#cy_borg

Right now, these are the books and supplements I have prepared (and thanks to the people on reddit who regularly ask which supplemental material to get for Mörk Borg for solo play; these are all pdfs unless noted otherwise)

Ironsworn

Core set

Assets (Printed Deck)

Ironsworn: Delve

Ironsworn: Delve - Site Cards (Printed Deck)

Mörk Borg

Core rulebook (print)

GM Screen (print)

Mörk Borg Cult: Heretic

Mörk Borg Cult: Feretory

Sölitary Defilement

Cy Borg (print, bought from a store which is part of the Bits & Mortar initiative, so I can also get the pdf) added on June 24th, 2025

So what has been going on is that I came across the solorpg subreddit, kept reading there, then got myself to play Dead Cells for fun, that led me to other roguelikes, also to Dark Souls, and then to Mörk Borg, and Ironsworn, because the person behind the solo rules supplement for Mörk Borg said that Ironsworn rules served as inspiration for Sölitary Defilement.

This is building myself entertainment for the future.

And Dark Souls is fun. Summer holidays will be dark and sunny.

By Christian Sahlén and Johan Nohr

A rules-lite cyberpunk RPG about a rotting megacity constantly in flux.

Based on , as you may have guessed, Mork Borg

New rifle I designed for my CY_BORG character. Easily the most complex thing I've ever drawn.

Link: https://www.killengn.com/

Kill ENGN is a 64-page zine expansion designed for CY_BORG that adds mechs to your game. There is also a pre-written adventure in a 40-page zine called Cast Oubliette. I backed these on Kickstarter in late 2024, and the PDF delivered very quickly, but I've only just gotten around to reading it because I'm bad at backlogs.

As ever with anything -Borg, the visuals are intended to bring a lot of the vibes, and these look great. Kill ENGN takes the typical design language and definitely learns all the right lessons. It's visually very busy, but still easily readable and useable at the table. The finished product is extremely slick, no notes here. The writing is also really high quality, which isn't always the case for third-party supplements like this. Overall it's a really professional piece of work.

There are rules for building a mech that use the typical character creation structure, so it's nice and familiar, and makes the mechs feel important, not just like a piece of equipment. It also means there's a lot of flexibility and customisation, and I could easily see more classes and gear being added to expand it further.

Although this is a zine expansion, it's very close to being a full game in its own right. You have character creation, lore, combat rules, gear, enemies - you could almost run this standalone, showing how much effort and detail has been put into it.

One other thing I love is that there's a lot of good tables sprinkled throughout the book, and a strong mission generator. This should really help GMs to incorporate the mechs into their campaigns beyond 'wow it'd be cool if we had mechs'.

For Kill ENGN itself, I'd say it's an easy recommend if you play CY_BORG and like mechs. And who doesn't like mechs?

Moving to Cast Oubliette, the adventure, it's of a mixed bag for me. For one thing, I'm not a huge fan of the primary font choice, which I didn't find all that pleasant to read for the whole zine. A quick overview though: in the adventure, your characters go to what is essentially a mech fight club and get an early opportunity to experience mech combat in a contained scenario, which is a nice touch. It also serves as a 'you meet in a tavern...' style introduction, where you will eventually be pulled into an adventure towards a facility owned by Grivt Dynamics, a corporation building mechs.

The format is typical OSR-like Borg-style with simple maps and bullet points. A frequent concern I had was the length of some bullet points, which are really more like paragraphs of text, as you can see above. It also leans a lot on diagetic text, to the point where it took me longer than I would've liked to parse the intended structure of the adventure. I often struggle with this in games - the diagetic text approach can be very cool, but honestly as a GM what I want more than anything is clarity in the rules and instructions. Sometimes I definitely feel that is sacrificed too easily.

The final act of the adventure is cool, and there's a good story going on for the players to uncover, although it feels like it arrives in this last act without much prior setup. The hook here is very light initially, and players will need to follow the story for the sake of it rather than their characters being really driven to.

Shunned Nanomancer, 2022, Birdnest

CY_BORG may be one of the most gloriously anti-establishment games I’ve had the pleasure of reading through. I was certainly enjoying the world-building and the picture of this inescapable dystopia, but I think the moment I fell in love was the first page of the rules for the system. On this page it says, “You are encouraged to break every single rule in this book. Except this one.

Rule #00

Player characters cannot be loyal to or have sympathy for the corps, the cops, or the capitalist system. They might find themselves reluctantly forced to do missions for them or their minions. But make no mistake—they are the enemy.” Talk about a powerful thesis statement.

I do think if I ran a campaign in CY_BORG I’d likely want to make it a little more hopeful than the corebook. (in the sense that you could possibly have a chance of destroying the system and create something better, but I’ll wholly admit that to do this would require me to change or ignore certain aspects of the setting.) Of course, this is also to point out that TTRPG systems are intended to help facilitate telling a story that you and the people you’re playing with actually want to participate in, so if changes are needed, then they should be made.