There’s been some Twitter discourse the last couple of days about the Mörk Borg Third Party License.

It started when Kaiju Poet announced his upcoming Kickstarter, Whispers of the Dead Saint. It’s a novel that will be set in the dying world. People were asking how a novel can be compatible with an RPG ( we’ll answer that later ). In the ensuing discussion, MÜG BORG was pointed to in a way implying it was also ridiculous.

I made MÜG BORG.

There was a ridiculous joke behind it, but it isn’t what you think. I wanted to see what odd thing I could force my friend,Līber Lūdōrum, to put in Ex Libris Mörk Borg (ELMB). For those not familiar with ELMB, it’s his Sisyphean effort to record everything published under the Mörk Borg Third Party License. As of this writing, it has just hit 1300 entries.

So what is MÜG BORG?

As I said, I wanted something in an unusual medium. A constraint that would drive my creativity. Low hanging fruit would have been to just slap the label and legal text on something. I wasn’t happy with that. It felt disingenuous. So, I decided to include game rules. That made the license appropriate. From there it was fairly easy to decide that a coffee mug with coffee based rules fit the bill.

There has been talk arguing some of these products are cash grabs. I can’t tell if these are criticisms, or straw man arguments from members of the Mörk Borg community. Either way, it isn’t for me. I released MÜG BORG on August 10, 2021. In the last 13 months, I have made $41.27. If I was trying to make extra money, there would be far better ways to do it.

So, what about Whispers of the Dead Saint? Is the compatible logo appropriate? Well what does its author have to say?