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.

• You have 1 horizontal A4 page † to create your marvelous monstrosities. 
• It CANNOT be perfect. Get over yourself. This is for fun.
• No AI art. There's so much free art out there, use some of that. See the rule above.
• The theme is: “What we didn’t know”—read on for an explanation. 
• You must vote (see more below, it's what makes Jams awesome!)
  
• You can charge for your submission but do provide community copies throughout the jam and the voting period.
• 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 license in your submission. Found 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.

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.

Whether you want to create a dungeon, a creature, or something else entirely. Getting that first spark of an idea can be tough. So here are some of my methods: 

• Rework a map (either from the real world or from someone like Dyson).
• 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.

Don’t worry—we all are. You’re 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. Oh, and listen to The Gap by Ira Glass.

Game jams on Itch.io have the option to include voting. After a jam is finished all the participants can vote on each other. This is mostly an opportunity to help each other grow through praise and feedback. We will score submissions 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).

Every single submission has won. You have created something that wasn't there previously. Fuck that's awesome.

The adventure that scores highest in "overall" will be featured on the wonderful MÖRK BORG podcast FLAIL TO THE FACE. And the top scorers in the other categories will receive my zine TRAPPED WITHIN.

Should someone score highest in more than one category, the zine will go to the second-highest scorer, and so forth.

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 – Everything you need in terms of public domain art. 

 MÖRK BORG Design Primer – For finding fonts, colours, and more.

How to Photobash Art for Your Zines – by Chaoclypse is a great video for creating art easily.

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.

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.

I probably didn't have to put this here, but I freaking did.