gods well, although there are some feel-bad mechanics that negate players’ successes, which might not fit for every table.

There’s also five pieces of unique loot expanded upon (Mjölnir being one of them) and quest hooks surrounding them.

Character Creation

The classes you can find in Berserkr are as follows:

Some of them were better made than others in my eyes. Wraith and Soul Shepherd have a lot of narrative overlap. The Flame Construct doesn’t have any features for outside of combat. The Valkyrie has a feature and a realm special for flight, which seemed largely redundant. The Berserkr has a feature that has the possibility to get sick from consumed “tainted blood” which seemed like a risk to have people accidentally introduce negative stereotypes.

That being said, there is some great stuff in there too. I especially liked the Realmbreaker being able to access previous PCs’ memories and the Warden’s beast companion (and the mourning phase, should it die in battle).

Other than the class, there’s five stats (Fortitude, Might, Guile, Swift, Wits - one more than usual) rolled as in Mörk Borg but with some bigger modifiers from the start, slightly higher HP dice too, starting equipment/weapons/armor, fates to influence dice rolls and some backstory tables. Overall, more or less as expected for a Borg game.

Mechanics

There’s a lot of mechanics introduced for the setting and most of them sound extremely fun. This is where Berserkr shines.

The first (and my favourite) are Sagas: players have to write down important story beats of their characters during the game. Some mechanics interact with these and might even erase entries. And when you die? You’ll basically have to do an elevator pitch (”recounting your saga”) about yourself to the gods to secure your place in valhalla (or helheim).

In addition to the usual Borg combat-related actions (melee, ranged, defense, scrolls), there’s also parrying, as a special offensive-defensive action. There are a handful of conditions which can add a little mechanical depth (although I’m not completely sold on introducing mechanics that take away players’ turns and one could argue they veer into D&D-adjacent territory) and there’s rules for Flyting (a battle of wits) and for holmgang (duelling).

Another favourite of mine is the Favour and Wrath mechanic. Depending if you sway the balance towards Loki or Odin, you will incur the Favour and Wrath of both of them. The further the balance tips, the more extreme Favour and Wrath will be. All of this is tracked on a Ragnarök tracker and Ragnarök starts as soon as you reach the end. Neat! There’s also mechanics for Ragnarök itself, of course, and I can see those working well.

Last but not least, the runes. There’s 24 of them and they can usually be used as spells or inscribed into either armor or weapons. About 10% of the effects are used for buffing and debuffing, 15% for healing, 15% for defensive actions and 30% of the effects are used for damage and other combat related things. Only 30% are used for utility and flavour and one of them really irked me: “Make any creature you see pregnant”. I struggle to see many scenarios in a Viking-Borg game where this spell would be used consensually or meaningfully and having it trigger randomly as a side-effect (which is totally a thing in this game) is tasteless at best and packages female trauma as entertainment at worst. It’s easy to leave out of the game, but it makes you stop and think how this made the list in the first place. It made me seriously reconsider playing the game and I’m still undecided if I can see beyond it.

Conclusion

Overall, I can see Berserkr being a fun game with lots to do. There’s enough content in there to support campaigns of varying length. There’s some good guidelines how to frame a campaign and players can really choose the directions it will go, tipping the scales either way.

Many of the texts and ability texts are longer than what I’m used to from Borg games and shorter and punchier descriptions would have been welcome occasionally. There’s also some mistakes that should have been caught in editing (e.g. calling players “PCs”, random switches between second and third person) and the proofing of the print version (invisible or hardly readable text compared to digital).

What makes up for it is the artwork, with each page feeling unique and some really great pieces.

There is slightly more mechanical depth to the game than is usually seen in Mörk Borg, at the cost of being a bit more similar to D&D. You’d think this is common in Borg games, but I found it especially noticeable in Berserkr. Many of the new and unique mechanics, like Sagas and Favour/Wrath add a lot of flavour to the game, though, and my overall impression is positive. Especially considering the hackability of Borg games.

Should I find myself running Berserkr it will be with a few adjustments, especially in the character classes (more uniqueness and wacky-ness) and runes (more utility options, less pregnancy horror). It’s a solid jumping-off point for a game about vikings meddling in the gods’ business and fighting in Ragnarök, though.

Other Games

A friend of mine made a viking-themed game, too! It’s called Pagan Pacts and it is a lot more low-fantasy, if that’s your jam. You can find it on paganpacts.com for free.

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