A Trip Through A Beautiful, Dread-Filled Morg Borg Landscape — Reviewing ‘Crown Of Salt’

Welcome to the table,

The vast majority of my life is in some way tied to table top gaming. My only good childhood memories come from sitting around a well worn table in the dimly lit backroom of a comic shop, surrounded by ‘elder nerds.’  Some of them had kids that were older than I was.

We played Pathfinder in the back of a smoke-filled lounge. People danced around us until the early hours of the morning at least once a week for a good part of my 20’s. We were at gaming conventions. I was running campaigns that spanned periods longer than a decade.

If it had a system, a setting, or a halfway decent looking handbook and was within arms reach or brought to my attention I was at least giving it a second thought. If I could, I’d add it to my library of manuals, folios, core books, and modules.

I’m sure, on some deep personal level, I could get into how gaming gives me the ability to meet other people on an equal playing field. On that field, dice, cards, or some random mechanic of chance defines whether you are successful at an action, rather than physical ability.

I’m sure I could dig deep into the way the world is not set up for someone with a physical disability. It seems like, if anything, the difficulty level is only getting ramped up higher and higher due to world events. However, rather than risk the existential dread that dawn has been bringing me for months now, I’d rather bring to your attention, dear readers, a different kind of dread.

This dread is found in the pages of one of the most compelling and stylish TTRPG books I have seen in a second.

I’m talking about Crown of Salt.

On it’s surface, Crown of Salt is a stylish 120 page Mörg Borg scenario book complete with beautifully moody color illustrations. These draw upon primal fears framing isolation, loss, and suffering into a TTRPG experience that I can only liken to exploration greed, from the perspective of those who are being taken from.

By the very nature of how this TTRPG is presented and the aesthetics chosen, Crown of Salt hits with the impact of a major blockbuster movie. It’s scored by the silence of your own anxiety and laced with notes of sinister silence. These are only punctuated by the occasional ragged breath and nervous laugh, as each corner turned seems to deliver you into the clutches of some fresh horror that is as beautiful as it is terrifying.

The adventure allows a Storyteller to take players on a quest into the unknown. The players seek a legend that is said to be buried under the Grift’s salt plains. What is brilliant about the construction of Crown of Salt is how open ended the hook is to get into the story.

This could be a seed for a larger campaign or a one shot adventure played out over a weekend. With very little effort the story could also be set up as a side quest in an ongoing game. As someone who has run hundreds of thousands of hours at the table, I could see even the most novice of Storyteller knitting this into a system that fits their table if Mörg Borg is not their cup of tea.

The only disappointing thing about Crown of Salt is how long I took to actually sit down and read it. It sat on my desk for what felt like months. As I was traveling for various engagements, I told myself that rather than watch some in flight movie or play on my phone I would read more in my travels. Somewhere over the Midwest of America, as I was on my second read through of Crown of Salt, I realized I clearly need to put my phone down more.

Crown of Salt was originally developed for the Spanish Old School Renaissance style game La Marca del Este or Adventures in the Eastern March, a heroic fantasy TTRPG. When Crown of Salt was translated to English, it had its system shifted to Mörg Borg to keep it ‘rules light’ and allow for easier conversion if Storytellers had the want or need to fit it into their table.

Behind this whole thing is the talented artist an TTRPG creator Tania Herrero, otherwise known as The Bread Wyrm. Tania’s art is a thing of true beauty, evoking visions of dread filled landscapes and haunting creatures that stalk through the surreal webwork of story beats. These beats make up the narrative of only the most memorable of times at the table.

Everything about Crown of Salt oozes style and dread in equal measure. It’s not lite or easygoing in any way. I have a table that can turn the most bleak of situations into a shopping session. Even they would be hard pressed to find a foothold of humor or joy in this grim dark story splashed with sea salt and sorrow.

And that is where this is truly a brilliant bit of tabletop goodness. This story will allow for the ambiance of gloom to be used as tool by the Storyteller and serve as a combat-less combatant against the very personalities of your player characters. You can bring in the most amusing of “little guys” or hilarious “himbos” into Crown of Salt and watch the player really have to work to find the moments to inject their special brand of charm.

Everything is brilliant, drawn into this slow sinking entropy. But somehow, due to the brilliant mind behind the books construction, it feels beautiful and compelling at each page turn. I don’t want to sink into the dark. I don’t want to seek the thing that will bring me ruin. Yet, I can’t resist the pull of the salt and gloom.

Crown of Salt is much like the lure of the deep’s call. It is almost impossible not to fall under its spell and sink into it, knowing that the outcome will most certainly spell your doom.

From the perspective of someone who loves art and brilliant design, Crown of Salt is one of the coolest looking TTRPG books I have on my shelf.

From someone who has run thousands of hours at the gaming table, Crown of Salt is a truly unique and stylish horror adventure into spaces most fear to tread.

What I’m telling you, dear reader, is that Crown of Salt is one of those books that is easily on my “must have” list. You would be doing yourself a disservice if you did not at least give it a look.

Until next time, it’s very easy to draw parallels between one thing and another. ‘If you like Batman you may like Daredevil,’ and so forth.

There are so many modern video games and novels that I could liken Crown of Salt to and immediately get a “Oh I like playing the samurai with dragon magic” but this book is something you need to experience yourself without me coloring it with paints from a different palette. It deserves to exist as its own thing and can’t wait to tell you about more from The Bread Wyrm.