Awe-Borg
A downloadable game
We have been here a thousand years, and the land doesn’t care.
We huddle in our villages, towns, universities, protected by customs and lore that more or less keep it outside.
We have been here a thousand years, and the law doesn’t care.
Sometimes it rides in and takes someone. If they ever come back, they are forever changed. They never come back.
We have been here a thousand years, and the Aweful don’t care.
They do not even notice that we’re here.
***
Awe-Borg is a game of exploration in a Lovecraftian universe, in which you play the desperate workers, scholars, and zealots willing to face a vast and hostile wasteland for the slim chance of a better life, comprehension, or hope.
Using Mörk Borg's quick-to-play mechanics, it offers 94 richly-illustrated pages including:
- 6 unique character classes: the Obsessive Messenger, the Wronged Labourer, the Braggart Hunter, the Village Warden, the Banished Scholar, and the Doomed Prophet.
- 7 beings from End-Deer to Swarmdogs, and 6 Aweful beings, unknowable horrors haunting the edges of reality.
- 26 random tables, covering everything from adventure-creation to starting gear to worrisome blights, cursed tomes, and Dreadful Understandings.
- Unique rules for Beholding Aweful Things, with a chance to slowly gain power through greater understanding, or otherwise slowly diminish your very self.
- d66 True Visions, predicted features of a coming apocalypse.
- 8 locations in the world: the Villages, the Town, the School, the Mines, the Palace, the Temple, the Land, the Capital*
Created by the Saga Forge Adventures competition winner Eleonor Estragon, Awe-Borg offers you tools to create stories in a world where neither the land nor the law care if you exist, but somehow you keep going.
*You will never reach the Capital.
Purchase
In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $5 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Exclusive content
Support this game at or above a special price point to receive something exclusive.
Community Copies
Take a free copy if you need one - a new one will be added for each purchase.
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Hi - this looks intriguing (I'm looking at the preview pages, not a Community Copy). Is this game set on earth during a particular era, such as the 1920s? How does this game "do Lovecraft" differently than Cthork Borg?
Hi - thanks for the comment!
The game's set in an alt-universe based on a mix of late Tsarist Russia and elements of the modern day.
I'm really interested in parallels between Lovecraftian horror (there are powerful things that are distant, random, and impossible to understand) and how Russian writers of the period treat their government and environment (distant, arbitrary, inexplicable), so I thought it would be an interesting setting for people to adventure in. You'll encounter The Villages, The Town, The School, The Palace, The Mines, The Temple, The Land, and The Capital (you will never reach the Capital).
I've not played Cthork Borg - and thanks for telling me about it; I'll certainly check it out in more detail - but based on a quick look, I'd say:
Cthork:
1. A classic Lovecraftian setting
2. Way more expansion content
3. It seems a bit crunchier (in a cool way)
Awe:
1. An unusual setting, but one I hope is built to host Lovecraftian stories well
2. More about how your characters face their society, in addition to the Horrors
3. I've tried to keep things simple (e.g. the system for 'what happens if you see the Horrors' uses the core stats, rather than an additional stat to track).
And, though it's not important, more colour in the artwork.
Hope that helps!
Eleonor, thank you!