Cy_Borg, Pirate Borg and Death in Space talk new expansions at Gen Con panel

Stockholm Kartell fans will soon be eating well if the news out of a panel at GenCon Indy is any indication. The designers behind Free League’s portfolio of third-party tabletop RPGs previewed three new books coming for Mork Borg spin-offs Cy_Borg and Pirate Borg, and Death in Space.

Johan Nohr and Christian Sahlén joined Carl Niblaus and Luke Stratton on publisher Free League’s stage to discuss the coming year for their respective acclaimed tabletop RPG series, all three of which are planning to release their own expansion or supplement some time during 2024.

Cy_Borg dives back into its particular take on cyberpunk roleplay with Waste: 20X4, a sourcebook that picks up one year after the events of the core rulebook. “New year, worse shit,” Sahlén said on the panel, explaining that nearly everything worsened in the year since players first set foot in a city ablaze with rebellion, corruption and dirty cybernetic lighting.

Waste: 20X4 will introduce additional classes, factions and scenarios that will give players plenty of fodder for Cy_Borg’s quick-and-dirty style on the table. The book will also contain plenty of reference tables, rules for car chases and mowing down enemies while behind the wheel. Expect the book to be released “sometime next year”, according to Sahlén.

Fellow Stockholm Kartell member Carl Niblaus is planning to release a collection of scenarios for the excellent Death in Space called Dead Flag Contracts. Set within an old fuel depot on the jungle planet Lepidopterathat now houses a forgotten shred of society left after the Gem War, the book will explore life spent subsisting on galactic scraps through scenarios that can apparently be linked together to form an arcing campaign.

The style and tone seems to fit directly with Death in Space’s original vision: players embody hardscrabble nobodies trawling through the refuse of hyper-capitalism’s castoffs. Ships are jury-rigged patchworks, jobs are sparse and dangerous and paydays barely keep you alive through the next month. That’s still the case in Dead Flag City, and the book will also contain plenty of tools, tables and resources.

Pirate Borg is close to a public retail release after cleaning up on Kickstarter and clinching a publishing deal with Free League, a reality that still surprises designer Luke Stratton. His swashbuckling take on Mork Borg’s rules found an exuberant fanbase, and the resulting book will be available in retail on September 19th.

Already looking ahead, Stratton’s next project is the Dark Caribbean sourcebook. In his alternate history, explorers find the fabled New World full of nothing but zombies. Luckily for those enterprising settler colonialists, those undead bodies can be ground into a magical and potent Ash. This discovery triggers a vast resource scramble, and unscrupulous pirates can make a killing if they don’t mind a little wanton violence and hostile takeover.

Both Dead Flag Contracts and Dark Caribbean are planning to drop at some point in 2024, though the designers wouldn’t commit to a more concrete date at the panel. These three children of the Mork Borg bloom have found dedicated audiences of their own - thanks in large part to the RPGs permissive third-party licence - and are leading Free League’s growing portfolio of independently created titles.