No more excuses – it’s time to create. Whether you’ve never actually created an adventure before, or you’re the ENNIE-award-winning creator of CLAMDASH, this is it. Put aside a Saturday or a few hours every day and let’s hammer this thing out.

I want to help you help yourself by creating an adventure for MÖRK BORG. Because creation is life, that’s wildly cliché, but hot-diggity-do if it isn’t true.

The rules are simple:

• You have one horizontal A4 page † to create your marvelous monstrosities. – It CANNOT be perfect. Get over yourself. This is for fun.
• The theme is: “What we didn’t know”—read on for an explanation. 
• You must vote. After the jam ends you have 14 days to read and vote for the others. It’s part of what makes online creation awesome. Please do so and leave a nice comment. 
• Make it dark, but DO NOT make it misogynistic, sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, or otherwise discriminatory in any way. 
• Include the MÖRK BORG third-party licensing text in your submission. You can find it here: https://morkborg.com/content/

† That’s the same as a spread (two A5s): 297 mm x 210 mm. Meaning that it will look like your MÖRK BORG core book.

After the jam, you can expand upon your adventure, but for now, it cannot exceed a horizontal A4.

Theme: What We Didn’t Know

The idea behind this theme is to create something for the MÖRK BORG universe that we didn’t previously know about. Is there an island in the endless sea? Something above us? A city yet to be named? Perhaps there’s a piece of lore that finally completes the puzzle.

You can also try translating the theme into something more mechanical for your dungeon. Use it and abuse it.

“I Don’t Know How to Create an Adventure?!”

Here are some of my methods: 

• Rework a map (either from the real world or from someone like Dyson): https://dysonlogos.blog/2022/07/04/on-the-five-room-dungeon/ 
• Start ideating with the cross-method.
• Take a piece of paper, run out into the forest, and write everything down. 
• Find an item in your home and brainstorm ideas around it. What does it inspire? What attributes can you transfer into your adventure? Could it be a dungeon, an artifact, or something else entirely?
• Just get started. See below.

“I’m Still Lost!”

Don’t worry—we all are. You’re just afraid that starting means failing, and that failure will fuel that horrible voice in your head telling you that you can’t do it. Fuck that voice. You can do it. Take one step forward. It’s SO worth it. Trust me.

If you need tips, tricks, emotional support, or high-fives, join us over on Discord! We’re all about helping each other grow: 

What do you mean I must vote?

Game jams on Itch.io have the option to include voting. That means that after a jam is finished all the participants can vote on each other, scoring different adventures on four metrics:

• Theme
• Written Tone
• Visual Execution
• Overall

Basically, how well does it use the theme? How is the written tone of the piece? How well is it executed? And how much do you score it overall?

Remember this is all in the spirit of growing as creators. So this is an opportunity to leave a dark and wholesome comment to other creators and help them grow (new limbs).

Winner:

The adventure that wins "overall" will be featured on the wonderful MÖRK BORG podcast FLAIL TO THE FACE.

Also ,the top 3 overall will receive my zine TRAPPED WITHIN.

 

Resources

I will try to include more as we go, but this is a great start.

I'm Not Paying Nohr for Cover Art STARTER PACK Google Spreadsheet

MÖRK BORG Design Primer Google Doc

How to Photobash Art for Your Zines – by Chaoclypse

Why Did You Create This Jam?

Well, I got started by doing a jam myself.  So I want to give the gift of creation to more people. I had honestly forgotten how awesome it is to make stuff, just for the hell of it. And so, after a chat with Olaskos and Kevin on their podcast “Whispers of the Dying Land” I knew I had to do this.

So really, this whole jam is just an attempt at getting Olaskos to create his first dungeon.

Legal

What we didn’t know jam is an independent production by Philip Jensen and is not affiliated with Ockult Örtmästare Games or Stockholm Kartell. It is published under the MÖRK BORG Third-Party License. MÖRK BORG is copyright Ockult Örtmästare Games and Stockholm Kartell.